Entries Tagged 'Kunming, Yunnan' ↓

Wow! Wild tigers were spotted in Xishuangbanna:

For the first time ever, scientists recently captured clear footage of a wild Indo-Chinese tiger in a nature reserve in China’s southeastern Yunnan Province. The researchers used infrared cameras as part of wildlife monitoring and protection project supported jointly by the Xishuangbanna National Nature Conservation Protected Areas Management in Shangyong, Beijing Normal University Institute of Ecology, and the International Species Protection Project.

Source: World Watch

Hey! I noticed a few days ago that some of my flickr photos weren’t appearing on my website. If you’re in China and you may also be experiencing problems viewing photos from flickr. Install this magic addon to Mozilla Firefox and everything will reappear.

http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4286

Thanks to John at Sinosplice for pointing me to the fix!

Discussion about the disappearing photos on flickr forum.

(Confused? “What is Firefox?,” you ask. It’s a web browser! If you don’t know what browser you’re using you might be using Internet Explorer — the one with the big blue “e”. Firefox is a safer browser, download it here.)

I talked to my friend April about that poem I memorized. And she had a different take on the last few lines. Of course, I doubt she’s wrong on this one!

谁言寸草心, shui2 yan2 cun4 cao3xin1,
报得三春晖. bao4de2 san1chun1hui1.

word-by-word translation:

who (nobody) / calls / short / grass / heart (feeling)
tells / for / three / spring (the season) / sunlight

Here the small leaves of grass are not a metaphor for the child, but in fact refer back to the clothes the mother is weaving/sewing. Meaning, the clothes are such a small token of her love, that although they will remind him of her love, he will eventually wear them thin. The clothes she sews for him so lovingly cannot last forever. Ah, yes. I like that message a little better.

Today I found even more treasures abandoned by American students, including the March issue of Harper’s Magazine. Woohoo! Also another two coursepacks: “Social Issues/Arts and Humanities Seminar” and “Minority Areas Field Excursion Readings.”

The original source of all of these coursepacks is presumably SIT, a study abroad program for undergraduates. Their course syllabi are online (includes full bibliographies of readings).

I was just thinking about all those things that are bugging me, things I can only (mysteriously) refer to here as “things not appropriate for blogging.” But I realize that lately I’ve been incredibly fortunate. Last night my friend, Jessie, invited me to dinner with her parents and then we went to an “open mic nite” at a bar. Really lovely people. And although it wasn’t exactly Chinese practice (they are Australians) it was so relaxed and normal. I don’t think I need to remind you, but “normal” isn’t always so “normal” around here. Living in a constant state of being “the other” can really wear you out.

Last night I also had the good fortune of finding a collection of books and course packs abandoned by some American students that were studying here. Oddly enough half (!) of the books were ones I’d already read and I passed them on to Jessie and her dad. But I think the course packs are the real gold mine. They are labeled: Orientation Readings (introductory material for their big study abroad semester), History and Religions, and Minority Issues/Field Study Seminar. It’s all in English, of course, and it’s all so… USEFUL. I mean, I haven’t really dug into any of it, but skimming the first two packs, I’m really very interested in spending some time reading through them. Here’s the abbreviated bib included as the table of contents for each pack:

[UPDATE: Full bibliographies available on SIT website (see course syllibi).]
Orientation Readings -
1. Behind the Facade (Manfred Morganstern)
2. Introduction to Your College Semester Abroad (SIT)
3. The Green Banana (Donald Batchelder)
4. Creditable Study Abroad (John Sommer)
5. Traveling as a Vegetarian (Costas Christ)
6. Big Bad China and the Good Chinese (Jeffrey Wasserstrom)
7. The Chinese Character (Lin Yutang)
8. Confucianism and Western Democracy (Hu Shaohua)
9. Encountering the Chinese (Hu Wenhong and Cornelius Grove)

History and Religions Seminar -
1. Approaches to Understanding China’s History (John King Fairbank)
2. Patterns from the Past (John Bryan Starr)
3. Political Development in Reforming China (Tong Yangqi)
4. China’s Political System (John Bryan Starr)
5. China and Its Religious Inheritance (John Chamberlayne)
6. Sino-Muslim Identity in Modern China (Johnathan Lipman)
7. Mad Dogs and Englishmen (Craig Storti)
8. A Traveler’s Guide to the Chinese History (Madge Huntington)

Minority Issues/Field Study Seminar -
1. The Two Chinas (Kevin Sinclair)
2. Representing Nationality in China (Dru Gladney)
3. Sex Tourism Practices in the Periphery (Nancy Chen)
4. Ethnic Identity in China (Dru Gladney)
5. China’s Many Faces (Susan Blum)
6. Against Authenticity (Susan Blum)
7. One Drop of Blood (Lawrence Wright)
8. Interviewing Informants (Julia Crane)
9. Participant Observation (Julia Crane)
10. Collecting Life Histories (Julia Crane)
11. Fieldwork Under Time Constraints (John Hoddinott)
12. Fieldworking in Kunming (Susan Blum)
13. The Return of the Foreign Anthropologies? (Gregory Guldin)
14. Sinicizing Chinese Anthropology (Gregory Guldin)
15. Thinking About the Ethics of Fieldwork (Ken Wilson)

Yeah, I’m still alive. My sister scared the hell out of me yesterday, by calling my cell phone from the U.K. Apparently, there was an enormous earthquake in Pu’er City not far from Kunming (our home), but we didn’t even feel it. The quake killed three people, injured 290, and forces tens of thousands of people from their homes. Sounds awful.

I memorized a poem for class today. It’s called 游子吟 (You2zi3 Yin2) or “A Song for a Traveler”. It is often recited on Mother’s Day because it’s about a mother’s love for her child. Her child is about to leave home, and she is sewing his clothes.

慈母手中线, ci2mu3 shou3zhong1 xian4,
游子身上衣, you2zi3 shen1shang4 yi1.
临行密密缝, lin2xing2 mi4mi4 feng2,
意恐迟迟归. yi4 kong3 chi2chi2 gui1.
谁言寸草心, shui2 yan2 cun4 cao3xin1,
报得三春晖. bao4de2 san1chun1hui1.

Here’s my rough translation:

A loving mother with thread in her hand,
A traveler with clothes on his body.
Before he leaves she so, so carefully sews,
Fearing it will be a long, long time before he returns.
No one claims the new blades of grass feel
Any gratitude for three months of spring sun.

From what I can gather is it’s about us, your damn, ungrateful children, who don’t appreciate the sacrifices you make and abandon you without so much as a “thank you”. But I might have this wrong. [UPDATE: Yes, I was wrong.] Here are some other translations:

Song of the Wanderer

The thread moves in the hand of the mother kind,
To weave a garment for the wanderer to wear.
As the mother plies the needle with much care,
Anxiety for her son’s tarry out so troubles her mind.
Oh, can the tender plant have enough to pay,
For the sunshine of so many a spring day?
Source: Learn Chinese Mandarin London

A thread is in my fond mother’s hand moving.
For her son to wear the clothes ere leaving.
With her whole heart she’s sewing and sewing.
For fear I’ll e’er be roving and roving.
Who says the little soul of grass waving.
Could for the warmth repay the sun of spring.

The thread in the hands of a fond-hearted mother
Makes clothes for the body of her wayward boy;
Carefully she sews and thoroughly she mends,
Dreading the delays that will keep him late from home.
But how much love has the inch-long grass
For three spring months of the light of the sun?

These two are both from: bbs.netat.net

The poet is Meng Jiao (751 – 814), who lived during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907).

A week ago I was flying high, listening to lectures on Chinese history and struggling through a children’s history text in Chinese. But this week I’ve got nothing. Not sure what’s wiped me out.

At school we started the next textbook in our series:
杨寄洲 （2003）。汉语教程（第三册）上，一年级教材。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。

It already feels a little denser than the previous book. And our teacher keeps telling us that it’s really hard and she doesn’t know how to teach it. Great. Of course, I’m not sure what she means by “teach” it, because all she does is drag us through the book. Here’s our standard operating procedure for getting through a chapter, spanning 3-4 days:

Read the new words, 生词: repeat each word after her and then a couple of students students read through the list aloud.
Discuss the new words: lecture style, sometimes she gives examples, might ask us to make a sentence.
Discuss grammar points, 语法: lecture style, gives examples, might ask us to try make a few sentences on our own.
Read the text, 课文: phrase-by-phrase repeat after her and then a few students read it aloud.
Discuss the text for comprehension: unless you ask questions, nothing really happens.
Do exercises in the book, 做练习: she calls on students to read aloud the speaking portion, then the other sections she usually reads the questions and then accepts murmured responses from the class.

I know this is an improvement from what Chinese kids get in their University classes, but I find it unbearable. Sigh.

My first anniversary is next week. On June 1, 2006 I landed in Kunming and started studying Mandarin. Since then, I changed schools and moved house three times. I also have quite a collection of Mandarin textbooks.

• Conversational Chinese 301, Vol. 1 [ISBN 7-5619-1403-2]
  康来华 （2005）。汉语会话301句，上。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• Conversational Chinese 301, Vol. 2 [ISBN 7-5619-1404-1]
  康来华 （2005）。汉语会话301句，下。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• Easy Way to Learn Chinese Characters [ISBN ：7-5619-0911-X]
  柳燕梅（2004）。汉字速成课本。 北京：语言文化大。
• Short-term Spoken Chinese, Threshold, Vol. 1 [ISBN: 7-5619-1364-8]
  马箭飞 （2005）。汉语口语速成，入门篇，上 。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• Short-term Spoken Chinese, Threshold, Vol. 2 [ISBN: 7-5619-1365-6]
  马箭飞 （2005）。汉语口语速成，入门篇，下 。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• Short-term Chinese Listening 1 [ISBN：7-5619-1367-2]
  梁菲（2004）。汉语听力速成，入门篇。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• Short-term Chinese Listening 2 [ISBN：7-5619-1058-4]
  梁菲（2006）。汉语听力速成，基础篇。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• Short-term Spoken Chinese 2 [ISBN：7-5619-0860-1]
  马箭飞 （2006）。汉语口语速成:基础篇。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• Short-term Spoken Chinese 3 [ISBN：7-5619-0705-2]
  马箭飞 （2004）。汉语口语速成:提高篇。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• First Year Chinese Course, Level 1, Vol. 1 [ISBN：7-5619-0745-1]
  杨寄洲 （2004）。汉语教程（第一册）上，一年级教材。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• First Year Chinese Course, Level 1, Vol. 2 [ISBN：7-5619-0746-X]
  杨寄洲 （2004）。汉语教程（第一册）下，一年级教材。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• First Year Chinese Course, Level 2, Vol. 1
  杨寄洲 （2004）。汉语教程（第二册）上，一年级教材。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。
• First Year Chinese Course, Level 2, Vol. 2 [ISBN：7-5619-0748-6]
  杨寄洲 （2003）。汉语教程（第二册）下，一年级教材。北京：北京语言文化大学出版社。

It’s a little frustrating that I’m still not through the first-year books even though I’ve been studying continuously for a year. None of the local programs seem to be equipped to actually keep pace with the Beijing books.

I’ll start the third level of the “First Year Chinese Course” in a couple weeks.

Spiderman 3 Poster – Kunming, China

Ok, not sure if this is a national problem with the Spiderman 3 posters, but Jeremy just noticed that in Kunming all of the promotional materials are messed up. The Chinese is fine and some of the English is a little silly, but there is a colossal mistake repeated on every bit of their signage — including the window decals.

The English word “Spiderman” never actually appears on the posters. Instead, above “蜘蛛侠” and Spiderman’s outstretched arms in that Spiderman-y font it reads: “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPRSTUVWY – 3″.

Anyone in Shanghai or Beijing see the same mistake? Other metro areas?

Sadly, you may notice even the alphabet is transposed incorrectly. The letters “Q”, “X”, and “Z” are missing.

Weekends are not so untouchable here in China. Today is Sunday and my Korean student, who attends high school in Kunming, told me she has her Friday classes. Yesterday, they had Thursday classes. May day is this coming Tuesday, and in order to extend the holiday through the following weekend, this weekend is being sacrificed — schools and businesses continue to operate as if they are normal weekdays.

This holiday schedule was announced by the government about a week ago. The alternative, I suppose, was to make this weekend the holiday and change the following weekend to be part of the working week. Anyway, these kinds of last-minute announcements are disorienting for me. Thankfully, our new school simply announced at the beginning of the semester that our vacation would be April 28 – May 6. Seems sensible.

Yesterday we had a school field trip to 抚仙湖 (Fuxian Hu), a lake about a 2-hour drive from Kunming. I was very excited about the chance to go swimming and even bought a bathing suit, but the weather wasn’t great. Too cold for swimming. That didn’t stop some lunatics from getting in the water.

It was April’s birthday and I talked her into coming along. She used to be a tourguide here and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share her expertise. When we stopped at the flower market on our way to the lake, she turned to us and forgetting that this time her audience was a group of foreigners, she said, “Now, if you want to buy something don’t speak Putonghua [Mandarin]. You’ll need to speak Fanyan [the local dialect], or else you’ll get bad prices.” Of course, we don’t speak Fanyan, but obliged by trying out our best impressions of the dialect. (“It’s just like speaking Putonghua with your jaw kind of slack!” and “Remember to add ‘ga’ to the end of each sentence!”) She was appalled.

It was a fun trip. There were over 150 people, including some kids. The kids were a great. Despite having different mother tongues, they all played with each other and were kissing and hugging … you could almost hear the song “we are the world.” One little girl took a liking to Jeremy on our boat ride.

After the boat ride, April treated us to tiny grilled fish and beer.

How lovely.

Not sure what we’ll do with the remainder of our holiday.

Anyway, a final note for the computer nerds:

I geeked out last week when Tech Soup ran a feature on Google Analytics. The data they collect on your web traffic isn’t earth-shattering, but they sure know how to make an intuitive and beautiful tool. Wow, I love Google more and more.

Well, my new school (Dong Fang, 昆明东方语言文化学校) is just as terrible as the old one (Shi Da, 云南师范大学). The main problem is that there are few opportunities to practice speaking in the classroom, and outside the classroom everyone instantly starts speaking English or their mother tongue. I’m not sure what contributes to this phenomenon, but it really sucks. At Shi Da, even when I had next-to no Chinese at all, I was still fumbling through normal small talk in Chinese. At Dong Fang, I feel stupid for trying to initiate anything (outside class) in Chinese.

My tutor says that my reading is improving. But my conversation skills are worse than before. Very frustrating.

I’m teaching English only on the weekends, which is good. It’s really hard for me to switch between languages, so limiting it to the weekends works for me. I find even after two days (6 hours) of teaching English, my head resists returning to Chinese. Anyway, it’s necessary to subsidize my expenses by teaching a little. I’m teaching kids one hour a week, and they asked me to do another 6 hours but I just can’t deal with that. It requires tons of preparation and energy. Plus, it doesn’t pay more than my one-on-one tutoring and conversation classes. Maybe I can find some more high school kids to tutor. They’re the best.

Meanwhile, my friend Audrey Hollis won here election for Alderman back in Missouri! I donated a website here: http://audreyhollis.googlepages.com