I had my own breakthrough, today, about the language. In the school van every morning, Julia
and Alex have been playing Hangman, essentially a spelling game. It came to me today that 1.) this game
cannot be played in Chinese, as ‘characters’ are not single, like letters. A character is composed, often, of
several elements that are characters themselves. A character represents a concept, not a letter. 2.) The Chinese have graciously
provided Pinyun writing for characters:
the pinyun for the neighborhood in which I live (my closely guarded cue
card for taxi drivers!) is Hai xin guang chang. This is, essentially, a phonetic spelling in western letters
of the sounds that are used to express the characters. At some point, elements of character sounds
were coordinated with western letters.
My breakthrough is that the Chinese don’t use Pinyun! It is a crutch for
non-Chinese. Maggie confirmed this
insight—she said that students in the 1st, 2nd grade
range make use of Pinyun as they build an initial bank of vocabulary. But once a Chinese speaker gets over
the first writing hump, Pinyun has no useful function, except to allow them to
write closely guarded cue cards for the naïve and illiterate!
Other language bits:
at the Fun Fair, I was part of a team doing the obstacle course. My task was to walk down the length,
signaling to children what to do at each stage. The last task was to throw a stone, hop a hopscotch course,
and then run quickly back to the starting line. So, I would mime hopping, then turn their bodies, talking
all the while of course, and wind up and then point my arm and hand
emphatically back to the start, loudly shouting “RUNNNNNN as fast as you can,”
under the theory that communication would be effected by the loudness and
enthusiasm of my expression! The
universal language of emotion!
I have developed some ‘universal language’ tools in the
classroom: what makes me think these are communicating? I click my tongue to say ‘come on,
let’s go.’ And I use a thumb up to mean ‘exactly; you got that right.’ And I have noticed that many of the
children are much more comfortable with me now, so much so that they speak a
lot of Chinese to me. Do they
think I am just holding out on them?!
At least they try me, before they head to another teacher. It suggests that they believe I am
useful! We are singing more in
circle time; they are enthusiastic singers, and several of them continue to hum
through the morning whatever songs we had sung earlier; I like that a lot! If you were listening closely today at
about 9:30 pm, you probably heard them shouting “Hurrah” from “If you’re happy
and you know it…” They put 100% of
their souls into that word!
Today Julia had to get a photo taken as part of an
application for alien resident status, something those with student visas need
to do. So we took a car ride at
lunch time to the other school owned by the group which owns QAIS—a ride so
long that Julia and I both thought we had left the city! An hour’s drive for a 5 minute
appointment with a camera. Chinese
cities are huge! Partly because
they are spread out. The road we
took wound along the coastline which was beautiful. We want to go back and explore that shoreline, the beaches
and bays that are over on that far side of the city. We were, apparently, about 10 minutes from the site of a
well–recommended mountain and temple.
The aides told me there are wonderful waterfalls and fields of flowers
along the walk up to the temple.
We’ll see if we can negotiate the bus trip out there.
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| Here is the other school we visited |
As we moved from the downtown area into some attractive
housing areas and on into the outskirts of the city, we repeatedly saw modern
architecture, quite large structures, really impressive sports stadiums, and
poverty close by in every direction.
The areas where permanent markets are held—there are many all through
the city—are single story structures, permanent but which look fragile, about
to collapse, held together with ingenuity and scraps. They look bad, frankly, and quite poor. And it struck me today that among all
these many markets and street vendors, identical products are being sold: cherries, watermelons, hair things,
shoes, clothes, Chinese vegetables.
So, in effect, the market vendors are in competition with one another. One might walk through the extensive
market area, shopping, bargaining, socializing; but the truth is that the range
of products is fairly circumscribed.
Whether you buy your cherries from vendor A or B, or wait until you
reach vendor T, is probably a randomly made decision; and whether you buy them
at the market or from the local vegetable stand means a lack or gain in income
for each that probably has an impact.
When I buy my bananas from Carrefour, I feel guilty about not buying
them at the hill vegetable stand.
However, that saleswoman wants me to buy the whole bunch, not just 4 at
a time; and she displays a bunch with 15-20 bananas. Many more than I can eat before they become virtual banana
bread! It’s fascinating,
really, how much one-to-one selling is going on in this huge urban area. It hasn’t all disappeared into the maw
of Walmart. Whether it’s
profitable is an open question.
Despite the poverty, though, I must note that these market
areas do not feel unsafe. On the
Saturday morning when Julia and I walked to the Lotus story, we walked past a
market area, with its broken pavements, stained walls, dirt floors, canvas
roofs, and people squatting in the doorways, etc. Yet, I did not feel any concern whatsoever that I or my
daughter could be harmed by those squatters, mostly men. They don’t have much, their lives are
very different than mine, but they were not hostile to me. Julia scooters far in front of me every
day; I am not worried about her being harmed or taken. It’s just not a factor in this
culture. I worry about her near
the streets, and she has clear rules about crossing streets (you simply cannot
believe the aggressive ways that cars push themselves into and/or across lanes,
no matter the hypothetical rules), but I do not worry about her getting out of
my sight. I find that fascinating;
poverty and danger are so closely linked in American cultural beliefs.
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| Here is one of those very busy streets... |
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| ...And Julia dutifully waiting to cross safely! |
Yesterday morning Mr. Lee, school van driver, took a
different route because the traffic was so heavy (it’s heavy on Mon-Wed, but
noticeably lighter on Thursday and Friday). We wound around and about for 20 minutes, sometimes getting
into what should have been one lane back alleys but were now being used as two
way streets for a steady stream of cars—well, steadily waiting for a break in
one direction to allow the other direction to jump into the roadway. Even Maggie acknowledged that she, a
native of Qingdao, had no idea where we were! I felt I had broadened my perspective. The effect of today’s trip out for the
photograph, therefore, was to make me realize what a tiny corner of Qingdao I
have seen and explored so far!
That puts into a different perspective the fact that we have
only 5 weekends left in China—wait, I correct myself, having just checked: we have only 4 weekends left in
China! Wow, how can that be? We have to get to the mountain and
temple, we need to see the zoo, we haven’t been to the beach yet, or wandered
far down the boardwalk, we have to find the Jimu Lo shopping area to bargain
for tea sets and pearls (!), we haven’t shopped at the RT Mart yet, nor had our
second meal at the hotel buffet restaurant, and we have to squeeze Julia’s
birthday celebration into a weekend night. We have to find the market area that sells yarn—I must have
the fun of yarn shopping in China!
We haven’t been into the Old City, nor to the former German area with
its European style architecture.
We want to do some serious kite flying at the Kite Park. We need to bring the bunnies home for a
weekend of ownership, and we would like to make one or two more play dates,
maybe get Alex over to the hill for some scootering. I had better get cracking!
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| Scootering home after school |
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