Shang
Tuesday, February 3, 2004 06:33 p.m.

One of my better shangs:

Last night, Mr. Chong allowed me to begin painting shang, which I found to be a bit easier than the yi. The yi is so difficult because it’s so simple the smallest error glares. A slight wobble looks like advanced Parkinson’s. The slanted edge when the brush first touches the paper has to match the little knobby flourish on the end. There is pressure to be considered. Speed. Energy. On a shang, you can fudge it a little, and it doesn’t look so bad. He wanted me to go on and start practicing xia, but I didn’t feel like my one two threes were even up to standards, so I stuck with shang. And shang (fourth tone) means above and xia (fourth tone) means below, if you care.

As I look at my pages of shangs, I notice they are not in the least bit uniform when it comes to the proportions of the length of the little arm and how high up it is. Also, the stroke at the bottom is sometimes fatter, sometimes, skinner, but always looking more comfortable than that damned downward stroke, which is impossible, impossible I tell you! Some of them are quite deformed. After a while, I lose sight of what I’m painting, and each one is just this completely separate, abstract, meaningless thing and they begin to morph into something which does not resemble the original and I have to go back and look at it again like I’ve never seen it before.

Old Lefty is still painting ones and inbred star trek boy wasn’t there today.

Zhong Ying Huihua #3
Saturday, January 31, 2004 02:23 p.m.

For Thursday class, I had studied the first lesson fairly thoroughly, skimmed the second lesson, and had not yet cracked the third. I showed up exhausted, not having slept for 24 hours, but determined to pay attention.

Everybody showed up, both pairs of gay men, Geoffrey Rush, Joyce the introverted lesbian, the little white dude, and the bigger white dude. Little white dude, from now on will be abbreviated LWD, and bigger white dude will be BWD. LWD was again wearing the navy private school-looking slacks, which suggests that he comes directly from work. Geoffrey Rush again looked fresh from the Northwestern woods, and both gay couples have that We Shop at Whole Foods kind of vibe to them.

I now know how to say the two most important things, “I’m sorry.” And “Can you please repeat that?” (Duíbuqǐ and Qǐng nǐ zài shuō yī biàn?) Another favourite of mine is “I speak badly.” (Wo shuo de bu hao.) And the all-important, “Cesuo zai nar?” (Where is the bathroom?)

BWD is starting to annoy the shit out of me. He was absent the first class, OK, sometimes shit happens, and then he showed up fifteen minutes late for the second class, which I think is inexcusably rude. He has one of those speaking voices which is strong and carries well. This would serve him admirably if he was asking intelligent questions. You know the saying, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question.” That’s just something they say to make stupid people feel better. This guy is asking questions like, “Do they have computers in China?” in a loud, clear, and undoubtedly sincere voice. I think he needs a nice hot cup of Shut the Fuck Up.

The highlight of the class was probably when the teacher was trying to get one of the gay guys to say, “Lianxi,” and they kept pronouncing it, “Nancy? Nancy?” I found this to be hysterically funny.

Zai jian.

Yi. Er. San.
Monday, January 26, 2004 11:57 p.m.

Today, I graduated from painting ones, to painting twos and threes. This made me feel very superior, because the old Lefty (left-handed, I mean, not politically left-leaning), is still painting ones, and so is a kid who showed up today, who I had not met yet. He is one of those people who look sort of OK at first, except for an unnatural protrusion of brow, just a hint of inbreeding in the family, and then they start talking about translating Chinese into Klingon and your entire body is flooded with the impulse to RUN AWAY. RUN FAR FAR AWAY. AS FAST AS YOU CAN. AHHHHH!!!!

But I didn’t. Because that would be rude. Even when old Lefty started talking about translating Chinese into Ewok (EWOK!!!), I just smiled serenely and said nothing. Painted my ones, twos and threes. Breathe slowly. Don’t make eye contact. Say nothing. Not here to make sparkling conversation with brilliant intellectuals. Here to learn Chinese calligraphy. So learn the Chinese calligraphy and say nothing. One. Two. Three.

Anyway, I heard somewhere (and I have no idea if this is true), that ewok talk is just Japanese played backwards. If anyone is in position to confirm or deny this, please do, so my mind can be laid to rest.

Yi
Wednesday, January 21, 2004 06:05 a.m.

Monday evening I went to my first Chinese calligraphy class, which is also taught by Mr. Chong. He holds this class in his apartment, which is in the U district, so from now on, Monday will be U district field trip day for me.

He immediately set me to writing (or rather, painting) the number one (yi), over and over again, for the entire length of the class. And the strange thing was, I was so absorbed in doing it, the time flew by like... something that flies very fast. When he made the sample stroke for me to copy, I was flabbergasted at how much there was to just one stroke. I could imagine it taking me ages to master it. Unbelieveable.

First of all, you have to sit up very straight, with your feet flat on the floor (so the energy which comes up from the earth can get in unhindered and uncrooked) and the paper must be straight in front of you. I don't know about you, but I was taught to write cursive with my paper at a 45 degree slant, and I've been a confirmed slanter (and a sloucher as well) ever since, so this felt very very unnatural. Then, you must hold the paintbrush in a very particular way, not like a pencil at all, and about halfway up the paintbush. It feels especially awkward when you start at the top left corner of the page, to begin making ones, and your arm crosses in front of you. Very strange.

To paint a one, you touch the tip of the paintbrush to the paper, and press gently to make the angle, then zip it over to the right, with energy, but not pressing quite as hard, and then twist the brush ever so slightly clockwise to produce the extremely sutble (if you do it right) finishing flourishy knobby bit.

I painted seven pages of ones that night and only produced three correct ones. I include here, for your amusement, my very first one, and my best one.

There was one other guy there, an older guy in his fifties, also making ones. I kept peeking over to see how he was doing. His ones looked like crap. They all looked like one of these: ~ whatever those things are called. And he slouched. And held his paintbrush like a pencil. And rested the heel of his hand on the paper. And then I noticed that the poor bastard was left-handed. A wave of pity washed over me. This sorry fucker was never going to be able to do Chinese calligraphy properly. He couldn't see what he was writing. I got the impression that he had been painting ones for a long time.

Zhong Ying Huihua #2
Monday, January 19, 2004 05:01 a.m.

So, I went to my second Mandarin class. One gay couple was still there, but the other did not return. Two new people showed up though, two white boys, a little one (age approx. 20), wearing what appeared to be private school uniform pants and a white T-shirt and some scruffy facial growth. The other was what I think of when I hear the term frat boy. Big. Dopey. Beer-soft and out-spoken. The butch lesbian, whose name is something incongruous like Joy or Joyce, was there, and so was Geoffrey Rush.

So far, my favourite sound the “e” sound, which sounds like “uh” with the back of your tongue arched against the soft palate, and also “zh” and “ch” which involve something exciting called a retroflex voiceless unaspirated affricate. This means your tongue is flipped up like a little snake in a way it never does in English. Your tongue is sitting up in bed like it’s been startled awake. It means other things too, but the tongue is the most fun (as usual).

But this class is most notable for the revelation that the teacher, Mr. Chong, gives lessons every Monday on reading and writing. So come this Monday, I’ll start that class too. Whoopee!

Zhong Ying Huihua #1
Sunday, January 18, 2004 01:38 a.m.

So, I went to my first Mandarin Chinese class at Seattle Central Community College. In my class are 2 gay couples, who’ve never met, I mean to say, 2 entirely separate gay couples, who both happen to be going to China in March. Weird, eh? They’re not flamboyant or anything, just four nice, soft-spoken, middle-aged gay guys. There is also one youngish, extremely rotund lesbian, who sits near the back, never saying anything and having issues, probably self-confidence related. There is a guy who bears more than a passing resemblance to Geoffrey Rush, if Geoffrey Rush was an out-doorsy, denim-wearing, ponytail-sporting kind of guy. And me. This is the class. Oh boy.

The instructor, as are all instructors of Mandarin, is a tiny, thousand-year-old Chinese man with a tendency to ramble on for rather a long time about gardening and tell jokes that don’t make any sense, at which the gay couples laugh politely, and I smile, I hope sincerely.

Wo shi Gan Shu Rui. Hen gaoxing jian dao nin.
Sunday, January 18, 2004 01:10 a.m.

For reasons that are unclear to me, even now, I have been always been intrigued by the Chinese language. I distinctly remember, at age six, inventing fake Chinese writing. As I got older and became obsessed with languages in general, I was informed that Chinese was too hard for English-speakers to learn. Furthermore, Chinese is not a common language in the part of California I came from, and I ended up learning Spanish instead, which, I must admit, proved extremely useful. But now I’m a grown up, and I can do whatever the hell I want. And if I want to throw away my life and scholarship money by becoming a linguist, and squander the precious years of my life learning a language as, um, concentrated in few places, as Chinese, I suppose that’s my problem. Surely, I would not be the first American to learn Chinese. Surely, with practice and determination, it can be done. Surely, it’s not impossible. I declare, here and now, I am making up my mind to learn to speak Chinese, and also (and this is where I grit my teeth in determination), to learn to read and write it. I may dally with Latin and Spanish, and possibly Romanian. English, for all her familiarity makes a riveting mistress, but it is to Chinese that I pledge my devotion. I live in Seattle now, which luckily has a decent sized Asian population and I have taken a grand total of 2 classes so far, which have consisted mainly of making the sounds, many of them delightfully unpronounceable to my fat American tongue, and enchantingly wonky and bizarre-sounding to my uncalibrated American ears. A description of the first class, which appeared in my everyday live journal will be reprinted here for your reading enjoyment. And, so, that’s what this is about. I hope there are other Mandarin-learning crackers out there, reading this and, you know, identifying with my inner turmoil and flash cards. And I hope there are non-Mandarin-learning people of any colour, who are just laughing at me. ‘Cause I’m here for you.