Bro is SB

So for those of you who don't know me in person, my real first name starts with an S, and my last name with a B.  My initials, therefore, are SB.

My dad, a middle school principal, once told me he knew he'd "made it" as an educator when he found "B**** sux" written on a bathroom stall. I had a similar experience the other day.

 I have a fifth-grade class that's composed mostly of delinquents. Not bad kids, but they care more about screwing around than learning. The other day I walked into class to see written on the classroom wall in giant letters "BRO IS SB". Now, one would think "Why, yes.  That's the least creative graffiti I've seen in my life."  And that's what I thought at first.

Then I mentioned it to my Chinese coworker. She laughed and told me that SB, when read by a Chinese speaker, is pronounced "Sha-Bi" which means "Stupid Cunt".

Then she told me to stop signing with my initials on homework sheets.

Bro Goes Out for Sushi, Hilarity does Not Ensue

China has a tendency to put me in socially uncomfortable situations, whether it be getting mistaken for a spy in remote border regions or accidentally congratulating my neighbor on his mother's death.  I've got a new experience to add to Bro's Travel Hall of Shame, and while this doesn't quite take the cake, it's definitely top 5.

One thing you can't get away from as a laowai (foreigner, literally "always outside") are the constant barrage of "hello"'s that start the moment you leave your apartment each morning.  People say it instinctively on seeing us.  Most of the time they're just trying to be friendly, but it gets irritating after a while.  Another thing that bothers me is people I've never seen before, e.g. waiters or storekeepers, switching to English on seeing me, because obviously as a foreigner I speak English and don't speak Chinese.  It comes off to me as presumptuous to assume I don't know Chinese, and besides I'm in their country.  I have an obligation to try to communicate in their language.  Think of it this way: if we Americans saw a vaguely Asian-looking person, we wouldn't go up to them and start speaking Chinese, would we? 

So, the other day I went to eat some sushi.  I like this particular place because it's popular with salarymen on business trips, and so the staff there all speak Japanese.  I like Chinese, but it's important to practice other languages too.

I went in and sat down, excited to practice.  The waitress, a solid 8/10, came up to me.  Before I got a "Kombanwa" out, she said "Good evening sir, here's our menu."

O-okay...

I paused, unsure what to do.  I was gearing up into Japanese mode, and the sudden cute girl speaking English threw me off.  "U-uuh..." I said.

I didn't want to speak English, and I didn't want her to use it either.  I wanted to speak Japanese.  Not only that, but being looked at by a cute girl was sending me into panic mode.  My mind raced.  I looked at her and stammered out in Japanese "I-I don't u-understand."

She laughed and asked if I was Japanese.

"U-uh...no..."  I could feel the spaghetti welling up in my pockets.* "I-I'm, uh..." don't say American "American".

She laughed and swiched back to English. "I'm only joking.  Have you decided yet?"

Shit. If I spoke English, she'd know I was lying when I said I didn't understand her.   There's nothing cute girls hate more than lying. Better keep using Japanese.  Also, she had this really cute way she flipped her hair when she smiled.  I was distracted by it and didn't think through what I said next:

"B-but, uh, is that English or something?"

Her smile was gone. "Come on, stop." she said.

"Because...I, uh...don't speak...English..."  That's plausible, right?  The statistic that 3% of Navajo speakers were monolinguals--American citizens who didn't speak English--flitted through my head.  I didn't occur to me that the statistic had no bearing on the number of blond white Americans who were Japanese monolinguals.  No, this occurred to me afterward.

She gave me a "come on now" look. "Fine." she switched back into Japanese. "What do you want?"

Struggling with Herculean effort to keep my spaghetti pocketed and my jimmies stable*, I ordered the first thing I saw: some basic crab roe and salmon, and a tonkatsu curry.  Not exactly the enormous sushi feast I had planned.  Looking at me like I was a dangerous lunatic, she took my order and retreated to the kitchen.

Thank god that's over, I thought.  Social interaction would be so much easier if it weren't for good-looking women.  I was about to pull out my book and get some reading done, when I realized that the book was in English, and I therefore couldn't read it in front of the waitress.  So I sat there staring at the wall like a loser until my food showed up.  I feebly muttered "a-arigatou" and ate as quickly as I could so I could hurry up and get out of there.

But it doesn't end there, nosiree Bob.  God, wanting to really drive home the "lying is bad" lesson and complete the humiliation conga, had bigger plans for me.  I looked up just in time to see my boss standing outside.  My boss at the school where I teach English for a living.

I ducked down and tried to melt into the wall. Please, God, don't let him come in! I prayed.

Of course, he opened the door and asked for a table.  "Oh hey, it's Bro!  How's it going?" he said, in English of course.  He walked up to my table and shook my hand. "I didn't know you liked sushi!"

"U-uh...hi...uh, see you." I muttered.  The cute waitress was now staring at me with pure and unadulterated disgust.  I put my money on the table and scuttled off, a wrecked and beaten shell of a man.

Of course, it only occurs to me now that if I had just said "Thanks for using English, but I'd prefer to speak Japanese" she wouldn't have pressed the issue, and maybe even been impressed enough to give me her number.

Oh well...maybe next time.

And that's the story of why Bro can't go back to his favorite sushi place.

*1: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spaghetti-stories
*2: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/that-really-rustled-my-jimmies

China vs. Japan, or: Why Can't We be Friends?

Tonight, on a very special Office Hours with the Brofessor...

I'm going to talk about something extremely sensitive today: Sino-Japanese relations.  I understand the personal nature of this topic, and would like to state here that it is not my intent to upset anyone.  If anything written here causes offense or discomfort, I wish to apologize in advance, and ask your indulgence for a laowai/gaijin who, despite his ignorance, genuinely wishes to treat his friends on either side of the Sea of Japan/East China Sea with respect.  Shout out to, most especially, Mitchell, Bonnie, Shota, Ryota and Ran.

Living in China, I often get asked whether or not I as a foreigner experience racism.  I've never been sure how to answer this question.  Sure, I'm treated differently because I'm foreign, and people often jump to conclusions about me, but I've (almost) never been made to feel unsafe solely on the basis of my ethnicity. 

I was discussing this with my roommate, who presumably knows a bit about racism, having grown up black in Savannah Georgia during the 70s.  He expressed the opinion that racism comes in two varieties: that of simple ignorance, and that of genuine hatred.  The former comes from a lack of personal experience with the demographic in question, and is not in itself malevolent. 

To illustrate, today I was talking with a Chinese friend of mine.  Somehow, the conversation turned to religion, and I mentioned that I was Christian.  She asked me the difference between Christianity and Judaism.  I told her about some of the similarities, e.g. most of the Bible, moral law.  Her response was "But I thought Christians hated Jews for being rich."

Of course, what she said wasn't driven by malevolence; she was just saying what she heard.  Later on, we were talking about TV programs, and I mentioned one show that I was enjoying.  She asked me if it was Chinese or American. "Actually, it's Japanese." I said.

She fell silent.  After a moment, she said quietly, "...I hate Japan. They have no heart, no humanity."

Every time a Chinese friend or coworker says this, my heart sinks a little.  The reason she says this needs little if any introduction.  The wartime atrocities of Imperial Japan are well known.  Bad blood between the two countries goes back centuries.  It is not my place to say who is ultimately right or wrong--all I will say is that to deny the horrors visited upon Japan's Asian neighbors in the 30s and 40s is no different from denying the Holocaust.  But that doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of Japanese people I'm privileged to call my friends.

I told her how sad it made me to hear that. I'm an ethnic German, and the atrocities of Nazi Germany were at least as terrible as those of Imperial Japan; did that mean I had no heart?  Even as an American, do the horrors of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib mean that I'm some sort of monster?

My friend explained that ultimately the difference between Japan and Germany was that Germany recognized the past and made amends--whereas Japan didn't.  I didn't feel it was appropriate time to mention the numerous postwar apologies made by Japan*, but she did have a point in that in Japan, denial of atrocities did not carry the same weight as in Germany, and that war criminals were interred along with legitimate war dead.**

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan
**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_shrine

That said, does not forgiveness have some value?  While I don't want to mitigate the suffering of the peoples under Japanese occupation, my Japanese friends never hurt anyone.  Why should they be stigmatized for the crimes of certain of their countrymen, three generations gone?

I've always said that China and Japan are estranged brothers.  Imagine what good could be accomplished if prejudices were put away! 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  How can I be loyal to two groups of friends with such enmity between them?  I'm thinking about convincing the Chinese friend mentioned above to sit down and actually talk with one of my Japanese friends.  I think they'd have a lot more in common than either of them think.

Doke Doke Doke!

If there's one thing I really miss about America, it's personal space.  Well, that and Chipotle.

At the cafeteria where I have lunch most days, you buy a ticket at the front for your meal, then give it to a guy by the kitchen, who in turn gives you what you ordered.  Food comes out in batches every few minutes.  Theoretically customers are supposed to line up at the food window, and they do, after a fashion, but the moment the dumpling trays come out it's every man for himself.  It gets ugly.  Suddenly, the nice old lady who just complimented me on my Chinese cuts ahead of me, steps on my feet, and shoves me behind her.  After she gets her food, she almost knocks me and three other people over while she fights her way over to the tables.  If I'm lucky enough to get my food through the melee, I'll sit down and be about to pour some nice vinegar out for my dumplings when--holy shit--another old lady snatched the vinegar out from under my nose, and is now halfway across the room.

And it's not just at lunch.  Getting on the bus, checking out at the grocery store, trying to fit in the elevator.  There's an ad at the grocery store near my apartment: "At People's Glorious Liberated Grocery Depot #82, you don't need to wait in long lines." How true that is, I think as, for the sixth time this week, I get elbowed ruthlessly in the gut by a septugenarian.

I am, however, onto their game.  I came to the realization that I am by no means a small dude, especially in China.  I'm 6'1", which means I tower over most people here, especially grandmas.  I'm also reasonably fit, inasmuch as I walk a lot and do pushups every day.  I'm no Stallone, but I once made a psychopathic Belorussian fencing master back off by standing up straight and scowling at him.  So what's so intimidating about Chinese grandmas?  This in mind, I plunged into the fray, and I am happy to say that I can use my (comparative) bulk to my advantage.  There was a time when, out of pity, the lunch dude came to the back of the crowd personally and just gave me my food, since he knew I couldn't handle the gladiatorial free-for-all that is lunchtime in China.  Now, however, I get my dumplings every time, and it ain't because I was there first.

In my last year of college, my roommate and I began to walk everywhere with a conceited tough-guy swagger.  We called this the "doke doke doke", after the brilliant opening sequence to Cromartie High School:

The idea is that you get some momentum going and blow through whatever gets in your way, all the while looking as cool as possible, almost to the point of self-parody.  For those in your path, the choice is to get out of the way--"doke" in Japanese--or bounce fruitlessly off of the oncoming wall of Badass.  It can be done on your own, but is best accomplished by having a crew of your bros fanning out behind you in a V-formation.

Mastering the art of the Doke takes some practice, but as you might imagine it's become an invaluable skill in dealing with crowds in China.

So anyway, the other evening I was loitering around the night market.  The night market is this series of alleyways where people put up aisles of stalls and sell fake designer goods and Apple products.  For the most part it's a shitshoot, but there are some decent food stands too, and cold beer.  The problem is that you can't get to it without fighting through a crowd first.  This would've been a problem two months ago, but not anymore, now that I'm a seasoned crowd warrior.  Let me stress once again, however, that you cannot get around crowded places in China (which corresponds, more or less, to the whole country) without pushing and shoving.  It is expected of you, as should you expect it of others.  It's not rude, it's just getting where you need to go.

As I was blasting (doke'ing?) my way through the crowd, I noticed that there were more laowai standing around than usual.  They all seemed to be youngish white people speaking English--and only English--with, like, a California accent, y'know?  There were quite a few of them so they must've been some sort of tour group.  I say this because not one of them could have survived a day on his own here.  They seemed to be decidedly of the "DO--YOU--SPEAK--ENGLISH" school.  Puke.

Let it not be said  that I despise tourists or people who don't speak the local language.  If I did it would make me a hypocrite, as I myself am both a perpetual tourist and terrible at Chinese.  In fact, what I really can't abide are the types who call themselves "travellers, not tourists" and refuse to shut up about how they're supposedly getting a "more authentic" experience than anyone else.  Everyone who's traveled abroad has met someone like this--the sort of people who think that staying in a hostel and eating overpriced local food make them Gandhi or something.  These are as a rule boring yuppies with no understanding of their own culture, much less anyone else's, and therefore they get so upset when they see other Westerners abroad that they dismiss them as plebians.  If I ever turn into one of these people, I hereby submit a request to be shot. 

So it truly doesn't matter to me whether or not you speak Chinese or are in an organized tour or whatever, but when you're faced by the locals, for the love of Captain Picard at least try.  Buy a damn phrasebook.  Hell, just print some words off the internet.  But don't walk up to people and expect them to linguistically accommodate you just because you're too lazy to figure out "how much for this" in Mandarin.  It's accommodating enough of them to use Mandarin instead of Hangzhouhua.

Not only were these guys making a general nuisance of themselves by Englishing it up and talking to people like children, but they had decided to stop in the middle of the aisle, exactly where everyone needed to get through.  It was as if someone had erected a giant, obnoxious, spray-on-tanned roadblock in the middle of traffic.

Given that they were fellow Americans, I looked for a way around them.  I really did.  But there wasn't.  There were just too many of them, and I had some important beers to drink on the other side.

You know what you must do, I thought to myself.  So I revved up my doke, stepped up my strut, and slammed into those bastards with the force of ten thousand Chinese grandmas.

The poor suckers didn't know what hit them.  I parted their group as Moses did the sea, and they recoiled backward as one.  It was beautiful.  In my wake flooded in a crowd of people who had themselves been trying to pass through, effectively stranding the two halves of the group on either side of the aisle, an impenetrable torrent of humanity between.  All they could do was mutter out a feeble "h-hey, bro..." as I shouldered them aside, and wait for the tides to calm.

Now, I am not a violent man by any means, but shoving through these guys was the most satisfying thing I'd done all week.  Suddenly I understood why old ladies like doing this so much.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Laowai Life. Also, 1000 views!

Nimen hao pengyou min!  I'd like to start today by making an exciting announcement.  I logged in today to see that my page was at exactly 1000 views!  I know this isn't much, but it's a lot to me!  Thank you so much, and I hope you continue to follow my (mis)adventures, and maybe even tell your friends.

I might not be in college anymore, but I'm still a "student of life", to quote a mentor of mine!  So at the urging of some friends, from now on I won't just be posting cool linguistic stuff, but also interesting things that happen to me in my travels.

As I've mentioned, right now I'm an English teacher in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, PR China:

I'm pretty much living the dream now, since all I've wanted to do since high school is travel around and learn other people's languages while I teach them mine.

In high school and college I surrounded myself with books of travel and expat blogs-in particular the excellent Gaijinsmash, which I consider an enormous inspiration; the author Az's writing style had, and continues to have, a profound effect on my own.  Indeed, his experience in Japan is in many ways one of the greatest pull-factors in my own coming to Asia.  If you haven't read his work, click the link right now.  Great stuff.

So, at the first chance I got, I left the States, where the job situation for a newly graduated linguistics major could only lead to one place: in front of my old Nintendo Gamecube in my parents' basement.  Now I wander the earth in my quest to become a great linguist!*

Teaching English in China, for people like me who are new to the game, usually means working in private English training schools of varying quality/dubiosity.  The one where I'm working now is internationally recognized and relatively accountable, but that doesn't make it perfect, or in many cases even good.  Basically it's a place where rich people send their kids to get, first and foremost, experience interacting with foreigners, and secondly speak English outside of their regular classes, which are by and large abysmal in quality.  The Confucian "do-everything-as-told-when-told-and-forget-about-individual-creativity" system has its place (educating Ming Dynasty gentleman-scholars for the imperial exams, for example) but it is not, in my opinion, the language classroom.

The emphasis on "come see the foreigners, kids!" rather than quality language education means that my job is less teacher, and more somewhere in between babysitter and performing monkey.  As I've said, the kids here are all from rich families, and if the parents bought the course they all get certificates at the end regardless of whether they've actually learned anything.  In that sense we're less school and more diploma mill.  Indeed, there's less emphasis on placing a kid in a class appropriate to his level than there is on closing the deal and putting him in a class that's running.

Let it not be said, however, that I am unhappy with my lot. Quite the contrary.  I consider myself privileged to be here.  For one thing I am providing my kids with what for many of them is their first interaction with foreigners.  That's pretty special.  For another I make 3 times the average salary here.  It's like making six figures right out of college, especially when the free apartment is considered.  For another I have the opportunity to really experiment and grow as a teacher, and get experience with kids, which never were and, I think, never will be my strong suit.  I am fortunate to have a boss who is a true master in the field of education (but on the other hand has all the personality and warmth of a chess computer with Asperger's) and a supportive team of coworkers.  Please, therefore, look forward to posts about life in China!

*The very best, like no one ever was

I'm back!  I've been living in Hangzhou, PR China since the last post, and due to government censorship  and my own lack of a computer this is the first I've been able to make a post.  Stories about life in China to follow in the next week.

Lesson #6: Sik bremaŋ, ɨnam ekam ko qibaŋ

Lesson 6: Sik bremaŋ, ɨnam ekam qo qibaŋ

Goal: Students introduced to Ket seasons and nomadizing patterns.  Learn cardinal and ordinal numbers to twenty, as well as months of the year.

Vocab
Time, season: Brema (from Russian vremja)
Month, moon: Qib
Every: Kasna
Day's journey: Itaŋ (i' "day" + taŋ "drag")
Year: Sɨ
Autumn: Qogd(i)
Winter: Kət
Spring: ɨr
Summer: Sil
Cold: Ta'j
Hunting grounds: Kəjbaŋ kə'j "go out" + ba'ŋ "earth"
Together: Qujbaŋ
Now: En

Numbers:
1: Qus, Quk
2: ɨn
3: doŋ
4: Sik
5: Qak
6: As
7: O'n (this word also means "many")
8: ɨnam bənsaŋ qo (lit. two from ten)
9: qusam bənsaŋ qo
10: qo
20: e'k

Months: There are two ways to name the months in Ket: the first is to use the recent Russian loan + qib.  But that's no fun, and it keeps us from learning about what happened at different times throughout the traditional Ket year.

January: Qà holan eqŋ qib "The big short-days month"

February: Qaetaŋ qib "the elk migration month" (qaj "elk" + itaŋ "day of nomadizing" + qib)

March: Diqib "eagle month" (di' "eagle")

April: Qonɨb "chipmunk month" (qo'p "chipmunk)

May: Qudebəlqib "Pike Spawning Month"

June: Danqib "Grass month".  Unfortunately, this was also known as qalas qib "tribute month".

July: The first half was known as Kubənnaqib "dabbling ducks' month".  The second half was Ulbənna qib "diving ducks' month".  Also, su-sil qib "midsummer month" or Sulaŋtaŋ qib "white salmon fishing month"

August: Sujdəqŋ qib "mosquitoes-living month", or Eltij qib "berry-picking month"

September: əŋdeqŋqib "falling leaves month"

October: Ba'ŋtelqib "earth-freezing month"

November: Tabeiŋqib "dogs-hunting month"

December: Həna holan eqŋ qib "the small short-days month"

Grammar: Ket numerals can be suffixed to predicate form with "-am" with the meaning "it is" when standing by themselves (for instance, when counting we can say "qusam, ɨnam, doŋam...".  We can also use this with interrogative Anun "how many", but if we say the name of the thing we're counting, we drop -am suffix.  For example:

A: Tune isan anun? ("How many fish are those?")

B: Doŋam. ("Three of them")

But:

A: Tune isan anun?

B: Tune doŋ isan. ("Those are three fish")

Ordinal numbers add the nominalizer -s to the predicate.  This gives us words like qusamas "first", ekamas "twentieth", etc.  

For constructions between 11 and 17, we can say (number) ekam qo "beyond ten".  18 and 19 are subtracted from twenty the same way 8 and 9 are from ten.  Therefore, sikam ekam qo "fourteen", asam ekam qokamas "sixteenth", qusam bənsaŋ ekam "there are nineteen".

Lesson: Read this piece about the Ket year, and answer the questions.  Keep an eye out for adessive postposition -diŋta, which as we've discussed is often used instead of locative when discussing some non-sentient location.  There's a translation into English after the questions, but don't look at it unless you really need it!

Ostɨkanna Utis Deŋna Sɨ: Qukamas brema ɨr.  Ostɨganna utis de'ŋ qusqa dukadaqan.  ɨnamas brema sil.  Kasna sil de'ŋ aseleneŋqa dukadaqan.  Sil suj baŋdiŋta, haj utis de'ŋ sesdiŋta.  Qogd, kət haj ɨr buŋ hɨssejdiŋnta.  Doŋamas brema qogd.  En utis de'ŋ haj qusqa.  Sikamas brema kət.  Kət qà ta'j!  Am haj dɨlgit baŋŋusqa dukadakan.  Ob haj qà higbiséèbaŋ bən qaseŋ--buŋ kəjbaŋdiŋta.

1. Kasna qogd utis de'ŋ aseleneŋqa dukadaqan?

2. Ostɨkan kasna sil biseŋ?

3. Sil baŋdiŋta akus?

4. Kasna kət baŋŋusqa anetaŋ?

5. Kət ob, qà higbiséèbaŋ biseŋ?

English:

A Ket Family's Year: The first season is spring.  Every spring the Ket family lives in a birchbark teepee.  The second season is summer.  Every summer people live in houseboats.  In summer mosquitoes are on the land, and the family is on the river.  In fall, winter and spring they're in the forest.  Now, also, the family lives in a birchbark teepee.  The fourth season is winter.  Winter is very cold!  The mother and kids stay in the earthen shelter.  Dad and the older brothers aren't there--they're at the hunting grounds.

Homework: Here are some number questions.  I've phrased them as simple math problems, e.g. "how much is three from seven?".  Try to find the proper names for the numbers, even if the true ket name for the number translates to something like "two from ten!"  (Hint: remember that ekam "beyond, plus" is different from ekam "there are twenty".  You can tell which is which by position in the sentence.)

1. Sikam bənsaŋ ekam anun?

2. Onam ekam asam anun?

3. Doŋam ekam qo anun?

4. ɨnam bənsaŋ onam anun?

5. qusam bənsaŋ qo bənsaŋ qakam ekam qo anun?