A rash decision...
Monday February 8, 2010
OK. So it was probably rash to agree to be interviewed, on air, live, in Chinese, having only studied the language for just over a year, and having had not nearly as much chance to actually speak the language as I would have liked (something I hope that the coming summer will remedy). But when I agreed to this venture, I’d been drinking far too much coffee, I was slightly excitable, and my defences were down. Anyway, I thought, it’s weeks away.
Or it was. But last night, I remembered what I had agreed to. And so this morning, not without a degree of trepidation, I headed off to an obscure part of the outskirts of town for the interview. I had spent most of last night writing out a script (my written Chinese is better than my spoken language), and having checked over it several times, I was, although far from confident, at least content that I might be able to stammer a few coherent (if not always entirely correct) sentences. A ten minute interview, or so. How wrong could things go?
As it turned out, things started pretty well. We sat around in the studio, and I did a relatively convincing impersonation of somebody who knew what was going on. Twenty minutes in, I was feeling good. A Chinese New Year song was playing. The conversation had come to an end. I had said everything that I had planned to say. We’d been shooting the breeze, chatting about New Year customs, I’d been talking about the book I was writing. I sat back, took off my headphones and thought to myself that my work there was done. 不错, I told myself, 不错，不错…
It was only then that I realised with alarm that I was a guest on the show for the entire hour, and that the listeners (to whom I can only apologise) were being promised that I would be returning to say more after the break. It was at this point that my mind decided to depart the recording booth and leave me to it, on the principle that – having performed relatively well for a short while – it was due a brief holiday.
A strange kind of sleepiness set in at this point. I struggled to concentrate. My fellow guest, a native speaker, was chatting about firecrackers and tigers and other New Year things. I tried to make intelligent-sounding background grunts. I hoped that I wouldn’t be asked any more direct questions. And just when I thought I was off the hook, as the show came to an end, I found the microphone swinging my way again. I stammered, I stuttered, then I conceived of the ridiculous idea that it might be sensible at this point to talk about Chinese philosophy. But no sooner had I said that I was of the opinion that Mengzi was a fairly interesting chap than I realised that I would have trouble talking about the topic in English, let alone Chinese. So I stuttered a bit more, tried various Chinese words at random, put out an urgent call for my mind to return to duty, then ground to a complete halt as I realised that my mind was simply not coming back any time soon. Next I tried a few words in English, by which time it came home to me that I no longer had the capacity for communicating in any language whatsoever. I lapsed into a kind of awkward silence, my fellow interviewee looking at me in perplexity. “And now, a New Year song,” said the friend who was interviewing me, whilst – in an act of considerable kindness – fading out my mic before I could be heard sobbing softly in the corner.
Strangely, however, once we were out of the recording booth, I felt pretty good about life again. It could, no doubt, have gone a lot better. But it could have gone a great deal worse. I had managed around fifteen minutes of chatting more or less coherently. In Chinese. On the radio. Live. As for the ten minutes of incoherence towards the end, well, I blame Mengzi.
Mencius, Confucius and Dumplings
Wednesday December 16, 2009
For over a year now I’ve been diligently – nay, obsessively – practicing my written Chinese over at the marvellous Skritter.com. So far, Skritter has been an immensely effective learning tool, and the guys who run it are a fantastically dedicated bunch. “To Skritter” has become an everyday verb in my house. Anyway, a few days ago George over at Skritter asked if I’d do a quick interview for the Skritter newsletter, and I thought I’d post a copy over here on my blog.
“Why am I learning Chinese? The official reason I give is that I’m a writer, and I’m writing two books that require that I know some Chinese. The first is a collection of short stories, and the second is a philosophy book. But if I’m being absolutely honest, I’d say that it is probably the other way round and the books are a pretext for learning the language.
I’ve been interested in China for years, but it’s one of those interests (like playing the accordion) that I’ve taken a long while getting round to. I’ve been to China only once. Twenty years ago, at the age of eighteen, I took a jeep up the Khunjerab Pass in Pakistan, Chinese visa in hand, and walked across the border. There was political unrest in China at the time, and they turned me back. In all, I probably spent ten minutes on Chinese soil. I came back home and vowed, one day, to go to China again, and to learn Chinese. But somehow I got involved in other stuff. Writing books. Studying. Getting into philosophy.
Just over a year ago, I decided to finally make good on my intention to learn Chinese. Skritter came along just at the right time, and it has astonished me how quickly I’ve managed to get a grip on the written language. I try to practice an hour a day, when work permits.
Next year, all being well, I’m heading to China for six weeks. By the time I fly to Beijing, I’d love to be able to read 孟子 and 孔子 in the original. But I’ll settle for being able to read the menu well enough to order 饺子.
Incidentally, you may want to know what a Skritter actually is. Well, according to my sources, it’s one of these (see picture below) – a furry critter in Viking garb…
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Informal Launch Event
Tuesday December 8, 2009
Just a quick post, this. On the coming Thursday, in the Western pub, I’m having a joint launch for Finding Our Sea-Legs
For directions, go here.
To Boldly Go...
Saturday November 28, 2009
It’s a long time ago that I was in the Tanimbar islands in Indonesia, although it was good the other day to catch up with an old friend from there on Facebook, chatting in my now appallingly rusty Indonesian. I spent six months in Tanimbar back in 1994/1995, and it was in many ways an extraordinary experience. Tanimbar appears both as the model of sorts for my first novel, Cargo Fever
So imagine my surprise when I found an article published in the Singapore Business Times about a cruise company who specialise in travel to out of the way places, and who have managed to make contact with a hitherto unknown village in Tanimbar called Sangliat Dol. The cruise company’s visit, apparently, had been a “genuine first time experience” both for the folks on the cruise and for the people in Sangliat Dol, because they were the first group of travellers ever to visit the village.
This is perplexing. Back in 1994, there was a reasonable road from Saumlaki to Sangliat Dol – at least outside of the rainy season – and Sangliat Dol was firmly established as a part of the small, but nevertheless active, tourist industry in Tanimbar. It was mentioned in the guide-books. It was the place where everybody in Saumlaki thought that you should go, if you were a westerner.
I went there myself, some three months into my stay, with a friend from Saumlaki. We walked up the coast, stopping off overnight on the way; and when we came to Sangliat Dol, we found that the villagers were out in force, busy tidying up the stone steps that led up to the village, because (somebody explained) they would look better for the tourists that way.
As a story, it’s not as superficially exciting as the idea of making contact with new and unknown peoples and places; but when we leave myths such as this to one side, it may be that in the end it’s possible to discover that there are more intriguing, and more complex, stories to be told…
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Server Move
Saturday November 14, 2009
I’ve at last got round to moving this website to a new server, and everything seems to have gone more or less to plan. Now that I’ve done so, I can add a few more bells and whistles to this website, and first on the list is Twitter integration – so now you can get my Twitter updates in the blog sidebar, thanks to the nifty Kimili Twitter Timeline plugin.
Learning Chinese - One Year On
Tuesday October 13, 2009
Tonight I’m off to my intermediate Chinese class (with some trepidation – what does “intermediate” even mean?), and it occurs to me that I am now one year in to learning Chinese. I started classes last year for research purposes, as I’m working on a book that draws on several Chinese themes; and over the year, I’ve become entranced by the language. It helps, of course, that there are some superb tools out there – including the truly wonderful Skritter, and the dependably excellent ChinesePod – and that I’ve had the benefit of some great teaching here in the UK as well. Along the way, I’ve found myself getting increasingly interested in some of the possibilities opened up by Chinese thought, as a counter-balance to the traditions of thought with which I am more familiar. As a result, not only the novel but also the philosophy book that I’m sketching out at the moment seem to be taking shape with the benefit of a good deal drawn from the traditions of China.
Where this is taking me, I don’t exactly know. I’m hoping over the coming year – despite now working full time in the university – that I’ll be able to continue putting the hours (and hours, and hours…) into the Chinese, and at some stage, I’d like to spend a little while in China honing my linguistic skills. But for the time being, I’m happy to continue on with the process of attempting to metamorphose from a stuttering fool into somebody who can hold a thought, an idea, a conversation in Chinese. My previous class finished several months ago. Tonight, I’ll be able to see if I’ve been making any progress in the period in-between.
Weasels with Ocarinas
Wednesday October 7, 2009
Recently I was given an internet radio, and I confess that I am already entranced. I’ve been happily scrolling through the 8,000 radio stations available, from Georgian folk music (this one – my girlfriend claimed – sounded rather like a weasel playing an ocarina), to curious podcasts about keeping goldfish.
I’m sure that the initial sheen will soon rub off, and then I’ll settle down into a set of favourite stations which I can listen to whilst washing up, making pastry, and hanging out in the kitchen with the cat. On my list, I think, will be ABC’s The Philosopher’s Zone from Australia, Deutsche Welle’s news updates in German (spoken slowly, so that the likes of me have a chance to understand what’s going on), various Chinese language podcasts, the French Chansons radio, In Our Time with Sir Melvyn, and so on. There’s so much good quality conversation out there: last night, whilst cooking, we listened to Alison Gopnik talking about her book The Philosophical Baby – engaging, thoughtful, and extremely funny.
Best of all, having the internet radio means that henceforth Sunday mornings – just when you want to listen to the radio – are no longer endless deserts of religious solemnity followed by the gruelling ordeal of The Archers Omnibus edition. Absolutely anything is better than The Archers – even a weasel with an ocarina.
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