The Cave Homes of Gansu Videos!

Hey, guys!

I finally finished putting together my second video about visiting rural Gansu (赵台，in the country) and staying in a cave home with my friend's relatives. It was a rare opportunity, and I'm really happy that I got to experience it. Hopefully, I'll be able to go back soon!

For those of you who don't know, I visited an area in rural Gansu Province with two of my friends to visit some of their relatives. They live in some of the most beautiful (and remote) countryside I have ever seen. I was blown away by the difference in our lives, and I think about it every day. Please watch these videos. There are embeds from both YouTube and Youku.






This was my original video about going there - I'm sure some of you have already seen it, but I thought I'd put it up again anyway so you guys could watch them in order. As always, it's on Youku and YouTube! Thanks for watching! I'll have more to say on the second video! Scroll down!

 


The second of the two videos is the one that deals with the underlying reality and what I was (and am still) thinking about in regards to the experience. I hope it'll give you something to think about! Please watch them and enjoy them - it's not a huge investment of your time.

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100 Posts!! And Language As A Living Thing

Just a quick post. Thought you might like it and/or agree with it.

So I've been learning Chinese steadily and fairly hardcore for more or less one year, and sort of as a side-gig for maybe a year and a half/two year. After all that I've learned and all the mistakes/successes I've had, I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed with a lot of language-learning programs out there in one regard.

They do not treat language as a living thing - they do not allow the possibility of lingual adjustments that come with the adjustments of society as well as teaching multiple words for the same thing. They teach one word for "good" instead of "good/great/alright/so-so/not bad/awesome/super" etc. and all the words people use in daily conversation. I understand the difficulty, though.

And just for the record, I'm not hating on language-learning programs!! I understand that it's nearly impossible to keep updating and updating and updating language programs with new slang, vernacular, etc. I understand that you need to form a base of common-knowledge "phrases" in order to get a fix on how to adjust yourself within the 'real' language. I get it.  

I guess that what I'm really trying to get at is that language changes as society changes. A great example of this appears in Chinese greetings.

你好，你好吗？"Hello, how are you?" seems to me to be rarely used except when maybe meeting someone for the first time. It's incredibly formal and a little stiff-sounding.

It became 你吃了吗？"Have you eaten?", which is still pretty popular today. It doesn't literally mean "Have you eaten?"......well, yes it does, but it's used as a kind of greeting. Kind of like "What's up?" in America. You don't really want them to say "the sky is up" or "the sun is up"....they just say "Not much, how about you?" and then move on.

It's got a base in the history of China, where, in many places in the past, and even today sometimes, it's hard to get food due to rising costs, famine, drought, etc. It was a legitimate question then, and it's still used today, although it's shifted into a greeting.

Now, things have shifted again - "Have you eaten?" and "How are you?" are being replaced with "你忙吗?" - "Are you busy?" or “干什么呢? －What are you doing?" or 你去哪儿? - Where are you going?" 

These seem to more personify the modern Chinese city-going zeitgeist - all work, no play.

It's just one of those intangible things about language - these weird little shifts that happen that no one really takes notice of until years later. They, all of a sudden, realize that people don't talk the way that they used to. It's a weird thing and is something I'd like to brood on for a while and think about. Maybe I'll do a full post about it later.

It's neat to see how little things have changed as time goes on, and it'll be interesting to look back on this post in 20 years (if I'm even still around - you never know, people) and see what's replaced these.

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Seeing the Elephant

If you've ever spent significant time abroad, there's just something about it that is uncommunicable about your experience - that's what I'm talking about today. If you've been abroad, tell me where, when, and if you agree - I'd love to hear about it!

There is a phrase that combat veterans sometimes use when referring to the experiences of war and why they are so often reluctant to talk about it. It's called "seeing the elephant." It's an odd phrase that has some interesting origins, but I don't really want to get into that, but here's Wikipedia if you really want to know:

"Seeing the Elephant" Wiki

What I really want to talk about is the meaning the phrase. 

Currently, the phrase seems to pop up a lot among military combat veterans, particularly the enlisted. When someone has "seen the elephant," it means they have seen combat. 

It sounds simple, but there are a lot of dimensions to seeing combat - I was reading "Shooter" by Jack Coughlin and he talks about seeing the elephant. He says that if you've never felt the sting of smoke in your eyes, never heard a bullet zing by you, never killed a man, never smelled the stench of death, then you can never really talk about war with veterans. 

He says that in order for you to truly understand what war is, you have to be there and experience it yourself. Otherwise, war is just something sterilized you've seen on TV or read about in books.

This may seem like a clumsy parallel, but I believe that living abroad is the same way - you just have to be there to understand what kind of experience living in China is. When you've walked through the Hutongs of Beijing,

                         When you've hung out with people that don't speak your language,

When you smell the garbage dump you pass by every day to get to class (or go to a restaurant),

When you go across the world and meet wonderful friends who become your adopted family,

When you meet a girl you like and she likes you, but her dialect is so heavy you can't communicate well,

When you've been disturbed in the middle of the night by 'women of the night' coming into your hotel room.

When you've tried and failed to understand so much dialect from random cities that you feel like your language study has been worthless,

When you go down to a place as old, majestic, and historic as the Yellow River with your buddies just to skip rocks and kill time,

there's just something that is beyond communication to others. You tell them and they say, "that's cool," but that's all. There's just an added dimension there which is impossible to really convey. You had to be there.

You had to see the elephant. 

Movie and a Little Insight

This is a movie that me and my friends made. Actually, they made it and I just played a little part because I was really busy at the time. The movie is about 4 students and their struggle in pursuing their dreams. It is definitely an amateur movie, but I believe it reveals an underlying truth about the part of the cultural mindset of the youth in China.

*Note - this is an English-subbed Chinese language movie 90% of the duration. There is a 3 or 4 minute section where it is not subbed, but you can just watch and try to figure it out :) and when "Cat" AKA Janson starts singing at the end, keep watching :)



Three of these guys are my best friends. I do not know the "scientist", Jiang Feng pronounced (Jee-ah-ng Fung), the one with the glasses, very well. However, from long talks with all of my friends throughout my time in Lanzhou and other places, the sentiments expressed in this movie are echoed all throughout China's collegiate population.

The theme is this movie is the difficulty and feeling of impossibility in attaining one's dream. It's manifested most obviously in the song 老男孩，The Old Boy, which plays after each of the four guys encounters their difficulty or distraction. It begins at 8:49. Lyrics such as

"Look at the sky and scattered flowers

They withered in their most beautiful moment

Who will remember that they ever came into the world?"

Lyrics like this are so sad and are a real reflection of the feelings of the Chinese students, which is why this song is incredibly popular among China's students and young people. Chinese students have such huge dreams, to go to Qinghua University or Beijing University (China's Harvard and Yale) along with dreams that vary from person to person, such as "Cat"'s dream to become a master guitarist. He really is very good, but there is no outlet in China for him to really make a living from that, which leaves him in the dust. He told me that the times when he is happiest is on stage singing and playing guitar, but the times he can do it are too few as a college student and will only become less after college.

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Pay attention to that, THAT is the underlying mindset. People have these amazing talents and dreams, but they have it in their head that no matter what they do, their dream will never be realized, so they do not even try. They don't try. Some of my friends wish to go to America for graduate school, but they feel the competition will be too hard in the English exam, so they are not going to try it because they, in their minds, know they cannot do it!! But their English is wonderful - they have the ability, but something about society has just crushed their initiative and self-confidence. It might also have something to do with the Chinese idea of modesty. They don't want to try because if they get the chance to go overseas, some people might think they are showing off their abilities and are egotistical, which is NOT a label you want to have in China.

This mindset is all over the place and is it one of the saddest things about China. It just breaks my heart to see people like these not go anywhere in life because of something society's drilled into them.

Near the end, there is a screen with Chinese that comes up. It basically says: "No matter how small the seed, because you don't give up, that seed can one day grow into a big and great tree....you can realize your dream in no time, but in order to realize our dreams, we expended great efforts!"

Dreams are something you have to work for - they don't just happen. They are totally right.

However, "Cat" and "Boss" have let go of that to a certain extent, because now they are both in Chicago's NEIU and will be there for 2 semesters! That's such a great thing! They have pursued their dreams!

                                       

                                       

Almost Home/Two Souls

Hey guys, I'm coming home in a few days! Today is September 1st! Lately I've been sick and lonely - I was out in the rain about a week ago and got bronchitis or something, but it's almost gone, so hooray! Not much to say about my time in Beijing other than that it's had it's ups and downs. I've been to see some cool places like the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace, among others, I've eaten some great food (and some American food!!), and had some laughs with Guang Lin, the guy who I've been staying with. I've also been lonely, homesick, and sick. It sucks being in a city where you don't know anybody and your only friend is at work all day 5 days a week and you've got nothing to do. Just gotta remember to keep it in perspective. There are a lot worse places than Beijing to be stuck for a couple of weeks. The French have a phrase, "The man who possesses two languages possesses two souls." I've had a lot of time to just sit back and think - maybe too much. I've been in China for 6 months and 9 days (I think), but it feels like I've been here forever. I've really made so much progress in my language and because of my language, I've really been able to fit into the Chinese culture and environment with few difficulties. When I think about home, I can remember every place with photographic clarity, but I can't remember the feelings I had - I can't remember a lot of the more personal stuff, the everyday activities. I've been really disconnected from America and I feel like I've sort of lost touch with my American side, my American 'soul'. Until I heard that phrase, I never really thought about that before. Also because I never really pursued a language before until now. I just learned enough Spanish to pass Spanish classes. And speak bad Spanish on purpose to make my Spanish-loving sister angry. But when you're in another language environment and you need to speak a different language all the time, the way you think changes. You stop thinking about translation and all idea of your native language goes out the window. You enter the mindset of another language, which is impossible to really articulate. The way you think about the way words are put together changes. The way you view words in your own language changes. The way you define words in your own language changes. You start to define English words using Chinese because it just makes more sense. The two languages and mindsets swirl together and, in some way, live in harmony with each other. All the time, I am, in some way, thinking in that way. Even when I watch the English language CCTV channel or watching one of my American DVDs, I am thinking about how strange a language English is and why we say things the way we do and why are English and Chinese so different. How would the Chinese say these things and other questions are always on my mind. It makes my brain super tired.... I don't know if it makes any sense to anyone else, but to me it's very real and it's every single day's reality. See you guys soon, Austin Don't worry about me - although things get rough sometimes, I'm trying to stay positive.