The Carrot or the Stick
The books we use in our Chinese classes are pretty good, I think. The textbook for written Chinese (Hanyu) is fabulous, though I have a soft spot for everything Hanyu, since it’s my favorite class. Although the English translations in the oral Chinese (Kouyu) book are usually a little amusing, the dialogues are interesting, useful, and full of new vocabulary and grammatical structures. Often the dialogues and short essays contain useful, though usually unintentional, cultural cues. For example, the following is an abridged translation of Chapter 5’s dialogue:
Boy: Mom, Dad, guess what?!? I got almost perfect scores on my math, Chinese, and English tests this week! I’m ranked first in the class now.
Dad: That’s great, Son! I tell you what - since you’ve done so well, your Mom and I want to give you some extra spending money.
Boy: Actually, Dad, could I ask for something else? Not money.
Dad: Sure, ask away.
Boy: I just want you to promise me something. If I continue to do well in school, I don’t want you to beat me again, ok?
Dad: Oh, but Son, you don’t understand. If I hadn’t been so strict on you before, you wouldn’t be who you are today. And how could you get such good grades?
Boy: But Li Ming’s dad never beats him, and he gets great grades!
Mom: I also think that beating isn’t the best way. Son, Dad is just afraid you won’t grow up right. Ok - so can you continue to study well later on, just the same as today?
Boy: Oh, I know I can!
Dad: Ok Son, I promise, from now on I won’t beat you.
Boy: Mom, did you hear that? Dad isn’t going to beat me anymore!!
The greatest thing about Chapter 5 is that the evening before we were supposed to begin the chapter, our teacher received a phone call from The Powers That Be informing her that Chapter 5 was not to be studied, because it was a little bit strange and also contained too many difficult words, and we should skip directly to Chapter 6. But, being the curious and rebellious foreigners that we are, of course we stuck our noses right in Chapter 5 and demanded that we study it anyway. Because really, it’s priceless. I mean, c’mon - “Mom, did you hear that? Dad isn’t going to beat me anymore!!” I just about died laughing during class. I felt a little bad for our Kouyu teacher, she’s a tiny Chinese girl just a year older than me, and I think she felt a little offended that a roomful of foreigners were heeing and hawing all over the floor at the absurdity of the text. But what’s so funny about the text, and why I think the Powers That Be were trying to save face by preventing us from reading it, is that it isn’t meant to be absurd at all. The Chapter 5 dialogue is nestled right in with other perfectly ordinary dialogues about boyfriends, traffic lights, and soccer games. Included in the Chapter 5 vocabulary, alongside “to praise” and “mathematics,” is the phrase “to beat somebody,” as though it’s perfectly normal.
I feel that the laughable Chapter 5 dialogue is an excellent analogy for China’s current situation as a whole. They have made huge strides towards modernization and industrialization, and they seek everyday to prove to the world what a forward-looking, advanced, and postmodern country they are. But so frequently, little mistakes like this one (or bigger ones, like their reaction to the protests in T*b*t) reveal that the adolescent China has yet to grow into the adult attire they have already donned.
**Caveat** I feel self-conscious about saying this, because I truly love and admire China, and I realize that many of its more conspicuous mistakes are a natural result of not having completed the processes of industrialization, modernization, and westernization (can westernization be completed? Would anyone really want that for China anyway? But that’s another topic for another time).
-Bethany Allen