Linux and Stuff

對愛情的十大規則 Top Ten Rules For Love

2012-01-20T15:41:00.000-06:00

I found this and thought it was quite interesting about love. I did not write it although it is my first attempt at translation. It might sound funny at times because some Chinese words do not have a direct translation. Enjoy.

引導語：戀愛不僅僅是年輕時候的事，而是一輩子的事！真正成熟完美的愛情，是一輩子“攜子之手，與子偕老”，只求曾經擁有，不求天長地久那隻是一場遊戲！牢記十大法則，讓你們永不分手！

Introductory phrase: when in love not only a young thing, but a lifetime thing! Real mature perfect love is a lifetime "With their children's hands, and grow old" just to have, not seeking forever was just a game! Ten rules in mind, so you will never break up!

一、告訴你愛的人，你愛他（她）
雖然常說行動勝於言語，但是言語卻往往比行動更有表達力，直截了當。我們要時不時地對戀人說出我們的愛。一句簡單的“我愛你”或“你就是我的全部”就很有用，可以使戀人感受到關心，感受到愛，在戀愛中有安全感。

First, tell people you love, you love him (her)

While often said that actions speak louder than words, However words are often more expressive than the action, straightforward. We should tell our lovers of our love, from time to time. A simple "I love you" or "you're my everything", are useful, you can make lovers feel cared about, feel loved, and in love with a sense of security.

二、時不時流露愛意
小小的親密舉動——在過道上擦身而過時拍對方背一下，坐在沙發上摟著戀人的肩膀，挨著坐時手放在對方的腿上，逛街時手牽手——會讓你的另一半感受到濃濃情意，傳遞你的真情愛意。小小的觸摸很重要，比整夜的翻雲覆雨強多了。

Second, the outpouring of love from time to time

Small intimate act - in the aisles passing each other and giving each other a look, lovers sitting on the sofa arm around each other, sitting next to each other and placing a hand on their leg, holding hands when shopping - will let you the other half feels a deep affection, expressing your true love. A little touch is very important, much stronger than the a whole night of played games.

　三、懂得欣賞彼此。
我們要常常告訴戀人我們最喜歡他(她)哪一點——愛慕他(她)什麼，他(她)有什麼讓我們驕傲，我們看來他(她)有哪些優點。讓對方知道我們欣賞他(她)不僅僅是戀愛初期的事情，而是貫穿於我們整個一生。我們要不斷的鼓勵和支持彼此。只有這樣我們才可以幫助他(她)發揮其的潛能。

Third, know how to appreciate each other.

We often tell our lover what we like most about him (her) - love him (her) what he (she) what makes us proud, our views about their beneficial qualities Let the other know that we appreciate him (her), not only in the beginning, but throughout our entire lives. We must continue to encourage and support each other. Only in this way, we can help him (her) to use their potential.

　四、敞開心扉
不要封閉自己，掩藏自己的好惡、理想、恐懼、成就、失誤等等。我們可以和戀人一起分擔重要的事情。另外，我們應該保證戀人是分享我們秘密做多的人，而非其他人。雖說在最親密的人前也要保留一定的個人空間，但還是要盡可能地多抽出時間來和戀人談談心。

Fourth, to open their hearts.

Do not close yourself, hide your likes and dislikes, ideals, fears, achievements, mistakes, and so on. We can be lovers together to share important matters. In addition, we should ensure that lovers only share our secrets with us, rather than other people. Although in front of people, but we must also retain a certain degree of personal space, but still have to find time, as much as possible, to express ourselves to each other.

　五、時刻做戀人的堅實後盾
生活中當戀人遭遇失業或失去至親的傷心事時，我們都明白該如何來安慰和鼓勵對方。同樣，當戀人為與同事吵架，上班不順，一時想不起支票放哪等瑣事心煩時，我們更要懂得支持和安慰他們。當然前提是我們不能逆來順受，不能任其打罵。但爭吵發生時，我們還是應該臉皮厚一點，保持冷靜和理智，先聽聽他們在煩什麼，盡可能體諒他們，至少要安慰他們一下。

Fifth, ensure you always maintain a firm foundation

When one of you has a life experience of unemployment or loss of a loved one, we all know how to comfort and encourage each other. Similarly, when they quarrel with colleagues, work changes, and can not think how to perform daily chores or make decisions when they are upset, we want to know how to support and comfort them. Of course, the premise is that we can not submissive, not allowed to be physically and verbally abusive. But when the quarrel occurs, we should have a thicker skin, remain calm and rational, they are annoying to hear and just need time to vent their feelings, we can at least comfort them about it.

　六、送禮物
我們要抓住各種機會送戀人禮物以示愛意。禮物可以是在書店買合其心意的書，一份特別的甜點，也可以是一件首飾，一件衣服——無論大小，只要能告訴對方你在想念他(她)就可以了。我們也可以留張愛的便條，工作室發條“我愛你”的短信。這些都可以體現出我們一直掛念著對方，而對方則會對自己更加有信心，有安全感。

Six Send a Gift

We must seize every opportunity to send a gift to our lovers in the meaning for love. Gifts can be bought in bookstores combining the mind of the book, a special dessert, it can be a piece of jewelry, a piece of clothing - regardless of size, as long as you can tell the other you miss him (her) on it. We can also leave a note, little "I love you" messages. These can be reflect we have been worried about each other, while the other will be more confident of their own, and have a sense of security.

　七、諒解戀人的缺點和不足
我們對彼此不合理的期望很有可能導致戀愛的失敗。除非我們跟機器人結婚，否則我們不能要求對方完美無缺。人總會有弱點和不足，這些是個性，而非毛病。我們要學會了解和接受對方的癖好，一個正常人不可避免地會有一些癖好。我們都知道自身的弱點往往令我們感到不安，所以一定不要責備戀人的缺點，也不要故意揭戀人的短處。

Seven, understanding the weaknesses and shortcomings of our lovers

Our unreasonable expectations of each other is likely to lead to the failure in love. Unless we get married with the robot, otherwise we can not ask the other perfectly. People will always have weaknesses and shortcomings, these are their personality, rather than problems. We must learn to understand and accept each other's habits, a normal person will inevitably will have some habits. We all know our own weaknesses are often uncomfortable, so be sure not to blame the shortcomings of our lovers, lovers do not intentionally expose our weaknesses.

　八、一定勻出兩人獨處的時間
不論兩人有多麼忙，要保證一兩個星期有一個晚上是兩人一起度過的。兩人可以創造新的回憶，分享彼此的故事，也可以是僅僅是在一起，喜歡彼此的陪伴

Eight, some alone time evens out both

No matter how busy they are, to ensure that twelve weeks is one night they spent together. They can create new memories, share their stories, it can only be together, love each other's company.

　九、杜絕理所當然的心態
每天我們都應感恩戀人為我們做的一切，感謝他(她)為我們的生命帶來如此多的幸福。我們要記住戀愛中每天的快樂都是我們的另一半為我們做的一點一滴所帶來的(希望我們也這麼做)。永遠不要認為有理所當然的事，戀愛是日積月累的過程，需要我們精心對待，一旦我們開時鬆懈，愛就會逐漸消失。

Nine, to prevent a taken for granted attitude

We should be grateful every day for our lovers, thank him (her) for bringing us so much happiness. We love to remember all our happy days for what we have done while the other half brought a little (I hope we do). Never think there is a matter of course, love is a cumulative process, we need to be treated carefully, for once we allow it to slack, love will gradually disappear.

十、力求平等
我們一定要遵守戀愛中的黃金法則：己所不欲，勿施於人。戀人應平分家務活及其他事情。當自己不會格外體貼人時，就不要奢望或要求別人來格外體貼自己.

Ten, seek equality

We must abide in love's Golden Rule: Do unto others, do not impose on others. Lovers should split household chores and other things. When he are not a particularly considerate person, do not expect or require others to pick up the slack out of their own goodness.

編後語：這十條戀愛法則並非憑空而論，空穴來風。每一條都是獲取幸福的箴言！我們都敬仰愛情，膜拜愛情，但是卻無能真正攜愛情到老。真愛一個人，就應該努力做到攜手一生，永不離棄！

The Editor: these ten rules of love are not abstract terms, groundless. Each maxim is to get happy! We all love, admire, worship love, but hardly can this really ensure love into old age. Love a person, you should strive to work hand in hand for life, and never forsake!

Enter, the Year of the Dragon

2012-01-06T18:39:00.003-06:00

Long - "Dragon"

They know it as a fire-breathing, malevolent creature, with a lizard-like form used to depict the devil himself. So many in the West may continue to be surprised at how the dragon is revered as a symbol of power and majesty at the top of the animal order in Chinese thought. The mythical Chinese dragon or "long" is so important that the year it lends its name to, such as 2012, is widely considered to be one of the most auspicious in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac. The differences in cultural perceptions of the legendary beast are so complex that many say they still serve to illustrate some of the biggest gaps that still exist between the East and West.

Westerners have long depicted dragons as big reptiles with razor-sharp teeth and rough skin. They are fierce, fire-breathing creatures and associated with are something out of medieval times, with castles and moats and knights. They are monsters that terrorized the Earth, out of fairy tales.

The Chinese worship of dragons goes back to ancient times. With limited knowledge of nature and often helpless against a harsh and changing environment, many clans and tribes saw dragons as a powerful totem that granted supernatural powers protecting them from harm and providing them with luck.
Initially, the Chinese dragon's appearance also varied from region to region, as they were based on animals that people encountered
The dragon could look like a horse, a cow, a snake or even a fish, folklore reveals.

The image of the Chinese dragon was not fixed until the Song Dynasty (960-1279), when famed artist Guo Ruoxu produced a detailed depiction of the animal in his seminal book The Record of Illustration and Traditional Chinese Painting.

The dragon is a combination of nine different creatures. It has a deer's horns, horse's head, turtle's eyes, snake's neck, fish scales, hawk talons, cow ears, tiger paws and a sea serpent's abdomen.

The long was also believed to possess a wide range of powers and abilities. It could speed across the skies and probe deep underground. It controlled nature, especially the crucial resources of water and rain that were indispensable to an agrarian society. Ordinary Chinese came up with ever more ways to show their affection and admiration for the sacred long. In areas prone to floods and other natural disasters, dragon temples were built to pray for good harvests and adequate rain.

Chinese people continued to imbue dragons with their imagination and made them ever more mighty, divine and benevolent.

They are as wild as the beasts of the Earth, as intelligent as humans - and as sacred as the gods.

In Chinese folklore, long is also a fearless fighter and can see into the future. Righteous and sometimes standing on the side of the people, it symbolizes fertility, beauty, longevity and all the hopes of the people.

Perhaps most obviously to Western visitors to China, the long is the symbol of the power of Chinese emperors. In feudal societies, the emperors considered themselves as "the real dragon and the son of heaven", and everything they used, from beds to robes, were labeled as belonging to these.

Dragon motifs were widely used as decorations for palace objects. The dragon's color, yellow, was reserved for the supreme ruler of the land. From the Song Dynasty, only emperors could use dragon patterns.

It became taboo for commoners to use the creatures or even draw pictures of them. That also meant that some rebels would deliberately take up dragon symbols to topple unpopular monarchs.

Many proverbs closely related to the dragon are still widely used. A typical one is wangzichenglong, which illustrates Chinese parents' wishes for their children to be "as perfect as the long".

Beloved Chinese foods have also been named after the dragon, including longyan (longan, after the dragon's eyes) and longxumian (or "dragon whisker" noodles).

Popularity for the Chinese dragon, which appears as the fifth sign in the zodiac, hits fever pitch during the Chinese Year of the Dragon - which falls in 2012.

To help usher in the new year, people across China and Taiwan are expected to hold dragon dances on the night of the 15th day of the first month in the Chinese lunar calendar. Crowds will throng performances where frenzied dancers will hold up elaborate dragon floats lit by lights.

Boat races during the Dragon Festival, which usually falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, are also expected to be especially regal during the Year of the Dragon.
People want their babies born during the Year of the Dragon. People born in this year are said to have a lot of charisma, wisdom and longevity.

Some Things Are Never Forgotten

2012-01-01T17:34:00.003-06:00

My Aunt Anne and Uncle Roy, after they retired, would travel around to the different state parks in Texas. They had bought a travel trailer, so they could have some of the comforts of home without worrying about setting up tents, sleeping on the ground and so on, in their late middle-aged lives. They had always been active people. Uncle Roy was the Post Master in his town for many years and Aunt Anne had sold real estate. Uncle Roy was my Mother's older brother. They had always been good to me and I always enjoyed seeing them when we had family get togethers on the holidays. Aunt Anne was the type of Aunt that was a little on the plump side and always expected a kiss every time she saw you. Uncle Roy was lean and could explain anything mechanical. Uncle Roy smoked unfiltered cigarettes and to this day, the smell of a Zippo cigarette lighter still reminds me of him.
During the summer of 1978, they planned a trip to Glen Rose and the Dinosaur Valley. The park is known for dinosaur tracks that were discovered in 1908. The state bought the property in the 1960's and made it a state park. I was 14 at the time and Aunt Anne asked my Mother if I would like to go with them. I was delighted to go.
My Father took me to their house the day before the trip and I stayed in their spare bedroom that night. The only part I was a little leery about was their German Shepard, named "Harvey Wallbanger".
Harvey or "Harv", as my Uncle called him, was about 8 years old and his behavior was unpredictable. Their house was on a corner lot near a school. Everyday, the kids would walk home from school on the street next to my Aunt and Uncle's house. Their backyard was confined with a chained-link fence, where Harvey would be. Everyday, the kids would tease him and throw stones at him. This slighted his trust in children of any kind. My Uncle told me to just don't make any sudden movements around him and I would be fine. Normally, he was very friendly and enjoyed having his ears scratched. Most of the time, I left Harv alone.

The next morning, we woke up early and got everything ready to go. I had helped my Uncle connect the trailer to the truck the night before, so in the morning, all we needed to do was put the groceries in the trailer and drive away.
The trip to Glen Rose took about two and a half hours. Harvey sat in the front seat between Anne and Roy. His nose left little "nose prints" on the inside of the windshield when he touched it. I sat in the back seat and looked out the window.
We arrived at the park a little before noon. I stood and watched my Aunt and Uncle park the trailer. Aunt Anne would guide Uncle Roy to back the trailer into position. Then I helped them to level and secure it. Uncle Roy connected the electricity and water. With the trailer disconnected from the truck, we all got back in the truck and drove around the park.
Aunt Anne asked me if I remembered coming here before. I said that I remembered something vaguely but nothing really looked familiar. I seemed to remember sitting in a large depression in the stone on the edge of the river. I found out later that I had sat in one of the Brontosaurus tracks, that are plentiful throughout the park, when my parents had come there when I was about 3 years of age.
Due to a lack of rain that year, the river was not flowing. Instead, there were pools of water along the riverbed. They took me to a bend in the river known as "The Blue Hole".
The Blue Hole was a part of the river that was very deep and when the water was much higher, looked a deep blue color. The bank of the river next to the Blue Hole rose sharply and the trees that were hanging over it had ropes tied to them. My Aunt told me that when the river was full, the kids would swing on these ropes from the bank, out over the water and let go, thus landing in the middle of the water. One had to be careful when swimming this river as there are many limestone rock formations just under the surface. But now, all I could see were the rocks themselves.
We drove back to the trailer. Our campsite was one of many that lined the park road. They were spaced about 50 ft apart, allowing for a little privacy. Most of the sites were full and there was an empty spot next to ours. Each site had a covered table with concrete benches and a fire pit. Large established cedar elm trees covered most of the campsite we had with shade. My Aunt Anne had known this site from before and reserved it in advance.
Once we got back to the trailer, I wanted to explore the site a bit and found part of the river was just beyond the site. Harvey came with me and ran on ahead. As I came to edge of the still river, Harvey was drinking water out of one of the little pools of water. I could see the further down to the left, there was a bigger pool and wondered if I could fish there. I walked down and I could see the water ripple occasionally, meaning there were fish to catch. I ran back to the trailer and grabbed my rod and reel. I told my Aunt and Uncle that I was going fishing and they simply waved from their lawn chairs in the shade.
I caught a fish, and while I was reeling it to the shore, Harvey, who had stood on the bank watching my progress with perked ears, leaped into the water and tried to grab the fish. I shouted at him and as I brought the fish out of the water, he snapped at it a couple of times. I did get a chuckle when I took the fish off the line and threw it back out into the water, he would dive in the water as if to retrieve it. Stupid Dog, I thought.

We ate a nice dinner of hamburgers and hotdogs that my Uncle had cooked over the fire pit. I learned that if I broke off a piece of hotdog and tossed it to Harvey, he would catch it in his mouth. We watched the fireflies in the meadow next to the site and tried to follow them with the intermittent light. Sometimes they would land on you and you could watch their lower abdomens glow with phosphorescent light.

The trailer had two beds in the back end and a bathroom, kitchen and small living area in the front. When it was time to go to bed, my Aunt adjusted the built-in sofa and the back of the sofa laid flat to make a bed. I thought it was a cool idea and I slept there for the night.
The next couple of days were for fishing and exploring. We went to see the lifesize replicas of the dinosaurs that had left the tracks in the park. There was a replica of the Brontosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus Rex. They looked pretty cool and my Aunt took my photo with each.
When we got back on the third day for lunch, the site that had been vacant was now occupied. I didn't think much about it and besides you couldn't see anyone. They didn't have a trailer, just a large tent.
Aunt Anne made sandwiches and we sat at the covered table. While we were eating, the new "neighbors" walked over to our site. They were a family of four. Dad, Mom and two girls. One girl was about 7 years and the older girl was 14. Her name was Natalie.

Up until this point in my life, I had a very slight interest in girls, it was normal as puberty floods the male brain with testosterone and the girls began to become more curvy with each passing month. Being raised with a Mother who was quite strict in terms of who my friends were, girlfriends were out of the question. Besides, I had more interest in fishing and model trains, than stupid girls.

Natalie was a little taller than me and had long brown hair with big brown eyes. She was wearing shorts and I immediately noticed her long legs. She was very friendly too. Above all, she was a beauty and she was in the campsite next to ours.
After they left, my Uncle looked over at my Aunt and said, "I think ol' Mike's been struck by lightening."
"What do you mean?" I asked, finishing my sandwich.
"I saw the way you were drooling all over that young girl." he said, chuckling.
"Oh Roy, leave the boy alone and finish your lunch." Aunt Anne said.
"I was not!" I exclaimed.
"I thought your tongue was gonna fall out of your mouth." he continued, laughing.
"No, it wasn't." I said, beginning to blush.
"Roy, now you've embarrassed him." she said.
"It's Ok, Darlin', he's becoming a man. He knows I'm jokin' with him." Uncle Roy said.

I couldn't stop thinking about her. Maybe I had been struck by lightening or something. That afternoon, I went back fishing on a different pond near the Blue Hole. Nobody was swimming so I thought I'd have better luck.
While I was casting my bait into the water, Natalie and her family came by to see the Blue Hole.
"Catch anything?" he dad asked me.
"I've caught a couple, Sir." I answered.
"I remember when this place was a nice lazy river, but now, most of it is dried up." he said. Natalie came closer and sat near to where I was fishing.
"How long have you been here in the park?" she asked.
"About three days. We leave on Sunday." I told her.
"Where are you from?" she asked.
"My Aunt and Uncle are from Waxahachie, but I'm from Lake Dallas. What about you?" I asked.
"I'm from North Dallas." she answered.
"Cool" I said smiling.
She had a couple of freckles around her nose that looked cute. When she laughed, her nose crinkled up. She had a pretty smile that made it difficult not to stare.
"Hey Nat, we're going to go back now." her dad called out.
"Can I stay a while, Daddy?" she asked with a sweet daughter voice.
"Sure, just don't stay too long or the mosquitoes will eat you alive." he said.
"We'll be back before it gets dark, sir." I told him.
"Very well." he said, smiling. Then they walked over the top of the hill back to their site.

We sat a while and chit chatted about school and what each other liked and disliked. I caught a couple more fish, too small to keep, but each time, Natalie would clap and tell me I was a great fisherman. I felt happy that a pretty girl was giving me her attention. I always thought I was just average. Why would a pretty girl want to talk to me? had been my question.
I walked her back and when we got there, her family was sitting with my Aunt and Uncle talking.
Aunt Anne told me that her family was going to see the park exhibit that explained about the dinosaurs and there would be a short film. It was at the outdoor amphitheater and they wanted to know if I would like to go with them. I asked Aunt Anne if it was ok, for me to go and she said it was fine. They were going to go after dark so I needed to hurry up and eat dinner.
The amphitheater was basically, a large screen, made from plywood and painted white. The benches were logs that were cut in half and the flat side was used for benches. There were six rows of benches in two columns.
Natalie and I sat together behind her parents and little sister. Several other benches had other park visitors. The park ranger began telling the story of how the tracks had been discovered and how the park came to be. After he was done, he turned on the projector and the film about dinosaurs was shown. I watched the film and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Natalie's face. The light from the film flickering off her eyes. Then she turned and looked at me and smiled. She took her hand and put it on mine on the bench between us. I turned my hand and held hers. We smiled at each other and then watched the film.
Her hand was soft and it made my hand a bit sweaty. I had held a girl's hand before when I was younger, crossing the street, but never like this.
Something was happening to other parts of my body that I knew was normal, so I crossed my legs to help hide my excitement.
When the film was complete, she immediately released my hand as if her dad might see. I looked at her and she gave me a sweet smile. We all stood up and I crossed my hands in front and as we all walked back to the campsite. I was thankful for the darkness of the night.
On the way back, I asked her if I could see her the next day. She told me she didn't know what her family was doing, but she had hoped to see me. I smiled as did she. I left them at their site and joined my Aunt and Uncle at ours. They were just relaxing in their chairs and Harvey jumped up from his position next to Uncle Roy and barked a couple of times at me. I remembered to "not make any sudden movements" as I approached and allowed him to sniff my hand. He then gave a little whine and returned to my Uncle's side.

It rained the next day, so Natalie's family stayed in their tent or under the covered table area. We did the same and then my Uncle suggested we go into town for some barbecue. It was dark when we got back, so I didn't see Natalie. I had hoped to see her on Saturday, because we were leaving on Sunday.

Saturday was still rainy but not as bad. The rain let up about mid morning and I asked Natalie if she would like to go for a walk. Her dad said it was fine. He knew she was tired of staying cooped up in the tent all day. We walked up the road and after we were out of sight, she took my hand and held it again. I had a warm feeling when I spent time with her. We explored the pavilion and some of the other parts of the park. While we were sitting near the brontosaurus tracks, the sky opened up and large drops of rain began to fall. We ran towards the pavilion where it would be dry, but when we arrived, our clothes were soaked. Her hair was wet and stringy, little drops of water fell from the ends. I could see her bra under her shirt. She raised her arms to cover herself. We leaned against the painted cedar siding under the eave of the pavilion's roof. It was raining really hard and you couldn't see far beyond the pavilion. We would have to wait until the rain subsided. There was a flash and then a very loud clap of thunder. Natalie put her arms around my waist and hid her head in my chest. I put my arms around her to protect her.
"I'm scared of thunder." she said in a muffled voice.
"It was really loud" I replied.
"Hopefully, it's just a quick thunderstorm and the rain will let up soon." I added.
I felt her hold me tighter as another clap of thunder cracked through the air. I held her and noticed how good she felt in my arms. I had never held anyone but my Mom or Grandmother this tight before. She felt small and helpless, but she felt natural. I was looking out at the rain when I felt her raise her head towards me. I looked down at her and I kissed her. It wasn't a passionate kiss you see in the movies, it was a sweet kiss. It was my first kiss. Her lips were warm and soft. I didn't even know if I did it right. It wasn't gross like all my friends told me it was. It wasn't like kissing my Mom or Aunt Anne, no. This was a real girl kiss. When we broke the kiss I looked at her and she blushed. She hid her head again and then just held me tight. My heart was beating so fast. I held her and smiled my biggest smile. I kissed a girl! I kissed a girl! That was super-duper cool!, I thought to myself. I found I wanted another and another.

After the rain subsided a bit, we went back holding hands. It was late in the afternoon and Aunt Anne would have dinner ready soon.
That night, Aunt Anne had invited her family to dinner over at our site. It was fun, but it seemed a bit awkward. My Uncle Roy had picked up on it and after they left, he said something.
"You both got caught in that storm earlier, didn't you?" he asked me, while Aunt Anne was putting things away inside the trailer.
"Yes, we did. We got soaked." I replied.
"Where did you go?" he asked.
"We ran to the pavilion until it stopped." I answered.
"She was scared from the thunder." I added.
"Did you kiss her?" he asked smiling.
I blushed and then he nudged me with his elbow, "She is a pretty little thing." he said.
"You're a good looking boy, I'll bet you'll have them fighting over ya, in a couple of years." he said and slapped my shoulder.
"I don't think so, Uncle Roy." I said, still blushing and trying to imagine girls wanting to fight over me.
"You'll see." he said.
"What are you telling that boy, Roy?" Aunt Anne said, standing in the doorway of the trailer.
"Nothing, Darlin'" he said, getting up and giving his wife a sweet peck on the lips and then squeezing passed her to enter the trailer.

I sat outside and watched off into the darkness. My mind replaying the events of the day over and over. It was wonderful. I guess my Uncle had seen the dazed look, like I had been witness to something Divine. My Aunt and Uncle were inside the trailer when I heard a noise.
"pssst" Natalie said from around the front of the trailer. She was crouched down and when I looked she motioned for me to come.
I got up looking around for anyone else and walked over to her. She took my hand and led me into the road where the light was shadowed by the truck.
"What is it?" I asked her.
"Here, take this." she said, handing me a small piece of paper. "It's my address." she added.
"Why are you giving me your address?" I cluelessly asked.
"We can write to each other, silly. I know you're leaving tomorrow and I wanted to give it to you in case I didn't see you before you left." she said.
A light went off in my head as she spoke. Yeah, stupid, why else would she give you her address?, I thought.
"Cool, I'll write you when I get home and then you'll have my address as well." I said.
"I need to go back" she said, then gave me a quick kiss and was gone into the darkness.
I felt drunk. I walked back into the site and my Aunt Anne opened the trailer door.
"You gonna stay out here all night? What's that you have there?" she asked.
"Natalie's address. We're going to write to each other." I told her.
"That's sweet. Michael's got a girlfriend." she said.
"She's not my girlfriend, Anne. I like her." I told her.
"I see that look on your face. Cupid struck you hard." she said with a wink.
I blushed again and went inside.

We left early the next morning and returned home. Sunday night I was back in my own bed, thoughts of Natalie were all I could think about. I wrote her and she wrote back. We continued writing about once a week. She would spray her letters with perfume that I found I really liked. Over time, the letters were less and less. Eventually, they stopped altogether.

I never saw her again.

But I will never forget that trip or my first kiss.

Italiano, Francais and Putonghua

2011-10-27T18:59:00.009-05:00

In my last entry, I explained about how I was first introduced to languages. This entry will continue my journey to the present.

When I was very young, I was exposed to and grew to love the works of the classical composers. Later, when I was older this love branched over into a love for Opera. The more I attended and listened, the more I wanted to understand the languages. Most of which, but not all, were written and sung in Italian or French. I began to learn each, independently, of course. I first tried to learn both and ended up mixing them together into a Salian-Roman mess, so I put French aside and concentrated on "parla italiano". The plus side to Italian was I could go back and watch all of the Godfather series movies and really understand what they were saying. It was simple enough, most of the European languages all have similarities to English. Like German, learn the syntax, learn the rules and then build your vocabulary. I was more interested in learning to understand Italian more than read or write, because I really wanted to enjoy an Italian opera without reading the subtitles.

After I felt sufficient enough in Italian, I began to focus on French. Now. This is a most peculiar language. When you learn it you get a feeling that, whomever developed it became bored or lazy and never finished it.

My example is with French numbers.

Most languages use the numbers zero through nine as the basis for all other numbers from there on. In English, four is used for the numbers forty, four hundred, four thousand, etc. But not French. They have the base numbers, but when one counts above sixty, they don't use the bases. They combine numbers! What we know as "seventy" is literally, "sixty-ten" or soixante-dix! Eighty is "four-twenty" quatre-vingts! Ninety is "four-twenty-ten" quatre-vingt-dix! It is really confusing at first and I never found anyone to answer as to why is was this way. Perhaps it is the French, just being, French! I don't know.

I had a science teacher that used to curse the way the French always "Did things the hard way" He'd say, "Why the Hell, would you take the letters, E-A-U and X and pronounce it 'O'?", shaking his head in disbelief.

I actually enjoy French, and even though I have no one to practice with, I still try to practice when I'm in the car or alone. It is a romantic language, as is Italian and both have increased my love for the opera considerably. Unfortunately, when I attend, I find myself reading the subtitles to see if they write what is really being said and being amused when they leave out something meaningful.

In 2009, my employer at the time, was sending us to various parts of the world to upgrade the remote branch's computer servers. In a drawing, for which one of us would spend three weeks in Australia, I won second prize. I would visiting the branches in Hong Kong and Singapore.
I knew nothing about either. I knew where Hong Kong was on a map, but nothing else. I knew the British had "owned" the island until returning it to China in 1999. I figured English would fine for my trip and off I went. I have written about my trip and I won't repeat any of the details here.

When I landed in Hong Kong, I was thirteen hours ahead of Central Time in the U.S. and I had just flown for 26 hours. I wasn't exactly what you would call, "with it", but the excitement of traveling abroad made me excited, none the less. Little did I know that the next three days would change my life forever. Seeing everything I had only seen in magazines or in National Geographic, up close and personal, definitely left it's mark on my heart. I learned my first Chinese words from the hotel night manager, Mr.Stone. I asked him how to say "Thank you". He replied, "Xiexie". I practiced it a couple of times and was set. I thanked everyone that I had dealings with and for some reason, bowed to everyone, slightly. I knew the Japanese bowed, but I didn't see anyone else doing it so it was more of a lowering of the head.
As soon as I got back to the U.S., I went and found a small phrasebook. I could not understand it and knew I would be doing myself wrong to learn Chinese incorrectly. I wanted more, but wasn't sure how or where to get it.

Months passed and I changed jobs a couple of times. Then, one day when I was searching for Chinese web sites to be able to listen and mimic, (something I do well), I found a site called ChinesePod. They were based out of Shanghai, China and they taught Mandarin with lessons from "Newbie" to "Expert" levels. The part I liked the most was you could download the lessons and play them on your iPod! I could use the hour I spend driving to work to learn basic spoken Chinese! I listened for two hours or so everyday and not only learned what the spoken words were, but the meanings behind the associated characters. (I couldn't read the characters in the car, I was driving).

I know that I have a couple of years to become proficient and although I have come a long way from "Xiexie" to what I know today, I still felt I needed a real "Laoshi" Teacher. One I could sit with and listen, learn the characters and above all, watch their mouth as they said the characters.

I found a wonderful teacher, locally. She is very thorough and knows of my want to learn the language, not just a few key phrases for travel. I have started back at the beginning with the basics.

I'm not going to go into detail on the complexities of the language, although I will point out that Chinese is a very practical and efficient language. Yes, learning Chinese is difficult, but it is a lot of fun too. I continue today to spend as much time as I dare allow, listening, speaking, making sometimes very embarrassing mistakes and, above all, learning.

I encourage each one of you to learn a language, it opens doors into other peoples and cultures. It is believed that a possible prevention for Alzheimer's is stimulation of the brain as we age. Language learning is just this kind of stimulation.

One last thing I have learned through learning the various languages. If you think learning them is hard, try learning English, especially, American English. It has become a mixture of all the other languages through our vast variety of cultures all living together, in our "melting pot" of what makes America, "America".

A Tale of a Cunning Linguist

2011-10-26T19:16:00.001-05:00

Growing up, I never thought about learning a different language than my own native English. In fact, I hated English, why would I want to learn something else? Growing up in Texas, combining that with my mother, who had studied English in college, and I was always learning new ways of raising my mother's temper. The results were usually multiple thumps on back of the ear for emitting incorrect grammar or slang.

In school, I loathed English. It was so boring. Stupid spelling and grammar, not to mention writing classes of reviews on books no youngster would ever find interest in reading. Silas Marner was one that sticks in my mind as particularly dull. I had wanted to be doctor. I read all about anatomy and physiology, why can't I write a really good report on something like that? So has it, I skated by the skin of my teeth in English. College Freshman English was no different, except the professor seemed to feed off of crushing the proud works of every aspiring freshman with his fat red pen and the abundant usage of capital "Fs".

I never took any language courses in school. There wasn't much to choose from in a small town with a population of only about 3000. Being Texas, the choices were narrowed to Spanish or nothing. Since it was only an elective and not a mandatory course, I opted out.

My first exposure to language was when the Army sent me to Korea for 13 months. I picked up the basics, "Hello", "Thank you", "Mister" and "Mrs." Beyond that, there was one phrase I learned, "josumnida", which means "awesome" or if referring to a meal, "very satisfying". I think I might have learned how to recognize "Cola" in Hangul, but couldn't tell you today to save my life. It really didn't matter if you learned the language, because everyone you associated with around the base spoke English or broken English.

In 1987, I got orders to Germany for a 36 month tour. The only thing I knew about German was that I could mimic a German accent from watching old WWII movies when I was a kid. "Vee know zat jou have's zee microfilm!", was basically my knowledge of anything German. What I didn't know is how useful this "accent" would come be, down the road.

On the plane bound for Germany, a fellow soldier, that had been to Germany before, asked me if I knew any German and, of course, I didn't.

"Here, I'll teach you an easy phrase.", he told me.

"Thanks alot!", I replied.

I followed and learned each word until I could recite it flawlessly, thinking I would be ahead of the others when I arrived.

I proudly repeated to him, "Ich habe einen großen Schwanz!"

"Shhhh, keep it down, man!", he said, looking around. "You say that to a girl.", he added.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"It means, 'I have a big dick'". he replied, and he and the other guys started laughing. I chuckled, although I knew I could never say it.

The Germans can speak English and are taught, like most countries, in grade school. But, the Germans are a proud people and choose not to speak it, unless absolutely necessary. To help the newly arriving American soldiers in Germany, they would spend several weeks in the HeadStart Program. Not only did this program teach basic German, but also about some of the culture and to try to give the soldier a "Headstart" to life in Deutschland. I found the classes a lot of fun, and I was really picking up the basic language. It was really easy for me. I know others had trouble with the pronunciation and I would try to help them as best as I could.

I completed the class went on to my unit for work. I worked in a medical clinic which afforded me a lot of time after hours to explore this beautiful, historic land of my own ancestors. I met another soldier in the clinic and he had been there for a year or so already. We had similar interests in movies and comedy and something I was adding to my list of interests... the German language. His name was Mike also, and he and I became best friends. He helped me build my German vocabulary. I was really liking this new language. It was easy. I would come to meet some Germans and when I spoke to them, they would tell me that I spoke like a native German and didn't believe I was an American. My German was natural, not because I was that good, but because I applied my "accent", I had learned as a child.

The clinic employed a older German man to perform custodial duties and we called him, "Herr Wolfe" (Mr. Wolfe) Hans was his first name, but it was much easier to call him, Herr Wolfe.

Herr Wolfe spoke very little English. He was about 68 years old, wore glasses and had a very cheerful manner about him. Everyone liked Herr Wolfe. Every afternoon, he would walk through the clinic with a large cart and announce, "Abfall!" which meant to he was taking out the trash and wanted to empty your waste baskets. I quickly befriended him. I had learned a very useful question in German that I would ask frequently to him. "Was ist das auf Deutsch?" (What is that in German?) and point to an object. Then I would tell him the English name. We helped each others vocabulary greatly in both languages, although I doubt he really cared about learning English more than he already knew. Mike took formal classes in German and learned a great deal more than I, but I knew a lot more than most, and after a couple of years was almost fluent.

They say that the people who spend time in Germany and don't like it, are the people who refuse to adapt to the culture and learn the language, or at least a few words. I know its the fear of trying to speak and being laughed at, but this is so much farther from the truth. Germans were always helping me with new words or grammatical rules, because they knew I was trying to fit in.

When the time came to leave, it was a truly sorrowful day. I felt at home in Germany and knew that many of our customs and traditions came from Germany, as well as all over Europe. It was hard to let go.

Over the next ten years, I almost lost all of my German due to the one thing that will kill a language, lack of usage. You never forget your native tongue, but all others will slowly slip away. I met a couple of people along the way, that also spoke German and I was able to get most of it back. There are words every now and then that I have to look up, but the meat of my German is still there and now I know to keep at it.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this story, when I'll share more of my linguistic lust.

Open Kǒu, Insert Jiǎo

2011-10-20T13:48:00.002-05:00

Tones are a very critical part of learning Chinese, as many before me have pointed out.
A simple tone change can turn your mother, Mā (妈), into a horse, Mǎ (马). Although the characters are somewhat similar, 妈 has the added character for "woman" (女) as part of the character. But in speaking, delivering your tones can make for some truly embarrassing moments.

I had the opportunity to really but my foot in my mouth, all the way to the knee.

Today, I went to lunch at a new Chinese restaurant and decided to try out some of my Chinese. I'm taken to my table and sat down for lunch. An attractive, young waitress comes to my table and I feel the overconfidence rising deep in my brain. I asked the waitress how much a bowl of dumplings cost – “小姐，水饺一碗多少钱？ – (Xiǎojiě ，shuǐ jiǎo yī wǎn duōshǎo qián?)”
She looks at me incredulously, so I repeat myself. It takes a while, but finally she understands and with a burst of laughter, she explains, in English, that based on my tones, what I’d actually been asking her, “Miss, how much is one night?" — 小姐，睡觉一晚多少钱？– xiǎojiě ，shuìjiào yī wǎn duōshǎo qián?”
I felt the horror wash over me as my mind brought up images of her boss calling the police and my being arrested for solicitation! I apologized profusely and she actually helped me with my Chinese for the duration of my meal, that mostly went untouched, because I felt to ashamed to eat. That was also the largest tip I have ever given for a $10 meal.

I learned a few of lessons from this encounter.

No teaching method known on this earth is more effective that an embarrassing moment.
Embarrassing moments make you humble.
No one reading this will ever forget the difference between "dumpling" and "one night".

I will continue to humiliate myself and share these priceless gems as I trip and stumble my way toward learning this fascinating language.

On Spoken English

2011-10-18T15:29:00.003-05:00

Since my last post on speaking English, the fears and hurdles associated with learning to speak English, I have compiled a list of practices I use to learn to speak Chinese. Even though the languages are not the same, the tips here can be applied for learning any language.

Don’t worry about making mistakes because you will. We all must learn to crawl before we can walk. The funniest mistakes you make will be the ones you remember the most!
Be patient. This isn’t a one day process. Learning a new language stimulates new parts of the brain. Not only memory, but new motor skills in the brain must be remembered. Do you know how difficult it was for me to pronounce "人" properly?
Learn certain phrases that can be used in multiple situations. A friend of mine told me to learn the "music" of the language. English is a beautiful language when spoken in a manner that flows freely.
Learn how to greet someone properly. Luckily with English, there are not a lot of references to masculine and feminine words or greetings. It's more of a matter as to formal and informal greetings.
Talk slowly and carefully. Don’t rush through. Try to pronounce each word correctly, don't mix "L" and "R". Remember "silent e"
Restrict yourself to simple sentences until you gain confidence. Take your time. Pick sentences that you might normally use on a daily basis.
Watch out for your pronunciation. Many online tools will tell you how to pronounce a word correctly. Check one of them out when you’re in doubt. You can always ask a friend or me. I'll tell you how it is pronounced. Don't make the mistake I did and ask the bus driver in Taipei for a "Jiewen" when I meant to ask "Qing Wen" because I was careless with my pronunciation.
Carefully observe how proficient speakers of the language pronounce words and frame their sentences.
Ask your friends, relatives and anyone you can to point out your mistakes and correct them. Not all of us knows exactly the same levels of English. Some may have a little more of less knowledge as you. This is how you pick up little bits of knowledge and tips.
Speak to people you learn English, in English only. Practice is a must. Enough said about that.
Record yourself reading one article aloud every day. Focus on pronunciation, speed, clarity and emphasis. Play it back to yourself and listen for mistakes. Then practice those words and try again.
Many online sites offer you the opportunity to voice chat with another user. This is an effective way to practice. Get a Skype account, I know most of you already have one and practice this way. SharedTalk also has a voice chat feature. Most of you here met me there.
Learn at least one new word every day and use it as a part of your conversation with people. By the end of the week, you should know seven words really well. This is more helpful if you actually have someone to practice with.
Watch English movies with subtitles. This is how I perfected my German accent. When I speak German, even native speakers (German) think I am native too. One of my QQ friends speaks almost perfect English using this method as well. No, I will not reveal who it is, but she knows who she is.
Watch English shows. Same as #14.
Read books and magazines. Once exception with this. Stay away from the New York Times. They tend to write using a lexis that isn't meant for normal people. They fill the articles with a lot of words that are not commonly used in normal life.
Keep a pocket dictionary handy for any word you may need to know the meaning. You probably already have one you keep with you at all times anyway.
When you hear a new word, try to find its usage and its antonyms. If you read my previous entry on this tip, you will remember the reference to the English word, "Intercourse".

A lot of these are common sense and again, they can apply to any language you may be wanting to learn. I have simply targeted English, since most of you reading this are learning, wanting to learn or already know how to read and write English and want to speak better English.
I'm not giving up on learning Chinese, so don't you give up on learning English! You can learn to be proficient, confident speakers. I have faith in each one of you!

太谢谢大家!

The Path

2011-09-20T14:17:00.002-05:00

Just ahead, I can see the forest’s beginning. Majestic hardwoods of oak and pine, border the path ahead of me. Sunlight streams down and casts rays of heavenly light upon the path and forest floor below. The light reflects off tiny bits of dust, creating a magical sparkle. The path is gentle and steady, no roots or stones to threaten my stride.

I look to my side and see you, young and beautiful. I squeeze your hand gently and smile. The love between us is radiant and we each feel the warm from our hearts. We begin this journey together. Just the two of us, for we are alone on the path. A path of life and love that only a couple may follow.

We talk and laugh, sharing ideals and joys as we stroll. Occasionally, a storm will form and I use my coat to protect you from the elements of wind and rain. Mostly the weather is serene and bright, never too hot or too cold. We allow nothing to ruin our journey.

It seems we have walked for a long time. I notice that the path isn’t as clear as it was when we began. I look over to you and I see that you are still as beautiful, but there’s silver in your hair, your kind gentle face smiles at me and you reach and touch my weathered cheek, a slight tremor in your hand. I slowly and with some pain, put my arm around you. You have always felt so wonderful in my arms. We turn to see that the end of the path is near. We face each other and give a slight kiss. I tell you I love and thank you for a wonderful life. I hold out my withered hand. You place your frail fingers to mine. The light is fading as we walk, and without fear into the darkness, together.

I've Always Known

2011-08-15T14:24:00.017-05:00

When I was very young, my two best friends were Stephanie and Chris. In fact, we knew each other before we could walk. Chris lived next door to me and Stephanie lived on the other side of me, just two doors down. We played together always, whether we were playing Batman and Robin with bath towels as capes and pinned in the front with a safety pin or playing Stickball in Stephanie's from yard with her sister. Tall, old oaks and pecan trees filled the neighborhood, creating a canopy of shade throughout. There were many places that grass wouldn't grow due to the lack of sunlight.

I never really noticed that Stephanie looked like her parents and older sister and Chris looked like his parents and little brother. I remember one day, Stephanie said that she was going to get a new baby brother and her Mother told her how happy she was when Stephanie was born. As a child has no knowledge that one's own birth isn't remembered, Stephanie asked me if I remembered when I was born. "I don't know, I'm adopted." I replied. Chris stopped fidgeting with his army man and they both fell silent. With a surprised look, Stephanie asked more questions, "When did you find out?, Do you know about your 'real' mom and dad?", Chris, being totally clueless about it, asked, "Does it hurt?"

I had nothing to hide, nor be ashamed. I told them what I knew.

"I always knew.", perhaps my parents told me very, very early and acted like it was no big deal.

"All I know is that my real mom was 44 and she died, and she had red hair. My dad was a college professor and died too." Truly, this was what my Mother had told me and I saw no reason to withhold the information from my two best friends. At that point, Stephanie, let out an understanding, "Ohhhhh". Chris had already lost interest and was arranging his green plastic troops for their assault. I shrugged my shoulders and that was that. It never came up again. We went back to playing.

I remember several times in the future, with others, when the point would come up. I answered questions and I really think most people had a natural curiosity about "being adopted" , like it's similar to Foster children or refugee's from a war. No, "Being adopted" does not mean you were ripped from your family and walked a thousand miles to the border in hopes of freedom, of one day to meet a nice family and they love you like their own. It literally feels, like I wasn't adopted.
Most people, when they inquire, ask me if I know who my Natural parents are or if I would look for them. The answer is and always will be an emphatic, no. I might have thought about it before, mostly for familial medical history, but not now.

Like I had said earlier, all my Mother had told me was that my Natural Mother had red hair, she was 44 when I was born and died from complications of Caesarian section. My Father was a college professor and he was terminal with cancer. That's all I knew. After my real Mother, (my adoptive Mother), died of cancer in 1994, my Father and I began to get closer. He told me stories of relatives I never knew existed. They had died, but I never knew that my Father had an older brother.
To end any further confusion, from this point on, my Mother refers to my Adoptive Mother and my Natural Mother refers to the woman who gave birth to me. Same with my paternal participants. As I was saying, my Father and I had gotten closer. Over the next ten years, I learned so much about Mom and who she really was and his past as well.

One day, while having a cup of coffee, I asked my Father about how they adopted me. I told him what I knew. He gave me a puzzled look on his face and asked, "Who the hell told you that?"

"Mom told me." I replied.

"I don't know why she would have told you something like that, but then knowing your Mother..." He stated.

"What is the real story?", I asked him with a deep feeling of anguish and anger for my Mother, lying to me and in turn, I lied to others.

My Father began his story and I knew that he would tell me the truth. He was not proud or ashamed of the truth, unlike my Mother. He was a realist and always told it so.

My Mother and Father had tried to conceive several times when they first got married. After several miscarriages, they were losing hope. My parents married late in life and now, in their 40's knew the window was closing. My Father's territory took him to the northwest portions of the state and towns along the Red River. He would be away from home during the week, visiting customers and taking their orders. He would come home on the weekends and go back out on Monday mornings. He did this all through my growing up years until he retired. One evening, he was eating dinner in a diner and talking with another salesman, the topic of children came up. When my Father told the man how discouraging their attempts were, the man said he had heard of a doctor in a nearby town that helped with adoption.

When my Father got back, he and my Mother discussed it and decided to inquire with this doctor about adopting a child. He found that this doctor would deliver the children born to women that did not want to keep their babies and he would find homes for them. The town was far enough away from the city that no one back home would know that "Suzie was in trouble" and therefore not shame the family.
He told me that they made all of the arrangements with the doctor and on one Saturday, while they were cleaning house, the telephone rang. The doctor had just delivered a blond hair, blue eyed, baby boy. They immediately drove to the hospital and took me home. The same day I was born. Even my original birth certificate bares their names as my parents. He had no knowledge of my Natural parents identity, background or anything. The law back then was to prevent any contact or exchange of information to protect the child and the adoptive parents, should the natural parents change their minds later.

I was in shock, but relieved. I knew the truth. My mind raced. I wondered if my Natural Mother was a young girl who'd lowered her guard and succumbed to the forbidden fruit? Was my Natural Mother a wife of a soldier overseas and had gotten too lonely one night? I tried to imagine who, what, how, why. There was one thing I knew. I was consciously and purposefully, abandoned.
I have no animosity or anger toward my Natural Mother. She did what she did because she thought it was the only option she had, for whatever reason. It doesn't matter. Actually, I had more remorse for my own Mother for allowing me to believe in the lie of my past.

Now, when people ask, I just tell them, I don't know and I really don't care. I'll joke with and tell them, I was found on the side of the road or that I was given up by the Indians.
My Real parents raised me in a loving and nurturing home, teaching me how to love and bare compassion toward my fellow man.

It was like, "I've always known, because it never mattered."

The Angry Bus Driver Strikes Again!

2011-08-11T09:04:00.017-05:00

I woke up freezing to death from the lovely air conditioning. I guess I had begun to acclimate to the hot, humid environment of normal Taiwanese life. We are very spoiled in America with all of our luxuries and conveniences that we take for granted.

I got everything packed and ready to go. I only had time for an espresso from the machine in the lobby. I checked out of the hotel and walked down to the end of the street. I waited for the light and crossed it to reach the Ambassador Hotel. It's a five star hotel in Taipei and the airport shuttle runs from there about once an hour. It was about 7:30 in the morning and there wasn't a whole lot of people, out and about. As I approached the hotel's main entrance, the concierge walked up. "請問，先生，台灣桃園機場嗎？", "Qǐngwèn, xiānshēng, táiwān táoyuán jīchǎng ma?" or "Excuse me, Sir, Taiwan Taoyuan Airport?" I asked and I pointed to the curbside. "對對對，一，一，二，七", "Duì duì duì, yī, yī, èr, qī" or "Right, 1127", he replied. "謝謝你", "Xièxiè nǐ" or "Thank you", I thanked him and went to stand near the curb and wait.

Soon, 1127 arrived and I boarded, taking a front seat so I could see. I found that this bus also commutes a few students to and from school. Several students boarded the bus at various locations. I guess to them, it was just another bus that also went to the airport terminals.

At one point during the ride, our bus needed to change lanes to get on the freeway. The driver tried several times and it seemed one of the other buses would not let him in. Finally, he put on his blinker again and muscled his way over to the right lane, causing the other bus to blare his horn. Just as we were about to take the entrance ramp to the freeway, the other bus sped up and passed us on the left. He then pulled in front our bus and stopped, causing our driver to stop suddenly to avoid hitting him. The other bus' doors opened and the driver exited the bus, swearing angrily in Taiwanese. He came to the front of our bus and continued his rant. I thought it was somewhat comical. I could see our bus driver in the mirror and he maintained a cool expression wearing his sunglasses. The other driver shook his fist and walked over to the driver's side of the bus and continued to curse. Our driver simply turned his head toward the man and stared, never changing his expression or saying a word. Eventually, the other driver began to walk back to his bus. He turned and glared one more time and then returned to his bus and left. As we started to drive away, I let out a little chuckle, as I thought the other driver looked ridiculous with his display. Our bus driver just looked at me from the mirror and a smirk appeared on his face. We made our way to the airport and I thanked him as I exited the bus. The driver smiled and gave me a nod.

After I checked in and went through security, I bought a few items as I still had about $2500 NT or $75 US to spend.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, unlike last time when I left my laptop bag on the concourse train and had to go find it. This one was much easier.

I was very happy to experience what daily life is in Taiwan. It is a simple, but an enjoyable way of life. I'm sure there are many that have been heavily influenced by Western culture. I saw it many times, in Taipei. Designer purses and clothing. People trying to stay ahead of the Jones' and accumulating debt, just like those of us in the West. Tainan City is a city where people enjoy life at a little slower pace. They stop and smell the roses. They go to the park for walks together. Not that this doesn't happen elsewhere, you just get a sense of the real culture of the Taiwanese people in Tainan City. Having some of the modern technology along with ancient traditions together in a harmonious light. I truly enjoyed being a part of it, even but for a very brief moment in time.

I was made to feel...

At home in Taiwan.

Koxinga, the Dutch and Floating on Air

2011-08-10T09:14:00.037-05:00

I was a little sad after I woke up, as this was my last day in Tainan. My flight back to the States didn't leave until Saturday morning, but I needed to be in Taipei to catch the shuttle to the airport early. I joined BoFu in the living room and watched a little TV before going to breakfast.

There were a couple more sites to visit in historic Tainan City before I left, around 4:00 PM. I went ahead and packed everything up so I wouldn't have to do it in a rush later. I didn't purchase all of the goodies that I had in February and the items I wanted to take back would be purchased in Japan, on the way back. It didn't take that long to put everything away, so we went downstairs, jumped on the scooter and off we went, yet again. The first place we went was the Ancestral Shrine of Koxinga.

The Shrine was built in 1663 by Zheng Jing, to worship his father Koxinga. Koxinga was a Ming loyalist and the arch commander of the Ming troops on the maritime front for the later monarchs of the withering dynasty. Koxinga devoted the last 16 years of his life to resisting the conquest of China by the Manchus of Qing Dynasty. Upon defeating the forces of the Dutch East India Company on Formosa, in his last campaign in 1661–1662, Koxinga took over the island of Taiwan in order to support his grand campaign against the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty. He died at age 37, due to malaria.

The grounds of the Shrine are very beautifully kept with gardens, fountains and koi ponds. I found it a great place for meditation as it is very peaceful, even amid the city life. There are many places within for photo opportunities. There are large turtle statues with stone tablets mounted vertically on their backs. The inscriptions on the turtles commend Fu Kang-an for suppressing the Lin Shuang-wen rebellion. The inscriptions are in parallel Chinese and Manchu and time has worn many of them to almost unreadable.

We left the Shrine and proceeded to the Dutch Fort of Anping. The fort was built in the early 1600's on the island of Formosa. Time, ocean currents and silt filled in the space between Taiwan and Formosa and it became part of the main island. Koxinga and his forces battled against the Dutch to conquer Taiwan.

The main building of the fort is multi-terraced with a long run of stairs to reach the top. The fort is adorned with beautifully flowering Egg Flower trees. The lower and older section of wall still standing, is the entrance to a garden of Banyan trees. Banyan trees live for a many, many years and the oddity about the tree is that, if not trimmed, it will grow roots from any branch and trunk to the ground. It is not uncommon to see a branch with a long flowing "mane" of roots, swaying gently in the wind. I think they look very medieval. The top of the tree is very dense and completely shades the ground beneath. Years before, the oldest living Banyan tree (in Taiwan), in the Confucian Temple, died after living for 240 years.

The main building at the fort is now a museum with artifacts and statues of the time it operated as a true fort. There is a modern type tower in the center for viewing the surrounding area. We took photos and even ventured out on one of the terraces to use as a back drop. The photos didn't turn out too well as it was very windy. We left and took the scooter to one of the historic neighborhoods in Tainan City. It was a holiday and most of the shops in the area were closed so we just walked around and looked at the old architecture. Since it was around lunch time, we went to eat at a restaurant that we had passed before that is famous for its spring rolls. JiaJia took us to Chou's on the west side of Anping Canal in Tainan. There were many people there and eventually, we got our food we found a place to sit. Although it is a restaurant, the self-serve atmosphere reminded me more of a fast food place, only nicer. I ordered some food "to go" for her parents and left. We stopped at another Starbucks so I could see if they had a Tainan Mug. They did, so I bought it and we went back home. JiaJia had to work and I needed to go back to Taipei.

Big Sister was supposed to come last Sunday, but could not make it. Unfortunately, she would arrive in Tainan about an hour after I left. I had hoped to see her again after we met in January.

We visited for a hour or so and JiaJia took a nap. She took photos of BoFu and BoMu with me so I could have the memories. I also sent them to her to show them after I got back to the States. It was time for me to go catch the shuttle to the train station and JiaJia to go to work. She dropped me off at the station and waited until the bus came, so I'd get on the correct bus. I got on the shuttle bus and took a seat up front. The bus made various stops and finally dropped me off, a bit out of town at the THSR (Taiwan High Speed Railway) station.

I walked into the station, which was fairly new and modern. I purchased my ticket from an automated ticket dispenser for Taipei. One-way cost about $1300 NT or $45 US. I thought it was a great price. It was not an assigned seat, but I knew if I got on the train when it first arrived, I would have no problems finding a seat. I proceeded up the escalator to the second floor and looked for my platform. The train platforms are elevated about 30-40 feet off the ground. To reach my platform, I had to climb a long stretch of steps. Once there, it was deserted accept for a Taiwanese soldier that was going home on leave. He walked over and started talking to me. He was pleasant and asked if I was an American. I told I was and that I was going back to Taipei to fly back to the States. We exchanged email addresses and he walked away to the smoking area. I walked to the designated place for my car assignment.

It was quiet and windy on the platform. The sun was getting lower in the sky and cast an orange glow on the new concrete structured platform. I knew the train traveled fast and even though looking to the distant rails revealed nothing, the train would quickly and silently appear. A signal sound overhead indicated that the train would arrive soon and due to its momentum would create a forward wake of wind, please stand back from the tracks, behind the line. The sleek white train with an orange stripe gently, and almost without sound, appeared on the platform. I snapped a photo right before it passed my position and then quickly boarded when the doors opened. I chose a row about midway up in the car and took the seat next to the window. I wanted the full experience of the ride. The seats were three across and since there weren't many on the train, myself and the gentleman in the aisle seat placed our bags in the middle seat and on the floor. Within three to four minutes a whistle sounded and the train began to move forward.

The feeling of riding on this train was definitely something I would recommend to anyone, at least once. The feeling of movement is almost indiscernible. We were floating on the rails and for someone that is prone to motion sickness, there was no hint of that at all. There was a tray table similar to commercial aircraft and on the back of each was a map of the train. Which car had vending machines, toilets and the attendant. There was an LED ticker type display, in Chinese and English, displaying various types of information. What the next station was and how many minutes to arrive, the current speed of the train, etc. At one point, which I guess was during the longest stretch between stops, the speed displayed 212 kph or 131 mph. I could tell by looking out of the window that we were really moving. I was also aware of how the Laws of Physics would come to play if this forward movement were suddenly acted upon by an external force. I didn't let it bother me.

We passed through some most beautiful countryside in Taiwan. Vast fields of rice and others. I was on the west side of the train and watched the sun begin to set before it was obscured by clouds. The only downside to the speed was one couldn't really focus on anything but just for a second before it was gone. As we approached Taoyuan, the train took a more slower pace. We were getting closer to Taipei and the gentleman and I had to move our bags to yield the middle seat to a young lady, who quickly went to sleep. I was no longer able to see out of the window as the train had traveled underground. Finally, we stopped at the Taipei Main Station. Total time from Tainan to Taipei, 1 hour and 45 minutes. Earlier in the week, the TRA railway took four hours going the other way. The train continued on to Danshui, but this was my stop. I gathered my bags and departed the train. That was fun.

I rode the escalator to the red line of the MRT and bought a token to Shuanglian Station and got on the MRT. Two stops later, I exited the MRT and walked up to the street. Once I emerged from the station, I found it was raining heavily and thought, "I can't go back to Ningxia Night Market now. It will be deserted and not worth taking photos." I felt disappointed and walked to the hotel. After I checked in, I put my bags upstairs in the room and went back down to get something to eat for dinner. Having my mind set on something like fried squid or choa dofu for dinner and now with the disappointment, made me lose my appetite. I went to the bakery near the corner and bought a couple of rolls and went back to my room.

I watched a couple of movies on HBO, let JiaJia know I made there, took a shower and went to bed. What a way to spend my last night in Taiwan.

Tomorrow, I return to the States, but not without an sudden encounter with "The Angry Bus Driver". Stay tuned.

Japanese Wrestling and Pig's Feet

2011-08-09T08:45:00.027-05:00

When I woke up on Thursday, I felt more rested. It was still a little dark out and I went to the window to watch the sunrise over the mountains to the east. Soon BoFu came into the living room and joined me on the wooden settle. I went to get my camera and show him all of the photos I had taken since I had been there. He is very nearsighted and so he had to look very close to see the pictures. I had wished I had a larger device to put them on for him to see them better. After we completed the slide show, he turned on the TV and immediately turned the channel to an English speaking station. I thanked him and we watched an old black and white, American movie with Chinese subtitles.

After the usual breakfast on the corner, BoMu was awake and sitting watching TV. BoFu was making her breakfast of oatmeal. I was surprised at the program that BoMu was watching attentively, a Japanese version of America's WWF! JiaJia said that she loves it. I saw all of the moves they do on the American version and I believe there were some American actors competing as well. BoMu would laugh and cheer. I watched her with amusement and thought of my own mother's love for the older KungFu movies from the 60's. I never understood what fascination older women have with this.

JiaJia and I walked over to the market to get a few items for lunch. The market was only a 2 minute walk and is an open air market, very similar to a night market or a typical fruit stand in the States. Almost anything edible was available for purchase. Different vendors sell their goods on tables and ice filled cooling bins. Fresh fish, vegetables, chicken, pork, bread. Some already cooked and cut into portions, like roast duck and chicken. It is really cool to walk around and see all the different items. We bought some vegetables and went back.

I did little but watch as everything was prepared in either a pot or a wok. Stir fried vegetables with pork, fresh fried salmon, stir fried spinach with garlic, Taiwanese sausage, rice and chicken soup. This was to be my first home cooked meal in Taiwan. It was really delicious and because I'm not a big eater, I kept having to say, "我很飽了", "Wǒ hěn bǎole" or I am full. I was impressed with what limited kitchen utensils and appliances, could produce such a great meal. JiaJia had to work in the afternoon so I thought I would go exploring on my own. I grabbed my camera, told BoFu and BoMu, who were watching TV, that I was going out for a while. By pointing to myself and then to the door, I indicated my intentions. They both smiled and nodded their heads. I waved and went downstairs.

Since I didn't have a map or wanted to pay for the local mobile service, quite expensive, I would have to note my locations. I knew that the area was like a grid and I had seen it on Google maps before. I thought if I counted the blocks and then walked in a square, I'd end up in the general area. JiaJia told me that this was the "東區", "Dōng qū" or Dong District. That meant, all of the main roads would have the word "Dong" in the pinyin names. DongPing, DongFeng, DongAn, you get the idea. I knew if I saw something different, I had gone too far. I headed east to the main thoroughfare. The street didn't have "Dong" in it so I refrained from going farther east. I turned left and proceeded north. I passed a movie theater that looked like it was playing a translated version of "KungFu Panda" It seemed a bit out of place, but then who am I? It was really hot and humid so I looked for a place to get something cool to drink. I turned left again on a side street and walked westward. I saw a sign on a corner shop that said "Iced" in English and went inside.

I was greeted by the kids that worked in the cafe. I was in luck. This place sold frozen treats, however, none of their menus had any English. They told me they would get someone to speak English. Finally, a young girl came out and I found that she spoke just a little English. I knew that Mango is very similar to the Chinese "芒果", "Mangguo", so I told her I wanted that. Everyone quickly sprang into action to serve the, probably rare, meiguoren. While I waited, a Thai lady offered me a sample of a frozen drink that was made from watermelon. It was really nice and I wondered why she gave me almost half a glass. Within a few minutes my iced mango treat was ready. When I thought I was ordering a frozen mango drink, to go, I had indeed ordered the mango ice desert. A mountain of shaved ice, sliced mango, covered in a mango flavored syrup and topped with a scoop of mango ice cream was set in front of me with a spoon. Although this was not what I expected or really wanted, I decided that it would still be really good and I'll chalk it up to my own ignorance in Mandarin. As I began to slowly chip away at this orange colored mountain, I was repeatedly asked, "Hao chi ma?" or Is it good? and I would give my reply of, "Hao chi" or Delicious. After about 15 minutes, I had reduced it down to almost nothing and paid my bill, thanked them and waddled out. I was stuffed, but I was also comfortable now.

I passed a pedestrian bridge and noticed a Temple underneath one of the staircases. I found it odd that there was a Temple there, but had no way of finding out why. I continued west and entered a housing area. I assume it was more upscale as there were private entrances with custom style nameplates on the outer gates. I continued on and entered yet another neighborhood with large trees that shaded the street and entryways. I ended up near the grocery store that was on the edge of the district. I was familiar with this area as we entered the district on scooter many times in the past few days. I walked a couple of blocks south and found my street, turned left again and walked about 8 blocks east, back home. Since it was still about an hour for JiaJia to get home, I decided to visit her brother in-law's Chinese medicine "pharmacy", across the street.

The pharmacy looks similar to an older type apothecary. Various herbs and remedies stacked on the wall. A large wooden "中藥櫃", "Zhōngyào guì" or Chinese medicine cabinet sat behind the counter and was beautifully made with many drawers containing various items. He doesn't speak much English at all and so I spoke a little with his son, whom was learning English. I asked him a few questions and waited for his response. I noticed that he had no Asian accent when speaking English. It must have to do with his age. His words were clear and he enunciated well. I tried to see if he really understood me or if he was giving practiced conversational responses. Without looking around first, I asked him for the time. He pointed to the clock behind me and said it was "Five - forty". I looked myself and he was correct. I thanked him and left as his father needed his help.

When I returned home, I noticed that BoFu and BoMu were not home. I knew they sometimes went for a walk in the park. I sat and waited. A few minutes later they arrived and we all sat in the living room and watched TV. JiaJia came home from work soon after that.

There was a storm approaching and it got very windy. The cooler breeze flowed through the house and dissipated most of the heat. As it got nearer, the storm died out and the sun began to set. It was a good thing, because there was one last night market JiaJia was going to take me to and the storm would have ruined the experience.

As night fell, we jumped on her scooter and drove across town. Surrounded by dozens of scooters we rode through the streets. We asked fellow "bikers", stopped at the light, where the Garden Night Market was located. Soon, we arrived and I got off the bike so she could park it. We crossed the avenue and on a large concrete plaza was the night market. Banners and ropes bordered the venue and security personnel guided the masses into the main entrance.

The Garden Night Market is not open every day, like many of the other night markets we'd visited. This one is open on Thursdays and the weekends. It was pretty crowded and had a variety of vendors, especially food. We walked a little, viewing all of the various goodies and bought a large cup of sugar cane juice. We were going to eat our dinner here so the hard part was deciding just what to eat. This or that? We ended up getting something new to me. Pig's feet and rice, along with fried noodles and vegetables. I had never tried pig's feet before, but I'm open to trying anything once. I will say, that I enjoyed it a lot more than the fried noodles. Not a whole lot of meat, but what was there was tender and the sticky rice complimented the flavor. Once we were finished we looked at the remaining vendors as well as the numerous t-shirt vendors present. I saw some t-shirts that I knew would bring offense to anyone in the States and wondered if the locals even knew the meanings. Several times, Taiwanese Air Force jets on exercise, flew overhead at a fairly low altitude. They created a thundering noise as they passed. Soon it was time to leave as we had seen everything. JiaJia bought some sweet red bean soup for her father as well as some cookies and we left. Back home, her parents thanked us for the treats. It was late and I was tired. I noticed that I was beginning to acclimate as I didn't sweat as much before I slept.

Tomorrow is my last day in Tainan. We'll visit the Dutch fort and I take a ride on Taiwan's High Speed Railway.

Liouhe, Love River and the Light of East Asia

2011-08-08T12:02:00.033-05:00

Like usual, I was up before the dawn. I decided to go out to the Widow's Walk , to see the view. It was really peaceful and the view was beautiful. The cool breeze coming off the ocean felt really good. On the horizon, I could just make out the lights from a passing ship as it disappeared from view. I wondered if it was bound for Hong Kong. I didn't stay too long because soon I became the target of many a hungry mosquito.

We decided to get up early again, as there were still many places to see and the scooter had to be returned before noon. The hotel office wasn't open yet and we knew we'd be back before checkout, so we drove up the street and bought sandwiches at the 7-Eleven for breakfast. The clerk snapped at me for taking a photo of a coffee sign written in Chinese. I apologized and put my camera away. I'm not sure the reason, but most businesses do not permit photography in their stores. I had the same problem in Starbucks in Hong Kong.

We sat at the outside tables and ate. Discussing where we would go first. JiaJia had asked the clerk how long it would take to reach Cape Eluanbi. He told her an exaggerated amount of time. I didn't believe it and we finished our breakfast. We climbed on the scooter and off we went.

Being that it was very early on Wednesday, the tourist traffic was nil. We owned the road as we wound around the coast. It was what I would consider a priceless moment, that cannot be bought by any travel agent. No real set schedules, although we knew where we wanted to go. It's the journey, not the destination.

It was already beginning to get hot in the sun but the breeze helped. Still I could feel myself sweating, regardless. We stopped along the way and took a couple of photos of some fishermen on a reef, at low tide. I wondered how they had gotten there as the shoreline was very rocky and jagged. We reached Eluanbi in a third of the time the clerk had mentioned, about 15 minutes. At 8:15 AM, it seemed that we were the only ones there. I parked the scooter and we went into the park.

Cape Eluanbi is the southern most point of the Taiwan mountain range. It is popular for the scenery and also it's lighthouse. There are trails that wind through the jungle of vines and prehistoric coral, long dead from time and receding water millions of years ago. The sun was really getting hot and we opted to take a path through the jungle to the shore. It was shaded, with many intertwined vines and tree branches. At the beginning of the trail, there was a sign warning of poisonous snakes and insects. JiaJia didn't want to go, but I told her the path was clear and we'd proceed slowly and watch our step. It was almost like a dream. The path disappeared into the jungle. I would have hated to have been on the crew that cut their path through it years ago. Periodically, there would be a fork in the path with signage indicating which path led where. "Prehistoric Creatures" or "Shoreline Trails" ? We opted for the Shoreline Trails because even though it was shaded, it was very muggy and the Prehistoric Creatures path looked like it went upward. Occasionally, I'd spot a lizard or gecko scurrying away in the leaves. I did not see any snakes. As we neared the shore, you could hear the waves crashing and the jungle became less dense. Walking around a large reef, we were presented with a set of stairs going up. When we reacted the top, a sign pointed out the rock formation on the left. "親吻石", Qīnwěn shí or Kissing Rock, is a formation of two masses of land that have been eroded to now appear as if they are kissing. More photos. I could hear more people in the area now and the stairs continued upward.

At the top is a covered viewing area with wooden benches. The view showed all around the shoreline with all the reefs and rocks. A large family of tourists arrived up the stairs and broke any enjoyment of the peaceful moment. They were of all ages, young and old. Most of them definitely out of shape, even for the single flight of stairs to reach it. Some took photos, some sat and rested while others smoked and bickered. "Alright, let's go!", announced one other older men. "Go?!? Don't you want to see it?", a woman answered. "We saw it, now let's go!", replied the man. It was all in Chinese, of course. I saw a similarity that made me chuckle, the cultures may be different, but the same exact conversations take place all over the world. We left while they were still arguing.

We continued on the trail which opened up to a clearing and restroom facilities. Breaks were taken and the "family" caught up and some of them stopped too. We continued up a vast green expanse of neatly groomed grass, resembling the beautifully manicured fairways of Augusta. The path led up to the Eluanbi Lighthouse. The lighthouse had been built in 1888 because there are hidden reefs that stretch out beyond the shore. The water is fairly shallow in the region. The lighthouse is also called, "The Light of East Asia" because it is the most powerful of all the lighthouses in Taiwan. We started to walk back toward the entrance, as we still had several other stops before we went back. The grounds of the park were really beautiful with rolling lawns, papaya and banana groves. It resembled a grand resort in Hawaii or Tahiti, but without the hotels. Just as we were starting up the scooter to leave, two Chinese tourist buses entered the parking lot. I was happy that we missed them.

The bike ride cooled me off a bit. We entered the parking lot for "The Southern Most Point" and it was deserted. JiaJia asked the guard about the point and he pointed to a side road, just beyond the lot. I quickly got on the scooter and met her near the road. We rode about 300 meters to a sign that pointed the direction. We would have to walk the rest of the way. The path here was very wide and shaded by large trees. It was tiled in terracotta, giving it a more tropical feel. When we reached the point, there was a long deck that took you to the monument, a large, cone-shaped, concrete monolith. There was a group of girls there from Hong Kong, on their college graduation trip, taking photos of each other. They asked if we would take their photo. So I took their photo with two different cameras. We, in turn, asked the same from them. They agreed and then we left them to their school-girl shenanigans and walked back. We looked at the map and it appeared we could drive up the coast a bit and then there was a road that cut across the mountain and place us right near Kenting.

We started to drive up the east coastal highway, which is only a two-lane road, seeing an occasional car or truck. The eastern coast was quite different from the west, as the mountains rise out of the sea, creating breathtaking cliffs. Because the shoreline curved off to the east, you could see far ahead of the coast. At one point, we passed a film crew photographing a bride-to-be with the mountains and shore as the backdrop. She was dressed in a beautiful dress that made me think she was really uncomfortable in the midmorning sun. I knew the road we wanted was near there, so we continued on. Finally, I took the first main road that went west because most of them transverse the mountains and we'd be nearer Kenting. It would take too long to go back the way we'd come. We stopped at several villages and JiaJia asked the route to Kenting. Someone told us to take this last road we'd crossed when we stopped and that would take us there. We thanked them and she called the hotel to tell them we were on our way. She said the owner sounded annoyed but that we'd make it ok. I drove as fast as I thought safe, and eventually, I saw the familiar main highway to Kenting. Once we were back in town, we still had 30 minutes left on our rental. We decided to visit Kenting National Park. Which I swore I knew where the entrance was. After wasting about twenty minutes trying to find the entrance, we were told that it was almost across the street from the hotel. Typical man, think I know everything. The clock was ticking as we drove up the very winding mountain road to the park entrance, only 4 km away. Once we arrived, we were out of time, but I wanted to see it, if only briefly. We paid, went in and took a photo and left. $200 NT for admission for a photo. I didn't care. We quickly rode back down the road and brought the scooter back with about 2 minutes to spare. It would be about an hour before the shuttle/taxi would arrive to take us back to Kaohsiung so we went back to "Wonderful K.T." for lunch. JiaJia really liked the noodles and the way they had prepared them.

The shuttle/taxi was different this time and the driver was not as friendly. Also, we weren't going to have it all to ourselves. As we waited for the other passengers to arrive, at the first stop, I noticed a man sitting on the curb, chewing a betel nut. Betel nuts contain a stimulant/euphoric and chewing them produces a blood red juice, making the person appear as if they had recently been in an accident. As the man chewed, he looked like someone in a stupor with blood at the corners of his mouth. I motioned to JiaJia and she didn't want to look at him. After three stops, the minivan was full and we all headed for Kaohsiung train station. I tried to sleep but I began to dream that we were headed for a mountain turn and couldn't stop before we went off the cliff. It jerked my body awake and I stayed up after that.

When we arrived in Kaohsiung, it was about 3:00 PM. I had heard about the "Dream Mall" from reading and being one of the largest in Taiwan, I wanted to see it. There was a free shuttle from the station to the mall. Once we got there and the bus left, I remembered that I didn't have the squid balls from last night's dinner. I had left them on the bus. "Oh well", I thought, as we walked inside. The air conditioning was a tremendous welcome. I wanted to see if there was a Starbucks there so I could increase my collection of localized mugs. There was and I purchased a Kaohsiung Starbucks mug. We didn't stay long and had an ice cream cone from McDonald's. We caught the shuttle bus back to the station. There were several places in Kaohsiung that JiaJia wanted me to see. First was the shopping streets of the Sanduo Shopping District. We hopped on the MRT and arrived two stops later. We walked around and looked at the different vendors selling, mostly, clothes from America. We boarded the MRT back to the Main station to see the decorative dome in the center of the station. It was very beautiful and the images reminded me of some astral/biblical theme and left me wondering if the artist might be a bit disturbed upstairs. After taking some photos, we decided to go get something to eat. This meant my addition would be satisfied as we took the MRT to the famous, Liouhe Street Night Market.

Liouhe Street Night Market is voted the Best Night Market in Taiwan, and for good reason. It was very clean and well organized. The Liouhe Street was as wide as a major city street with vendors displaying wonderful foods and a wide variety culinary choices. The usual street foods were offered, like fried squid and stinky tofu, but there were many foods that the Taipei markets didn't offer. Kaohsiung is a coastal city and the selection of seafood eats was impressive. JiaJia pointed out a vendor that was famous for his papaya milk. The marquee above his stand was filled with signatures of famous Asian celebrities that visited him. There was a crowd waiting to be served. Once I had my drink, we noticed a group of local kids posing for a group photo. One of them asked me if I would take their photo. After that they asked me to join them for a photo. I was happy to oblige and JiaJia took the picture. I presented the common "Peace" symbol that everyone in Asia uses, but in Taiwan, the symbol represents the ears of a rabbit, being that 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit. I thanked them and we continued on our market adventure. I took photos of the various vendors as we walked. We came upon a vendor that JiaJia said was a local dish to Tainan, and did I want to try it. "棺材板", "Guāncai bǎn" or Coffin Bread is similar to a bread bowl filled with various vegetables and meat in a creamy sauce. It is cut on the top, like a "coffin lid" and tastes almost exactly like a Chicken Pot Pie. It was definitely "comfort food". "Hao chi ma?" "Hao chi" It was filling enough that we didn't eat anything else there, besides it was still hot and humid.

Our train for Tainan City didn't leave until about 9:00 PM, so we took the MRT to Yanchengpu Station. From there we walked a good distance to the "愛河", "Àihé" or Love River. President Chang-Kai Shek renamed the river to Love River for his wife. It is said to be comparable to the Thames River in London. It is a canal that links downtown Kaohsiung with the Kaohsiung harbor. At night, it is truly magical. Hotels on the opposite side of the river are lit up with beautiful lights of different colors that dance off the reflective water. There is a park like walkway that runs down part of the river for people to enjoy it's beauty. After snapping some photos, I needed a rest. My feet were killing me, "hen tong tong". I knew we had to walk all the way back to the MRT station before I could rest again. I mentioned that as much as my feet hurt, if someone offered me ten million NT dollars to walk down the street cross the bridge to get it, or if I could forfeit the money for instant relief for the pain, I'd choose the latter. JiaJia never laughed so hard. I guess my description of the hypothetical scenario really amused her. I was really serious. After a few more minutes, we made our way back to the MRT station and then the train station to catch the train to Tainan.

Back in Tainan, I was so happy to sleep on the bamboo mat as it meant that I didn't have to stand up or walk anymore. I rubbed my feet and fell asleep quickly.

Tomorrow is Thursday and a authentic Taiwan meal followed by my own solo adventure around Tainan.

貓鼻頭 - Tip of the Cat's Nose

2011-08-03T13:44:00.034-05:00

After I woke up in my usual, very early manner, I decided to quietly sit in the living room and practice my Chinese characters. After about an hour or so, BoFu came in and sat down next to me. I showed him the mobile application I was using and he joined right in. The Character would display on the screen and he would wait for a brief period, giving me time to say the character. If I waited too long, he would say it for me and then I would repeat his pronunciation. If I got the character right, he would laugh, smile and nod his head. It was nice, two guys, neither of whom spoke much of each other's language, communicating without really speaking to one another. Soon, it was time to leave for the train station for Kaohsiung. Since we were only going to be gone a couple of days, I removed my laptop and threw everything in my backpack.

After getting breakfast "to go", we jumped on the scooter and headed for the station. Once at the station, we purchased our tickets and made our way to the platform. We were lucky to get two seat together, that isn't always the case. We boarded the train found our seats. The train ride to Kaohsiung is only about 45 minutes and costs about $2 US per person. The ride was mostly through city scapes as Tainan and Kaohsiung are next to one another and almost blend together. We ate breakfast on the train, Dan Bing, of course and an iced coffee, without ice.

The train arrived in Kaohsiung and we exited. JiaJia had arranged for a car to take us to Kenting as the hotels have a special relationship with these drivers to attract more business. A bus would be cheaper, but it is a 3 hour ride and there's no guarantee of a seat. We walked outside of the station and looked for looked like our driver. JiaJia called the driver on the phone and she was right out front. The car was basically a taxi that was chartered for this purpose. Since we were the only ones going today, we had a private car to Kenting for about $30 US.

The taxi wasn't anything different than what you would find in the US. It was very clean and new. The driver was a nice lady from Kaohsiung and this taxi was literally hers. Taxi drivers in Taiwan own their own cabs and still work for a company that dispatches them out. I sat in the back and enjoyed the view of an ever increasing amount of palms and papaya trees as we neared Kenting. The driver and JiaJia chattered in Taiwanese for almost the whole trip. I could pick out words here and there and occasionally, she would tell me what the driver was telling her. Basically, stories of being a taxi driver.

We arrive in Kenting around 11:30. We are led between the buildings, past salon and to the very small hotel lobby. We are told that rooms aren't available until 3:00 PM and if we wait until noon we can go ahead and rent the scooter for the 24 hour rental. There are some girls from Hong Kong waiting in the lobby to take the same shuttle/taxi back to Kaohsiung. They have just graduated college and are taking their graduation trip. I leave my backpack with the hotel owner and we decide to wander around and eat lunch. Not knowing where anything is we walk back to the main road where the shuttle/taxi dropped us off.

Kenting is a popular tourist town, mostly for college kids. The town straddles the main highway with most of the shops and restaurants one each side of the street. As we begin to explore the main drag of Kenting, I notice a couple of places from the hotel is a Levi's Outlet. They are closed now, but will open when more people are on the strip. Being that we're on the coast, the sun feels a lot brighter and I decide I need some cheap sunglasses. The owner is just now opening his store and I quickly find a pair for about $6 US. We walked up the road a ways and thought maybe there was something perhaps down a side street, closer to the shore. We ended up on the beach and went and sat under a tree and watched the tourists playing in the water. There was a strong southerly breeze coming off the South China Sea and it felt good in the shade. Finally I was getting really hungry so we went back up to the main road. We found a place to have lunch, "Wonderful K.T." I have no idea what it means, but you pick out your ingredients and noodles and they will cook it all up for you. We chose Ramen-syle noodles and added onions, pork balls, tofu, and cabbage. We sat in the air conditioned dining room and talked as the meal was prepared. They had a hot sauce that was labeled "液體死","Yeti Si" or Liquid Death. I had to try it, being a lover of Srirracha and Sambal, back in the States. I will agree that it is hot, but it's not Liquid Death. A couple of women came in with the cutest little girl. She was about 2 years old and stole my heart with her smile. I took a couple of photos of her as we were leaving.

We walked back over the the hotel lobby and signed for the scooter. The owner showed me how to work the seat compartment and lock for the bike. I backed it out of the garage and slowly maneuvered my way through the narrow space between the buildings to the street. The owner had given us a map and where to go to see the sights along the coast. JiaJia climbed on behind me. Once she was ready, I gave it some gas and off we went down the road. The first we needed to do was get some gasoline. There is one gas station in town. It cost about $3 US to fill the little tank of the 100cc bike. Then we were off again. Headed for "貓鼻頭", "Maobi Tou" or The tip of the cat's nose. We wound around the coast line and even stopped at a tourist beach along the way to walk down to the water. The wind was a bit strong creating a choppy surf. People were playing in the water, but the beach wasn't crowded. Peak season didn't start for another week, when school let out, so traffic was light and the beaches weren't crowded. Local vendors tried to get us to buy a ride on a banana raft. We jumped back on the bike and got back on the road. The roads are in very good shape, making the ride a lot more enjoyable. Every now and then, JiaJia would get my attention and tell me where to turn. We headed down one road that was lined with dense papaya trees on each side of the road. The road also dipped down creating a cool spot and the breeze felt wonderful in the hot sun. Most of the time on the back roads, there was only the occasional car or scooter. It took about 20 minutes to get to park. We parked the bike and went inside the pavilion that accompanied the park.

Maobi Tou is named for the massive boulder that is shaped like a cat's head. The "head" points south, hence its "nose" is the southern most point. The climb to the observation point was a bit steep, as are most climbs in Taiwan. Buses filled with Chinese tourists from mainland China were everywhere. Taking pictures and such. I did notice that the buses never stayed that long. Perhaps long enough to look, take a small break, then they piled into the buses to see the next attraction on their tour. I preferred to use our method. It was hot and I bought ice cream from one of the vendors. It's really ice milk, but it was cold and refreshing. Because the wind was blowing a bit hard, it made eating the ice cream cone a daunting feat, as you were trying to eat it before it melted all over your hand.

We wanted to see the sunset from "關山", "Guanshan" Guan Mountain, which was around 7:00 PM, but it was only about 1:30 in the afternoon. We were a bit tired and so we went back to the hotel to see if they were done cleaning our rooms. They were and I took the bag upstairs. The top floor had the coolest view and the hottest rooms. One AC unit per room and they were turned off. There was even an adjoining private "Widow's walk". After a too long nap, it was getting late. We raced to get to Guanshan before dusk. I rode that scooter full throttle and only managed about 40mph. We arrived about 10 minutes after the sun had set. People were walking down from the mountain top to their cars when we arrived. I parked the bike and we went up an extremely steep walkway to a Temple located at the summit. The view was spectacular and you could see the South China Sea to the west and the Philippine Sea (Pacific Ocean) to the east. I took some photos and then we decided to go eat dinner. JiaJia knew about a place not too far, in a cove, that had a great selection of fresh seafood. When we got on the bike, it was beginning to get dark and it hit me that I only had sunglasses and no other eye protection from the swarms of insects that usually come out right after dusk. As we rode through the papaya groves, my fears came true as I drove straight through a swarm of what I think were mayflies. Luckily, none of them hit me in the eye, but I did suffer a couple of welts to the arms and legs.

We snaked around through the little village hoping we would find the restaurant. It was more challenging in the dark. A parade of vehicles seemed to be headed in a certain direction and being that this was a popular place, we followed. It was a lucky choice and we found the floating restaurant that JiaJia had read about. I park the bike and we walked across the gangplank to the restaurant.

The "restaurant" was really a group of about eight smaller restaurants more similar to night market eateries but of a higher quality. The place we wanted to go was closed on Tuesdays so we chose a different one. Not knowing what we were in for, we casually ordered a few dishes, including sashimi, oyster soup, squid balls and a couple of vegetables. I noticed several of the tables of large groups, enjoying their dinner with large elaborate dishes, laughing and talking as they ate. When our dishes began to arrive, the look on our faces must have been that of classic astonishment. The servers brought six dishes to our table that were clearly meant for a large family. We looked at eat other and wondered just how we could eat all of this food. The prices had been very cheap, so I thought we would order several to make a good meal. The dining room was almost silent as the other tables now looked at us and our banquet of food. Murmurings could be heard and they probably wondered the same thing we were. The sashimi alone was enough for a meal for two. JiaJia was raised never to waste anything. There would have to be wasted food tonight because there was no way we could eat it all. In the end, we opted to taking the squid balls in a doggie bag and left. The entire meal cost less than $20 USD. A really good deal compared to all the food we were served. We still wanted to walk around the night market, so we left and drove back to the hotel.

The highway was alive with people. Street vendors had set up their carts and booths along the street as well as all of the stores and nightclubs. Some had big screen displays outside to show the people inside dancing, to entice more customers. We walked up one side of the street and JiaJia bought a cold tea drink. I was still very full from dinner and only wanted something cold. As we reached one end of the "market", I noticed one street vendor serving alcohol. He had a small sampling of a true bar, but the bottles were openly displayed. Kahlua, Bailey's, Crown Royal and Johnny Walker Black. I thought that would never be allowed in the States.

I bought tourist t-shirt and we decided we'd had enough and returned back to the hotel and to our rooms for the night. We agreed that an early start was needed to complete the trip before we went back to Kaohsiung. A cool shower to rinse off was what I wanted and afterward, sleep came quickly.

Follow me tomorrow, as I get lost and visit the number one night market in Taiwan.

Confucius and Dragon Boats

2011-08-02T12:37:00.023-05:00

I woke up very early and felt a bit disoriented. I felt sticky from sweat and my body hurt from the pressure points on the hard surface. I looked at my phone for the time and noticed it was only 4:00 AM. It was still dark out although enough ambient light from outside allowed me to see. There was a small window in one corner of the room and I felt my body object as I struggled to stand. I looked out of the window and watched as the dawn was appearing over the eastern mountains. I noticed on the rooftops around, shiny, steel cylinders with what looked like PVC tubing attached. “What were those?”, I wondered. I was told later that they were water reserves, in the event the main water pumps failed. Interesting. Since it was so early, I laid back down and put on my iPod. Funny that the first song I played was "The End", by The Doors. Seemed appropriate for my surroundings. If I'd heard a military helicopter, it wouldn't have been more fitting. After an hour or so, the sun began to rise. I decided to go look from the balcony. Looking down into the courtyard, I watched an older woman performing Taichi. I remembered from when I used to do it. I've seen other older people performing this in Hong Kong, early in the morning for exercise, near the sea.

After everyone was up and about, we went downstairs for breakfast. There is a small "joint", because it's old, run down, but serves good food, on the corner and we crossed the street. There were various patrons of different levels of occupation. The motorcycle mechanic, the senior school girl, the school teacher and the meiguoren, many others, all there with a common goal... breakfast. Some were eating on a tight schedule. Still others were finished and casually read the newspaper. I got my first taste of "蛋餅", "Dan Bing" or Egg Cake. It's basically a flour tortilla-like bread. A beaten egg with scallions is poured on top. After a few minutes, the whole thing is turned over, then folded and cut into manageable pieces. It's simple and very "好吃" tasty. I have never thought that the concept of "iced coffee" was any good. Remembering the times I would leave my cup on the counter, only to come back later and wince after filling my mouth with cold coffee. I had wanted coffee, but all they had was something like an iced latte. I tried it, it was only $15NT and I was surprised how good it really was! We sat and ate. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the food and atmosphere. I think it helped because I wasn't one of those rushing off to work. JiaJia ordered something for her father and we finished and went back upstairs.
Since it was going to be getting hot soon, we decided to go see some sights around Tainan. Tainan is one of the oldest cities in Taiwan, so there is a lot of old culture here to see.

We grabbed bottles of water, put on our helmets and off we went.
Riding through the streets of Tainan, I begin to notice how the scooter, literally, rules the road in Taiwan. Because they are small and very maneuverable, they can fit in just about anywhere. Trucks, cars, buses cannot prevent them from sneaking in between at the traffic light. It was fun to ride on the scooters. Even though it was getting hot and my meiguoren head was too big for the helmet, it made me want a scooter of my own. We stopped at the Tainan Confucius Temple.

The temple was originally built in 1665 and was designated more toward scholars than for religious enlightenment. The different "Halls" around the temple hold names that reflect this theme. The Ming-Lun Hall (Hall of Ethics), Ta-Cheng Hall (Hall of Great Achievement) were built and designated as Taiwan's First Academy. I'm not going to a lot of detail as there is more than enough information on the internet and besides, this is a narrative about my trip, not a lesson on the teachings of Confucius. The museum like atmosphere along with the impressive maintenance of the grounds, knowing it's rough 400+ year history, it worth the small admission price to pay to visit. It is an oasis of culture, right in the middle of the city.

We met a painter, who was painting a picture of the Hall of Edification. I asked him if I could take his photograph by motioning with my camera and saying, "先生,可以嗎?", "Sir, May I?" He responded with a clean sounding "Yes, of course!" After I took his photograph, he asked me where I was from. When I told him I was from Texas, he stated, in English, that he had been to San Antonio and Houston many times for his company. We laughed and then we took a picture together, acting like we were both painting the same painting. We thanked him and left.

It was getting hot as the sun was now almost overhead. It was time to have lunch with BoFu, BoMu and Ben, so we jumped back on the scooter and went back. The wind from the scooter ride felt good, as I was really sweating a lot. In North Texas, it gets hot in the summer, but we don't get near the humidity as this tropical land. I wondered if I'd brought enough t-shirts for the rest of the week.

After lunch, I felt sleepy from time difference and took a nap. I was awakened to be reminded that we needed to get new sandals for the trip to Kenting tomorrow. There's no more inconvenience than having to turn around on a scooter to retrieve a lost shoe. Plus, the Dragon Boat races were tonight and we didn't want to miss that.
After going to several places to find sandals, some of which were closed for the holiday, we found a nice, simple pair of "Jerusalem Cruisers", as some people in the States call them. They were about $10 US. I don't have big feet. I wear a size 11 in my footwear, but buying shoes in a country where the average sized foot on a man is a size 6, makes your choices dwindle rather quickly. I had to buy the largest pair they had. Many of my previous selections were too small, with my toes hanging off the front of the sandal, so I had to pass on that style. I'm pleased with the ones I had obtained. Once we got back home, it was time for Bahtsang and the Dragon Boat Festival.

The Dragon Boat Festival is a celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar. For 2011, it is June 6th. Also know as Double Fifth. It's a tradition that commemorates the death of the poet "屈原", "Qu Yuan" in 278 BCE. Basically, the story is during the Zhuo Dynasty, Qu, a descendent of the royal Chu, was charged with treason and exiled for opposing the king. During his exile, he wrote many poems about how he loved his land and the people. When the Qin overthrew the Chu, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River, on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.
The townspeople threw Bahtsang in river to feed the fish so they would not eat his corpse. Other locals quickly manned their boats and raced into the river to retrieve his body. It is believed that this is the origin of the Dragon Boat races. Now, people eat the Bahtsang as a symbol of that time, and teams are formed to compete in the Dragon Boat races.

Spectators line the banks of the Anping Tainan Canal and watch the races. Long, narrow boats with ten man teams row very vigorously to capture the flag. The winner is determined by the first boat to grab the flag, that is attached to a small buoy in the center of the canal. Everyone cheers for their favorite team. And afterward, to my special treat, vendors are setup along one side of the canal, creating a mini night market. JiaJia bought some candy called, Dragon Beard for her father and it reminded me of cotton candy without the coloring. I bought her nephew an ice cream and his 3 year old sister kept badgering him for licks from the cone. All of us boarded the scooters and rode back home. We had to get up very early for the train to take us to Kaohsiung and then another ride to Kenting.

Join us tomorrow as we explore the southernmost tip of Taiwan via motor scooter.

Tainan and Hot Pots

2011-07-30T17:15:00.034-05:00

I woke as I always do, before dawn. I got dressed and went downstairs. I needed some coffee and the espresso machine was just what I wanted. Grabbing my coffee, I walked outside to see the familiar sights again in the daylight. Like most cities around the world, Taiwanese like to sleep a little later on Sundays. For such a large city, the streets of Taipei are pretty deserted at this time, with an occasional scooter or delivery truck. A man sweeping the garbage off of the sidewalk in front of his shop. Another man running into 7-Eleven to get the daily paper. I watched them for a bit as the daylight got brighter.

We ate breakfast around 7:30 and decided to leave for the MRT station. Our train to Tainan didn't leave until 11:00, but we still needed to get to Taipei Main Station and also get something to eat for lunch on the train. We walked across MinSheng West road and walked through the morning market in search of something for lunch. Do we want fruit? Fruit would have been nice, but there's no real way to cut it up on the train. We decide on "粽子" or "Rice dumplings", it is pronounced Zongzi, but in Taiwanese, it's "Bahtsang". I had had them before and they are really tasty. Since Monday is the Dragon Boat Festival, bahtsang are everywhere. I'll tell you more about the festival later. We purchased the "bahtsang" from the same vendor as in January and walked back across the street to the MRT station.

I really enjoyed seeing the familiar sights of the MRT stations. I know it sounds boring, but to me, it's very special and I'll say it again, if you ever some to Taipei, use the MRT. It stops at most of the attraction areas and night markets, plus it is a real bargain.

Once we arrived at the main station, we had to walk to a separate area for the TRA (Taiwan Railway Authority) trains. They are a separate system from the MRT and are usually for longer treks across the country. We still had some time before our train arrived so I did some people watching in the station. Last time I was here, it was winter and everyone was bundled up for the 50 F weather, but now everyone is more casual as I sit and sweat on the subway platform. I check the leader board and see that the train is about 3 minutes from arrival. We gather our things and walk over to the boarding area, designated on our tickets. Once the train arrives, everyone boards and looks for their seats. I was happy that we had assigned seats as last time I had to stand for the train ride. It is going to take 4 hours to arrive in Tainan City and I did not want to stand for the entire journey.

I took the seat by the window so I could take photos. Soon the train pulled out of the station and our journey began. How exciting! A train ride across the island. I am an old school train freak from when I was very little, and still love to stop and watch the trains go by. Seated across from us was a mother and her baby daughter. She looked to be about 3 years old and sang most of the trip. Every time I would look at her, she would "get shy" and hide herself behind her mother, who was desperately trying to sleep. I had to candidly take photos of her from time to time. After every stop, the little girl would wave and say, "bye bye" to those on the platform, as our train left the station. It was really cute.

Every so often, the passenger car would be "reloaded" with different passengers as people would exit the train and more people would take their places. There was a group of girls that were on some trip for school or something. One of them was a large, American girl that was suffering from the humidity like I was. The train was comfortably air conditioned, but the platforms were not. Early on, I noticed that my seat back wouldn't lock, and unless I would sit straight up and not lean on it, it would gradually put me in the supine position with no room for my legs. It was a constant battle the entire ride and so I could not sleep.

Most of the trip I spent observing the landscape as the train progressed further south. Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Changhua, Chiayi, Xinying and finally, Tainan. There were many more stops along the way, but these were the bigger stops. The train wound through farmland and rice fields. I began to notice that where ever it was possible or went without regulatory enforcement, little vegetable gardens filled every little space along the tracks. Whether it was a one square meter plot or third of an acre, someone grew vegetables on it. It was really a sight to see the lack of unused space as we see in the U.S. There was a baseball field inside the river's levee. Although the river was down, the levee told me it was there for a good reason. The land is very lush and tropical. I noticed large Buddhist statues in the mountains to the east. Finally, around 3PM, the train stopped in Tainan City.

We grab our bags and exit the train. It is hot and very humid. The sky is clear and there is almost no breeze. Sweat begins to bead up on my forehead and run down my temples. My shirt begins to soak as I make my way through the station to the exit. I have to wait out front with the bags while JiaJia gets her scooter from the parking spot she put it. I snap a couple of pictures of the station. She pulls up on the bike and tells me she will take the bags home and then come back to get me. The scooter is only a 50cc bike and could not transport me, her and the luggage. I agree and just relax in the shade. "Boy, is it hot." I think to myself as I look at the residents of Tainan pass by and stare. I smile and nod my head. Many of them smile back. After a few moments, JiaJia returns and I climb on the back of the scooter and off we go. Because the scooter is so small, it does not have passenger pegs, so I literally hold my feet up off the ground, hoping to not lose a flipflop along the way. It has been years since I was on the back of any type of two wheeled vehicle and I know it was difficult for her to steer with me shifting the weight every 10 feet.

JiaJia and Ben’s family home is about 10 minutes drive from the station, mostly due to traffic. We arrive and I dismounted the bike while she parked it. I look around and take in my surroundings. It is a typical apartment style high rise with only a hand full of floors. Not the impressive skyscrapers you see in photos of Hong Kong. The facade is of a very light mauve colored tile. There are balconies and many windows. The entrance reveals a quaint courtyard with trees and several planters. The "wheelchair accessible" ramp going up to the half-floor level elevator area is so steep, I would never want to attempt it without several safety persons, should I slip and start to roll backwards. We walk up the steps and enter the elevator. Floor six is the winner and we proceed upward. There are two apartments/condominiums on each floor. That makes for a nice sized home. The entrance is through a couple of security doors, that lead to the balcony. Once on the balcony, shoes are removed and you step inside. Everyone was awaiting my arrival. I was soaked with sweat looking like I had run from the train station. I met "伯父" BoFu or "Uncle" and "伯母" BoMu or "Aunt". I knew it was more of a respectful term for an elder. "BoFu, BoMu, nimen hao." (Uncle, Aunt, Hello) I said when I first walked inside. I was introduced to big brother, "Ni Hao" and his wife and kids. And of course, my old friend, Ben. I spoke English with him. I was asked to sit and I was given a glass of water. I spoke English and it was, of course, translated to Chinese or Taiwanese as that is language spoken. "How was the trip from America?", "How many hours does it take?", etc. We all sat and visited for a little while and then it was decided that we would all go to dinner, along with Mei Mei (Little sister) and her husband and two kids.

Their home was very nice and spotless. I won't describe the features in respect to the family, but I will say, I was very impressed.

Everyone piled into cars and onto scooters and all ten of us headed for the restaurant.

The restaurant "Takara" is a great place to take the family. The main theme was "Hot Pots" and you tell the waiter, which sauce you want for your base. Then you go around to select which vegetables, meats, etc., you want in your "pot". The "pot" is a steel cauldron that is set into the table and your own "gas hot plate" underneath, that you can control. You basically, cook your own Hot Pot like you want it, yourself. They have many different ingredients to add. There is also a sushi buffet, a table full of various fried finger foods and a dessert bar. I was able to assemble my ingredients and even added a Thai flair, as I love spicy Asian food. I found that I should have waited to add the octopus and shrimp until the hotpot was almost ready. Instead, I added them at the beginning. The octopus turned into tire rubber and the shrimp, all but disintegrated.

Big brother's daughter and little sister's son came and stood next to me and practiced their English. They were very nice kids, a little shy at first, but began to feel more confident as the evening progressed. I ended my meal with an ice cream cone and the help of a friendly little Taiwanese girl who was determined to remain in charge of the scoop. I thanked her and proceeded to enjoy my Häagen-Dazs treat. We all watched the 3 and 4 year olds play and size each other up. Typical toddler mischief.

After dinner, big brother and his family drove back to Taichung. I was honored that they came to meet me. (Actually, they came to visit his parents, but I like to think I was that special). Ben and I sat in the living room and discussed classical music and the Chinese economy. He told me about the project he was working on. Soon, it was getting close to midnight and I decided to get ready for bed. My room was Japanese style with a raised wooden floor for a bed. Along with bamboo mat, a pillow and a fan.

Tomorrow we go to the Confucius Temple and celebrate Dragon Boat Festival.

My Adventures Continue - Southern Taiwan

2011-07-30T10:17:00.016-05:00

There are many people all around me. I see flashing lights of neon in various colors. Familiar aromas fill the air, mixing together and triggering butterflies in my stomach as my anticipation rises. Music plays and creates an ambiance that increases my adrenaline. A particular smell stimulates my brain and stands out from the others as I near. There! Ahead! I see it on the sign. I have found my quest for culinary delight! "臭豆腐" "Stinky Tofu", I, immediately, sit and take a piece of a pungent square into my mouth. It is done. I am home.

This is my second trip this year and although I had previous written that I was going to change my narration style for this trip, I have decided that people prefer a more adventurous, chronological narrative to a highlight based synopsis. So let's get started.

Day 1:

My flight was generally uninteresting aside from sitting next to a friendly Japanese physician on the flight to Tokyo. She was traveling back to Japan to help with the relief efforts there for a few weeks. I thought it was noble of her.
I arrived in Taoyuan International Airport about 8:00 PM, local time. I could feel the excitement overtake the lingering fatigue after flying for 28 odd hours. I was met by a smiling JiaJia as I exited Customs. She was cutely dressed and, of the many people waiting for their parties to exit, she was right out in front of the crowd. The airport was more crowded this time, I guess because last time it was around 11:00 PM when I arrived. We collected our things and went to ride the shuttle bus into Taipei.

We arrived in Taipei and everything was so familiar. I had really enjoyed staying at the Shin-Shih hotel, that I chose it again for this trip. This time I would only stay the first and last night. The rest of the trip would be spent in the south end of the island. The staff was the same as before and greeted us with a big smile and mentioned they remembered when we were here in February.

After checking in and dropping of our bags, it was time to eat. I had been having "night market withdrawals" for months and JiaJia hadn't eaten due to her all day, journey to meet me at the airport. She had found that the Ningxia Night Market was only a couple of blocks from the hotel. I wished we'd known about it last time, as this was a smaller night market and mainly provided various "少吃" or "little eats", instead of the variety of goods the larger markets offer. It was crowded as well as expected for a Saturday night. I forgot my camera in my bag, but I remembered, "I will be back on Friday night before I leave. I'll take pictures then", so we didn't go back and get it.
When we entered the market, all the wonderful memories of my last visit came back to me. I had eaten a meal on every segment on my flights so I wasn't really that hungry. I told her she could choose. I really wanted more "臭豆腐" or "stinky tofu" and something sweet to drink. We sat and I got my wish. We got a combination of noodles with pork and stinky tofu. We waited for a table and finally a few people got up and left. As we sat and enjoyed the food, I thought to myself, "I am home." I really have grown to love this culture and the ever-friendly Taiwanese people, that one cannot help but feel at home. After we finished our food we strolled through the remainder of the market and returned to the hotel as it was nearing midnight. I had to take a pill for sleep to get me on the right time from the 13 hour difference.

Tomorrow, we will take the train to Tainan City and meet family. I get to experience my first real taste of life in Taiwan.

New Site - Visions of Life

2011-07-22T17:46:00.003-05:00

I recently created a site to put my fictional writing in so as to not clutter up this one. Mostly short, heartwarming stories of stuff the pops into my head. Enjoy!
Visions of Life

Night Market Madness

2011-07-13T05:53:00.013-05:00

Entering the hall, I see the arrangement of metal folding chairs, dress-right-dress in neat rows and columns. There are many people of various walks of life, to my right and to my left. The ones I make eye contact with, I give an acknowledging nod and proceed to find an empty chair. I do not recognize anyone in the room. There is a podium on the stage and a man is shuffling papers as he occasionally glances at the attendees over half height glasses. I find an empty seat on the third row and side step my way through the isle, being careful not to step on someone's toes as I pass. "Excuse me. Excuse me. I need.. Yeah. Thank you. Excuse me. How are you? Excuse me. Thanks." I sit and fidget. I wish I'd never come, but I'm finally here. The speaker announces that the session will begin and wants to know if there are any new comers present. I raise my hand and look around to see if I'm the only one. A few more hands are raised and the speaker asks me to step forward to the podium. Again, I make my way to the isle and to the stage. The speaker tells me "It's ok, just tell your story." I step to the podium and clear my throat.

"Hello. My name is Michael and I'm addicted to Asian Night Markets."

"Hi, Michael", the room responds....

What is it about Asian Night Markets?

Since my first hit of the acrid odor mixture of "Stinky Tofu", dried fish, gutter water and human musk entered my brain, I wanted more. Day markets are just as wonderful, but they lack the ambiance of strolling through the sea of vendors and patrons, surrounded by lights of various color, that the night brings. I know that I'm not alone in my quest for Asian street food. Some come for a simple meal on their way home from work. Others visit for more practical purposes, such as finding a good bargain on clothing. Still others come to simply hang out with friends, like American teens in a mall.

There are several types of night markets. There is the permanent type, like Raohe St. Night Market in Taipei. Permanent night market locations will usually have colorful, lighted arch, indicating the entrance. They may even have directional signs to lead you to their location, like the three night markets located near Langshan Temple in western Taipei. Some are but a simple, open, paved section of town with plenty of places to park one's scooter nearby. Garden Night Market, in Tainan, is one of these types. Others are simple tarps, erected to shelter the vendor and aligned in a row on each side of the street. Each vendor proudly displaying his goods for purchase to the wandering masses.

My first encounter with an Asian night market was in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, also known as the "Ladies Market" probably because of the numerous fake purse vendors. Another was "Temple Market", with it's second-hand cell phones and electronic gadgets. I came looking for souvenirs and did I find them. I was hooked. I even sought out Bugis Market (pronounced, Boogies) in Singapore the following week for more. It was there, that I began to sample the local street food. I wasn't too adventurous as I am now and mostly stuck to various fresh fruits and fruit juices. Durian, mangoes and fresh ice-cold coconut milk were my favorites.

When I went to Taiwan, I wanted to "see" the night markets, but never knew how deep seated my lust for them truly was, until I stepped under the entry arch of Raohe Street Night Market, in Taipei. My senses were bombarded with flashing lights, various aromas, loud music and packed streets. When we walked into the "food court", a building filled with numerous food vendors with cramped, dining sections that were almost impossible to turn around in. I knew that this was where I wanted to be. I am not a "tourist", I do buy T-shirts, but I travel to enjoy the culture of the local life and "be in it". I find a deeper appreciation and understanding this way. I sat on a tiny stool and we shared a simple snack. I was hooked. The organized chaos created a plethora of culture, just waiting to be absorbed and processed. During the rest of my visit, daily night market visits became one of the highlights. Shilin Night Market for fried squid, goat soup, quail eggs and hot pots. Hwahsi Night Market, Danshui, Bali and SanXia. All having the local cuisine and some more local to that particular city.

My summer trip was no different. Not an hour of landing, I was back in a night market, strolling through the crowds of Ning Shia Night Market searching for Choa Dofu (Stinky Tofu). It is an average sized night market with plenty to eat. I forgot my camera and knew I would be back on Friday before I left for the States so I could take photos then. Little did I know that it would be raining Friday night and thwart any chances of that.

Kenting didn't have a traditional night market, per se, but vendors and shops lined the two laned highway. Pedestrians strolled up one side of the road and then back down the other. Only fruit tea was bought as the seafood dinner on the coast was enough food to feed four people so I was too stuffed to get anything.

Kaohsiung had several night markets, located very close to MRT stations. Sandou Shopping District is more of a day type market with apparel as the main reason to go. Liuhe Night Market is the most famous night market in Taiwan. It's variety of seafood is amazing, like giant, salt-crusted, grilled shrimp. Dim sum of every combination. One of my favorites was "Guancai ban" or Coffin bread, that, reminded me of a "chicken pot pie" in flavor and texture. The papaya milk here is world renowned. Celebrities around Asia travel here for it. Luihe Night Market is rated as the best night market in Taiwan and I can see why, although it's primary draw is the tourists.

Tainan presented a wonderful night market, Garden Night Market, that is only open several days a week. It's street food diversity was very impressive. Spicy chicken's feet, pig's knuckles and rice, as well as the usual stinky tofu and a variety of noodle dishes. I ate it all and loved it. It's a open air market with it's own plot of land, no buildings and not "street". It reminded me of a large parking lot, filled with vendors and patrons.

I can't wait to return and visit more of the hundreds of night markets littered across the countryside and sample more of the local cuisine.

So many night markets, so little time.

But My English is Poor

2011-07-07T18:16:00.007-05:00

As I gain more and more friends in China, I can see a growing trend that is common among my English learning friends.... Oral English practice.

Or lack thereof.

Some of them write beautifully, even to the point of shaming many American adults with their command of written English. Yet, when I've had the fine opportunity to speak with some of them, they speak English as if they have just begun to learn.

Fear of Ridicule

Most people complain that speaking English takes a certain amount of bravery to trip and
fall and still want to try. Avoidance never learned English. I, too, face this demon of
potential ridicule as I trip, stumble, fall and slash the Chinese language in my attempts of
speaking the multi-toned beast. Still, I try and I practice. Even though I might be asking
the bus driver "Excuse me" or requesting a "French Kiss", because I mis-toned the words
"Qing wen", causing him to blow coffee all over the inside of his windshield and looking at
me rather oddly. But, still I try.

For me, embarrassment is nothing new. I've never died from it, so I know I can laugh too
and try again. I have found that most people will actually help you, than to laugh at you.
You might get a little giggle, but the respect for trying to learn is ten-fold. I learned
this valuable insight while I lived in Germany, when I set out to learn German. First of
all, Germans, especially younger Germans, speak English, and very well. They choose not to
because English is not their language and they believe, if you are in Germany, you must
speak German. Makes sense, although a bit Prussian. If you are in a country, especially
for an extended period of time, you will enjoy your stay and be accepted by the citizens of
that country better, if you learn their language. At least the basics and a few words of
vocabulary. They will actually help you learn and be happy to do so. I have been all over
the world and have never met anyone, I mean anyone, that would not help me to learn what
something was called in their country. I have even made new friends this way.

Bad Habits in Pronunciation

My father grew up in New York, where like most regions in America has it's own way of
pronouncing certain words. I grew up in Texas, also with it's own way of speech. Each
region has words that are complete abominations of how the word is to be pronounced
correctly. I will use the word "thing" as an example. To this day, my father still
pronounces the word as "ting". This is common in New York, especially among the less
educated population. In Texas, you might hear the word, "thang". Again more common among
less educated and also rural folk. Both "ting" and "thang" mean "thing", but to someone who
is not local, it is commonly misunderstood. The point is the bad habit of mispronunciation
was never corrected and then it gets passed down to children and they grow up thinking their
way is correct.
I see this habit in Asians of pronouncing every letter, especially silent "e" as in "like".
You know the rule states the "e" on the end makes the preceding vowel long, but remains
"silent". Still I hear "like" pronounced, "like-eh". This is a very common bad habit.
Another is switching "L" for "R" and vice-versa. The famous Sylvester Stallone movie is
"Rambo", not "Lambo". I think direct transliteration into Chinese causes this habit to
manifest itself.

Using a Translator is Cheating

I know, I know, I've used them too. I may have spent the last year diligently learning how
to "speak" Chinese, but there are only about 15 characters I can recognize and pronounce
correctly. I have just begun the process of learning the characters. Through using online
translation utilities, I have found that no software can accurately translate Chinese as
well as someone who is fluent in the language. There are too many idioms and combinations
that change the meaning completely to give accurate results. I can spot a Chinese person
using a translator into English in a heartbeat. An example is when I see someone write a
sentence and end it with the word, "just". In the English language, I cannot think of any
time the word "just" appears at the end of a sentence, unless you use it like I just did in
the previous sentence. My point is that if you use a translator without actually learning
the correct way of speaking (or writing), you will form more bad habits and they are hard to
break. Especially, if you are not told they are bad. Using a translator for single words is perfectly fine.

Ask a friend

If you know someone who speaks the language you are learning, ask them for advise. This
will help with proper word selection for the application of that word. An example for
English would be, the word "intercourse". I see this one misused with many Indians. The
dictionary defines "intercourse" as "connection or dealings between persons or groups".
Basically people getting together and interacting, talking, etc. So, technically, you
could tell someone that you would like to intercourse with them and be correct... Almost.
In America, as well as the United Kingdom, the word "intercourse" refers to sex or
"Xingjiao" and it is the only time the word is used. So, in speaking with an English
speaking person from America or the UK, you would not want to use this word, if you simply
want to talk with someone. This is where an English speaking friend could help you from
great embarrassment and or unpleasant responses.

Don't Quit

You will probably get discouraged at times. I hated English in school. So many rules and
then exceptions to these rules. Perhaps that is why many American men go bald, from pulling
their hair out from frustrating English rules. I doubt it, but you can sympathize with
anyone's struggle. Hey, I have at least 2500 Chinese characters to learn, their sounds,
meanings and the rules for them too. I figure it will take me several years with hard work.

Until next time .... Zàijiàn (再見)

Fact or Fiction?

2011-07-01T13:59:00.007-05:00

In America, we learn certain superstitions as children and learn later that they are just that, superstitions, Old wives' tales, etc. Basically, untruths about a certain practice. Sometimes they have a basic common sense reason behind them, like walking under a ladder, although it does not truly bring bad luck, there is a safety concern that something might fall on your head, and therefore, bring bad luck.

Others are completely ridiculous, like breaking a mirror will bring misfortune for seven years. Besides the chance of cutting oneself on the glass or spending the money to replace the broken mirror, there's no basis that this is true. And why seven years? Does breaking a mirror get reported as a blemish on one's credit report? That lasts seven years. You go to buy a car and they tell you, "I'm sorry, Mr. Faris, but you have two broken mirrors on your credit report and therefore, we must deny your application at this time."

What if someone broke a mirror and it got inadvertently reported on your credit? How do you prove to Experian that you didn't break the mirror? I guess you would have seven years bad credit, which is like bad luck.

I hear a lot of "true beliefs" from the Asian cultures and wonder about their origins. One that intrigues me is that a pregnant woman cannot use scissors in her bedroom. Why not? I would suggest that anyone, not just pregnant women, never run with scissors. Remember your kindergarten teacher? What about the kids that ran with scissors? Did they get a mark on their credit report too? "I'm sorry, Mr. Faris, I can see from further analysis of your credit report that you were running with scissors, when you broken that mirror, and in this industry, it's worse than a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. That's 14 years, plus one, because any number with a '4' in it is bad luck in Chinese culture, so you will have to keep this mark for 15 years. We do accept cash."

The number 4 in Chinese culture is, 四 - si (fourth tone). It is unlucky because it sounds almost homophonous to the word for death, 死 - si (third tone) and they don't want the association. You won't find a 4th floor, or and floor with a 4 in it, in buildings.

I'm not mocking people's beliefs. I'm having fun with old superstitions. My own religion has some strange beliefs and practices, but they are actually laws sent from G-d. They won't cause you necessarily specific harm. For example, the law states that no work shall be performed on the Sabbath, the day of rest. One can partake in recreational and leisure activities, as long as it is not work related. You can paint a picture, but you cannot paint your house. Sounds ridiculous, but painting a picture is considered recreation, while painting your house is considered work. I don't paint, so, you know, I'm good there.

What other superstitions or beliefs are your favorites or most worrisome?

Born to be Mild?

2011-06-30T15:42:00.004-05:00

As I crest the hill, I see the vast groves of papaya trees line the road on each side. I descend into them. I feel the air temperature drop and I welcome the cool breeze. One realizes that you're alone and there is nothing else but you, nature and the road. I yell like a banshee, knowing no one will hear me and I increase my speed as I fly down the hill. I feel so alive! I never want this moment to end.

I have never been a rider, nor have I ever owned a motorcycle. I have friends that ride on a regular basis and own everything from Harley Davidson Hogs to BMW Sport bikes. I learned how to ride when I was a teenager, riding around the lake where I grew up. I hadn't ridden since. I had the great opportunity to ride a 100cc scooter while in Kenting and rode all over the coast at the southern tip. I know it's a little dinky toy, but it's all I needed to have one of the best experiences of my life. After visiting a certain attraction along the way, I watched the tour buses fill with their tourists, as I strapped my helmet on, turn the key and away we'd go, on down the road. No plan, no schedule. Just ride until we see something we want to check out.

The traffic was fairly light and the roads are well maintained, making riding very enjoyable. I had forgotten the freedom a bike allows. I've owned a convertible, so I know the openness riding "topless" brings. I thoroughly enjoyed it and being able to just stop on the side of the road to take a photograph, without worrying about finding a place to park the car. I will recommend that anyone traveling to tropical destinations to rent a scooter or similar during the your stay, as it enhances the experience ten-fold.

Jim Morrison is in my head

2011-06-29T18:35:00.009-05:00

I slowly open my eyes and observe the rotating fan blades above me. My body hurts from the pressure points of sleeping on a bamboo mat. The very early light is barely enough to make out my surroundings. A small room with a raised Japanese style wooden floor and four small walls. An average sized window is on one side and I can hear the morning birds, singing for the coming dawn. There is no air conditioning and the humidity is high. My mind quickly flashes to the opening scene of Apocalypse Now! and I am playing the part of Martin Sheen.
“Saigon….Shit.”, I think and then chuckle to myself as I wipe the beads of sweat from my forehead. Sorely, I stand and walk to the window. As I peer out, I can see the surrounding rooftops and sunlight trying to peek from over the mountains. A cat sleeps on the metal roof of an adjacent building. In the garden below, an elderly woman is gracefully practicing Tai Chi. It is at that moment, I realize to myself, “我現在的家.” (I am home)

I have decided that instead of giving a detailed, day by day, narrative of my trip, I will share certain very memorable moments in time that I hold more dear to my experiential enjoyment. There is no real reason for the deviation and if I am told the latter is more enjoyable to read, I’ll return to it in the future. Hao bu hao. (Is that ok?)

This trip is different from my trip to Taipei, earlier this year. I feel a relaxing
familiarity and my Chinese is much more broad than before. I was like a new born child, seeing the world for the first time. I am still in awe as I try to absorb the history and legend of this vast culture. I am told that well treatment of foreigners is expected, which I can attest, is true.

Mango Surprise

Everyone is so very nice and friendly. I remember a particular time when I was off
exploring around town. It was in the mid to late afternoon and very hot and humid. I was just walking and looking. The kind of walk one does to “see what lies around the next corner”. No specific destination, just “walking around”. I began to look for a place I could get something cool to drink, a frozen smoothie or similar. A place with the name “fruit ice” caught my eye. I crossed the street and went inside. I was greeted by all of the employees and when I told them I couldn’t read Chinese, they quickly went off to find the employee that spoke English. “One moment, ni deng zhe”, I was told and offered half a glass of what tasted like a watermelon smoothie. “You try, you try”, she said to me as she gestured for me to drink it. I did as I was told and consumed the pink mixture. It was very tasty and I thanked her. The “English speaker” soon arrived and we went over the menu together, with her pointing out the different fruits in Chinese. I chose, what I thought was a frozen mango drink.
My order was taken and I sat and waited as the whirl of ice machines and Chinese filled the room. After a few moments, I was brought a large mountain of mango, shaved ice and mango ice cream that was served in a large bowl. It looked delicious but definitely not what I intended on ordering. I chuckled to myself and looked up at the very proud creators of this Himalayan-sized dessert, waited for my approval. I simply smiled and said, “Ta shi hen piaoliung, xiexie.” It was very delicious, with fresh mango pieces and a sweet mango syrup covering a mountain of shaved ice, topped with a scoop of creamy, mango ice cream. For $3.00 US, it was a great deal. As I waddled out of the shop, I thanked them again as they also thanked me repeatedly for the stopping by.

Dragons, zongxi and a sea of scooters

This year, June 6th, represented, Lóngchuán Jié, Dragon Boat Festival. It is celebrated throughout many Asian countries and is derived from ancient Chinese folk traditions.

The traditional story that the festival commemorates is the death of poet, Qu Yuan, of the ancient state of Chu, in the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty. A descendant of the
Chu royal house, Qu served in high offices. However, when the king decided to ally with the
increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was banished for opposing the alliance. Qu Yuan was
accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry, for which he is
now remembered. Twenty-eight years later, Qin conquered the capital of Chu. In despair, Qu
Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth
lunar month.

It is said that the local people, who admired him, threw lumps of rice into the river to
feed the fish so that they would not eat Qu Yuan's body. This is said to be the origin of
zongzi (rice dumplings)
The local people also paddled out on boats to retrieve his body. This is said to be the
origin of dragon boat racing.

Zongzi or rice dumplings are really quite tasty and satisfying. Basically, they are
comprised of half an egg yoke (hard boiled), a mushroom, a small piece of pork, all
surrounded by sticky rice and wrapped in bamboo leaves, forming a nice little package. I
have enjoyed them on several occasions and find them very filling and a convenient snack.

Tainan is one of the many cities that celebrates this festival and the Anping Canal packed
with many spectators to see the races. Bright colorful lights adorned the bridges and
street vendors lined the main road, turning the races into a mini night market. I sampled
Dragon Beard candy, that is actually spun sugar like cotton candy, but more compact and non
-flavored.
The races consist of two "Dragon boats" which are traditional long boats with a
crew of about 10 to row the boat to the finish, where the drummer reaches to take the finish
flag and win the race for his team.

It was after this final race that I experienced the unbelievable number of scooters (50-
100cc motorbikes) that dominate the roads in many cities. The other vehicles must yield to
them as there are just too numerous. Many travel with two or more riders. It is not
uncommon to see a mother driving with older child holding on the back and a toddler,
standing in front of her. All with helmets, of course. A practice that would guarantee a
visit from CPS, if attempted in America.

Scooters rule the road and yield only to pedestrians. Even then, you'd better get out of
the way. It is fun to ride amongst them as a "member" of the signal light formed packs that
flow through the streets like schools of fish.

I will be adding more as I write them, stay tuned.

So You Want to Learn Zhongwen?

2011-05-04T14:53:00.014-05:00

I was recently sent this article by David Moser, of the University of Michigan, Center for Asian Studies. I am including it in English and Chinese for those who know one or the other. It is really funny to me.

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard

by David Moser
University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies

The first question any thoughtful person might ask when reading the title of this essay is, "Hard for whom?" A reasonable question. After all, Chinese people seem to learn it just fine. When little Chinese kids go through the "terrible twos", it's Chinese they use to drive their parents crazy, and in a few years the same kids are actually using those impossibly complicated Chinese characters to scribble love notes and shopping lists. So what do I mean by "hard"? Since I know at the outset that the whole tone of this document is going to involve a lot of whining and complaining, I may as well come right out and say exactly what I mean. I mean hard for me, a native English speaker trying to learn Chinese as an adult, going through the whole process with the textbooks, the tapes, the conversation partners, etc., the whole torturous rigmarole. I mean hard for me -- and, of course, for the many other Westerners who have spent years of their lives bashing their heads against the Great Wall of Chinese.

为什么中文这么TM难？
作者：David Moser

看到这篇文章的标题，任何有头脑的人第一个问题都会是“难，是对谁而言？”问的有理。说到底，中国人看起来学的还挺顺当的。当中国小孩儿经历那“狗都嫌的两岁”时，他们用的是中文来把父母们逼疯。几年之后，同样这些孩子就已经在用复杂得不可思议的汉字来歪歪斜斜地写情书和购物清单了。所以我说的 “难”到底是什么意思？既然我早就知道本文的语调将充满牢骚和抱怨，那我最好还是说清楚自己到底是什么意思。我的意思是，对我来说很难，一个以英语为母语，试图学习中文的成年人。他会经历教科书、磁带、语伴等等这一整套折磨人的繁琐过程。我的“难”是说的对我自己，呃——当然还对很多其他西方人，那些花费了经年累月，在中文的长城上撞到头大的人们（译者：原文“Chinese”同时表示“中文”和“中国的”）。

If this were as far as I went, my statement would be a pretty empty one. Of course Chinese is hard for me. After all, any foreign language is hard for a non-native, right? Well, sort of. Not all foreign languages are equally difficult for any learner. It depends on which language you're coming from. A French person can usually learn Italian faster than an American, and an average American could probably master German a lot faster than an average Japanese, and so on. So part of what I'm contending is that Chinese is hard compared to ... well, compared to almost any other language you might care to tackle. What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard for them, for Chinese people.

如果我要说的只有这些，那这些话相当空洞。中文对我来说当然难喽。毕竟，任何外语对非母语人士都很难，对不对？这个嘛，差不多是这样。不过不是所有的外语对任何学生的难度都是一样的。它取决于你自己的母语。一个法国人学意大利语往往比美国人快，而一个普通美国人掌握德语则多半比一个普通日本人快得多，如此而已。所以我所谈论的部分观点是指中文很难，相对于……反正相对于你有可能想学的几乎其他任何语言。我的意思是中文不但对我们（英语人士）来说难，它在绝对意义上也是难的。这意味着对于中国人来说，中文也很难。

If you don't believe this, just ask a Chinese person. Most Chinese people will cheerfully acknowledge that their language is hard, maybe the hardest on earth. (Many are even proud of this, in the same way some New Yorkers are actually proud of living in the most unlivable city in America.) Maybe all Chinese people deserve a medal just for being born Chinese. At any rate, they generally become aware at some point of the Everest-like status of their native language, as they, from their privileged vantage point on the summit, observe foolhardy foreigners huffing and puffing up the steep slopes.

如果你不信，随便问个中国人。绝大多数中国人都会高兴地承认他们的语言很难，可能是地球上最难的。（实际上很多人以此为傲，就好象实际上有些纽约人以居住在美国最不宜居的城市为傲一样。）可能所有中国人都该因为生为中国人而获得一枚奖牌才是。不管怎样，基本上他们早晚都会意识到他们母语那种珠穆朗玛峰一样的地位的，当他们站在那至高无上的山峰上，优越地俯视着那些有勇无谋的外国人们在陡峭的山崖上气喘吁吁的时候。

Everyone's heard the supposed fact that if you take the English idiom "It's Greek to me" and search for equivalent idioms in all the world's languages to arrive at a consensus as to which language is the hardest, the results of such a linguistic survey is that Chinese easily wins as the canonical incomprehensible language. (For example, the French have the expression "C'est du chinois", "It's Chinese", i.e., "It's incomprehensible". Other languages have similar sayings.) So then the question arises: What do the Chinese themselves consider to be an impossibly hard language? You then look for the corresponding phrase in Chinese, and you find Gēn tiānshū yíyàng 跟天书一样 meaning "It's like heavenly script."

大家都听过这个公认的说法，那就是如果你考虑英语中的“It's Greek to me”（译者注：原意是“这对我就像希腊文”，引申为“难以理解”。），然后在全世界的语言中寻找一个与之相对应的习语，从而得到一个关于哪个语言最难的共识。那这样一个语言调查的结果将是中文轻松获得最难解语言的称号。（比如，法语就有这种表达“C'est du chinois”，意为“这是中文”，亦即“这是神马我不懂”。其他语言有类似说法。）那么问题来了，中国人自己认为什么才是最不可能学会的困难语言呢？你在中文中寻找类似的习语，然后你找到了——“跟天书一样”

There is truth in this linguistic yarn; Chinese does deserve its reputation for heartbreaking difficulty. Those who undertake to study the language for any other reason than the sheer joy of it will always be frustrated by the abysmal ratio of effort to effect. Those who are actually attracted to the language precisely because of its daunting complexity and difficulty will never be disappointed. Whatever the reason they started, every single person who has undertaken to study Chinese sooner or later asks themselves "Why in the world am I doing this?" Those who can still remember their original goals will wisely abandon the attempt then and there, since nothing could be worth all that tedious struggle. Those who merely say "I've come this far -- I can't stop now" will have some chance of succeeding, since they have the kind of mindless doggedness and lack of sensible overall perspective that it takes.

Okay, having explained a bit of what I mean by the word, I return to my original question: Why is Chinese so damn hard?

这些可不完全是在说笑话，中文那令人心痛的难度是名副其实的。所有那些试图学习这门语言的人们，除了纯粹以此为乐的，都会对学习中极低的投入产出比感到沮丧。那些实际上正是被这门语言吓人的复杂和难度吸引的家伙，则绝不会失望。不管原因为何，所有中文学习者早晚都会问自己这个问题“我到底为啥在干这个？” 还能记着自己初衷的人会明智的选择立刻放弃，因为没有什么值得付出如此多的痛苦挣扎。而对自己回答说“事已至此，无路可退”的人呢，则有机会成功，因为他们拥有学习中文必需的素质——不见黄河不死心的死钻牛角尖精神。

Ok，解释了一下我的措辞含义之后，让我回到最初的问题：为什么中文这么TM难？

1. Because the writing system is ridiculous.

Beautiful, complex, mysterious -- but ridiculous. I, like many students of Chinese, was first attracted to Chinese because of the writing system, which is surely one of the most fascinating scripts in the world. The more you learn about Chinese characters the more intriguing and addicting they become. The study of Chinese characters can become a lifelong obsession, and you soon find yourself engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast sea of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.

1. 因为书写系统很不合理

优美，复杂，神秘……但是莫名其妙。像很多中文学习者一样，我一开始就是被这些汉字所吸引的，它们肯定是世界上最迷人的字符之一。你学中文越多就就越发现汉字的让人上瘾的魅力。中文汉字的学习可以令人痴迷一生，很快你就每天一滴滴地从汉字的海洋中积累成癖，徒劳地试图建立一点储备，靠着那漏水桶一般的长期记忆能力。

The beauty of the characters is indisputable, but as the Chinese people began to realize the importance of universal literacy, it became clear that these ideograms were sort of like bound feet -- some fetishists may have liked the way they looked, but they weren't too practical for daily use.
For one thing, it is simply unreasonably hard to learn enough characters to become functionally literate. Again, someone may ask "Hard in comparison to what?" And the answer is easy: Hard in comparison to Spanish, Greek, Russian, Hindi, or any other sane, "normal" language that requires at most a few dozen symbols to write anything in the language. John DeFrancis, in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, reports that his Chinese colleagues estimate it takes seven to eight years for a Mandarin speaker to learn to read and write three thousand characters, whereas his French and Spanish colleagues estimate that students in their respective countries achieve comparable levels in half that time. Naturally, this estimate is rather crude and impressionistic (it's unclear what "comparable levels" means here), but the overall implications are obvious: the Chinese writing system is harder to learn, in absolute terms, than an alphabetic writing system. Even Chinese kids, whose minds are at their peak absorptive power, have more trouble with Chinese characters than their little counterparts in other countries have with their respective scripts. Just imagine the difficulties experienced by relatively sluggish post-pubescent foreign learners such as myself.

Everyone has heard that Chinese is hard because of the huge number of characters one has to learn, and this is absolutely true. There are a lot of popular books and articles that downplay this difficulty, saying things like "Despite the fact that Chinese has [10,000, 25,000, 50,000, take your pick] separate characters you really only need 2,000 or so to read a newspaper". Poppycock. I couldn't comfortably read a newspaper when I had 2,000 characters under my belt. I often had to look up several characters per line, and even after that I had trouble pulling the meaning out of the article. (I take it as a given that what is meant by "read" in this context is "read and basically comprehend the text without having to look up dozens of characters"; otherwise the claim is rather empty.)

汉字的优美是不容置疑的，不过当中国人意识到普及识字的重要性时，有一点就很明显了，这些表意文字有些像裹足小脚——可能有些恋物癖喜欢这些小脚，可是它们在日常中并不实用。首先，要学会基本识字要求的汉字就已经是不可理喻的难了。“相对什么而难？”有人可能会再次发问。答案很简单：相对西班牙语，希腊语，俄语，印地语，或者任何只需要最多几十个符号就能完成书写的“正常而理智”的语言。 John DeFrancis在他的书The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy中提到，他的中国同事估计让一个说普通话的人学会读写三千个汉字需要七到八年，而他的法国和西班牙同事估计他们的母语要达到类似水平则是只需一半时间。自然的，这些估计很粗糙，凭印象而已（比如什么算“类似水平”就没说清楚），不过其中寓意是显然的：中文书写系统在绝对程度上比字母书写系统更难学习。在中国，就算是吸收能力处于顶峰的小孩子，他们学起汉字来也比其他国家小孩学习其他文字更费劲。所以想象一下已过青春期的，学习相对缓慢的外国人学习者（比如我）经历的困难吧！

大家都听说过中文很难是因为需要掌握巨量的汉字，这一点千真万确。好多畅销书和文章中淡化了这一困难，说什么“尽管中文拥有（10000，25000，或者50000。来，您选个数字）个不同的汉字，你其实只需要学习大约2000个就能读报了”。这是瞎掰。我学习了2000个汉字的时候并不能顺利地读报。我常常每看一行就得查几个字，之后还得冥思苦想文章的意思。（我假定读报中“读”的意思是“阅读并且能基本理解文章意思，而不需要查几十个字先”，不然的话这个说法就没什么好讨论的了。）

This fairy tale is promulgated because of the fact that, when you look at the character frequencies, over 95% of the characters in any newspaper are easily among the first 2,000 most common ones. But what such accounts don't tell you is that there will still be plenty of unfamiliar words made up of those familiar characters. (To illustrate this problem, note that in English, knowing the words "up" and "tight" doesn't mean you know the word "uptight".) Plus, as anyone who has studied any language knows, you can often be familiar with every single word in a text and still not be able to grasp the meaning. Reading comprehension is not simply a matter of knowing a lot of words; one has to get a feeling for how those words combine with other words in a multitude of different contexts. In addition, there is the obvious fact that even though you may know 95% of the characters in a given text, the remaining 5% are often the very characters that are crucial for understanding the main point of the text. A non-native speaker of English reading an article with the headline "JACUZZIS FOUND EFFECTIVE IN TREATING PHLEBITIS" is not going to get very far if they don't know the words "jacuzzi" or "phlebitis".

The problem of reading is often a touchy one for those in the China field. How many of us would dare stand up in front of a group of colleagues and read a randomly-selected passage out loud? Yet inferiority complexes or fear of losing face causes many teachers and students to become unwitting cooperators in a kind of conspiracy of silence wherein everyone pretends that after four years of Chinese the diligent student should be whizzing through anything from Confucius to Lu Xun, pausing only occasionally to look up some pesky low-frequency character (in their Chinese-Chinese dictionary, of course). Others, of course, are more honest about the difficulties. The other day one of my fellow graduate students, someone who has been studying Chinese for ten years or more, said to me "My research is really hampered by the fact that I still just can't read Chinese. It takes me hours to get through two or three pages, and I can't skim to save my life." This would be an astonishing admission for a tenth-year student of, say, French literature, yet it is a comment I hear all the time among my peers (at least in those unguarded moments when one has had a few too many Tsingtao beers and has begun to lament how slowly work on the thesis is coming).

A teacher of mine once told me of a game he and a colleague would sometimes play: The contest involved pulling a book at random from the shelves of the Chinese section of the Asia Library and then seeing who could be the first to figure out what the book was about. Anyone who has spent time working in an East Asia collection can verify that this can indeed be a difficult enough task -- never mind reading the book in question. This state of affairs is very disheartening for the student who is impatient to begin feasting on the vast riches of Chinese literature, but must subsist on a bland diet of canned handouts, textbook examples, and carefully edited appetizers for the first few years.

这个神话广泛流传，主要因为当考虑出现频率时，任何报纸中超过95%的汉字都是在最常用的2000个汉字之中。但这样的数字并没告诉你其实还有非常多的由这些熟悉的汉字组成的陌生词汇。（比如说，在英文中知道“up”和“tight”并不意味着你也知道“uptight”的意思。）（译者注：猜猜看 uptight什么意思？）而且，所有学过任何语言的人都知道，你常常明白每个词儿的意思，但就是不懂整段文字的含义。阅读理解可不是整明白一大堆词儿的意思就行了，你还得搞清楚这些词儿和其他词汇在很多不同语境中如何结合使用。此外，很明显，即使你认识一段话里95%的汉字，剩下的5%也常常恰好是理解文章最需要的部分。一个非英语母语的人读到“JACUZZIS FOUND EFFECTIVE IN TREATING PHLEBITIS”这条新闻标题时如果不知道什么是“Jacuzzi”或“phlebitis”，那他也基本上搞不清这句话什么意思。（译者：jacuzzi是一种按摩式浴缸；phlebitis则是静脉炎。）

阅读的困难在学习中国的圈子里是个恼人的问题。我们汉学家们中有多少人敢在大家面前站出来，大声阅读一段随机挑选的文字呢？然而自卑情结或是怕丢脸的心理让很多教师和学生不自觉的变成了某种无言的共犯：每个人都假装好像学习四年中文之后，勤奋的学生就应该能飕飕地阅读从孔子到鲁迅的任何作品，只是偶尔停下来查一些烦人的低频率汉字（当然，用的还得是中中字典）。其他一些人呢，当然对困难的存在就更诚实些。有一天一个学了中文十年以上的同学跟我说， “我的研究被一个问题阻碍着，那就是我还是不能阅读中文。读两三页书要花掉我好几个小时，而我甚至不能略读来节省些时间。”要是一个学了十年，比如说，法国文学的学生这么承认，那可真是令人惊讶。然而我在同侪中常听到此类评论（至少在那些放松的时候是这样，比如喝了太多青岛啤酒，开始哀叹论文的工作进度多么缓慢……）

我一个老师曾经跟我说了个他和一个同事会玩的游戏：他们在亚洲图书馆的中国区里随机从书架上抽一本书，看谁先搞懂这本书在讲什么。所有在东亚文学作品集上花过工夫的人都可以证明，这个游戏的确相当难，更不必提真正阅读整本书。这样的状况真是令那些迫不及待要在中国文学的宝库中大快朵颐的学生们伤心沮丧，头几年他们只能靠乏味的罐装教材，讲义和小心剪辑过的开胃小文章度日……

The comparison with learning the usual western languages is striking. After about a year of studying French, I was able to read a lot. I went through the usual kinds of novels -- La nausée by Sartre, Voltaire's Candide, L'étranger by Camus -- plus countless newspapers, magazines, comic books, etc. It was a lot of work but fairly painless; all I really needed was a good dictionary and a battered French grammar book I got at a garage sale.

This kind of "sink or swim" approach just doesn't work in Chinese. At the end of three years of learning Chinese, I hadn't yet read a single complete novel. I found it just too hard, impossibly slow, and unrewarding. Newspapers, too, were still too daunting. I couldn't read an article without looking up about every tenth character, and it was not uncommon for me to scan the front page of the People's Daily and not be able to completely decipher a single headline. Someone at that time suggested I read The Dream of the Red Chamber and gave me a nice three-volume edition. I just have to laugh. It still sits on my shelf like a fat, smug Buddha, only the first twenty or so pages filled with scribbled definitions and question marks, the rest crisp and virgin. After six years of studying Chinese, I'm still not at a level where I can actually read it without an English translation to consult. (By "read it", I mean, of course, "read it for pleasure". I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and a dictionary in my hand, I could get through it.) Simply diving into the vast pool of Chinese in the beginning is not only foolhardy, it can even be counterproductive. As George Kennedy writes, "The difficulty of memorizing a Chinese ideograph as compared with the difficulty of learning a new word in a European language, is such that a rigid economy of mental effort is imperative." This is, if anything, an understatement. With the risk of drowning so great, the student is better advised to spend more time in the shallow end treading water before heading toward the deep end.

对比一般常见的西方语言，差别非常明显。只学了一年法语，我就能阅读很多东西了。我浏览了大致的小说名作，萨特的《La nausée》，伏尔泰的《Candide》，卡缪的《L'étranger》，还有数不清的报纸，杂志，漫画，等等。花了不少工夫，不过却不怎么痛苦：我用到的只是一本好字典和一本旧货市场上买来的破旧不堪的语法书。
这种“扔到水里学游泳”的方法就是不适用于中文。在学了中文三年的时候，我还没读过一本完整的小说。我发现那读起来实在太难，太慢，毫无收获可言。报纸那时候也还是令人畏惧。那时候我读篇文章恨不得每十个字就得查个字典。看一遍人民日报的头版，连一个标题也“解密”不了，这种事儿也一点儿不少见。当时有个人推荐我看《红楼梦》还送我一套漂亮的三卷版。我只能笑…… 它现在还躺在我的书架上呢，得意洋洋地对我露出胜利者的微笑。只有前二十几页涂满了潦草的笔记和问号，其他部分则是清爽洁净的处女地。学了中文六年之后，我仍然没有达到能不借助英文翻译阅读它的水平。（阅读它，我当然是指的阅读取乐。我估计如果谁拿把枪指着我脑袋然后手里扔本字典，我也能想法儿读下来它吧吧。）在一开始的阶段就冲进中文的浩瀚海洋，这种做法不但有勇无谋，而且适得其反。如同George Kennedy写的，“记忆一个中文（象形）字比学习一个欧洲语言词汇难上如此之多，以至于严格地节约精神力是必须的。”这其实还是低估了难度。（在中文的海洋中）被淹没的风险非常大，所以学生最好还是先在浅谈涉水中多花点时间，再考虑前往深处。

As if all this weren't bad enough, another ridiculous aspect of the Chinese writing system is that there are two (mercifully overlapping) sets of characters: the traditional characters still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the simplified characters adopted by the People's Republic of China in the late 1950's and early 60's. Any foreign student of Chinese is more or less forced to become familiar with both sets, since they are routinely exposed to textbooks and materials from both Chinas. This linguistic camel's-back-breaking straw puts an absurd burden on the already absurdly burdened student of Chinese, who at this point would gladly trade places with Sisyphus. But since Chinese people themselves are never equally proficient in both simplified and complex characters, there is absolutely no shame whatsoever in eventually concentrating on one set to the partial exclusion the other. In fact, there is absolutely no shame in giving up Chinese altogether, when you come right down to it.

好像这些还不够糟似的，中文书写另一个发指的特点是居然有两套系统（幸好，有部分重叠）：台湾和香港仍在使用的繁体字，和大陆在五六十年代开始使用的简体字。所有学中文的外国学生多少都被迫要学习两种体系，因为他们常常遇到分别来自两个中文系统的教学材料。这无疑给已经不堪重负的学生们压上最后一根稻草，于是他们这时都很乐意跟西西弗斯交换角色。（译者注：西西弗斯，希腊神话中被迫不断推石头上山的那位。）不过既然中国人自己从来不会同时精通简繁体，外国人最终只注重学习其中一种也完全没什么可丢脸的。事实上，当你认真权衡之后，完全放弃中文也没什么可丢脸的……

2. Because the language doesn't have the common sense to use an alphabet.

To further explain why the Chinese writing system is so hard in this respect, it might be a good idea to spell out (no pun intended) why that of English is so easy. Imagine the kind of task faced by the average Chinese adult who decides to study English. What skills are needed to master the writing system? That's easy: 26 letters. (In upper and lower case, of course, plus script and a few variant forms. And throw in some quote marks, apostrophes, dashes, parentheses, etc. -- all things the Chinese use in their own writing system.) And how are these letters written? From left to right, horizontally, across the page, with spaces to indicate word boundaries. Forgetting for a moment the problem of spelling and actually making words out of these letters, how long does it take this Chinese learner of English to master the various components of the English writing system? Maybe a day or two.

Now consider the American undergraduate who decides to study Chinese. What does it take for this person to master the Chinese writing system? There is nothing that corresponds to an alphabet, though there are recurring components that make up the characters. How many such components are there? Don't ask. As with all such questions about Chinese, the answer is very messy and unsatisfying. It depends on how you define "component" (strokes? radicals?), plus a lot of other tedious details. Suffice it to say, the number is quite large, vastly more than the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. And how are these components combined to form characters? Well, you name it -- components to the left of other components, to the right of other components, on top of other components, surrounding other components, inside of other components -- almost anything is possible. And in the process of making these spatial accommodations, these components get flattened, stretched, squashed, shortened, and distorted in order to fit in the uniform square space that all characters are supposed to fit into. In other words, the components of Chinese characters are arrayed in two dimensions, rather than in the neat one-dimensional rows of alphabetic writing.

2. 因为中文没有按照常识使用字母

为了进一步解释为什么中文书写系统如此之难，也许应该先说清楚为什么英语那么简单。想象一个普通的成年中国人决定学习英文时面对的任务吧。要掌握这个书写系统需要什么技能呢？很简单，26个字母而已（当然是大小写，再加上一些书写方式和变体。还有引号，分号，破折号，括号等等，这些中国人自己也用的。）这些字母怎么书写？从左到右，水平书写。保留空格来分开各词。先不考虑拼写的问题，这个中国人学习这些英文书写系统的各个要素需要多久？也许只要一两天吧。

现在再看看另一个决定学习中文的美国大学生。要掌握中文书写系统需要什么呢？完全没有和字母对应的东西，虽然汉字里会重复出现一些构件。这些构件有多少个？别问我。就跟所有关于中文的问题一样，这个问题的答案也是繁复而无迹可寻，令人不满。它取决于你如何定义“构件”，以及很多其他冗长的细节问题。这么说吧，有很多个，比26个拉丁字母多多了。那么，这些构件如何组成汉字呢？嘛，你说吧，可以从左到右加到别的构件身上，也可以从右至左，或者从上到下，或者包围起别的构件，或者钻进别的构件里……怎样都有可能。而在这些空间组合过程中，这些构件们或变平，或延伸，或压扁，或缩短，总之会扭曲到能够符合所有汉字应满足的方块区域为止。换句话说，中文汉字的构件们是在二维上排列，而不是字母系统的简单明了的一维。

Okay, so ignoring for the moment the question of elegance, how long does it take a Westerner to learn the Chinese writing system so that when confronted with any new character they at least know how to move the pen around in order to produce a reasonable facsimile of that character? Again, hard to say, but I would estimate that it takes the average learner several months of hard work to get the basics down. Maybe a year or more if they're a klutz who was never very good in art class. Meanwhile, their Chinese counterpart learning English has zoomed ahead to learn cursive script, with time left over to read Moby Dick, or at least Strunk & White.

This is not exactly big news, I know; the alphabet really is a breeze to learn. Chinese people I know who have studied English for a few years can usually write with a handwriting style that is almost indistinguishable from that of the average American. Very few Americans, on the other hand, ever learn to produce a natural calligraphic hand in Chinese that resembles anything but that of an awkward Chinese third-grader. If there were nothing else hard about Chinese, the task of learning to write characters alone would put it in the rogues' gallery of hard-to-learn languages.

Ok，先不考虑优雅的要求，一个西方人要学中文多久，才能看到一个新字的时候至少知道怎么动笔写出一个差不多的模仿来？难说，不过我估计平均的学习者要花几个月的努力来掌握基本功。要是个从来不擅长图画课的笨手脚的家伙，也许要一年或更多。有这个时间，那个同时学习英文的中国人已经学会了书写英文花体，而且还有空读读Moby Dick，或者至少是Strunk&White。
（译者：Moby Dick即《白鲸记》，赫尔曼·梅尔维尔发表于1851年的小说，“被视为美国文学史上最伟大的小说之一”；Strunk&White又名the Elements of Style，即《英文写作指南》，著名的写作指导工具书。）
这不是什么新鲜事，我知道的：字母学起来很容易。我认识的中国人学过几年英文后常常能写出一手跟美国人无法区别的书法。另一方面，只有很少的美国人能够写出自然一点的，至少是比一个笨拙的三年级小孩要好点的中文书法。就算中文其他都不难，光是学习写汉字的难度就足以把中文放进“难学语言”的陈列室里了。

3. Because the writing system just ain't very phonetic.

So much for the physical process of writing the characters themselves. What about the sheer task of memorizing so many characters? Again, a comparison of English and Chinese is instructive. Suppose a Chinese person has just the previous day learned the English word "president", and now wants to write it from memory. How to start? Anyone with a year or two of English experience is going to have a host of clues and spelling rules-of-thumb, albeit imperfect ones, to help them along. The word really couldn't start with anything but "pr", and after that a little guesswork aided by visual memory ("Could a 'z' be in there? That's an unusual letter, I would have noticed it, I think. Must be an 's'...") should produce something close to the target. Not every foreigner (or native speaker for that matter) has noted or internalized the various flawed spelling heuristics of English, of course, but they are at least there to be utilized.

Now imagine that you, a learner of Chinese, have just the previous day encountered the Chinese word for "president" (总统 zǒngtǒng ) and want to write it. What processes do you go through in retrieving the word? Well, very often you just totally forget, with a forgetting that is both absolute and perfect in a way few things in this life are. You can repeat the word as often as you like; the sound won't give you a clue as to how the character is to be written. After you learn a few more characters and get hip to a few more phonetic components, you can do a bit better. ("Zǒng 总 is a phonetic component in some other character, right?...Song? Zeng? Oh yeah, cong 总 as in cōngmíng 聪明.") Of course, the phonetic aspect of some characters is more obvious than that of others, but many characters, including some of the most high-frequency ones, give no clue at all as to their pronunciation.

All of this is to say that Chinese is just not very phonetic when compared to English. (English, in turn, is less phonetic than a language like German or Spanish, but Chinese isn't even in the same ballpark.) It is not true, as some people outside the field tend to think, that Chinese is not phonetic at all, though a perfectly intelligent beginning student could go several months without noticing this fact. Just how phonetic the language is a very complex issue. Educated opinions range from 25% (Zhao Yuanren) to around 66% (DeFrancis), though the latter estimate assumes more knowledge of phonetic components than most learners are likely to have. One could say that Chinese is phonetic in the way that sex is aerobic: technically so, but in practical use not the most salient thing about it. Furthermore, this phonetic aspect of the language doesn't really become very useful until you've learned a few hundred characters, and even when you've learned two thousand, the feeble phoneticity of Chinese will never provide you with the constant memory prod that the phonetic quality of English does.

3. 因为书写系统并不太与其发音对应。

关于书写汉字本身的过程就不多说了。那么记忆如此之多汉字的艰巨任务又如何呢？同样的，比较中英两种语言有助于说明。假设，一个中国人前一天学了英文词儿“president”，现在呢想依靠记忆写出它来。怎么办？任何学过英文一两年的人都能找到大量的线索和窍门（即使不那么完美的）来帮助自己。这个词儿肯定只能以“pr”开头，之后呢稍微猜一下再加上视觉记忆（“会有个字母z么？z不太常见，所以有的话我应该会注意到。那么肯定是字母s了。”），他就能弄出一个差不多的东西了。不是每个外国人（母语人士也算）能注意到或者不自觉的运用英文中这些有一定缺陷的拼写窍门的，但至少它们存在。
现在想象你一个学习中文的，昨天刚刚碰到中文里的president“总统”。现在你想写它。你如何回忆起这个词儿呢？首先呢，你 (很可能)已经忘掉怎么写了，生活中很少能忘得如此彻底和干净…… 你可以尽情地重复学习这个词，而发音绝不会帮助你记起如何书写。当你学了较多汉字，掌握一些发音构件的规则时可以情况会好些。（“总”有时出现在其他汉字里，也发类似的音，对吧？Song？Zeng？对了！“总”在“聪明”里有。）当然有些发音的构件要更明显一些，不过很多汉字，包括一些最常见的高频率汉字，对它们的读音完全不给任何线索。
这些要表达的是中文跟英文比较起来不怎么表音。（英文呢，反过来又比不上德文或者西班牙文表音，然而中文根本不在一个数量级上。）有些外行觉得中文完全不表音，这是不对的，不过一个非常聪明的初学者也完全可能几个月都发现不了中文表音的地方。中文的表音程度是个复杂的问题。研究观点从25%（赵元任）到66%（DeFrancis）都有，只是后一个估计要求掌握很多发音构件的知识，而这些知识绝大多数学习者都不会拥有。你可以这么说，中文是一种表音语言，就好象性爱是一种有氧运动：技术上讲的确如此，但实际上并不是最明显的特点。而且呢，中文表音的部分只有在你学了几百个汉字之后才能为你所用，而即使你已经学了两千汉字，中文的薄弱的表音成分仍然不会提供类似英文表音那样的对记忆的帮助。

Which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character. Period. If there is no obvious semantic clue in the radical, and no helpful phonetic component somewhere in the character, you're just sunk. And you're sunk whether your native language is Chinese or not; contrary to popular myth, Chinese people are not born with the ability to memorize arbitrary squiggles. In fact, one of the most gratifying experiences a foreign student of Chinese can have is to see a native speaker come up a complete blank when called upon to write the characters for some relatively common word. You feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief to see a native speaker experience the exact same difficulty you experience every day.

This is such a gratifying experience, in fact, that I have actually kept a list of characters that I have observed Chinese people forget how to write. (A sick, obsessive activity, I know.) I have seen highly literate Chinese people forget how to write certain characters in common words like "tin can", "knee", "screwdriver", "snap" (as in "to snap one's fingers"), "elbow", "ginger", "cushion", "firecracker", and so on. And when I say "forget", I mean that they often cannot even put the first stroke down on the paper. Can you imagine a well-educated native English speaker totally forgetting how to write a word like "knee" or "tin can"? Or even a rarely-seen word like "scabbard" or "ragamuffin"? I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn't remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 "to sneeze". I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the "Harvard of China". Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word "sneeze"?? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China. English is simply orders of magnitude easier to write and remember. No matter how low-frequency the word is, or how unorthodox the spelling, the English speaker can always come up with something, simply because there has to be some correspondence between sound and spelling. One might forget whether "abracadabra" is hyphenated or not, or get the last few letters wrong on "rhinoceros", but even the poorest of spellers can make a reasonable stab at almost anything. By contrast, often even the most well-educated Chinese have no recourse but to throw up their hands and ask someone else in the room how to write some particularly elusive character.

这些就意味着，你常常会完全忘记怎么写一个汉字，完毕。如果字根上没有语义的明显线索，也没有什么表音构件来帮忙，你就完蛋了。即使中国人自己也是如此：跟普遍的迷信正相反，中国人并没什么天生的记忆字迹的能力。实际上，一个外国学习者最感安慰的时候，就是看到一个中国人被要求写一个常见汉字时一个笔画也写不出来。看到一个母语人士遇到你每天经历的困难时，你真是感到那些委屈得到了莫大的伸冤和解脱。
事实上，这种经历如此令人宽慰，以至于我干脆记了一个单子，上面列着我看到的中国人提笔忘掉的汉字（提笔忘字？）（一个有病的，强迫症的行为，嗯我自己也知道……）。我见过很有学问的中国人忘掉如何书写“罐头”的“罐”，“膝盖”的“膝”，“改锥”的“锥”，“捻拇指”的 “捻”，“胳臂肘”的 “肘“，“姜”，“垫子”的“垫”，“鞭炮”的“鞭”，等等。我说的忘，指的是他们常常连第一笔画都不知道怎么写。你能想象一个教育良好的英语人士完全不会书写“膝盖”或者“罐头”么？（译者注：分别是knee和tin can）或者哪怕“scabbard”或“ragamuffin”这种少见的词，他们也不会忘。我有一次和三个北京大学中文系的三个博士生吃午饭，他们三个都是中国人（一个来自香港）。我那天正好感冒，打算给一个朋友写个纸条取消我们一个约会。我发现自己想不起来怎么写“喷嚏”中的“嚏”了。于是我问那三位该怎么写。结果吓我一跳，他们仨都尴尬而难为情地耸耸肩。谁都不能正确地写这个字儿。各位同学！北京大学常常被认为是中国的哈佛啊。你能想象三个哈佛大学英文系的博士生不会写“sneeze”（喷嚏）？然而这种情况在中国绝不少见。英文就是大大地比中文容易书写和记忆。不管这个词频率多低，拼写多奇怪，英语人士总能整出点儿什么来，就是因为拼写和发音是有一定对应关系的。你可能不记得“abracadabra”里面有没有连接符，或者 “rhinoceros”最后几个字母不会拼，但最糟的家伙也能差不多点儿的拼出来几乎任何词。与此相反，即使是教育最好的中国人在写某些特别难记的汉字时也可能束手无策，只能问问别人。

As one mundane example of the advantages of a phonetic writing system, here is one kind of linguistic situation I encountered constantly while I was in France. (Again I use French as my canonical example of an "easy" foreign language.) I wake up one morning in Paris and turn on the radio. An ad comes on, and I hear the word "amortisseur" several times. "What's an amortisseur?" I think to myself, but as I am in a hurry to make an appointment, I forget to look the word up in my haste to leave the apartment. A few hours later I'm walking down the street, and I read, on a sign, the word "AMORTISSEUR" -- the word I heard earlier this morning. Beneath the word on the sign is a picture of a shock absorber. Aha! So "amortisseur" means "shock absorber". And voila! I've learned a new word, quickly and painlessly, all because the sound I construct when reading the word is the same as the sound in my head from the radio this morning -- one reinforces the other. Throughout the next week I see the word again several times, and each time I can reconstruct the sound by simply reading the word phonetically -- "a-mor-tis-seur". Before long I can retrieve the word easily, use it in conversation, or write it in a letter to a friend. And the process of learning a foreign language begins to seem less daunting.

When I first went to Taiwan for a few months, the situation was quite different. I was awash in a sea of characters that were all visually interesting but phonetically mute. I carried around a little dictionary to look up unfamiliar characters in, but it's almost impossible to look up a character in a Chinese dictionary while walking along a crowded street (more on dictionary look-up later), and so I didn't get nearly as much phonetic reinforcement as I got in France. In Taiwan I could pass a shop with a sign advertising shock absorbers and never know how to pronounce any of the characters unless I first look them up. And even then, the next time I pass the shop I might have to look the characters up again. And again, and again. The reinforcement does not come naturally and easily.

作为一个表音书写系统优势的平凡例子，我在法国时常常遇到这样一些情况（再一次地我用法语作为“容易”外语的经典例子）。在巴黎有天早上我醒来打开广播，听到一个广告，其中有个词儿“amortisseur”出现了几次。“amortisseur”是什么意思？我想了一下，不过由于当时正要见人，我匆忙离开的时候忘了查字典。几小时后我正好在街头一个标志上看到了“amortisseur”，这个我早上刚听过的词。“amortisseur”这个词下面是一张减震器的图片。哈哈，看来“amortisseur”的意思是减震器。就这样，我学了一个新词，快捷无痛。仅仅是因为我试图读这个词儿的时候发音是和我早上听到的词一样的。两者互相印证。接下来一周我几次看到这个词，每次我都能通过照字面阅读而找到它的发音“a-mor-tis-seur”。没多久，我就能轻松想起这个词儿，在对话中使用，或者在给朋友的信里写出来。这样一来，学外语的过程就没那么可怕了。
当我第一次去台湾呆几个月的时候，情况则完全不同。我被汉字的大海完全淹没了，它们看起来很有趣，可是完全不给什么发音线索。我带了一个小字典来查陌生的字，不过在拥挤的街道上查中文字典实在是不可能的任务（后面还会说关于查字典的事儿）。所以我一点儿也没得到类似在法国的那种发音的帮助。在台湾，我可以走过一个卖减震器的商店，却完全不知道该如何发任何一个汉字的音，除非我先查字典。即使查了一遍，下次走过的时候我还得再查一遍。然后，再查，再查。记忆增强的过程一点也不自然易行。

4. Because you can't cheat by using cognates.

I remember when I had been studying Chinese very hard for about three years, I had an interesting experience. One day I happened to find a Spanish-language newspaper sitting on a seat next to me. I picked it up out of curiosity. "Hmm," I thought to myself. "I've never studied Spanish in my life. I wonder how much of this I can understand." At random I picked a short article about an airplane crash and started to read. I found I could basically glean, with some guesswork, most of the information from the article. The crash took place near Los Angeles. 186 people were killed. There were no survivors. The plane crashed just one minute after take-off. There was nothing on the flight recorder to indicate a critical situation, and the tower was unaware of any emergency. The plane had just been serviced three days before and no mechanical problems had been found. And so on. After finishing the article I had a sudden discouraging realization: Having never studied a day of Spanish, I could read a Spanish newspaper more easily than I could a Chinese newspaper after more than three years of studying Chinese.

What was going on here? Why was this "foreign" language so transparent? The reason was obvious: cognates -- those helpful words that are just English words with a little foreign make-up. I could read the article because most of the operative words were basically English: aeropuerto, problema mechanico, un minuto, situacion critica, emergencia, etc. Recognizing these words as just English words in disguise is about as difficult as noticing that Superman is really Clark Kent without his glasses. That these quasi-English words are easier to learn than Chinese characters (which might as well be quasi-Martian) goes without saying.

Imagine you are a diabetic, and you find yourself in Spain about to go into insulin shock. You can rush into a doctor's office, and, with a minimum of Spanish and a couple of pieces of guesswork ("diabetes" is just "diabetes" and "insulin" is "insulina", it turns out), you're saved. In China you'd be a goner for sure, unless you happen to have a dictionary with you, and even then you would probably pass out while frantically looking for the first character in the word for insulin. Which brings me to the next reason why Chinese is so hard.

4. 因为你不能取巧使用同根词。

我还记着，当我刻苦学习了中文三年的时候，有过一次有趣的经历。有天我正好在旁边座位上找到一张西班牙文的报纸。我好奇地拿起来看，“嗯～”我想说，“我从来没学过西班牙语。看看我到底能懂多少。”我随机挑了一篇关于空难的小文开始看。结果我发现稍微猜一下就能获取大部分的文章信息。空难发生在洛杉矶附近，186人遇难。没有幸存者。飞机起飞后一分钟后即坠毁。飞行记录上没有什么特殊状况的提示，而塔台则并不知道任何紧急情况。飞机三天前刚维护过，也没发现什么机械故障。等等等等。看完文章后我突然沮丧地意识到：从没学过一天西班牙文，我读起它的报纸却比学了三年的中文报纸还容易……
这到底是怎么回事？为啥西班牙这个“外语”这么容易？原因很明显：同根词。这些同根词跟英文词汇相比只有小小的改造。我能读懂文章，因为绝大多数关键词基本都是英文：aeropuerto, problema mechanico, un minuto, situacion critica, emergencia,等等。认出这些词儿不过是一些英文词穿了马甲，这难度大约和发现超人不过是肯克拉克不戴眼镜的难度差不多。不用说，这些类英文词比中文汉字好学（中文汉字则多半是类火星文……）。想象一下，一个糖尿病人在西班牙发现自己需要注射胰岛素。他跑进诊所，只需很少的西班牙语和猜测的过程，他就能获救（其实，英语"diabetes" 翻成西班牙语就是 "diabetes" ， "insulin" 等于"insulina"。）在中国呢，他肯定完蛋了。除非他带了一本中文字典，即便如此，他多半也会在字典里疯狂地查胰岛素第一个汉字时不支晕倒。这正好说明了我下一个要说的中文难的原因。

5. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated.

One of the most unreasonably difficult things about learning Chinese is that merely learning how to look up a word in the dictionary is about the equivalent of an entire semester of secretarial school. When I was in Taiwan, I heard that they sometimes held dictionary look-up contests in the junior high schools. Imagine a language where simply looking a word up in the dictionary is considered a skill like debate or volleyball! Chinese is not exactly what you would call a user-friendly language, but a Chinese dictionary is positively user-hostile.

Figuring out all the radicals and their variants, plus dealing with the ambiguous characters with no obvious radical at all is a stupid, time-consuming chore that slows the learning process down by a factor of ten as compared to other languages with a sensible alphabet or the equivalent. I'd say it took me a good year before I could reliably find in the dictionary any character I might encounter. And to this day, I will very occasionally stumble onto a character that I simply can't find at all, even after ten minutes of searching. At such times I raise my hands to the sky, Job-like, and consider going into telemarketing.

Chinese must also be one of the most dictionary-intensive languages on earth. I currently have more than twenty Chinese dictionaries of various kinds on my desk, and they all have a specific and distinct use. There are dictionaries with simplified characters used on the mainland, dictionaries with the traditional characters used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and dictionaries with both. There are dictionaries that use the Wade-Giles romanization, dictionaries that use pinyin, and dictionaries that use other more surrealistic romanization methods. There are dictionaries of classical Chinese particles, dictionaries of Beijing dialect, dictionaries of chéngyǔ (four-character idioms), dictionaries of xiēhòuyǔ (special allegorical two-part sayings), dictionaries of yànyǔ (proverbs), dictionaries of Chinese communist terms, dictionaries of Buddhist terms, reverse dictionaries... on and on. An exhaustive hunt for some elusive or problematic lexical item can leave one's desk "strewn with dictionaries as numerous as dead soldiers on a battlefield."
For looking up unfamiliar characters there is another method called the four-corner system. This method is very fast -- rumored to be, in principle, about as fast as alphabetic look-up (though I haven't met anyone yet who can hit the winning number each time on the first try). Unfortunately, learning this method takes about as much time and practice as learning the Dewey decimal system. Plus you are then at the mercy of the few dictionaries that are arranged according to the numbering scheme of the four-corner system. Those who have mastered this system usually swear by it. The rest of us just swear.

Another problem with looking up words in the dictionary has to do with the nature of written Chinese. In most languages it's pretty obvious where the word boundaries lie -- there are spaces between the words. If you don't know the word in question, it's usually fairly clear what you should look up. (What actually constitutes a word is a very subtle issue, of course, but for my purposes here, what I'm saying is basically correct.) In Chinese there are spaces between characters, but it takes quite a lot of knowledge of the language and often some genuine sleuth work to tell where word boundaries lie; thus it's often trial and error to look up a word. It would be as if English were written thus:
FEAR LESS LY OUT SPOKE N BUT SOME WHAT HUMOR LESS NEW ENG LAND BORN LEAD ACT OR GEORGE MICHAEL SON EX PRESS ED OUT RAGE TO DAY AT THE STALE MATE BE TWEEN MAN AGE MENT AND THE ACT OR 'S UNION BE CAUSE THE STAND OFF HAD SET BACK THE TIME TABLE FOR PRO DUC TION OF HIS PLAY, A ONE MAN SHOW CASE THAT WAS HIS FIRST RUN A WAY BROAD WAY BOX OFFICE SMASH HIT. "THE FIRST A MEND MENT IS AT IS SUE" HE PRO CLAIM ED. "FOR A CENS OR OR AN EDIT OR TO EDIT OR OTHER WISE BLUE PENCIL QUESTION ABLE DIA LOG JUST TO KOW TOW TO RIGHT WING BORN AGAIN BIBLE THUMP ING FRUIT CAKE S IS A DOWN RIGHT DIS GRACE."

Imagine how this difference would compound the dictionary look-up difficulties of a non-native speaker of English. The passage is pretty trivial for us to understand, but then we already know English. For them it would often be hard to tell where the word boundaries were supposed to be. So it is, too, with someone trying to learn Chinese.

5. 因为连在字典里查一个字都很复杂。

学中文中最不可理喻的困难之一，就是连学会查字典的难度都基本等于在文秘专业学一个学期。在台湾的时候我听说有时还有初中生查字典比赛。想象一下吧，有种语言里连查字典都成了跟辩论或是排球一样的技能！你多半不会称中文是个善待用户的语言，而中文字典则绝对是虐待用户的典型。
找出所有部首和它们的变体，再加上处理那些没有明显部首模棱两可的汉字，这是个愚蠢的，花时间的苦差事。和其他拥有合理的字母或类似系统的语言相比，这一点大大放慢了学习中文的过程。我得说，我花了一年时间才能比较顺利的在字典中找到任何汉字。而直到今天，我极偶尔还是会遇到即使查个十分钟还是查不到的汉字。这种时候我就会像（圣经中信仰屡受考验的）约伯一样，举手向天，同时考虑去电话营销业之类的工作……
中文肯定也是地球上最需要字典的语言之一。我现在手头有超过二十本各种中文字典在书桌上，每本都有单独用途：有大陆用的简体字字典，有香港台湾用的繁体字字典，还有简繁体都有的字典；有用威妥玛拼音的字典，有用大陆拼音方案的字典，还有用其他更超现实主义的拼音的字典；有经典的中文虚词字典，有北京方言字典，有成语字典，有歇后语词典，有谚语词典，有中国GCD用语词典，有佛教用语词典，还有反查用词典，不一而足。一次穷尽式的查询某个难解词汇可能会让书桌上“堆满词典，如同战场上的士兵尸体一样。”
查陌生汉字的时候还有一种四角系统的查法。有谣言说这方法很迅速，基本上和查字母语言的情况下一样快（虽然我没见过谁能第一次就找到正确的编码）。不幸的是，学习这个查法本身就跟学杜威十进图书分类法花的时间和精力差不多。此外你还得指望字典的确按照四角系统安排过（这类字典并不多）。那些掌握了这个四角查法的人对其推崇备至，我们其他人则是赌咒发誓。
查字典还有一个问题来自中文汉字本身的特性。绝大部分语言中词汇之间的分界很明显，有空格在那儿。如果你不懂一个词，那找到该查什么一般不难（当然什么算一个词是个微妙问题，不过在这个话题方面我的说法基本正确）。在中文里呢，汉字之间有空格，但是得需要好多中文知识和真正的侦探本领才能让你找出词汇之间的界限。所以找一个词儿往往是个试错过程。就好象英文写成如下的样子：

FEAR LESS LY OUT SPOKE N BUT SOME WHAT HUMOR LESS NEW ENG LAND BORN LEAD ACT OR GEORGE MICHAEL SON EX PRESS ED OUT RAGE TO DAY AT THE STALE MATE BE TWEEN MAN AGE MENT AND THE ACT OR 'S UNION BE CAUSE THE STAND OFF HAD SET BACK THE TIME TABLE FOR PRO DUC TION OF HIS PLAY, A ONE MAN SHOW CASE THAT WAS HIS FIRST RUN A WAY BROAD WAY BOX OFFICE SMASH HIT. "THE FIRST A MEND MENT IS AT IS SUE" HE PRO CLAIM ED. "FOR A CENS OR OR AN EDIT OR TO EDIT OR OTHER WISE BLUE PENCIL QUESTION ABLE DIA LOG JUST TO KOW TOW TO RIGHT WING BORN AGAIN BIBLE THUMP ING FRUIT CAKE S IS A DOWN RIGHT DIS GRACE.

想象一下这样的情况会怎样加重英文学习者查字典的困难吧。这段话读起来不难，那是因为我们懂英文。对不懂的人来说搞清楚词汇之前的界限可不容易。在学中文的时候情况正是如此。

6. Then there's classical Chinese (wenyanwen).

Forget it. Way too difficult. If you think that after three or four years of study you'll be breezing through Confucius and Mencius in the way third-year French students at a comparable level are reading Diderot and Voltaire, you're sadly mistaken. There are some westerners who can comfortably read classical Chinese, but most of them have a lot of gray hair or at least tenure.
Unfortunately, classical Chinese pops up everywhere, especially in Chinese paintings and character scrolls, and most people will assume anyone literate in Chinese can read it. It's truly embarrassing to be out at a Chinese restaurant, and someone asks you to translate some characters on a wall hanging.

"Hey, you speak Chinese. What does this scroll say?" You look up and see that the characters are written in wenyan, and in incomprehensible "grass-style" calligraphy to boot. It might as well be an EKG readout of a dying heart patient.

"Uh, I can make out one or two of the characters, but I couldn't tell you what it says," you stammer. "I think it's about a phoenix or something."

"Oh, I thought you knew Chinese," says your friend, returning to their menu. Never mind that an honest-to-goodness Chinese person would also just scratch their head and shrug; the face that is lost is yours.

Whereas modern Mandarin is merely perversely hard, classical Chinese is deliberately impossible. Here's a secret that sinologists won't tell you: A passage in classical Chinese can be understood only if you already know what the passage says in the first place. This is because classical Chinese really consists of several centuries of esoteric anecdotes and in-jokes written in a kind of terse, miserly code for dissemination among a small, elite group of intellectually-inbred bookworms who already knew the whole literature backwards and forwards, anyway. An uninitiated westerner can no more be expected to understand such writing than Confucius himself, if transported to the present, could understand the entries in the "personal" section of the classified ads that say things like: "Hndsm. SWGM, 24, 160, sks BGM or WGM for gentle S&M, mod. bndg., some lthr., twosm or threesm ok, have own equip., wheels, 988-8752 lv. mssg. on ans. mach., no weirdos please."
In fairness, it should be said that classical Chinese gets easier the more you attempt it. But then so does hitting a hole in one, or swimming the English channel in a straitjacket.

6. 然后还有个文言文……

放弃吧。太难了。如果你以为三四年学习之后你就能轻风般浏览过孔孟的文章，就好象差不多的三年级法文学习者能够阅读狄德罗和伏尔泰，哥你就杯具了。的确有一些西方人能够顺利地阅读古代中文，不过他们大都有灰白头发，或至少有教授地位……
不幸的是，中国古文到处出现，特别是在中国画和卷轴里。大部分人以为任何懂中文的人都能阅读它们。当你在中国餐馆，有人请你翻译一个屏风上的汉字时，那可真是让人无地自容。
“嗨哥们，你不是懂中文么？这个卷帘上写的什么？”你抬头一看，发现写的是文言，还用的是无法理解的草书体……这样的书法就看起来濒死的心脏病人的心电图差不多。
“呃……我想我能看懂一两个字，但我没法告诉你它什么意思。”你结结巴巴地说，“我猜是关于凤凰之类的东西……”

“噢，我以为你懂中文。”你朋友说道，然后继续看他们的菜单。即使那些字一个如假包换的中国人也会挠头不懂，丢的还是你的脸……

现代汉语仅仅是古怪的难，而古典中文则是刻意让人不可能学会。汉学家不会告诉你这样一个小秘密：要看懂文言文一小段话，你必须首先知道它在讲什么。因为古典中文根本是由几个世纪的典故用一种简要的编码组成，流传于一个书虫们组成的精英小团体中，他们自己都彻底了解任何一点相关的文学背景。一个没有专业知识的西方人没法理解这些，就好象如果孔子本人来到现在，也看不懂分类广告中“个人”一栏里这类的东西：“Hndsm. SWGM, 24, 160, sks BGM or WGM for gentle S&M, mod. bndg., some lthr., twosm or threesm ok, have own equip., wheels, 988-8752 lv. mssg. on ans. mach., no weirdos please.”（译者注：这个意思就不翻译了，好孩子不需要知道……）
公平的讲，文言文你越尝试就会变得越容易。不过高尔夫一杆进洞或者穿着束身衣横跨英吉利海峡也是如此。

7. Because there are too many romanization methods and they all suck.

Well, perhaps that's too harsh. But it is true that there are too many of them, and most of them were designed either by committee or by linguists, or -- even worse -- by a committee of linguists. It is, of course, a very tricky task to devise a romanization method; some are better than others, but all involve plenty of counterintuitive spellings. And if you're serious about a career in Chinese, you'll have to grapple with at least four or five of them, not including the bopomofu phonetic symbols used in Taiwan. There are probably a dozen or more romanization schemes out there somewhere, most of them mercifully obscure and rightfully ignored. There is a standing joke among sinologists that one of the first signs of senility in a China scholar is the compulsion to come up with a new romanization method.

7. 因为字母化方案太多了，而且全都不给力。

嘛，这么说可能有点过分。不过真的，把中文用字母表达的方案很多，而绝大多数都是由某个委员会或是某些语言学家弄出来的。有时候还更糟，是个语言学家组成的委员会…… 当然啦，设计一种字母化方案非常不易，有些方案比较好，但所有的方案都需要很多与直觉抵触的拼写。而如果你真想发展中文方面的职业道路，那你至少得会其中四五种，还不包括台湾用的那些鬼画符。总共恐怕有超过一打的字母化方案，大部分都是晦涩难懂而理所应当地被大家忽略了。长久以来在汉学家之间有个笑话：一个汉学学者老年痴呆的标志，就是他感到发明一种新的字母化方案的迫切性。

8. Because tonal languages are weird.

Okay, that's very Anglo-centric, I know it. But I have to mention this problem because it's one of the most common complaints about learning Chinese, and it's one of the aspects of the language that westerners are notoriously bad at. Every person who tackles Chinese at first has a little trouble believing this aspect of the language. How is it possible that shùxué means "mathematics" while shūxuě means "blood transfusion", or that guòjiǎng means "you flatter me" while guǒjiàng means "fruit paste"?

By itself, this property of Chinese would be hard enough; it means that, for us non-native speakers, there is this extra, seemingly irrelevant aspect of the sound of a word that you must memorize along with the vowels and consonants. But where the real difficulty comes in is when you start to really use Chinese to express yourself. You suddenly find yourself straitjacketed -- when you say the sentence with the intonation that feels natural, the tones come out all wrong. For example, if you wish say something like "Hey, that's my water glass you're drinking out of!", and you follow your intonational instincts -- that is, to put a distinct falling tone on the first character of the word for "my" -- you will have said a kind of gibberish that may or may not be understood.

Intonation and stress habits are incredibly ingrained and second-nature. With non-tonal languages you can basically import, mutatis mutandis, your habitual ways of emphasizing, negating, stressing, and questioning. The results may be somewhat non-native but usually understandable. Not so with Chinese, where your intonational contours must always obey the tonal constraints of the specific words you've chosen. Chinese speakers, of course, can express all of the intonational subtleties available in non-tonal languages -- it's just that they do it in a way that is somewhat alien to us speakers of non-tonal languages. When you first begin using your Chinese to talk about subjects that actually matter to you, you find that it feels somewhat like trying to have a passionate argument with your hands tied behind your back -- you are suddenly robbed of some vital expressive tools you hadn't even been aware of having.

8. 因为音调系统很古怪。

Ok，这种说法很白人中心主义，我知道。但我得提一下这一点，因为它是最常见的抱怨之一，也是西方人最恶名昭著的弱项之一。每个学中文的人一开始都无法相信中文有音调系统的一面存在。怎么可能Shuxue既可以是“数学”同时还能是“输血”呢？或者guojiang可以是“过奖”或者是“果酱”？它本身就是中文一个大难点了，因为这意味着我们非母语人士在记忆元音辅音之外，还得记住这些看起来不重要的发音部分。更大的真正的困难出现在你实际使用中文表达自己的时候：你发现自己束手束脚的，你可能语调都挺自然，结果音调都搞错了。比如，你可能想说“嗨你在喝我的杯子里的水！”，然后你想当然地把重音放在“我的”身上（结果声调变成了四声）(相当于中文四声的声调)，那你说的多半是些胡言乱语，可能被理解也可能不被。
语调和重音习惯具有非常大的追加和自由性质。在无音调的语言中，你基本上可以随心所欲地（加上必要的修改）按你的习惯来强调，否定，重视，和质疑。说出来的可能不太自然，但绝对能被理解。中文则不然，你的语调习惯必须遵守每个你用的词汇音调的限制。中国人当然能自由地表达所有微妙的语调，和使用那些无音调的语言的人一样。只是他们的方式对我们说无音调语言的人来说有点陌生。当你真正开始用中文说些你在意的话题时，你就发现好像你不得不双手被捆着，同时试图表达一个激情四射的观点。你突然被剥夺了一些重要的表达手段，以前你可能还没意识到自己拥有它们。

9. Because east is east and west is west, and the twain have only recently met.

Language and culture cannot be separated, of course, and one of the main reasons Chinese is so difficult for Americans is that our two cultures have been isolated for so long. The reason reading French sentences like "Le président Bush assure le peuple koweitien que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne," is about as hard as deciphering pig Latin is not just because of the deep Indo-European family resemblance, but also because the core concepts and cultural assumptions in such utterances stem from the same source. We share the same art history, the same music history, the same history history -- which means that in the head of a French person there is basically the same set of archetypes and the same cultural cast of characters that's in an American's head. We are as familiar with Rimbaud as they are with Rambo. In fact, compared to the difference between China and the U.S., American culture and and French culture seem about as different as Peter Pan and Skippy peanut butter.

9. 因为东西方泾渭分明，而两者才刚刚相遇。

语言和文化当然无法分割，这也是中文对美国人如此难的主要原因之一。中美文化隔绝太久了。读法语句子“Le président Bush assure le peuple koweitien que le gouvernement américain va continuer à défendre le Koweit contre la menace irakienne”的难度仅仅如同于看懂一些行话而已。其原因不但在于印欧语系之间的相似性，还因为这些表达方式中的核心概念和文化背景是同源的。我们有一样的绘画史，音乐史，乃至历史的历史，后者的意思是一个法国人脑中的各种典型例子以及文化角色的集合和一个美国人一样的。我们熟悉阿蒂尔·兰波，就好象法国人熟悉兰博。事实上，与中美文化的差异比起来，美国和法国文化的区别就类似于Peter Pan花生酱和Skippy花生酱。（译者：好吧，换个例子，就好象可口可乐和百事可乐，两者内容几乎一样……）

Speaking with a Chinese person is usually a different matter. You just can't drop Dickens, Tarzan, Jack the Ripper, Goethe, or the Beatles into a conversation and always expect to be understood. I once had a Chinese friend who had read the first translations of Kafka into Chinese, yet didn't know who Santa Claus was. China has had extensive contact with the West in the last few decades, but there is still a vast sea of knowledge and ideas that is not shared by both cultures.

Similarly, how many Americans other than sinophiles have even a rough idea of the chronology of China's dynasties? Has the average history major here ever heard of Qin Shi Huangdi and his contribution to Chinese culture? How many American music majors have ever heard a note of Peking Opera, or would recognize a pipa if they tripped over one? How many otherwise literate Americans have heard of Lu Xun, Ba Jin, or even Mozi?

What this means is that when Americans and Chinese get together, there is often not just a language barrier, but an immense cultural barrier as well. Of course, this is one of the reasons the study of Chinese is so interesting. It is also one of the reasons it is so damn hard.

和中国人说话往往不一样。你没法谈话中随口提到狄更斯，人猿泰山，开膛手杰克，歌德，或者披头士，同时期望对方总是能明白。我有个中国朋友，他都读过卡夫卡著作最早的中文译文，却仍然不知道Santa Claus是什么。最近几十年来中国和西方接触甚多，然而两者之间仍然有大量的知识和思想差异。
同样地，除了一些哈中的，有多少美国人对中国朝代有个大致概念呢？一个普通的历史系学生听说过秦始皇和他对中国的贡献么？有多少美国音乐系学生听过一丁点京剧，或是能认出来琵琶？多少其他方面博学的美国人听说过鲁迅，巴金？更别提墨子了。
这些意味着当两国人在一起时，不但有语言障碍，还有一个巨大的文化障碍。当然这是学习中文如此有趣的原因之一。这也是中文为啥这么TM难的原因之一。

Conclusion

I could go on and on, but I figure if the reader has bothered to read this far, I'm preaching to the converted, anyway. Those who have tackled other difficult languages have their own litany of horror stories, I'm sure. But I still feel reasonably confident in asserting that, for an average American, Chinese is significantly harder to learn than any of the other thirty or so major world languages that are usually studied formally at the university level (though Japanese in many ways comes close). Not too interesting for linguists, maybe, but something to consider if you've decided to better yourself by learning a foreign language, and you're thinking "Gee, Chinese looks kinda neat."
It's pretty hard to quantify a process as complex and multi-faceted as language-learning, but one simple metric is to simply estimate the time it takes to master the requisite language-learning skills. When you consider all the above-mentioned things a learner of Chinese has to acquire -- ability to use a dictionary, familiarity with two or three romanization methods, a grasp of principles involved in writing characters (both simplified and traditional) -- it adds up to an awful lot of down time while one is "learning to learn" Chinese.

How much harder is Chinese? Again, I'll use French as my canonical "easy language". This is a very rough and intuitive estimate, but I would say that it takes about three times as long to reach a level of comfortable fluency in speaking, reading, and writing Chinese as it takes to reach a comparable level in French. An average American could probably become reasonably fluent in two Romance languages in the time it would take them to reach the same level in Chinese.
One could perhaps view learning languages as being similar to learning musical instruments. Despite the esoteric glories of the harmonica literature, it's probably safe to say that the piano is a lot harder and more time-consuming to learn. To extend the analogy, there is also the fact that we are all virtuosos on at least one "instrument" (namely, our native language), and learning instruments from the same family is easier than embarking on a completely different instrument. A Spanish person learning Portuguese is comparable to a violinist taking up the viola, whereas an American learning Chinese is more like a rock guitarist trying to learn to play an elaborate 30-stop three-manual pipe organ.

Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.

There is still the awe-inspiring fact that Chinese people manage to learn their own language very well. Perhaps they are like the gradeschool kids that Baroque performance groups recruit to sing Bach cantatas. The story goes that someone in the audience, amazed at hearing such youthful cherubs flawlessly singing Bach's uncompromisingly difficult vocal music, asks the choir director,

"But how are they able to perform such difficult music?"

"Shh -- not so loud!" says the director, "If you don't tell them it's difficult, they never know."

结论

我还能再继续，不过我想如果亲爱的读者们能看到此处，多半他们早就已经同意我的看法。那些学习其他困难语言的人们有他们自己的恐怖故事，我敢肯定。但我仍然能相当自信地断言，对于一个普通美国人，中文比世界上三十多种主要语言（亦即在大学阶段常常学习的语言）中其他任何一种都难得多。这件事也许不会引起语言学家们的兴趣），但它值得你好好考虑一下，如果你决定最好学个外语，想着说“嗯～中文看起来好像不错。”

要量化学习语言这样一个复杂而多层面的过程很难，不过一个量度是掌握必要的语言学习技能的时间。考虑到上述所有的中文学习者必须具备的东西，使用字典，熟悉两三种字母化方案，大致了解汉字系统（包括简繁），这加起来可是很多时间，而你仅仅是在学习如何学习中文。
中文本身要更难多少呢？再次我使用法语作为简单语言的例子。非常粗略和直觉的估计，不过我想说要达到法语中类似的读写流利程度，中文需要你三倍的时间。同样的时间，一个普通美国人多半可以学会流利使用两种拉丁语系的语言。

学习语言也许类似于学习乐器。比如说，虽然口琴有某些精彩的作品，一般而言钢琴学起来要比其他乐器困难而花更多时间。作为类比，可以说我们都是某种乐器的高超演奏家（即我们的母语），而学习同类的乐器则比学习完全不同的乐器容易得多。西班牙人学葡萄牙语类似于小提琴手学习中提琴，而美国人学习中文则更像摇滚吉他手试图学习演奏拥有三个手键盘，三十个音栓的管风琴。

有人说过学习中文是“五年关于谦虚和低调的课程”。我曾经以为这是说五年之后你就能掌握中文，同时学会了谦虚。然而，我现在学习了中文六年，我的结论是，这句话告诉你五年之后中文对你来说仍然是神秘的深渊，不过至少你已经彻头彻尾地学会了低调这个好品质。
仍然有一个令人敬畏的事实，那就是中国人掌握他们的语言相当不错。可能他们就像是那些巴洛克艺术表演团体招收的小孩子们，然后去表演巴赫的康塔塔清唱剧。那个故事里，有个听众十分惊讶于听到这些胖嘟嘟的小孩子们能够如此完美无瑕地演唱，而这些乐曲都是巴赫那些困难的要求严格一丝不苟的作品。他问合唱团指挥，“但这些孩子们怎么能够演唱如此高难度的音乐呢？”

“嘘！小声点！”乐团指挥说道，“如果你不告诉他们这有多难，那他们就永远不知道。

Why Do We Write?

2011-02-24T19:08:00.012-06:00

I did a Google search on this question, in quotes, so I could match the exact question. Over 500,000 results were returned. Of course some results included "Why do we write about food" and other variations, but the majority were others, like me, asking themselves the same question.

Why do we write? Really?

When I was younger, I used to write in a journal. I wrote about experiences, life and love, certain events in my life that I wanted to relive some day in the future. Perhaps my children or grand children would find them and discover what kind of man I really was, what I'd done, how I'd felt inside. I had stacks of journals. I say had, because over time combined with my carelessness with my belongings, they've all been lost.

There have been times in my life that I didn't write for reasons that there wasn't time to write, wasn't in the mood to write or simply that the topic wasn't worth writing down. With the advent of the document management software, people began "blogging". Some blogged about their expertise in house plants. Others blogged about their experiences and feelings while going through a divorce. Still others, and there were many, blogged about the government and their political opinions on matters of state.

I started blogging about four years ago. I didn't write in my blog like some friends, who wrote all the time, mostly about controversial topics and their strong opinions and why. I liked to write about stuff that was either something about me and my history or some recent life experience that I wanted to share. Do I care if anyone actually reads what I write? Actually, yes, I do. It gives encouragement and motivation to write more. I know that some people write as a form of venting, similar to when you need a friend to "get something off your chest". The keyboard/pen is your servant and always fulfills your request.

I have been asked, "How do you know what to write?" When I write, especially, when I share an experience with others, I write it as if my mind is showing you what all my senses are experiencing at that very moment in time. I don't know if that makes sense, but I try to paint a picture of what I experienced so the reader can feel some of the same experience, I had, when it took place. I like to describe some of the little things we notice when we experience something in our own lives. There is always a small detail that always sticks in our minds about a certain experience. Years later, perhaps we are asked about the trip we took to New York when we were younger. We'll forget most of the details, but that one thing will always be recalled. Like my recent trip to Taiwan, 20 years from now I might not remember the name of the hotel, but I will always remember the little boy, who repeated everything the train announcer said, in the same rhythmical pattern. Sounds insignificant in relation to the trip as a whole, but it's just something that will always stick with me.

So, Why do I write? I write because, I enjoy it. If I write something and make someone feel good about something or spurn a curiosity about a certain place or people I've visited or traveled, then that gives my efforts meaning and purpose. It makes me feel good when people tell me they've enjoyed my stuff.

I hope to be able to continue to share my life with you for many years to come...

Enjoy!