Wednesday June 30, 2010

Warning: This thought has almost nothing to do with what follows. The thought for the day is the title of a novel by Jefferey Chan: Eat Everything Before You Die.


I’ve been thinking about an interesting difference between the Chinese language and the English language, and because I can’t get Janet to listen to me I thought I’d inflict this on you. This difference lies in where the Chinese and English languages place the future. For example, in this famous line the future is thought of as lying in front of the audience, and presumably also the speaker: “The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow.” Another example is the title of a movie, Back to the Future, which seems like a contradiction in its placing of the future behind rather than in front. Here’s the headline of an article about contact lenses: “The future before your eyes” And one last example: “Graduates have their future before them.”

The corollary is that the past is behind you, as in this question: “After You Have Been Cheated on Can You Put it Behind You and Trust Again?” And this one, from a popular song: “You hide the cracks, the facts will find you/ Turn your back and leave the lonely days behind you now,” where the past is explicitly placed behind the speaker.

Now, in Chinese I think it is not the case that the future is front of you and the past behind. Let me explain. There’s a very common word in Chinese, pronounced hòu, that means back, behind, rear, etc. So someone at the back door is at the "hou" door; someone in the back yard is in the "hou" yard, the back surface of an object is the "hou" surface and so forth. But when we find "hou" used in expressions of time something funny happens. For example, toward "hou" means “from now on; in the future.” That is to say towards the back means in the future. Compare this with “the future lies before you;” they’re exactly opposite. For another example, "hou" day is the day after tomorrow, a day to come, not in the past.(The opposite of the day after tomorrow is the day before yesterday, which is front ("qian") day, since that day is past and hence in front of us.) "hou" children are our descendants, those who will come after us in the future. That is to say, whereas in English the future thought of in spatial terms is in front of us, in Chinese it is in back of us.

I think there’s a simple explanation for this phenomenon: we can’t see the future or what happened there or then, but we can see the past and what happened there and then. What we can’t see, the future, is therefore placed in back of us in Chinese (no eyes in the backs of our heads), while what we can see, the past, is in front of us, where our eyes naturally fall. I think Chinese recognizes this, while English, for whatever reason, does not.

This difference would be nothing more than an interesting oddity if it had no consequences. However, I think it does have consequences. Let me give two more quotations. The first comes from Wired magazine: “Netflix Everywhere: Sorry Cable, You're History” The second is from Henry Ford: “History is more or less bunk.” I suggest that because of the English language’s placing the past behind us we can more easily than the Chinese ignore history, kiss it off, put it behind us and, therefore, out of sight.

I think we’re all familiar with the importance the Chinese tradition places on history. Let me close by telling you a poignant story about the greatest of all Chinese historians, Sima Qian. He lived during the Western Han dynasty, from ca. 140 BCE to 86 BCE. While working in the imperial court as a historian and advisor to the emperor Wu he incurred the emperor’s displeasure and was sentenced to death. The only way to avoid the sentence was to pay a large amount of money, of which he had very little, or submit to being castrated. So important to Sima Qian was history that, in order to continue work on the history of China he was writing, he chose to be castrated. I wonder if anyone said to him, “Put that behind you”?

Meanwhile, team 184 continues its good works in Kunming, trying to eat everything, not before we die, of course, but before we have to leave.

- Michael

Monday June 28, 2010

Thought for the day: If you add a little to a little, and then do it again, soon that little shall be much. - Hesiod
It’s the second week with our students from Pu’er City, and little by little they are sharing stories using the English that they know. As they recounted their activities of the past weekend in class this morning, we Volunteers introduced them to such words as “budget,” (for the shoppers), and “hangover” and “white lightning” (for the drinkers).

John and Betty had their students make up a story inspired from pictures in magazine ads. After a few minutes of preparation and a practice telling the story in front of a classmate, each student told his/her story to the class, without reading from notes.

Michael and Janet had given an example of telling a story (“Little Red Riding Hood”), in Friday’s class and assigned each student to prepare a Chinese Folk Tale to tell today, which they performed with flair, apparently.

Leon and Jim heard from two of their students, Tommy and David, that the two young fellows went for a walk in Green Lake Park on the weekend, speaking English to each other. Two beautiful Chinese girls heard Tommy and David speaking English, and were so impressed that they gave the fellows a puppy. Was this a tall tale?

Esther and Nancy are working with their class on discerning sounds of English using word pairs such as “light and right,” “connect and collect,” “glass and grass,” and “cloud and crowd.” Nancy’s ukulele accompaniment to songs such as “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” is a delight to the students.

As my class of 15 is made up entirely of women, we spent some time on the theme of shopping, talking about articles of clothing and patterns, such as checks, polka-dots, stripes and floral prints, and what items they bought for family members and themselves.

My class played a spelling game today, called “Alphabet Scramble.” Three teams competed in the spelling of five-letter words, with each member of a team holding up a card with a letter on it, in the correct order (usually) so that I could check the accuracy of their team’s spelling. That went well.

We got a start on the chants and singing games, joined by Leon’s and Jim’s class, the last half hour of the morning. There were lots of smiles as they learned a clapping pattern to go with “Miss Mary Mack” and traditional Western folk dance figures to go with “Old Brass Wagon.”

Baoli rewarded us for our morning’s work by taking us to the Golden Flower Hot Pot Restaurant, a short walk from school. It was a kind of pyrotechnical pleasure, with each of us sitting behind a blazing heat source and bubbling broth of tomato, chicken or coconut. The choices of raw items to cook included tofu skin, mint, watercress, mushrooms, quail eggs, sweet potato noodles, and thinly sliced lamb and beef. Fondue was never like this!

The afternoon lecture for the students, as reported by Michael and Janet, was given by a Chinese Professor, Yang Tau, who had observed educational institutions in the United States and Canada. He made laudatory remarks about the practices of teachers in the North American system of Education, and challenged our students to ask more questions, and to focus on every pupil, not just the brightest young scholars.

So, little by little, a difference is being made, for our students, and for us, Team #184 in the Kunming program.

A toast to small steps that lead towards big new destinations of the mind and heart!

-Dixie

Tuesday June 29, 2010

Thought for the Day: Into each life a little rain must fall.

And each summer day in Kunming, it usually will – likely a warm and gentle rain, creating a good market for the ubiquitous umbrellas for the pedestrians and ponchos for the scooter riders, including the fashionable pink matching set seen on a mother and her little daughter this morning. Tuesday was such a day of steady morning rain, prompting our leaders to exhibit the flexibility that we all strive for in this program. They canceled our outdoor field trip to the Hump Memorial.

Fortunately, Dixie literally stepped up and led the afternoon singing and dancing program a day early. I thought that the idea of packing all 75 of the teachers plus us into one room and teaching song and dance would be like herding cats. However, Dixie was not fazed, and the teachers took to the whole affair with great humor, enthusiasm and talent. We volunteers did our best to keep up! What better place to learn “Here We Go Looby Loo” and a medley of French Canadian, American Indian, Israeli, Russian and pioneer dances?

Our teaching continues to challenge and inspire us. Who knew there could be so many different ways to approach simply introducing an assignment such as the upcoming Speech Festival? Thus we learn from each other and from our teacher-pupils. That is partly why we want to return to this experience in China again and again.

- Betty

Monday June 28, 2010

Thought for the day: If you add a little to a little, and then do it again, soon that little shall be much. - Hesiod

It’s the second week with our students from Pu’er City, and little by little they are sharing stories using the English that they know. As they recounted their activities of the past weekend in class this morning, we Volunteers introduced them to such words as “budget,” (for the shoppers), and “hangover” and “white lightning” (for the drinkers).

John and Betty had their students make up a story inspired from pictures in magazine ads. After a few minutes of preparation and a practice telling the story in front of a classmate, each student told his/her story to the class, without reading from notes.

Michael and Janet had given an example of telling a story (“Little Red Riding Hood”), in Friday’s class and assigned each student to prepare a Chinese Folk Tale to tell today, which they performed with flair, apparently.

Leon and Jim heard from two of their students, Tommy and David, that the two young fellows went for a walk in Green Lake Park on the weekend, speaking English to each other. Two beautiful Chinese girls heard Tommy and David speaking English, and were so impressed that they gave the fellows a puppy. Was this a tall tale?

Esther and Nancy are working with their class on discerning sounds of English using word pairs such as “light and right,” “connect and collect,” “glass and grass,” and “cloud and crowd.” Nancy’s ukulele accompaniment to songs such as “The Bear Went Over the Mountain” is a delight to the students.

As my class of 15 is made up entirely of women, we spent some time on the theme of shopping, talking about articles of clothing and patterns, such as checks, polka-dots, stripes and floral prints, and what items they bought for family members and themselves.

My class played a spelling game today, called “Alphabet Scramble.” Three teams competed in the spelling of five-letter words, with each member of a team holding up a card with a letter on it, in the correct order (usually) so that I could check the accuracy of their team’s spelling. That went well.

We got a start on the chants and singing games, joined by Leon’s and Jim’s class, the last half hour of the morning. There were lots of smiles as they learned a clapping pattern to go with “Miss Mary Mack” and traditional Western folk dance figures to go with “Old Brass Wagon.”

Baoli rewarded us for our morning’s work by taking us to the Golden Flower Hot Pot Restaurant, a short walk from school. It was a kind of pyrotechnical pleasure, with each of us sitting behind a blazing heat source and bubbling broth of tomato, chicken or coconut. The choices of raw items to cook included tofu skin, mint, watercress, mushrooms, quail eggs, sweet potato noodles, and thinly sliced lamb and beef. Fondue was never like this!

The afternoon lecture for the students, as reported by Michael and Janet, was given by a Chinese Professor, Yang Tau, who had observed educational institutions in the United States and Canada. He made laudatory remarks about the practices of teachers in the North American system of Education, and challenged our students to ask more questions, and to focus on every pupil, not just the brightest young scholars.

So, little by little, a difference is being made, for our students, and for us, Team #184 in the Kunming program.

A toast to small steps that lead towards big new destinations of the mind and heart!

-Dixie

Tuesday June 29, 2010

Thought for the Day: Into each life a little rain must fall.

And each summer day in Kunming, it usually will – likely a warm and gentle rain, creating a good market for the ubiquitous umbrellas for the pedestrians and ponchos for the scooter riders, including the fashionable pink matching set seen on a mother and her little daughter this morning. Tuesday was such a day of steady morning rain, prompting our leaders to exhibit the flexibility that we all strive for in this program. They canceled our outdoor field trip to the Hump Memorial.

Fortunately, Dixie literally stepped up and led the afternoon singing and dancing program a day early. I thought that the idea of packing all 75 of the teachers plus us into one room and teaching song and dance would be like herding cats. However, Dixie was not fazed, and the teachers took to the whole affair with great humor, enthusiasm and talent. We volunteers did our best to keep up! What better place to learn “Here We Go Looby Loo” and a medley of French Canadian, American Indian, Israeli, Russian and pioneer dances?

Our teaching continues to challenge and inspire us. Who knew there could be so many different ways to approach simply introducing an assignment such as the upcoming Speech Festival? Thus we learn from each other and from our teacher-pupils. That is partly why we want to return to this experience in China again and again.

- Betty

Sunday June 27, 2010

Thought for the day:
"No knowledge is ever wasted or to be despised"
- Joseph Needham, father of the Joseph Needham known in China as Li Yue-se

Sunday being a nominal day of rest, five members of our team (Michael, Janet, John, Betty and Esther) took a day trip to the Stone Village (Nuò Hēi) and the Stone Forest (Shí Lín) about two hours Southeast of Kunming. The excursion was led by our gracious Kunming host Li Baokun (known to us as Chris). The four who remained behind had visited these amazing sites during previous trips to Kunming and I could easily dedicate a page or two of this journal telling of their wonders. However, I will defer to a fresher view from one of our travelers in a further issue of this journal.

The four of us left behind (Jim, Nancy, Dixie and me) spent a quiet day and so I am tempted to end this journal entry here. However, there may be some interest in exactly how we spent our time.

First, Jim. Jim, in a weak moment last week volunteered (I think that's what our leader Baoli called it) to give an afternoon lecture on the changing demographics of his school system. So Jim spent the entire day, with the exception of lunch (about which you will hear more later), preparing his lecture. This, he says, involved many hours on the Internet gathering information and pouring it all into PowerPoint. I find it puzzling that Jim, a dedicated Apple user, uses Microsoft's clumsy and underpowered PowerPoint rather than Apple's sleek and feature rich presentation software Keynote. Here, again, I could dedicate several pages elaborating on the superiority of Keynote, but I digress.

Next, Nancy. Nancy spent the morning preparing a new lavishly illustrated edition of "There Was an Old Lady" (you remember, the one who swallowed the fly) using, of course, Apple's amazing word processing and page layout software called, simply, Pages.

Finally, Dixie. Dixie spent the morning preparing the notes (using Pages of course) for the afternoon music and movement workshop she is planning for all of our English teacher students. She is requesting that we go over some of the lyrics with our students, prior to the Wednesday workshop of songs and games. She will be handing out the lyrics on the bus this morning.

There was a triumph at lunch in the Porridge restaurant. Dixie successfully ordered a delicious meal of pork spare ribs, fried vegetable dumplings and an excellent eggplant dish for the four of us.

After lunch, Dixie and Nancy walked to what's left of Kunming's Old Town and the Bird and Flower Market (the indoor, four story one that sells everything except birds and flowers). I am sure, if pressed, they will display the trophies they collected during their outing.

Oh yes, me. If you insist. I was modestly trying to avoid revealing the brilliant repair I made to the corroded battery compartment of the team's boom box. It had been damaged by leaky batteries. I will spare you my treatise on "The Theory and Practice of Repair in the Field Without Tools or Parts". Briefly, the repair was accomplished using Dixie's nail file, my trusty Swiss Army Knife and a few brass paper fasteners commandeered from our resource room.

Finally (for real this time) at dinner, John read the journal for Friday, Nancy read the journal for Saturday and our reunited group had a lively discussion about all of the day's events.

Respectfully submitted,
Leon

Saturday June 26, 2010

Thought for the day: True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.” -- Felix Emmanuel Schelling, American educator and scholar (1858–1945)

A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, as Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, declared. (But he lived between 604 BC and 531 BC.) The philosopher may have begun that journey in the Western Hills of Kunming, where Jim, Esther, and I, plus students Zoe and Yen, and their friend, Yu Wei, discovered that a single step past Dragon’s Gate began a journey of a thousand more steps: up past a temple, up and along a narrow precipice where the view of Lake Dian and the city were spectacular, up through a cave-like tunnel, up more steps that twisted and turned, until we reached the cable cars — really, a chair lift — that gently and quietly carried us just over the trees on the hillside, back down to the parking lot.

Then our guide hired what turned out to be a rattletrap of a van to ride down the rest of the hill. The doors were barely attached, the interior was ragged, and part of the dashboard wasn’t operational. The driver was careful, though, and eased us onto a boulevard and kept driving. And driving. But we were ready for lunch, the time being after 2 o’clock. It seems there had been miscommunication about our destination, both between our companions and us, and between our companions and the woman negotiating the transportation. After turning around and taking a modern open-air conveyance to an ethnic village complex we hadn’t planned to visit, we decided just to take a bus back into the city. The 9:00 to 5:00 adventure included relaxed strolling, effortful climbing, almost scary moments, and camaraderie with our Chinese companions.

Other volunteers enjoyed Green Lake Park, the Provincial Museum, and exploring the contents of the resource room. What adventures will tomorrow bring?

-Nancy