I realize that these random once quarterly posts aren't good for anything like a regular readership, but I decided to get with the program and put this on the blog.

Over the course of the last two years my language skills in mandarin have progressed significantly. Right now, I think it is far to say I speak mandarin and can read Chinese with a high level of proficiency (I still don't think I've attained an advanced level of proficiency, or the much more distant horizons that may be considered fluency that follow it).

An interesting wrinkle, though, which I think is significant for reasons that I will make apparent later, is that in addition to mandarin I also speak some of the local dialect. The dialect is not altogether a third language, but the pronunciation does have some differences, and also some local vocabulary, that when learned, help my life to go much more smoothly here, as that dialect is after all what everybody speaks. (Most can do their best to speak mandarin with you, but it isn't pretty. Speaking dialect, if possible, is quite a bit more convenient. It is also perilous though, because you can start to have a hick accent to your mandarin if you aren't careful.)

However, one of the special aspects of this dialect is that it is always spoken very loudly, and most of the time sounds kind of angry. The city is a loud place, the people are loud people, and known for speaking their mind and losing their temper quickly and loudly, so if you learn to speak mandarin here, you will be loud, and I am no exception.

But not only am I loud - I was taken aback a few months ago when some classmates told me that I almost have entirely different personalities when I am speaking english and mandarin. The english-speaking me is the more reserved person all of you know, while the mandarin-speaking me is loud, more extroverted, and bold, and occasionally known for bursting into dialect with the occasional cab driver that tries to rip off the foreigner (and for this reason I usually recuse myself of the responsibility of dealing with unpleasant cabbies, best to keep your mouth shut and not regret anything later).

I think some of the reasons for me being so much more extroverted in mandarin are common to language learners in general. I have less of a sense of the need to say something exactly right, or with the right tone and implication, because as a language learner you don't have that luxury, you just have to spit out what you're trying to say and make do. Thing is, I haven't gotten any quieter as my language has gained more nuance, I've retained the extroverted aspect from that. I'm curious if other people have had this experience.

Another reason unique to my particular situation is that I have been learning in a place that is simply very loud. The people here are loud. I yell in restaurants all the time to get the servers' attention, just like the locals sitting next to me. Nothing wrong with that, and I personally think it is kind of fun, but studying here does train me that speaking softly is fruitless (really, it is!), and that you better be loud or nobody will hear you. This is one of the famously frustrating things about mass transit, and especially long journeys on buses/trains in this part of the country - there is always somebody having a cell phone conversation that you can hear in literally the entire bus. There is no volume nob, only "unbearably-make-your-neighbor-who-is-taking-a-nap-furious loud". I'm not quite that bad, but I'm loud. It isn't as bad when I'm speaking mandarin, but it is when I'm speaking dialect.

Beyond my own personal experience as a learner, I can also say I've seen this happen to other people, as well. I have a friend who is very soft spoken when speaking english, but when speaking mandarin, is almost suddenly incredibly assertive, quite straightforward, and not exactly gentle. I do not exaggerate - it is a night and day difference.

Interesting how your environment and the kinds of people you are around while picking up your second language can influence your personality in your second language, both positively and negatively.

Today I just finished Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. I first got into Calvino when a friend gave me a copy of If on a winter's night a traveler, and I really enjoyed the dramatically different style of writing that characterizes Calvino, and his ability to be more or less continually thought provoking, although not be always working towards a clear thesis. He's just an extremely engaging author with a very unique style that is constantly, as if by nature, making statements touching on hermeneutics, philosophy of language, good and evil, etc. - but never dry.

Invisible Cities is a dialogue between Marco Polo and the Kublai Kahn about the cities that Polo has experienced. As Polo describes city after (fictional) city, he deals with issues such as:

1) The interplay between language and what it actually represents - language destroying and reducing the represented.
2) The cyclical nature of good and evil in human communities (or, one might say, the pervasity of evil even in good).
3) The power of choice, as choice in the present dictates pasts and futures, and prohibits some pasts and futures.
4) The accumulation of human experience - at one point, Polo describes a city where all the people he sees resemble people he once knew that are dead.
5) Differentiating the imagined from the real.
6) The afterlife.

And that's just a few of the things he brings up. Quite an interesting, thought provoking book. If you're looking for an unconventional, deep, yet not dry piece of literature to work through, I'd recommend this book, although for a first time Calvino reader, If on a winter's night a traveler might be a better starting point. Both are well worth your time.

This year I again enjoyed my (Christmas) seasonal read of Athanasius' On the Incarnation, and found a few new points of interest that hadn't stood out to me before. While I won't summarize everything (the book is short, free online, and well worth reading), I thought I'd post a few of those thoughts.

1) On the Incarnation is ancient literature, so it has the feel of a work that deals with issues according to an ancient epistemological point of view. Athanasius would be endlessly heckled by those of the modern or even postmodern mindset for making any number of claims that they might say cannot be substantiated, are merely statements of opinion, are too universal, etc., but my guess is that Athanasius wouldn't be bothered by them. I find the ancients' point of view quite refreshing, because although I think they did care about being careful thinking according to all they knew, my feeling is that they didn't waste so much time on small arguments only meant to filibuster discussing the real deep issues, they would simply substantively disagree (imagine that!). Although technical arguments on the periphery of an issue can and often should be made (I am not suggesting they are necessarily irrelevant), for the purposes of good thinking and discussion they can actually in practice be far less important than the actual issue at hand, if they merely serve to protect us from the discomfort of actually addressing the real issues.

2) In relation to the above point: Athanasius has a big thing for proving the authenticity of Jesus' work based on the fact evil spirits were being expelled from people and places based on his power. See how that would go over with people today if you mentioned that as a reason for Christian belief these days!

3) Final remark: C.S. Lewis foreword (in my edition) points out that it is only by keeping the fresh breezes of the past flowing through our minds can we keep our thinking clear of the mistakes of our modern day frame of mind. I wholeheartedly agree, this book is quite interesting and refreshing food for thought during this season.

Today was a good day of rest. The weather was really nice so it was a good day to have a relaxing walk and explore an area I frequent yet rarely explore (I am a creature of habit).

Unfortunately I couldn't find any good park recommendations (green spaces: something this area is woefully lacking) so I decided to walk about another half mile up a road from one of my usual haunts and just see what was going on.


As I walked, I dropped in on the plant and flower market and looked at plants, birds, and goldfish while eating some walnuts I bought from a street vendor. Incredibly relaxing.


I ended up walking up to a tea store and drinking some black tea with the two girls who worked there for about fifteen minutes or so. After that, I went to my usual tea house and had some of this.


(Note: this is a normal way of drinking loose leaf tea. After the first round of hot water the leaves are sufficiently saturated that they sink to the bottom, and you can just drink it straight of the glass without any leaves coming with it.)

Recently I've accrued quite a collection of tea. I have black, oolong, jasmine, and two different kinds of green tea in my cupboard, and all of them are loose leaf. This stuff is West Lake Dragonwell green tea - it was incredibly good. It was good enough that I walked the quarter of a mile back up the hill I had just come down to buy some from the tea store I had visited just before!

On the way home I dropped in to a new Brazilian BBQ restaurant and had a look at the menu - next time I'm in the area, I may try it out.

All in all, a good day.

Good writing is not begun with caveats.

This is not good writing.

So, here's the caveat: there's a lot of good journalism out there on the Olympic games that have just concluded in Beijing. There's a lot of bad journalism, too - it seems to me one of the wonders of the free press is copious amounts of bad journalism - yet if you've been reading major outlets (such as the BBC, NY Times, CS Monitor, etc.) you've hopefully seen some good material (although no journalistic source is immune to the print-sensationalist-rubbish-about-China syndrome). I've read a lot, both in mainstream and in less traditional media. In the following remarks I'm going to distill what I've read along with my personal experience. There will not be links, sorry - I've read too much, and don't have time to link things out. If I get a chance I may add some at the end at a later date.

What follows is just my opinion, and nothing more. But maybe you'll think it is interesting.

So that's that.

The Olympics have been a huge source of anxiety, hope, and expectation for the Chinese people since Beijing was selected by the IOC to host the 2008 games. Since the treaty ports were blasted open during the First and Second Opium Wars, they have had a national inferiority complex. Westerners have short cultural memories, but Asians, especially Chinese, do not. Things have been improving for them since the 1978 "Reform and Opening" of Deng Xiaoping, and in this thirtieth anniversary year, they hoped to stun the rest of the world by finally emerging to be a peer (or even superior) to other countries for the first time in recent memory. So, it is an understatement to say that on 8/8/2008 (8 is a lucky number in Chinese owing to its association with a similar sounding verb that means to make money) China had big hopes and ambitions for the proceedings of the games.

When the games begun it seemed that the initial flaps relating to the torch relay around the globe (and through other controversial places) and the Beijing area pollution had been mostly worked through. Yet I think to answer the question "what was the Olympics really about, and what are the effects?" you have to first say that the answer to that question depends on where you are. The story is very different inside and outside of China.

The Picture Inside of China
The Chinese people were very proud of their opening and closing ceremonies. They were proud of the face that Beijing gave to the rest of the world. But what made them most proud were their athletes: if you looked at Chinese sources, you would find the Chinese leading the medal count, even finishing the Olympics in the number one position owing to their superiority in the gold medal column (if you looked at NBC's website, you'd see that America won, as they opted for an overall criteria). Most interesting to me on this point was something I heard one woman say: "China is winning in gold medals, and we should. If we did not, it would be a loss of face for us." Americans are serious about athletics, but I don't think that as a nation America would be shamed if it didn't get the most medals. Indeed, I think hardly any Americans would care. But in China, the whole country looked to their athletes to represent their emergence from underneath a veil of international inferiority, and they did. It was especially important that they did so as they were competing on home turf. Loss is bearable abroad, but not at home.

China also saw the international community come to China and be very impressed. There weren't many complaints that were noted in the domestic media - and this is for a reason: most foreigners were amazed. Well done, China.

Some have suggested (half suggested, half hoped?) that China's Olympic achievement may help it rid itself of the "Sick Man of Asia" self-image. I also hope for this, but I'm not sure whether it will or will not be of help. The point remains: when a person or country gain self-confidence, they quit sweating the small stuff. Overreactions to normal kinds of criticism diminish. Self-confidence brings with it the ability to change, which is an implicit admission that things may not have been as they should have. A country with anemic self-confidence can't experience huge changes as effectively because they don't have the prerequisite self-confidence that would enable them to even see their faults. Low self-confidence has in the past lead China to view outsiders and critics as wrong by default. Increased self-confidence could, but may not necessarily, help things.

All told, China as a country has had a good confidence boost from the Olympics. Their athletes performed well. People were impressed, and enjoyed themselves. That's about what they were looking for.

The Picture Outside of China
Outside of China, things are different: people will discuss things because it is not their own problems they are discussing, and the press is free, so is able to and has brought up sad things that did happen during the Olympics. Internet access was restricted, the IOC looked foolish before the world when promises were made but not delivered, protests set to take place in designated protest parks were all magically "resolved", these kinds of things, although overshadowed by some glowing reviews, and certainly the 8 gold medals of Michael Phelps(!), were definitely present in the worldwide media. These kinds of stories did not enter China, due to media controls and censorship.

It is true, that without question the rest of the world was impressed with China, and would tell you so. Yet there were still many reservations that journalists from around the world had as they went to Beijing and saw things that ought not to have happened in an Olympic host city. So, the foreign response to Beijing was both impressed but also doubtful about whether the beautiful face Beijing presented to the world really represented deeper change.

Conclusion: How will the two meet?
What remains to be seen is what will happen when a new kind of Chinese self-confidence coincides with an impressed but still skeptical world. I hope that the world will be able to engage China more constructively, but this of course depends on China being willing to be constructively engaged. One thing they proved is that they are willing to do anything that benefits them (host the Olympics), but can be negligent to fulfill the harder parts of the bargain (allow meaningful protests, uncensored internet access, etc.) that they promise in exchange. I venture no guess as to whether China will continue to milk the world for all it is worth (as long as we're letting them off the hook so easily) or will actually be willing to engage and not renege on its concessions. They may or may not - it is not just an issue of self-confidence, but also one of pragmatic governance. Whatever the world will let them get away with, they will continue to do, and many countries cannot financially or geopolitically afford the prospect of being tough with China on certain issues. In fact, simply "being tough" is probably totally unconstructive. How to engage China in a thoughtful way will be challenge for the rest of the world in years to come.

Things are certainly changing. But probably not on the schedule the rest of the world has in mind, and the extent and kind of change in motion is still doubtful. How things work out in the next year or two following the Olympics will be an interesting indicator of things to come.