Catastrophe & Physical side effects of studying Chinese (February 2008)
“…how strange it is to notice that the circus of torture has shifted to the Eustachian tube…”

"U.S. Embassy burned down! News, News!". When I hear this news I'm in the subway. If my Chinese had been better I would have bought a newspaper, but as it is now I only understand the part "... Meiguo huo” (“America fire. .”.) somehow the connection with ‘something being on fire’ is far away. My girlfriend Li is the one who translates the message for me, but as she does, she adds some Chinese business culture with it. She explains that selling newspapers in China is a dramatic event: regularly the same famous Chinese singer dies, the earth in Japan tears open and almost on a weekly basis the American Embassy lights on fire. As a Hendrix fan it reminds me of the Peter Gunn Theme: “Catastrophe you’ve always been a part of me. I see you in my dreams; I see you when I dream; you are my catastrophe.” But although the trick is new to me, to most of my fellow passengers it’s not. In the compartment we are in, no newspapers are sold and besides mine, no smile is reaped. After our stop we leave the vendor with his catastrophes behind and pick up our bike to continue.

Today at the end of February, spring has suddenly kicked in. When we leave the subway station a milky sun is looking down upon us, pumping up the mercury to 18 degrees. A few days ago, it was still freezing during daytime. In the dry climate of Beijing the sun shines 260 days a year. Unfortunately enough, because of the smog sunny days don’t necessarily go together with clear blue skies. After a ten minute ride my hands smell of exhaust fumes. The streets however are spic-and-span. Every day they are cleaned by an army of Chinese with tricycles, bins, brooms and long tongs to pick up paper. If there were a sieve which you could use to purify the air manually, without a doubt thousands of Chinese would do so daily. Let’s hope nobody invents such a sieve-straw.

I haven’t scheduled in a lot of time to explore the “capital C” cultural things yet, but I love to stroll through the vegetable markets and the big department stores. The stores are called Bai Huo Shang Dian: this means “Hundred Sales Store”. The Hundred Sales Store isn’t really one big store but a collection of many small stalls. They are crammed together in big five floored buildings. Compared to shopping in Europe, which I hate, shopping in these stores is a real event. The way the products are grouped: plastic domestic equipment with plastic domestic equipment, electronics with electronics etc, invites bargaining and bargaining in China is fun. Usually I can gain some respect by playing tough. Then the deal is sealed with a smile and a well intended compliment: “Ni hen lihai!” (you are very shrewd). However the unwritten rules of bargaining aren’t as transparent as one might think. Sometimes I find a raving Chinese in front of me shooting his way-out-of-my-Chinese-vocabulary words at me as if his mouth were a machine-gun. Fortunately these are just rare incidents.

To schedule in some Culture I bought a book about hidden places in Beijing that I want to visit by bike. The book is filled with nice facts like: the Forbidden City has exactly 9999 rooms; the nails on (almost) all doors are nailed in rows of nine; all stairs consist of nine or a multiple of nine steps. The book doesn’t explain why the “nine” is special. Wikepedia is only a little bit more informative and explains that the number nine was historically associated with the Emperor of China, that the Emperor's robes often had nine dragons and that Chinese mythology held that the dragon has nine children. But maybe more important: the number nine (jiu) is pronounced the same way as the word for “long-lasting”.

The book goes on. The biggest stone that is part of the ground structure of the Forbidden City weighs 250,000 kilos and was transported from its original location to the Forbidden City in 28 days. The 20,000 workers assigned this Herculean task waited until winter came to build a fifty kilometer long road of ice. This was hundreds of years ago. But recent history also has some interesting facts to recall. At the end of the book I find some facts about the symbolism that was used in the modification of Tiananmen Square in 1999. Most of the stones used for the pavement are 120mm by 96mm with a thickness of 21mm. Those measurements refer to the size of the Chinese population (1.2 billion), the size of the country (9.6 million square kilometer) and the wish to prosper in the 21st century. Other stones measure 120mm x 96mm with a thickness of 50mm, the latter referring to the age of the People's Republic of China. In other words a book to enjoy!

What else is new. I started studying Chinese on a daily basis with a private tutor a few weeks ago. I find it hard, frequently boring, but I am proud to notice some minor improvements. Finally, after a long struggle, I have stopped being constantly aware of having a tongue and jaws. I have dragged them around for weeks. All the small muscle pains – didn’t know I had so many muscles in that area – are healed. The crazy thing is that these muscle pains came up like flu symptoms, soon after I began intensively practicing the impossible sounds the Chinese language consists of. Now I am concentrating on my hearing and how strange it is to notice that the circus of torture has shifted to the Eustachian tube or whatever the place is called where it hurts. To be honest I find these physical side effects the most interesting part of studying Chinese. The way words are formed in Chinese can be very poetic. But the joy I get from this is small considering the eternally long river of repetitions in which I take my daily bath.