Chinese

After taking all the business / economics classes I need in order to get full credits for my Bachelors degree back in Denmark, I had 3 hours per week remaining. It was not necessary to use them, but because my schedule is not that demanding, and mostly for fun, I chose to take a Chinese (Putonghua) course.

After spending a minimal amount of time studying Putonghua in Denmark, I expected to be in the beginners class here at CUHK. But after a quick talk with my laoshi (teacher), she told me I would better fit in in the advanced beginners class. However, that class contains people who have had Putonghua for three semesters, and focusses on reading characters and basic writing - clearly showing the ambition of the Chinese. I am struggling to keep up with the others, especially speaking in class, but I am learning at a pace not seen before. The way of the Chinese - fall behind and you are on your own - is diametrically opposed to the Danish way, which emphasizes helping the weak. Thus the two systems have very different outcomes: the Chinese have a very strong elite, but a very large educational gap in society, while the Danes are more egalitarian, but are simply less bright and hard-working (on average) at the very top.

I thought it would be interesting to see how I take being the worst student in class, and consequently how much I learn from this learning method, so I decided to stick with it. It doesn't affect my grade transcript anyway. But it is definitely like nothing I have ever tried before.

Chinese characters evolved from pictograms, resembling the objects or ideas they refer to. The characters have to be learnt individually, as there is no immediate clue to pronunciation. For this reason they use "pinyin", which is the word as it sounds based on the English alphabet (see picture for the first page of my text book, characters to the left, pinyin translation to the right - note: no English!). It seems a daunting task, but quickly one appreciates the beauty and logic of the language, combining basic concepts to produce complex ideas.

Basic characters such as 山(shan - mountain) 人 (ren - person) and 果 (guo - fruit) bare some resemblance to what they mean; for example "fruit" simply looks like a fruit tree. When combined with other characters, for example 火山 (huo shan - fire mountain) or 美国人 (meiguo ren - America person), they create new meanings or words, "volcano" and "American" respectively. Other times, one of the characters is used as a phonetic reference, so 园 (yuan - park) is made up of the visual character 口 (kou - opening / mouth / enclosure) and the character for money 元 (yuan). The internal character has no other purpose than to remind the reader how it is pronounced.

Once one is able to recognize certain characters, deducing meaning becomes easy. So if you know that 好 means good and 吃 means eat, what does 好吃 mean? And if 小 means small, what can you infer from the words 小吃，小路，and  小学? (Answers given below)

Grammatically there are huge differences. Chinese do not really conjugate verbs, and the construction of sentences is quite peculiar. So while recognizing characters might be slightly logical, finding a correct sentence will be a challenge. An example: "你好, 我的名字是 Joachim Satchwell" means "Hello, my name is Joachim Satchwell". But literally, the characters mean "You well, I-belonging to name is Joachim Satchwell".

Learning a language is so helpful to understanding the culture. Chinese has 4 different characters relating to table-tennis smashes, showing their enthusiasm for the sport, and the characters reveal a patriarchal, agricultural society since the character for "male" is the composition of "plough" and "field". Unfortunately everyone in Hong Kong speaks Cantonese, but I will practice my Putonghua when I head for Cheng Du on Saturday.

Answers: 好吃 (hao chi - literally good eat, meaning "delicious"), 小吃 (xiao chi - literally small eat, meaning "snack"), 小路 (xiao lu - literally small road, meaning "path"), 小学 (xiao xue - literally small study, meaning "primary school")