The trilingual's dilemma

Learning a new language is a unique thrill. For me there's nothing quite like putting together a chaotic bundle of new sounds, ambiguous rules, and a generous helping of guesswork in order to connect to a new set of potentially millions of people on a level you never could have before. Anthropological conventional wisdom holds that you cannot learn a language without learning a culture as well, and I tend to agree. So I find a deep satisfaction in the process, something special and different and incredibly rewarding.

Learning Chinese brought me amazing places and allowed me to see and do wonderful things, and I'll always be grateful for that (for the curious, details of those adventures can be found in the initial years of this blog.) And, frankly, being a Chinese speaker has become a point of pride and identity for me. Not very many Americans speak Chinese, and I think some part of me likes that this ability shows I am willing to work hard, take my own path, and try new things. But part of coming to Spain was deciding to put Chinese on the back burner for a little bit.

I originally abandoned Spanish at age 13, jumping ship in high school for the more exotic (and verb conjugation-free) Chinese. For the next ten years, my Spanish language acquisition was pretty spotty. My knowledge of the language amounted to a bizarre mix of three years of middle school basics (Where is the library? The library is in the center of the city...), Rosetta Stone, podcasts, six weeks worth of mornings-and-nights (with creamy English-teacher-training-class centers) in Mexico, and a handful of weeks in Spain. It was only once I hit my 20s and spent the aforementioned time in Spanish-speaking countries that I realized I was ready to face the grammar challenges my 13-year-old self so loathed.

When I started meeting with a language partner in Boston prior to my departure for Spain, I was painfully aware of my inability to, say, speak in the past tense or express in any way my opinions on a topic. I also suffered from frequent code-switches (when the brain reaches for a word in one language and comes back with it in another)-- often I wanted to speak Spanish and found Chinese on my lips instead. It was incredibly frustrating, but with some practice I got to a place where I could access the two brain folders marked "foreign language" separately. I wrote about the beginnings of my trilingualism in this blog during my stay in Mexico, and I came to Spain feeling optimistic.

It took me a few weeks to banish errant Chinese from my brain, but after a month of immersion here in Palencia I felt I had succeeded. Around that time I started my Spanish classes at the Escuela de Idiomas (90 euros for an entire year's worth of courses, 2 or 3 times a week! Gotta love socialized education.) Although part of me balked at being put in the "Basico 2" level, in the end it was the right choice. Yes, I could express myself at a more intermediate level, but there were a huge number of grammatical holes in my language base that no amount of podcasts, Spanish soap operas, or Colombian pop songs could have ever filled.

Instead, with the help of my classes, I started to feel more solid in my linguistic footing. I could finally confidently speak in past tense, I was able to express myself generally in social situations, and I could go to bank and the grocery store, could generally Get Things Done. But the proverbial sword is double edged, of course. I wrote here in my last entry about visiting Valladolid, but there's one part that I left out:

During our program's orientation in Madrid, I met the only Chinese language assistant in Castilla y Leon. Her English name is Lydia, and I was very excited to introduce myself and get her contact information. Lydia and I met for lunch during my visit to Valladolid... and try as I might, I could not get my Chinese to come out and play. It was the opposite feeling of my time in Boston, as I struggled to express myself and failed. My sentences were a garbled mix of Chinese and Spanish, and there were points when I literally had no idea which language I was speaking and only recognized I had sprinkled random Spanish adjectives into a sentence after the fact. It was like I had lost control of my language center altogether. I felt bad for Lydia, who was confused and trying to help, but I felt even worse for myself. I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't proud of my six years of Chinese and when being a Chinese speaker wasn't part of who I was. It was horrifying to think I had lost so much hard work in less than a month.

Luckily, since that lunch I've gained a little bit of optimism. A few weeks afterward, I spent an hour trying to help my Spanish teacher communicate with a brand new arrival from Zhejiang. It was the closest to an aneurysm I hope I will ever experience, switching back and forth between Spanish and Chinese-- at some points I could barely find words in English. But in the course of my efforts I discovered that switching between Spanish and English, then English and Chinese, made it a lot easier. Something about the relationship between my two foreign tongues was causing dissonance. But I have found that cutting out that dynamic (or doing something to ease the transition, like practicing writing or listening to Chinese language music) seems to help some of what I've lost come back to me. And that, in turn, helps me feel all that work, and that linguistic and cultural world in general, is not lost to me.

Life in Palencia is still chaotic, but as things settle down I have big plans, and one of them is to spend more time nursing my Chinese back to health (along with pitching to English-language magazines in Madrid, joining a gym, going to the market more often, and on and on...). Chinese is not totally absent from everyday Spanish life, after all: there is an entire genre of stores (the kind that sell cheap electronics and everyday necessities) that are referred to as "Chinos" after the most common ethnic identity of their owners.

I could speak with the owners of these stores, practice with Lydia, and devote myself to trilingualism, yes. But I have to remember as well that things may never be the same as they were when I was writing my thesis in Yunnan, or even when I was just using the language to keep in touch with my friends and write articles for an immigrant newspaper in Boston. In gaining this gift of direct linguistic access to the world of Garcia Marquez, bullfights, tapas, tango, and Neruda, I have to lose something, too. But wasn't that always the way it was going to be, leaving Boston for something new?

Pong!

Will wonders never cease? It's only 8:21 and I'm almost done with my homework. We didn't have class or an activity until 6 PM, requiring a rushed dinner followed by desperate homework completion, character memorizing, and a late bedtime. Today, we were supposed to have a lecture from an Assistant Professor who teaches here at Yunnan Normal University (they call it "Shi Da" for short) he got about 20 minutes into his prepared two-hour power point presentation, but Lu Laoshi kept asking him to hurry up a little bit or skip over parts we had already learned. Then all of a sudden he lost his temper; yelled, in a torrent of Chinese, that he didn't feel like talking, we could do it ourselves, and he wasn't happy; and walked out, slamming the door behind him. This is a very un-Chinese display of temper, and we all didn't really know what to say. But it meant that once we watched the half-hour movie afterwards (a cool trippy/artsy memoir-documentary by a Beijing artist who was at the Tiananmen Square massacres) we were free to go and it wasn't even dinner time!

I don't mean to sound bitter, I'm learning a huge amount here, even if it can get exhausting. As mentioned in a previous entry, we have Chinese lessons from 8-12 every morning with a half hour break for Taiji (you probably know it pronounced as "tie chee".) After a lunch break we have a lecture on some topic or we go somewhere and have a lecture there (recently we went to a Kunming mosque. The Hui minority is Chinese people who practice Islam. It was really really interesting, seeing and hearing all the Arabic mixed with Chinese.) We've also been watching a lot of movies about Chinese history, and I'm starting to get how modern history shaped up the way it did, exactly what the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward were and why they were so horrible, and what part China has played in all the stuff I already knew about (WW I and II, the Korean War, etc.)

After we're done with all that and maybe some side trips-- we walked to the Minority Students University last week and met a bunch of students there, I made some new friends-- we have to find a place to eat dinner and then dive into homework (grammar, character memorization, reading comprehension... since we're only studying intensively for 5 weeks, they're working us hard.) And by the time we're finished, it's time to go to bed to get up at 7 AM again. But I have found time to do some cool things on the side, and the wonderful thing about this program is that they work in a lot of cool stuff in for us. For instance, today, instead of staying in the classroom the A, B, D, and E classes went to this huge food market right across from the gate to campus. I had no idea it was there-- I've walked past the tattered entrance at least 5 or 6 times, but there's a long pathway that leads to the market, and I never would have guessed that down that graying sidewalk were teeming stalls selling everything from live rabbits to pre-skinned pig trotters, from laundry hangers to chili peppers that are probably illegal to eat in the US. Our teachers came with, and Ashley and I taught them the English phrase "sensory overload"-- because it truly was. Too much to see, smell, hear, touch everywhere. I didn't bring my camera, but I'm definitely planning to go back.

We also went to the Western Hills on our day off from classes last Wednesday (a merciful break.) I'd already been with my parents in high school, which was wonderful because my stomach was acting up and I wasn't feeling up to climbing a mountain. Instead, I took the slow, stately cable car (I just code switched! More about that in a minute) and enjoyed a magnificent view of metropolitan Kunming and Lake Dian, which is freaking huge and stretched out pretty much as far as the eye could see. While on the cable car I saw what I swear was the world's cutest dog. He (I've decided it was a he) was sitting calmly next to his owner with his paws on the hand rail just like a person. So. Cute.

I've also had some adventures on my own. My tripmate John and I went to play Majiang (mahjong) with our expat friend Kevin (the Thai who lived in Oregon-- and to answer your question, Kitty, he has an Oregon sweatshirt). We were, of course, the only Westerners in the place, which was filled with old men and women and a few young people smoking and drinking tea. The most complicated part involves an intricate ritual of dealing the tiles, which still eluded me when we left. Otherwise the are similar to gin rummy with some strange twists thrown in. I even won a round! My favorite part is yelling "Pong!" when you can steal tiles from your opponent. Also, John and I were fascinated by an automated majiang table that will shuffle and redeal your tiles for you on its own.

I also ventured into the University Canting (cafeteria) last week. It was a complete madhouse, with gobs of Chinese people rushing everywhere. My confusion must have showed on my face, because a nice Chinese graduate student appeared at my side, asking, "Can I help to you?" He introduced himself as Jacky, an M.B.A. candidate and we spent the rest of the lunch talking, after he helped me get my food. I got sick over the weekend, but Jacky, Diana, and I had lunch yesterday as well at a restuarant near campus. We talked a lot about cultural differences (Jacky refused to believe that the drinking age in the US is 21) and taught each other some new words. It was quite fun until my la duzi started acting up again.

I've been making lots of Chinese friends, actually, which has been nice. The program set up a "language partner" program for us, which is really just "a huge pool of Chinese people who are curious about you and can speak English at least a little." We had a meet and greet on Ashley's birthday (there was cake) and after a flurry of cell phone number exchanges we've been on a number of outings. Diana, Tania, and I had dinner with a number of our new friends one evening, and they were extremely helpful and friendly, very interested to hear about American culture, telling us about what they learned of US History and their favorite cartoon characters (Winnie the Pooh, usually.) On Saturday Tania and John went with two Chinese girls to Green Lake Park, but I was, alas sick. Too bad: I missed John creating a scene trying to go in one of those plastic bubbles you can walk on water in. I think they're probably illegal in the US but they're huge here. Tania told me that all sorts of people were crowding around to see the wai guo ren (Foreigner) make a fool of himself. John does that a lot-- he bought this crazy pair of pajamas and has been wearing them around. He also has a bright pink iPod stocked with Disney songs. He goes to Tulane and was in New Orleands when the hurricane hit. He is also a National Merit Scholar. Strange kid. But nice: he's been lending me his computer to watch movies on while I've been sick. DVDs here are insanely cheap, and it's just a matter of time before I give in a buy my lot. Tania came home with 15 great movies for Y90 (less than $11), and I've been making my way through "Before Sunrise," "Love Actually," "My Neighbor Totorro," "Little Miss Sunshine," and "Almost Famous" ever since.

One more notable thing is the Chinese we speak as a group. I've been noticing that more and more we speak Chinglish together, which is really interesting. Conversations are peppered with questions like "Does anyone mei you kuai zi?" (does anyone not have chopsticks?) or "My pigu hurts" (my butt hurts.) This afternoon I was trying to conjugate the verb to drink unsuccessfully (my English is in fast decline) and Tania suggested "drink le"-- the "le" being the way one indicates past tense in Chinese. My Chinese is improving similarly-- I've now code switched twice during my time here. ("Code switching" happens when your brain reaches for a word in one language and comes up with the word in another. In my case, the words wore "impression" and "cable car"-- just two minutes ago.) I'm considering this a good sign. Also-- I ate a meal tonight and it didn't go right through me! Hurrah! Good signs everywhere.

Settling in (for now)

Classes have begun, affording to us at least a shadow of a routine. We study Chinese for 3.5 hours every morning-- from 8-12, with a half hour break at 10. During the first period we focus on Yufa (grammar structures) and shengci (vocabulary.) During the second period we focus on kouyu (spoken Chinese.) Lisa was in my class for the first day, but she was in Beijing last semester studying and found the subject matter too easy. Today, Sophie moved up from the level below me to try out something harder, but was struggling a bit. I could very well end up with my own class, which would be intense. I was placed in level D, out of A-F, which was a nice ego boost given how many of the people above me have lived in China for some amount of time-- actually, now that I think about it, it's all of them. I've been enjoying kouyu the most, because we have to speak for five minutes every day in front of the class about something, and I've discovered that I can discuss more sophisticated topics and ideas than I thought. Yesterday I was able to explain the smoggy mountain concept from my Argus article. Today I talked about approaching Chinese strangers at Salvadore's last night (I had to ask Chinese people about their opinions on something for homework, they were actually quite nice about it and we ended up exchanging phone numbers.)

During the break between classes, the program has found a Taiji master to teach us, and we go out and make fools of ourselves in the bright blue morning. We learn the slow,fluid movements as well as some more martial-arts flavored routines on a plaza in the middle of campus where University students are free to come gawk and laugh (and they do.) It's only been a few days, but we're already getting better, and the Taiji is a great way to relax between classes. Makes my knees hurt a little, although that could also be the walking up 6 flights of stairs 3 times a day (elevators are a rarity here.)

In the afternoons we do something cultural or education-related. Yesterday we walked to the Minority People's University and met English major students there. One of them is from a village near Xishuangbanna where three different minorities live--I can't help but think how interesting it might be to study how they interact and live together. Today we watched a fairly interminable movie all about modern Chinese history, called "The Mao Years." It was fairly interesting, I learned a lot about the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward that I didn't know before, but the movie was so long and I've been getting little sleep, and I ended up napping against my will.

Tomorrow we get a reprieve from classes-- we will visit the Western Hills of Kunming (a place I have actually already been) and hear a lecture about Buddhism, then get to explore the Daoist temples hewn into the rock. We won't get a reprieve like this every week, though: this newly established routine will last for another three weeks before our five-day "Yunnan Exploration Project" (where we choose a place to go in a small group and are responsible for getting there, finding places to stay, eating, and then writing a paper about it. We can go wherever we want and the program will pay for everything except airfare. How psyched am I???) After the project, we will continue with classes during a two-week homestay. The routine seems like it might get a little suffocating, but it's only 5 weeks, and nothing, at least in my experience, can stay boring in China.