Tag Archives: China

China, Chinglish, Languages

Beijing’s “Cheap” Way to Solve Chinglish / English: Downgrade the Importance of English in the Exams!

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The guys behind the “North Jing” (Beijing) are masters in particularly easy and remarkably cheap methods aimed at apparently solving problems. Want more people in the Subway and off the roads? Make Subway fares incredibly cheap. Still too many cars on the roads? Implement road rationing policies. Still still an excess of motorised wheels? Institute a cheap lottery system which is impossible to win for most of us. Still still still too many cars? Decrease the plates available for the lottery and reintroduce the “odd / even plate” rule on (unpredictable) Bad Air days. Oh and also increase penalties for those caught resisting the rules.

An excess of Chinglish in the city? Get some retired academics with limited overseas experience into a makeshift “experts committee” instead of — what can I say — qualified people. (For rail English, I have one as well — but these are award-winning professionals and seasoned travellers in the group instead of people who slipped in “through the back door”.) Make them translate a 50+ page book they wanted to do about “proper English for locals” from standardised English into Chinglish. (I’ve the copies on my hard drive: after submitting the ones I improved and put a lot of effort into, the “revised” ones by a Chinese professor who must have had just limited experience overseas were so “Chinglishified”, I ended up staring at a wall, thinking if my head should head there (pardon the pun) because of this shock of total, utter disbelief.) Oh, and in case you thought Stop Mouth at this train station with service to “Xuzhoudong” (Xuzhou East, but with the cardinal direction illegally using pinyin) station were anything out of the ordinary — well, let me tell you this: City authorities are floating the idea of lowering the total score for English on standardised university entrance exams, so they will in future weigh less. That’ll be 100 points instead of the 150 points. The sad practice of bored academic sermons, sadly, will see no changes.

City Hall is thus saying: To solve the city’s Chinglish problems and to “make English easier”, we are downgrading its importance. Guess what: that’s a mere formality. Still part of the exams will be — I swear — questions where locals see only one correct answer, but where two correct answers will be comprehended by native speakers of English from Europe and North America. I swear, this will be utter hell to all students. Downgrading English doesn’t solve the problem: it merely aggravates it. You will still be stuck with the average local unable to respond to your simplest-of-all-demands in English. You will still be stuck with bilingual essays that earn an A+ in Chinese — and merely, at best, probably a C in English. Oh, and not to mention the massive plagiarism in the academic world. How do you identify a paper from mainland China? Chinglish throughout, terrible grammar, and a way of thinking that just befuddles the average overseas academic. Is that what you want — or want to keep?… and I ask that to city authorities both before and after the points downgrade. Can you swear in the name of God Marx that you can totally annihilate, say, Chinglish, by downgrading the importance of English in the university entrance exams? (I really can’t see how that could work.)

Always willing to listen to a second opinion, I put this question forward to my class: Do you think we should downgrade English? Nearly all students sounded a clear NO — some were outright furious at the idea. It seems the new trend in China is to “throw up” on problems instead of solving it. HSR train crash (July 2011)? Downgrade new lines from 350 km/h to 250 km/h. Worsening smog? Force people through ridiculous lotteries just to get a car. Chinglish conquering Beijing? Downgrade the importance of (proper) English.

I’m pretty sure that, some years down the road (when “more competent” people with a fully functioning brain take over), we’ll take a second look at history — and regard that those who have run our failure of a capital in these years (at present) the same way as we looked at George W. Bush when he left office.

China

The David Feng Review of Plenary.ccp version 18.3

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I’m reviewing the recent 3rd Plenary of the Chinese Communist Party, now in “version 18.0” with Xi Jinping as its head honcho. Here’s my take on what version 18.3 of Plenary.app (sorry — CCP, not APP) — offers users (as in: users of “air” on Chinese territory; or more, rather, as in its “people”).

• SECOND KIDS: LIKE. I have never been a fanboy of the One-Child Policy simply because it makes all of us (as in the younger generation) like spoilt brats. I know this too well as I teach kids born in the 1990s — these are the antithesis of those in the Victorian era, where even writing with the left hand got you caned. (I’ve a Japanese / Swiss friend who was like that. Oh man, now if he was born a few decades “before” his time…) These days, if these kids don’t like your lesson, they tweet about it, tune into their iTunes on their iPhone (it actually is like this, technologically speaking), or just doze off. Even if you set the microphone on maximum volume and shake the room, booming the kid’s name again and again, the kid can just choose to leave the room. There’s no way you can do about this: it’s against the law to beat kids up or to “go against their interests”!

An only child is good when you’re the kid and you’re still aged about 9 or 10 — or so; nobody’s gonna steal your Lego! Then you enter what we all know as Adolescent Mode, and you find life on your own is just a bore. With a brother or sister, things might be much more different. Now that Chinese citizens can have two kids if only one of them is an “only child”, we will be seeing more competent kids — with less problems and a better way to actually talk to people.

• EDUCATIONAL REFORM: LIKE. I hate the National University Entrance Exams in China (aka Gaokao) even though I never had to go through one. It’s hell. If you crash out on The Big Day, your life is ruined. I know this since I know people who had to get an Associate Degree before getting one or more Bachelor’s Degrees. I am actually less pessimistic about the cancellation of “key courses” as it makes kids more socially competent: they can, instead, do extracurricular activities — and I myself loved that.

The new, SAT-like University Entrance Exams are like a gift from the academic / educational gods. I just hope I could set the English language exams so students aren’t brainwashed with Chinglish. Right now I’d say the great majority of English teachers in China are doing what they are not supposed to be doing — I’d say most of my colleagues would agree with this as well. Chinglish is all over the place. We’ve got to nix it. I also agree that schools and universities should revert to their academic selves instead of being pseudo-bureaucracies.

• NGOs: SCEPTICAL. One of the biggest issues with the China of today is the fact that there is virtually no breathing room for non-government organisations. Either you’re part of the .ccp/.gov apparatus, or you’re an individual who is free but never official (and the mandarins can — and will often elect to — ignore you). Starting even a computer or railways association can be extremely difficult due to the red tape. They have been talking about making it easier to start non-gov organisations but given how things have been in the past decades, I’d consider Taiwan-ish liberalisation next to impossible. A very real problem is how these NGOs will “interact” with the authorities. It’s not about whether or not you’re pro-PRC-establishment or not; under the Hu Jintao years, even the Chinese equivalents of YouTube were under government ownership. (Most of the clips were either fights in the Subway, rich ladies showing off their “bling-bling”, or soap operas from every last place imaginable — instead of being clips about political rallies and their “sensitive ilk”.)

If eventually NGOs would be allowed more rights to help society at large, then that’s OK. But until then, I remain highly sceptical in this regard. This can all be changed if a new law was made (or existing laws were changed) and we had this in print — black on white. Otherwise my scepticism remains.

I’m not advocating such massive NGO-ish changes in China as can be seen elsewhere. But it should not take hurdles to establish even — like — a chess club for a village in China.

I’ve a train to catch. More of my views on this later.

China, Chinglish, Languages, Rail

On the Road Again

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It’s late November. I like these late November days. First, the temps indoors are going up — we humans love places where the temps are just right — everyone should have those nice feelings of going into places where it’s nice and warm… and second, people are just calmer overall. 40+°C temperatures over summer means we will see (and have seen!) a few folks lose their calm — I took the train to Jilin once, and I saw passengers up in Second Class totally lose it as a few passengers from northeast China wrestled one another because someone was sitting in another guy’s assigned seat — or someone’s bag was probably an inch too long!

Talk about things to lose your calm over…

These past days have been filled with action on my end. I’m on the road again after one of the worst colds on record — for two weeks in late October and early November, I was out with a 40°C fever and a terrible throat that made me lose my voice for about two full days. In just four days, I completed trips to Xuzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Wuxi, met station crew from Xuzhou and Wuxi, and became honorary speaker and English consultant for stations in and around Xuzhou — so if you see Chinglish there, don’t yell at the railways — yell at me instead!

The city of Beijing has been having more blue sky days as of late. In fact, if you’re armed with a car, it’s one of the best seasons to be in and around the Jing. Your best photo shots come out from days right after the cold, northernly winds “greet” the city, where you’ll get at least one or two days of blue skies without feeling like it’s Siberia (with only chillier wind giving you a hard time).

I’ve taken some good shots of the Jing in past years, but these days, my “mobile machines” are trains, not cars. I’m thinking of Zhengzhou for Friday — another round of railway Chinglish extermination, as usual. To me, the title “Honorary Speaker and English Consultant” for Xuzhou means only one thing, really:

“Doctor Chinglish Exterminator David Feng”.

China, Street Level China

Street View China: Autumn in Beijing

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The centre of town is chronically plagued by that nasty PM 2.5 (the media made it worse by “announcing” the “invention” of PM 0.5, thus negating just about all of City Hall’s efforts), but on the outskirts, it’s a very different matter. Here on the Nankou-Jiantou Highway in northwestern Beijing’s district of Changping, it’s natur pur.

Here in the same pic: shades of red, yellow and green. The way autumns always were meant to be.

I believe in results, not just propaganda. If the government was serious it would have acted with much more force. City Hall was andantino before the Olympics, but right now, five years after the “magic of Olympian proportions”, they’re now back to larghissimo — in essence, larghissimo sostenuto. Those in power with a brain should be in vivacissimo, even prestissimo mode, and should add a dash of fortissimo, even furioso in terms of how they deal with polluters. The current state of affairs, sadly, is rather malinconico at times.

And it doesn’t start by forcing 50% of all cars off the road when the PM 2.5-o-meter reaches record new highs. That’s for incompetent mandarins. I’d say, slap a flat fare of CNY 100 on anyone driving their cars on any day (half fare if you live inside the city centre). Slap double fare on cars outside of Beijing. Charge the police and military (except for those on active duty). Charge even diplomats (if you live in the same city, you’re “farting away” regardless of what flag you fly).

Più veloce! I’d like to see more such Blue Sky Days for the centre of the capital — rather than to see it relegated to the outermost outskirts of town.

China, Chinglish

Sending the Makers of Chinglish Back to Their…

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Makers.

There — I did it this way because having two appearances of “makers” in the same sentence would sound kind of weird, no?

David Feng speaking at Tuanjiehu

Lest you thought I aped Steve Ballmer, nope. It wasn’t an excess of some North American comedy either. Let me tell you guys one thing: the worst thing than can happen when your mouth is less than an inch away from the microphone — is to bore the living and dead #beep out of people. I’m not kidding you. I had those terrible lessons in my BEc years in university because that teacher sat in one of these positions:—

  • mouth fixed in front of mic;
  • eyes fixed on sunken screen;
  • hands fixed on scroll mouse

and delivered an (un)academic sermon for 90 minutes straight. Jeez. After 15 minutes, I gave it up and favoured a little Lonely Planet guide into Hong Kong.

Whenever I speak I favour a handheld mic for the simple reason it gets me away from the lectern. First, you’ve got to move your eyeballs, so there goes all that (potential) drowsiness. Second, you can actually do crazy things with the thing, as you’re no longer chained to any one place in particular. You also have total control over the crazy noises you do. These days in China, presentation counts.

And the content, too, by the way. Today in my two-hour lingo sermon (which thankfully had nobody sleeping; this is a major problem here in China), I proceeded to rip open Chinglish at face value and tell people what made this weird lingo concoction of ours up. Inspired were about 60 or 70 people in the increasingly internationalising (that’s a word, I guess!) community of Tuanjiehu in eastern central Beijing. Yep, senior citizens, but also young kids from universities in town. Turns out there were a few things of note:—

  • English distinguishes between plural and single forms; in Chinese, the characters don’t reflect on that at all;
  • English has spaces; in contemporary mainland China, they’re all but gone;
  • There are a few words which have more than one meaning, and often the wrong meaning is written on the signs

which was why we’ve Chinglish on our signs. I didn’t feel any better when I spotted a few more in western Beijing’s district of Mentougou (one of these folks I know who might be in charge of Chinglish is going to get a pretty stern warning from me soon), but rest assured — I’m here to get rid of the whole thing.

Don’t you feel much more at ease when you’re told to let passengers exit first instead of this random bit?… “After first under on, do riding with civility…”

Picture credit: Co-host Alison Zhou. I do radio programmes with her every Wednesday afternoon from 15:00-16:00 Beijing time. You can’t miss us; we’re also to be heard online at am774.com.

Commentary

So — Is It “Beijing South” Railway Station or “Beijingnan”?

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New railway standards published last year now mean that the railway station in southern Beijing south of the main station, which in Chinese is known as 北京南站 (Pinyin: Beijingnan Zhan) is to be known as the rather odd-sounding “Beijingnan” Railway Station instead of the standardised “Beijing South” Railway Station. That’s a little bit like renaming the Zürich Main Station as the Zürich “Zong” (Zong 总 means “main” in Chinese) station for Chinese, or to use transliterated German for Chinese readers — 苏黎世豪普特站 (Sulishi Haopute Zhan in Pinyin, which simply means Zurich “Haupt” station — it doesn’t tell you it really is the main station!). Worse is a Big Apple application: imagine calling Grand Central Station “Zhongyang” Station! (“Zhongyang” in Chinese means “central”.)

However, before you torment the railways in a fit of fury and utter confusion, consider the pros and cons:—

PROS OF USING PINYIN

  • Apparently, this would make it easier for taxi drivers and locals not familiar in English to show you where the stations are.
  • Train direction signage uses mainly Pinyin (but then again, they were mainly designed in the 20th century — HSR signage on trains still use English; intercity trains to Tianjin say “Beijing South – Tian Jin”, albeit the extra blank in Tianjin).
  • Train tickets use Pinyin (but note here that they used to use English, certainly for HSR, especially before the Pinyin standards came out).
  • Language neutrality: Beijing’s south station is Peking-Südbahnhof in German, Pékin Gare de Sud in Franglais French, and so on. Now if everyone just said Bahnhof / Gare Beijingnan, that’d make it supposedly easier.

But then again that’s not all sides of the story told…

WHY WE SHOULD STILL USE ENGLISH INSTEAD
(as in why Pinyin doesn’t work out great)

  • First, this goes against a comparatively new (edition 2010) railway signage standard book published by the former Rail Ministry, which mandated the use of English instead of Pinyin for direction indicators (South, North instead of Nan, Bei).
  • Second, expats I’ve talked to say that the point that locals not knowing South (in English) is a moot point — if they don’t speak English, and you speak Chinese, then the name issue won’t be an issue anyway (you couldn’t talk to them in the same lingo in the first place!).
  • Foreigners in China and overseas also point to the fact that as they are still using the English words for Railway Station, that they’d might want to use the English for the cardinal direction of the station anyway.
  • Obviously, sticking in Nan (Pinyin Chinese) in an English description is suspect Chinglish. (But dissecting the Chinese name of the city, too, would be Chinglish!) Also, you now have a case of mixing parts of words that don’t belong in the language you’re using.
  • Academics based in Beijing point out that this only goes to do international travellers in China a disservice — train regulars in China also agree, saying that if Beijing South was to be used, people would at least look at the station “the right way” on a map, where as Beijingnan would simply leave them confused.
  • I’ve seen ticket sales staff at Beijing South telling international travellers that trains to Guangzhou leave from Beijing West, not Beijingxi Railway Station. They’ve got to get used to a standard that doesn’t sound right.
  • Think also about the massive changes required in the city metro signage. Line 9’s station at Beijing West Railway Station, for example, doesn’t say Beijingxi Railway Station! How about giving that money to kids that need it the most? (Corrupt officials might also eye after that bit of cash — for a potential secret purchase of Mao Tai! But I kind of digress.)
  • Finally, something has to be said about that massive amount of money that has to be wasted in replacing signage bit-by-bit in China. That’s not really a sustainable way of feeding into GDP growth that lasts!

I’d like to hear from you what you think should be the best translation — Beijing South or Beijingnan — and the best way to do this is if you emailed me (or tweeted me on Twitter, giving your reason). Later I plan to do a much more detailed bit research in this — but because it will involve giving some personal information I have to get the secure form working first!

I look forward to the day when I arrive at the Baoding HSR seeing signs that welcome me to the Baoding East Railway Station, instead of the present-day make-believe “Baodingdong” Railway Station.