Learning Hokkien in Old Xiamen

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
Excerpts from Carstairs' Amoy Dictionary
Click here for "Why Xiamen was called Amoy"

When Xiamen folk ask, "How did you learn Chinese?" I respond, "I picked it up off the streets over the years--and have been trying to put it back..." This usually gets blank stares, so I add, in typical Chinese self-deprecating fashion, "My Chinese is not really that good. And after 20 years even a parrot could pick it up!"

That sometimes gets a bit of a laugh--but I doubt even a parrot could learn Amoy.

I can envision a bright parrot picking up Mandarin, but not the nasal eight-toned Amoy Dialect (also called Minnan Dialect, Hokkien, Taiwan Dialect, etc.). In fact, the mere attempt can lead to insanity--at least according to Desmond Neill, a British army officer serving in Malay and the British Ministry of Labour in Singapore. He was sent to Kulangsu in the late 1940s to learn Hokkien.

Below are excerpts from Neill's absolutely delightful account of studying Hokkien in Amoy, ("Elegant Flower - First Steps in China", John Murray, London, 1956).

[pp. 7,8] Early May 1948 and the day for departure to Amoy had arrived. My ship, evidently not important enough to command a berth alongside the harbor, was anchored somewhere in the Roads behind an imposing array of other steamers, billowing clouds of black smoke in preparation for their sailing. Near Clifford Pier lay a disorderly armada of small sampans, which bobbed up and down on the languid waves like discarded coconut shells, manned by Chinese who scrutinized each new arrival with an eagle’s eye for a fare.

‘Where are you off to?’ shouted one in Malay.

‘To Amoy,’ I replied in my best Hokkien. The man looked blank. He did not understand. Those six months had been wasted.

Filled with a desire to apply my newly acquired knowledge, I made another attempt, concentrating desperately on the right pronunciation. The boatman’s leathery face wreathed with a smile as a new understanding slowly dawned on him. In a flash, all the other Chinese on the pier within hearing distance had gathered around. With grinning enquiring faces they fired question … I became tongue-tied. They chuckled in amusement at my silence. I wanted terribly to explain, tell them I was going to the land of their forefathers.
‘To Amoy,’ I explained.
‘Eee! Aiyaah!’
‘To learn Hokkien….’
‘A Red-Haired speaking Hokkien lah!’ guffawed two or three in a full-throated chorus…’

[On disembarking in Amoy]… ‘Here’s how!’ bellowed the Captain. ‘Come and see us when we return and don’t go round the bend trying to learn this outlandish language.’

...There are seven distinct tones in Hokkien and several hundred monosyllabic noises which go, singly or in combination, to make up the spoken language, with nasal and aspirate variations. The nasal twang would come through with commendable mellifluousness for someone slightly adenoidal or with a cold in the head. …Correctness of tone pronunciation and tone changes was of prime importance for there was only a slight different in modulation, for instance, between returning to China and pawning a pair of long trousers.

…the first few days rolled into weeks of heartbreaking despair as I struggled with Mr. Lim and with the tones, noises and sounds that seemed to make up no pattern, no harmony, and had little meaning for anyone. Simple sentences were understood by shopkeepers or boatmen, but in the middle of lengthier explanations and conversations, a word would slip the memory or a tone mispronounced and in my sympathetic auditor would break out into a hurried and incomprehensible suggestion of what I was perhaps endeavouring to say. At last, however, the jumbled pieces began to fit slowly together. It was like hearing an orchestral concert, prefaced first by the screeching of violins and cellos being tuned up to the right key, with Mr. Lim as the unruffled conductor. But never did an orchestra take so long to tune up.

LEARNING CHARACTERS LEADS TO INSANITY [p. 36]
The memorizing of characters was a strain largely on the retentiveness of memory, helped by a little ingenuity in writing every character out on a blank visiting card….To help memorize a character one was tempted to draw it out on the hand on in thin air with a finger. It was on these occasions that outside observers immediately diagnosed that incipient insanity which is prognosticated for anyone learning Chinese.

...Litigation for instance is made up of two dogs fighting with words [Yu4] , and I have often wondered if the traditional Chinese aversion to the formality of the law courts did not give rise to the idea of litigation in this way. Peace is signified with a woman under a roof, and discord with two women under it.
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Note: Márquez’s Gramática española-china del dialecto de Amoy is considered one of the oldest manuals on a local dialect!

United States Consulate in Xiamen China ?

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University

Yesterday, at the Xiamen Millennium Harbourview Hotel, I was delighted to meet Mr. Gary Oba, who is from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, and assigned to Fujian Province and Xiamen. And if things work out, we may finally have another U.S. Consulate in Xiamen in a couple years! During his visit last year, U.S. Ambassador Randt mentioned the U.S. would like a consulate here, but it did not seem likely. But this visit, Mr. Oba said, "Xiamen is next on the list." Of course, there are political and financial issues to work out. China has not yet agreed to it, and Washington has not funded it yet--but if the U.S. gets another consulate in China, it will be here.

That will be a great boon to Xiamen, but also to the U.S.. Here are a few reasons that I think we again need a consulate in Xiamen:

!. The U.S. has a long history of cooperation with Xiamen--from the 1840s to the 1940s.
2. Xiamen and Fujian people have for centuries been recognized as being very open to outsiders (Chinese and foreign) and cooperative, and Xiamen people have an especially good attitude about the U.S. because the U.S. helped China in many areas. It was the U.S. that early on tried to put a halt to the coolie trade, and the U.S. was one of the first Western powers to stop trading in Opium. (When they did that, the Chinese Viceroy said, "This is the first time I've seen a "Christian" country in the West practice what it preached!").
3. The U.S., through missionaries, businessmen and diplomats in the Xiamen U.S. Consulate, helped support and pioneer modern Chinese medicine, education, arts, sports, etc.
4. The U.S. helped China fight the Japanese during the war. We had an air base in Longyan, and when U.S. pilots were shot down near Xiamen, in Tong'an, locals rescued the pilots and hid them from the Japanese.
So the U.S. and Xiamen and Fujian have a history together. But today...
5. Fujian has great potential as Beijing pours on the rhetoric and pours in the funds to promote the province as the West bank of the Taiwan Straits development Zone.
6. Fujian is ideally located for trade, between Hong Kong and Shanghai and facing Taiwan.
7. As mainland and Taiwan ties improve, Xiamen will be increasingly strategic.
8. Most overseas Chinese are from southern Fujian province, many from Xiamen. As it becomes more difficult to do business in other areas of China (because of the currency, and increased cost of Chinese labor), many of the overseas Chinese will move their factories from Guangdong and Shanghai to Fujian--because this is their ancestral home, they can get better terms here, and even if they can't, they often own the land in Fujian, and are more willing to take lower profits "at home" than they would in other areas of China.
9. Xiamen is a rich source of educated labor. Xiamen University is China's only key university in a special economic zone, and Jimei College Town is projected, within a few years, to have 200,000 students and faculties in its various colleges and universities.
10. Xiamen is a delightful place to live and work, so U.S. consul officials, I'm quite sure, would enjoy being here, even without the above 9 advantages.

Okay, I could go on, of course. For example, I could talk about the amazing entrepreneurial bent of Fujian people, and how the maritime Silk Route started from here (Quanzhou, just to the North--the legendary port visited by Sinbad), etc.... But my point is--it would be very strategic for the United States to have a consulate in Xiamen--and it would be of great benefit to the Chinese as well, as they try promote their "business abroad" policies.

If only they could open the new U.S. consualte on Gulangyu Islet, in the original red brick building!

www.amoymagic.com

Ahoy from Amoy (Common Talk Highlights)

by Bill Brown
Xiamen University

Ahoy from Amoy!

A summary of news from this Week's Common Talk (Xiamen Daily's weekly English supplement, which is the first of its kind, and has gone international):

Cover story: "Gulangyu graced with poetry!"

"The third session of the Gulangyu Poem Festival kicked off on Gulangyu last Saturday, where over 80 renowned poets across the country met and shared their poetry and literary beliefs."

Renowned poets? Why wasn't I invited? I'm a poet, and I know it (though I blow it when I show it). Seriously, can you not read my epic poem about the true story of Amoy Vampires and not be moved? Or, at the least, want to move--far away, perhaps?

And "sharing literary beliefs?" I can imagine how that went.

"Yes, I'm professor Hong, and I'm honored to be here and share why I believe in the noun and the verb but eschew the adverb."

Or perhaps Doctor Dong waxed eloquent upon why verbs move him? Or Miss Tang shared how adjectives made her feel? Or....

Now I know why I was not invited to the Gulangyu Poem Festival.

America's Milk Scandal! So you thought it was just China? Common Talk reprinted an article from the New York Times that revealed American milk producers were killing up to 8,000 babies every year, for decades, with milk that contained swill milk, plaster of paris and starch and eggs, etc. Of course, this was 150 years ago. But it took decades to stop it. So the upshot was that what is happeing in China is bad but it's what happens in any rapidly developing country when the government cannot keep up. Of course, the government had a hard time keeping up with the biggest culprits because it had exempted them from inspections.

I appreciated the quote from a leading Chinese dairy's Vice manager last week. "We've learned an important lesson from this. We must provide the public quality, safe, and healthy foods." As if he did not know that before?

But today, Sue and I threw out our remaining bags of Nestle milk powder. It appears Nestle milk powder has malamine in it. An article quoted Nestle in Hong Kong as saying they've no idea how the melamine got in there but it's only a little bit so its okay.

How could even a little bit of a chemical used for plastics end up in milk?

By the way, I was with Alan Smith, of the Livcom Awards, in Shanghai a couple weeks ago, touring a brand new housing development. Alan asked why the new swimming pool was empty and I said it was because they founbd melamine in the water. The officials said, "That's not true!"

No sense of humor.

Xiamen Wal-mart, by the way has been having big sales on milk powder--piles of the stuff, and people with loudspeakers urging people to buy it. Trust-mart is doing the same thing. TV Commercials show smiling Chinese officials with milk moustaches holding glasses of milk.

Still, I'm switching to soy milk. Though who knows what is in soy milk. About a decade ago, Xiamen Daily announced that Xiamen's tofu makers had been filling out their tofu with plaster that they had obtained from recycled plaster casts bought from Xiamen hospitals.

Not sure why everyone complained. With global warming, aren't we supposed to be recycling?

Xiamen University invents Anti-Cancer Drug -- a surefire cure for cancer! It's a "compound that can turn a cancer cell-protecting protein in the human body into a cancer cell killer."

Hey, I think Sichuan cuisine can kill cancer as well--at least any cancer in the tract that leads from mouth to posterior.

I remember about 15 years ago China Daily had a spate of articles about how Chinese medicine had been proven to cure cancer. They also said it had cured AIDS. Those articles went on for months and then nothing more was said about these miraculous cures. Fortunately, given what I know of Xiamen University's Life Sciences department and bio-chemical research, I think XMU's claim to having developed a cancer cure may have more substance to it.

School Principals Swapped! Common Talk said 15 primary and secondary schools in Beijing have come to Xiamen to study local educational practices because Xiamen is a "leader in China in primary education, especially in curricular reform, quality of instructions and extracurricular activities." I guess in Xiamen good primary education is just elementary. Especially if it is at Xiamen International School! This is a free plug for them, by the way).

Quanzhou will host cultural exchanges with Taiwan, including Gaojia opera, Hui'an hand puppets, and Quanzhou marionettes, or "Quanzhou string puppets," as they put it. I'm sure there are strings attached to the exchange program as well.

Common Talk also announced the results of the 2008 Ig Nobel prizes, held on October 2nd at Harvard University, to recognize scientific experiments that "cannot or should not be reproduced." The winners included research in France proving dog fleas jump higher than cat fleas, Swiss scientists got the peace price for recognizing the legal principle that plants have dignity. The cognitive prize went to the Japanese who proved that slime molds can find their way out of a maze (this should encourage some of the low life that lives in our back alleys here). The chemistry prize went to two researchers who tested Coca-cola as a spermicide (one wonders how they tested it, and if they shook it up first). Two archaeologists measured how much an armadillo can mess up a dig. Etc.

Further news: NASA's Rhessi spacecraft has put a different spin on our understanding of the sun with the bright revelation that the sun is not perfectly round. During years of high solar activity it bulges at the middle. (I do the same thing).




The Quanzhou International Club just sent this announcement"

The 6th China National Peasant's Games will be held in Quanzhou starting on Sunday, 26th October 2008 and end on Saturday, 1st November 2008.
This Gala National Event would be akin to China¡¯s own Olympic Sports held every four years but certain events would be held with a difference. Some events would have a peasant and/or agricultural twist such as water-carrying race; seedling-throwing and 60-metre seedling-transplanting competition
We are attaching the games event schedule together with the venue of each sport. Note that the games will be held not only in Quanzhou City but also in JinJiang; Nan¡¯an; Hui An; Chong Wu; Shishi.
Unfortunately, attendance for the OPENING and CLOSING CEREMONIES are by Invitation Only. We asked if tickets for these two events may be purchased but we are told tickets are distributed to businesses, sponsors and local government. So if you have some connections with these, go for it!!

All other events are OPEN and FREE to the Public. We are trying to get confirmation this is indeed the case also for the finals in Basketball; Track & Field; Wushu and Dragon & Lion Dance. We will let you know if we can get confirmation from the organizers.
Please find in attachment a calendar of the games, a brief introduction of the 6th and the 5th China National Peasant¡¯s Games, a reference map showing locations of the downtown venues, and a picture of mascot Tongtong and logo of the games.








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Art of Chinese Mini-Bussing

The Arcane Art of Mini-Bussing

Adapted from Amoy Magic -- Guide to Xiamen and Fujian

Our first long distance bus trip, to neighboring Zhangzhou and back, was supposed to take 1½ to 2 hours, but that obviously didn’t include the hour they spent packing us on the mini-bus. If only we could have figured out which bus was leaving first.

One would think the fullest bus would pull out first, but not so. Sometimes a half empty bus will race off, the strategy being to pick up more victims down the highway, while a bus that is packed to the gills like a sardine tin might wait another half hour to find some soul willing to fry their fanny on the blistering engine cover. On a 30 seat bus, they can cram 50 victims, who sit on laps, or stand, or squat on tiny bamboo stools in the aisles.

The ticket hawkers all squawk in unison, “Hurry up! We’re leaving right now!” And drivers inch forward a few feet to prove time is of the essence. “Aiyah!” they scream. “Kuai Lai!”

I asked one lady, “Do you have A/C?”

“Of course! See the sign? Get on quick! We’re leaving!”
Sue and I scrambled aboard and squeezed into a tiny seat in the back, between two farmers and their baskets of carrots, cabbage and Chinese celery. The ticket seller snatched my money and the driver switched off the engine.

“I thought you were leaving right now?”

“As soon as the bus is full,” she said.

“It’s packed now,” I argued. But she ignored me like yesterday’s news, and stuck her head out the window like a turtle straining from its shell for a feeble-minded fly, and she screamed at all and sundry, “Hurry up! Get on board. We’re leaving now!”

Several passengers snickered, and I knew I had been had.

A youth who was obviously wiser than I eyed the bus suspiciously and said, “You’ve not filled up the aisle yet.”

The ticket lady rolled her eyes. “Of course we haven’t. We’ll pick up more people down the road. The driver started his engine and inched forward. The youth puffed his chest and led his girl onto the bus, sat on a bamboo stool in the aisle, forked over his 20 Yuan, and the driver switched the ignition off.

“Hey, you said we’re leaving now!” But the agent was again deaf, dumb and blind. I could barely keep from joining the snickers.

Twain’s Duke and Dauphin would have been proud.

Fully 45 minutes after we had been told, “Hurry, we’re leaving!” the van lurched off down the road. I asked the ticket lady, “Why haven’t you turned on the air conditioning?”

“Open windows are cool enough when we’re moving.”

“But you said the bus has A/C!”

“It does!” she said, “But we don’t use it when we’re moving.”

Snicker, snicker, all around me.

The bus slowed every few minutes as the ticket hawker poked her head from her yellow shell and screamed, “Get on board. Plenty of seats! Hurry!” One wily peasant dubiously eyed the collage of faces peering dolefully from the windows like nonAryans on the cattle car to Auschwitz. He timorously put one foot, clad in Playboy socks and plastic flip flops, onto the rusted bus step. The lady grabbed him by the collar, yanked him inside, slammed the door, and said, “Ten Yuan!”

“You said there was plenty of room!”

“There is room,” she said, and pointed to the battery box, which was coated in greenish gray cottony corrosion and grease, and squeezed between the hot engine cover and the wheel well.

Those of us with enough room to expand our rib cages snickered softly.
There was no order to her people packing, so every time the bus stopped to disgorge a victim, we reshuffled the deck of dog-eared bodies; parents lost children, husbands lost wives; one lost a wallet. But we made it to Zhangzhou in one piece, more or less.

After a pleasant afternoon in Zhangzhou, we returned to the bus stop, where we saw a bus inching forward. The sweetest little granny shouted, “Hurry, we’re leaving.”

“Susan, this old granny can’t be like the rogue on the last bus. They really are leaving.” We boarded the bus, paid our pesos, and the driver cut the engine. We sweltered for 20 minutes until sweet old granny had packed her bus.

Susan snickered.
When we reached home that night we discovered that we had been gallivanting about the countryside on Friday the 13th.

Someday I’ll write about China's Saturday the 14th....

Bill Brown
Xiamen University
www.amoymagic.com

Froggy Food in China

When I phoned the well-known Professor, Ji Yuhua, a few days ago, he said, "Ha! Good timing! I was just rereading your article in "Magic Xiamen" about frog pee and frog spit!" ...

"Never try to catch two frogs with one hand." Chinese Proverb

Froggy Food A Chinese friend removed from his kitchen cabinet a plastic baggie of about four ounces of a grayish, stringy dried matter, rather like a finely shredded sponge. “Only 210 RMB,” he said, beaming delightedly. “My brother brought it straight from the mountains!”

This expensive gray stuff was a rare Chinese medicine and cooking ingredient, second in efficacy only to bird’s nests (made from dry swallow spit). It was dry frog spit. Not just any frog spit, mind. It was that of a rare mountain frog, and collected only during a very brief season in the spring.

It seemed that everyone had frogs on the brain. A few days later our Xiamen University MBA Center invited me to lunch with a group of Provincial leaders who were taking my night courses. They complimented me on my lectures, though one confessed he wasn’t sure if I was contributing to China’s modernization or sabotaging it. Halfway through the meal, the waitress set in front of me a shot glass full of a bright, evil looking ruby liquid. It was redder than the inside lining of Dracula’s cape, and shimmered with a life of its own. I suspected it wasn’t V-8 Juice.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s the blood of a rare mountain frog. It is second in potency only to the blood of …”
“No thanks, I’ll pass.”
“But Professor Pan, you’re the guest of honor!”
“I have no honor. You drink it!”
Eventually the rankest person present took the small cup in both hands, ceremonially offered it to each diner, then downed it in one gulp and smacked his lips.
The waitress then handed me a cup of pale yellow liquid. “What’s this?” I demanded. “Frog pee? Second only to—”
“—Of course not,” she said in disgust. “It’s beer.”
Frog blood, beer, cobra venom (I’ve had it).
I wish they’d stick to tea…

Bill Brown

Xiamen University

www.amoymagic.com