Poster lesson

While queuing at a cable car I saw this poster and it was striking me as a great example to underline how different Mandarin functions as a language compared to German or English. 

The poster is just a general safety note. While the upper part "安全生产宣传标语" is read in the modern way, from left to right (like most written Mandarin these days), the main content is written in the classical way and should be read from upper right to lower left. Here's a translation word by word:

安全 = Security

一万天 = lit. one ten thousand days 

事故 = Accident

一瞬间 = one blink of an eye

So, first of all, there are no spaces. This means that you have to know which characters belong together semantically. This is not always easy and actually requires you to understand what the whole sentence is supposed to mean. For example, 安 (peace) and 全 (whole, all) also have a meaning just by themselves and thus don't necessarily have to go together. The concept of a word itself is fluid in Chinese, there are widely accepted combinations of characters that create a meaning and they will usually appear in dictionaries, but for a Chinese person with an understanding of the meaning of the single characters, creating a new one or understanding a combination that's unusual wouldn't be a problem either. Now is that a word? 

Second, Chinese is brimming with proverbs and lyrical terms. Take the 万天. The first character means ten thousand, the second one days. Of course, 10 000 days is not a specific amount of time, but rather a symbol for a really, really long time. While in English people tend to use more borrowed words from Latin, French or Greek the more educated they are, Chinese academics and intellectuals would set themselves apart by using four-character proverbs over and over. To say that somebody is scared you could say 恐怖，which means exactly that. But you could also say 不寒而栗, which means not-cold-but-trembling. For reasons I don’t know myself the 4-character-expression is the gold standard of linguistic aesthetic in Mandarin and these proverbs exist by the thousands.

The mixture of a super simplified syntax with a knack for poetic but vague expressions defines Mandarin and causes headaches for foreigners trying to learn it because even though you might have learned the characters and even their meaning, you will still find yourself struggling to wrap your head around the way thoughts are expressed.

Back to the example, it literally translates as:

Security tenthousand days,

Accident in the blink of an eye.

By now, it shouldn't be too hard to guess what the poster is expressing. It's just a reminder to be attentive and careful. Though still - it doesn't entirely reveal its point. Will minding security guarantee you a long life? Or is it a concept that you always (tenthousand days) have to keep in mind? 

Maybe now you can see why it is said that Mandarin is the most beautiful language and nothing compares to its poetry, but it sucks at conveying precise information in a concise way (like say, describing a physics experiment). That is very much the opposite of German, which with its endless capability of combining nouns to super-descriptive megaterms (Krankenkassenbeitragsabrechnungsstelle = The department of a health insurance in charge of charging the contributions) has found the ultimate way of expressing complex concepts without losing words, but is not widely considered beautiful.

Thoughts at the end of an internship

For two months I haven‘t been writing because there hasn’t been anything exciting happening around me. To be honest, there still isn’t, but there soon will be (some travelling before coming back to Germany), plus I always have the urge to wrap things up before a major section of my life ends. In about a week, my internship and consequently my stay in Guangzhou ends, marking the 5^th time in 6 years I’m moving cities. To be sure, all this is of my own choosing, nobody forces me to haste from one place to another. But like most things in life, it comes with a trade-off, namely that apart from a few close friends, you feel like you’re out of touch with the people around you.

I talked about this with a good Chinese friend recently, who was living in Vienna, Manchester and London the last six years and just returned to her home country for her family and work. We agreed that leaving your comfort zone and living in places that are very different from your own can certainly make you a more reflective and ultimately better person, but it can also deprive you of your sense of belonging. I think in her case it’s a lot tougher, because not only was she gone for six years straight, she also left her home at a younger age, so “Western” culture had a bigger impact on her personality than Chinese culture would have on mine. Now she struggles to reintegrate into a society and a workplace that are nothing like the UK.

The practice of sending your kids away while still in high school is in fact more common than you’d think in wealthy Chinese families. Criticism of the brutal education system is not limited to foreign commentators. Chinese for the most part despise it too, but also acknowledge that there are no alternatives to rigorous standardized testing in order to evaluate millions of students annually without giving way to rampant corruption and cheating. As a result, many of those who can afford opt out by sending their kids abroad long before the feared “Gaokao” (equivalent to A-Levels or Abitur) to attend high school in Europe, Australia, Canada or the States. Since being a good parent is equated with giving your kids the best possible education for a successful career, the potential psychological effects of sending a teenager around the globe for years is usually a lesser consideration. I’ve heard quite a few stories of Chinese graduates who came back to their country after many years and felt isolated and alienated by a culture that often is at odds with what they experienced during their adolescence.

Compared to this kind of persistent alienation, my reverse culture shock will be harmless. But unlike the last two times I’ve been abroad for longer, it will definitely emerge in one way or another. One and a half years is a long time and China is a very different country. I remember that both times I was back to Germany briefly in the last 16 months, its tranquility and slow pace of life, even in Berlin, were quite shocking. I will probably be unable to spot any change in my hometown by the time I return. In the meanwhile, Beijing has opened a new airport, a new landmark skyscraper, a new financial hub, a new high-speed railway and the land next to my university that lay waste when I arrived is now a residential area with dozens of apartment towers.

The other major thing I’ll have to readapt to is, as strange as that sounds, being the average. I spent the last one and a half years with a crowd of Chinese, German, American, Ukrainian and other international people, all from very different backgrounds and in very different personal circumstances. Going back, I’ll be surrounded by people that look like me, have a similar background and speak my mother tongue. Should feel familiar, but I guess familiar is what you’re used and if you’re used to an environment that is not predominantly German or even European, going back to that does feel unnatural first.

Personal thoughts aside, before I’m heading into an unbeknownst future in Germany (Graduate program? Where? What to do until then?), I’m gonna have some fun in Asia. And by fun I mean going to Taiwan yet another time because honestly there’s no better place. In addition, because Taiwan holds its presidential elections on the 11^th of January and does not allow postal voting, most of my local friends are going to return as well from their second homes abroad to cast their ballots. Other stops in my last few weeks here include Hainan (surfing on Christmas all by myself – would be sad if I actually was in the mood for Christmas but that does not arise in China), Hongkong to see a friend and ultimately Beijing because well, this is where it all started and for some reason one-way flights from there to Europe are 200€ cheaper and include a second piece of luggage. I should have enough time to write one or two posts during this brief journey. And then, on the 17^th of January, when the snow slush on the streets takes on the same color as the sky from the exhaust of the many cars people use to get everywhere because the weather is so grisly nobody steps outside if they don’t have to – that time of the year, I’ll set foot on German soil again, inquisitive where life is going to take me in the next decade.