Reporters caught me naked

11am last Thursday, I was in my room doing nothing in my usual home wear: half naked, boxers only, when someone knocked my door. Of course, I immediately opened the door without thinking who might be on the other side. Two French students were standing there and left a "huh?!" come out when they saw me:

- Some reporters from Dalian news are preparing an article about our life in Dalian, would you mind being interviewed? They are waiting outside.
- That means I need to put a shirt on, do my bed and tidy up my stuff right?


This maybe the third time we, French students, have to deal with Chinese newspaper. They like us being around, I guess. The two women started to ask questions about my life here, what I like most, what are the unforgettable I've experienced around, what are the significant differences with European lifestyle and so on. I would have liked to take the interview all the way in Chinese but it is so hard to think and talk at the same time. On top of it, while you try to express yourself in front of a Chinese person, you are so slow that you keep thinking you are wasting his precious time, even though they are way too patient. Thus, you cannot focus; you mess words up, and switch back to English. Fortunately, that day, Yu Heng, our so loved French/Chinese student, was here to help me out.
It is quite difficult to have an interview like that, many things you better not say, not because Mao is a devil and it is dangerous, but just because if it is too “not normal”, they simply won’t publish it. I feel like you have to provide the media some regular information. However, it is frustrating to feel that you are giving them the answers they are waiting for. Thus, you work it around in order to balance the “my thought/their thought” equation.

The interview was interrupted several times by the F-16 taking off nearby our campus, at the airport. Even better, as some guys have been trying, since few months, to take down one of the mountains around our school, we experienced the charm of a huge explosion followed by a homemade earthquake. Houston, we are still alive. DLILI, what a fantastic place.

The article was published in today’s newspaper. And I had a kind of proof about the “give me what I want” rule. The reporter wanted to take some pictures of me faking some regular activities. Thus, I sat at my desk and faked I was writing a letter, she kept saying “Smile” as I was almost tearing my lips to give her satisfaction (Alright this sentence fragment sounds way too sexual, take a look to the Google search results, ahaha). I finally told her I stopped being a clown and she would get no monkey smile: picture not published :) . See the students on the picture below? There are so good fakers of “we are studying hard, altogether”. This is the most amusing game in China I guess: open the newspaper, observe the pictures and guess: what are they faking?

Listening to: David Guetta - Fuck me I'm Famous

Radio show - be my guest

The event is not the most recent one, but so particular I think, I wanted to have this memory written somewhere.

I met this Chinese student named Xiao Dong, we had to work together for DLILIs show presentation. To earn money, Xiao Dong handles a part time job at the Dalian TV & Radio Center, thus has professional relationships with "famous" radio showmen. As 50 French students arrival was the attraction of Dalian at that time, Xiao Dong asked me whether I would like to take part in a radio program as the foreign guest. Clearly, I accepted the invitation; the program was going to be produced 1 week before Christmas. Since the show is the most listened to, from 6pm to 7pm during the rush hour, we had to prepare our speech a bit. The main purpose of having me over there was to introduce one of the 50 French students to the Dalian Radio listeners, and moreover, to share some of the music we listen to back in Europe.
Therefore, Xiao Dong and I headed to the radio center with an USB key full of different kinds of music I listen to. We listened the songs while having a conversation on how I should act during the Show. The rules where mainly normal I guess: no slang, no politics and so on. One instruction shocked me though, the DJ warned me on not talking about Christmas. I asked for some explanation, he simply answered “It is forbidden to talk about Christmas on the Dalian Radio waves, I don’t know why”, the kind of answer which makes me want to chat about Christmas, but I cannot afford a dead man though. All I noted is that the show had to be the most serious thing ever, no going out of bounds, no doing freestyle.
Let’s choose the music we’ll play now. I anticipated the global atmosphere and took mainly soft music such as Manu Chao or Jackson Five. However, the DJ liked more my Dancehall Ragga songs and the band called Brooklyn Funk Essentials. “Bring me more ragga next time okay?” he said. Oh boy, if Mao only knew what these songs are about: sex, drugs, alcohol. What ever, Ragga it is!


Finally, we met again the following week for some live performance. My friend Tang Xuan (Betty is her English name), came along to do the Chinese/English translations. The show was just fine, we discussed of my life in China, and I took the clown out, spoke Chinese and sang a Chinese song, while Papa Tank was shaking the Dalian Radio waves with his kick ass Ragga vibes.
I sometimes listen to the show, making sure the DJ did not die because of me passing that kind of music. Everything is fine in Dalian.

If you want to hear some Chinese, download the programs mp3 here.

Chinese Lesson 1: Tones

The “Tones on words” concept is something we don't have in our occidental languages. Thus, we have difficulties applying tones, and somehow, we don’t get it when Chinese people don’t understand us if we mistake tones. But what are tones exactly? They are a kind of dictatorial language rule: a mistake completely isolates you and you cannot afford your voice to go out of bounds. There is nothing like the frustration you feel when you give your best pronunciation and nobody hears you. Moreover, you lol it so hard when you notice that Chinese people cannot whisper or shout because of the tones. You cannot mumble even when saying “hello”. Since I can observe 50 Chinese learners here in Dalian, I found out why most of us have the tones wrong. In most languages we speak, we don't spend more than half a second pronouncing each syllables of a word. However, you can barely apply a tone in half a second. Consequently, as long as we don't practice our syllable lengthening, we'll hardly acquire a good pronunciation.

There are five tones in the spoken Chinese language, illustrated by the following famous chart:


The fifth tone is our normal pronunciation I guess (I don’t even know where I am anymore). The tones are clearly written in Pinyin (Chinese written in Latin alphabet), but I can rarely catch them in Hanzi (Chinese characters). Why should we pay so much attention to tones? Because in mandarin Chinese, the tones are as important as the sound for determining the meaning of a word. Have an example:

Let’s take the word ma, the example you see the most:

ma
This ma stands for the question mark. You just place it at the of your interrogative sentence. Remember, as you are stuck by the tones, you cannot modify your tonality to mark a question, so our guys created the ma word.


mā
The first toned ma means mother (māmā actually). You may have noticed the character is made of two shapes. The first character, the one on the left, is the key for "female". It gives you a trick to easily find the meaning if you see it written somewhere. You get to find the trick to remember the shape of the "female" character. Yeah, this is what Chinese writting & reading is all about: tips & tricks. If I am drunk enough someday, I'll blog my tricks for keys for you guys to understand how my brain is done and, moreover, how fucked up it is.

mǎ

The third toned ma means horse. No key, just horse, since there are no additives, should we consider this is the original character? If we do so, something may have inspired Chinese people. At first, this character probably had a horse shape, than evolved. Brains, warm up, imaginations, wake up. Try to find the horse shape and comment me your drawings.

In case you still don't get the importance of tones, let me give you a hint: you don't want to call your mother a horse do you?
We are done with ma. Actually, I am done with it. I exposed three tones, there are still two more. It is enough for the following translation exam though.

Nǐ māmā shì mǎ ma?

Alright dear reader, I'll give something I haven't decided yet to the first non-Chinese who sends me the english translation of this sentence. I'll give something even more something to my reader who sends me the answer to this question, written in both, pinyin and hanzi. Two clues: Nǐ means "you" and shì means "to be".

Tones are hard, I confess. But what about the writing? Soon...