No Questions Please

In my chinese class, I noticed that the teachers not only teach us the chinese language. They also try to teach us the mindset. This is most noticeable when one of the students pose a question in the form of “can I say this?”, to which the response (my least favourite laoshi gives) is “No.”

Language is not a philosophy class, you’ll get nowhere if you ask why certain things are said a certain way. But this particular teacher seems very keen on emphasizing that “that is the english speaker’s way of saying. But in chinese, we do not say this. This is a common mistake that enlgish speakers make. Do not say this in chinese. It is not the chinese way.”

The chinese way, the chinese way, so many things that are the chinese way- and no wonder they are only the ways of the chinese, considering how very insipid they are. If this wasn’t something handed down in your own culture, you wouldn’t want to bother adapting it into your own.

For instance, take the mo’xie (pronounced moe-shi-eh). The mo’xie is a test where the professor gives you a sentence, a paragraph or a passage. And you memorise that passage. The entire thing, word for word. And then when it’s time for the test, the laoshi says “write.” And you write down what you’ve memorised.

Although I understand that there is a certain logic behind this, my reaction remains the same, as WHAT. I want to learn how to communicate using the tools I’m taught, not memorise a dialog about how Lina wants a traditional chinese dress that’s two inches shorter and in the colour red.

It’s fitting for this particular language- because chinese has no alphabet, the language pretty much consists of memorising, memorising, and more memorising. And it’s not like chemistry, or european languages where you learn verb conjugations and pretty much all the verbs follow the same pattern. Maybe you learn the few exceptions, maybe you can get wind of it by intuition.

But with chinese? You just memorise each time, and hopefully, a day will come when it will be easier to memorise new characters. And that’s maybe the best it will get before you realise, oh my God I cannot deal with this crazy language anymore. They call coca cola ke-kou-ke-le, their characters for bungee jumping means ‘stupid pig jump’ (in taiwanese, not mainland china), and it doesn’t matter if you know phonetically how a word is supposed to be pronounced- you need to know the four (actually five, counting toneless) tones otherwise people will NOT understand you.

Sometimes in class, we will have a new grammar concept explained to us. But even though I speak an asian language that is somewhat, although to a minute extent, similar, sometimes the grammar will make absolutely no sense to me.

“You use this formula to explain very specific things. Like who, where, how, or places, reasons, purposes. Or transportation.”

….After hearing this, I had no idea what they meant. But asked to give an example sentence, I gave one.

“Ummmm…. no, you don’t say it like that,” the laoshi said. When asked why she said “Because that is a statement; it is not describing anything specific. Understand?”

No, I don’t understand. The downfall of having a class conducted by chinese teachers in chinese is that their english skills are not guaranteed. I still don’t fully understand how to properly use the formula. I mean, I can recognise it, but when I try to use it myself I’m always wondering ‘Is this the chinese way of saying it?’

Speaking of no questions, I saw the movie Brick (2005). And after seeing the movie I realised it can be enjoyed immensely if the viewer doesn’t ask the question ‘why’. Better yet, don’t ask the question ‘how’. Or even better, don’t ask any questions at all- it’s actually not a stupid thing to do. (Spoilers)

I was left wondering- did everyone else find this movie as surreal as I did? Because this movie wasn’t just high school kids acting dramatic about nothing- they actually had all this drama going on at a large scale, love, murder, violence, dealing- but they were only highschool kids.

I thought that it was all very improbable, but I also could not help thinking, what a fun way to have lived highschool.

The main reason I thought it was improbable was that nobody I knew in highschool thought or acted that way. I certainly hadn’t acted that way- I was a complete pissant in highschool. And middle school. And also maybe when I was a small child. But I suppose it was mostly meant to be improbable. It’s what made the movie so enrapturing.

I liked the small humourous touches, and the characters.

Although the main character did remind me of Harry Potter. Not just the glasses and the hair- but the way he moped around miserably, was prone to violence because of the people he cared about, and his rejection of authority figures. There are so many Harry Potter characters- I see them everywhere.

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