There’s a podcast I’ve been listening to for several months now. I found it on the Chinese boost blog in a post recommending real-life listening material to advanced learners. It’s a podcast by a guy in Kunming, who started the episodes as a tech-focused thing years ago but then it evolved into a broader “show” including topics like running, traveling and books. The first thing I heard from him was a book introduction and I was delighted to find myself understanding almost everything he said. Most of the topics he talked about were also interesting to me, so I subscribed.

In May he announced that he was going to New Zealand for at least a few months and he invited listeners to share their experiences about living abroad. So I decided to write, mostly because I wanted to recommend a book to help him understanding Western societies and values better.  (The Geography of Thought, that I wrote about  on this blog before)I ended up getting so excited about typing that e-mail about my own experiences that I actually forgot to include the link and I had to send a second message J
Every month, there’s an episode where he’s talking more freely, without a fixed topic and also reflects to comments and reviews he receives. I was wondering if he was going to mention my message or the book in this month’s episode.

Then today I saw the new podcast showing up on Itunes with a title that looked familiar – he chose a sentence from my e-mail to be the title! I listened to the extra long episode, it’s over 2 hours with a lot of messages and questions. He saved my e-mail last, and I was surprised to hear him reading out the whole thing. He kindly smoothed out some phrases in my message as he read through, and had a giggle about a few mistyped words. It was a very unique experience to hear a native speaker reading my e-mail out loud – it was my message but it sounded so different in my head when I wrote it!

Now I will have to write him again, thanking him for reading my message. Also, I should thank him for giving me the precious experience of feeling competent, and being an equal partner in a conversation, something so hard to achieve in a foreign language.

If you are interested, here's a link to the introduction of the latest episode, you can also find the podcast on Itunes under 狗熊有话说. 

One of the stereotypes about Chinese people is that they are very polite. But if you know how their society works, you’ll find that they only emphasize politeness in certain situations. On other occasions they can seem rude to Western eyes, but it’s not as simple as it seems. Foreigners often get confused by either the politeness or the rudeness, so let’s take a look at the complex idea of being polite in Chinese.

If you’ve read The Geography of Thought, or at least my summary of it, you are already familiar with the importance of the family/community in Chinese society. This strong sense of belonging to a group, and the fact that China is a huge country with a lot of people in it, created a very sharp distinction of “insiders” who belong to one’s own group (family, etc.) and “outsiders” (everyone else).

The lack of organized social security, or sometimes any security at all strengthened the feeling of mutual dependence within these groups and they learned that they can only rely on themselves. This contributed to a sense of isolation between the groups. The “inner circle” is what really matters, and whatever is outside of it is not one’s business. This is one of the reasons why Westerners can find Chinese people “ignorant” or “insensitive” towards each other. 

Ok, so we have “inner circle” and “outer circle”. What do these have to do with politeness?

The goal of politeness is to show respect, also to emphasize the other person’s (perceived) higher status as opposed to one’s own lower status. Classical Chinese politeness is filled with self-degrading phrases; even people and things belonging to the speaker would get some “derogatory” adjectives (“my run-down home”, “my worthless son”, etc.) and the glorification of the other person and everything associated with him (“your noble house”, “your talented son,” etc). In order to be polite, you need to talk down anything belonging to you. This can sometimes baffle foreigners when they hear someone talking about his own family as a group of worthless and lazy people. This is not to be taken seriously; this is politeness.

But since politeness is used to create and emphasize difference and distance, it is considered not only unnecessary but completely inappropriate within the inner group, especially with family. With a tighter relationship comes less politeness. In a way that can be seen as an inside-out for Westerners, since a lack of politeness actually signifies more intimacy. In Chinese families you rarely hear members saying “please” and “thank you” to each other. You can even insult someone close to you by trying to be polite to them, as they will se it as trying to build distance between the two of you and treating them as an “outsider”.

So if you are treated by Chinese people with utmost politeness, be aware of the distance it signals. Actually the more politeness being shown the greater the distance they feel from you. Politeness is not friendliness, it’s an impersonal “duty” they feel they need to perform. Thinking with a Western mind makes it easy to end up disappointed when one mistakes politeness for real personal feelings. 

In this second post I'll try to explain the idea of harmony (和谐 héxié) and its importance in Chinese society.

If you have read The Geography of Thought (I wrote about it here), you might already be familiar with this concept. If you aren't I highly recommend getting acquainted, but in the meantime here's a short summary.

According to Nisbett's theory, the ancient Greek's dependence on trading and communicating with other nations contributed to the concept of agency, while the agricultural-based Chinese society valued harmony above anything else, because farm work required cooperation instead of competition. Since undisturbed teamwork was crucial for survival, the focus of the society was on the group and the relations among group members, rather than individual members or their personal traits. This seems to be completely opposed to early Greek society, where trading and craftsmanship (and possibly piracy) required — and thus created — a strong sense of individuality, independence and competitiveness. It also supported the birth of the scientific, "objective" world view, logic and abstract thinking.  

This difference in thinking creates completely different world views. Growing up in our own culture, we take its values and perspectives for granted and can't even imagine having a different view on things until we get exposed to an alternate way. Even then, most likely we'll find the other person's behavior to be "weird" or "irrational." It takes time, experience and a conscious effort to really understand the motives that are so different from ours. 

The concept of harmony was described and cultivated from early times in China. Confucius's vision of the ideal society is of a harmonious one; hierarchy and the use of rules and rituals are the way to maintain this perfect state. Harmony is prevalent on every level of society, starting with the family (where the rules also decide the inner hierarchy) all the way up to the emperor (who's governing skills are evaluated by the level of harmony he creates and maintains in the empire). And despite the several thousand years and the purge against Confucianist values during the Cultural Revolution, Confucianism still heavily influences Chinese society. Just to mention one important example, "Harmonious Society" was the signature ideology of Hu Jintao, the Former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, in 2005.

In my last post I promised to share a few ideas about the unwritten rules of the game called "surviving and functioning in Chinese society." Since this is a huge topic, I'm going to make it into a series of posts, exploring different aspects. I hope you find it useful.

Even if you are not a learner of the language, but need to deal with Chinese people or are interested in their culture, it's crucially important to familiarize yourself with the concepts of harmony and face. Almost everything that seems odd, illogical, or downright weird for us about Chinese people interacting with themselves or with others, could be explained in relation to these two ideas.

Since both of these are large concepts, this article will focus just on face. I will discuss harmony in my next post.

Face, 面子 miànzi, or 脸 liǎn can be summarized as one's perceived position (or level of prestige) in society. It's not an internal, individual value (such as one's experience or expertise) but a very visible quality that has more to do with appearance. Some people like to compare it to a suit you wear. This is how you look from the outside, and it affects your interactions with others.

Hierarchy is an important idea in Chinese society (as one way to preserve harmony, the other big concept), and face shows one's position in that hierarchy. Age, power, fame and of course wealth all increase face. Connection to people who possess these things also can give you more face. Or even the illusion of having any of these can give you face. That's why so many Chinese people buy cars, phones or brand name clothes way beyond their actual financial abilities — because these items can make them "have more face," they can appear to be higher on the social ladder than they actually are. And while this may seem odd for Westerners, it's important to understand that it's not only about someone's vain attempt to look more rich, but these things can actually affect how that person is viewed by his or her peers and the level of respect s/he receives.

Knowing how to give face (and how to avoid losing face) is very important for all foreigners. As outsiders we are often treated with more leniency when it comes to the social code — more than native Chinese speakers are. Still, Chinese people are very sensitive about the issue of face, and not understanding this concept can seriously damage personal or business relations.

If you would like to build a good connection with a person, especially if it's a business relation or a person of higher social status, give them face. The easiest way is to treat them to nice meals and/or to give them gifts. Praising the person in front of others and doing favors are also great ways to give face. Formal politeness is also a sign of giving face. To the Western mind this might seem like an exaggerated form of "sucking up," but in Chinese culture, it is not viewed this way. Rather, it is a social requirement, and failing to give respect where respect is due would be considered rude.

Any kind of confrontation ruins face, usually for all parties involved. This can be very unfamiliar for many foreigners, especially Americans, but face is more — much more — important than honesty. Criticizing someone, or anything related to the person is considered rude, especially if it's done in front of others. If there's no way around it, any criticism should be discussed privately and in a polite and positive manner. The same rule applies to rejection, even those that seems banally simple for Westerners. If a person of face invites you for a dinner, you should not say "no," even if it's your wedding day! You can try to avoid answering on the spot, but even agreeing right there and finding a polite way to cancel later is still more acceptable than openly rejecting. This kind of behavior is often seen by foreigners as not only illogical but even downright repulsive because the lack of honesty. Yet, it's very important to understand that, according the rules of the face-game, the person was actually being thoughtful and polite by avoiding an awkward situation that would cause loss of face for someone else.

At this point, it may not be surprising that losing one's temper is another way to lose face, and it's also a way to cause others to lose face too. Getting angry is seen as a weakness of character and a lack of self-control. So even if you are justified in an argument, losing your calm will put you on the losing side. Also, if you get openly mad at someone, you will not only lose your own face, but you will damage the other person's face as well.

Another, even more subtle way to cause someone to lose face is to make a person appear as incompetent. This might sound complicated but if you ever experienced the situation where a Chinese person insisted on speaking English to you even when you were able to speak Chinese, then you can understand how it works. In this case the person is probably not only trying to gain face for themselves by speaking English (especially if their English is not good) but also trying to avoid making you lose face which would happen if you tried to use Chinese but failed. Would you have ever thought of that? 

Of course, this delicate game of face-giving is only present in somewhat formal relationships; you don't necessarily need to keep it in mind when dealing with strangers on the street (though it won't hurt). In friendships the amount of attention given to the face-game decreases as the friendship grows stronger and more intimate. That's why it can look like Chinese people are more rude to those closer to them — the lack of politeness actually signals the closeness of the relation. You usually won't see family members saying "please" and "thank you" to each other for the same reason. This logic can be very challenging for foreigners, even when they know about the idea of face. 

Now let's take a look at a few phrases about face:

给面子 gěi miànzi -- "to give face," i.e. to do something that makes someone else look more respectable
丢脸 diūliǎn — "losing face," i.e. any kind of failure or misbehavior that makes someone look bad
不要脸 búyào liǎn — "not wanting face," used when someone has done something shameful


Finally, here are some links to other articles about face:

http://www.china-mike.com/chinese-culture/understanding-chinese-mind/cult-of-face/
http://chinaculturecorner.com/2013/10/10/face-in-chinese-business/
http://chineseculture.about.com/od/businesseconomy/fl/Face-Culture-in-China.htm

I hope you found this post helpful. Next time I will talk about harmony, the other main concept that guides Chinese society.

In the last post I debunked a few common myths about Chinese as a difficult language, so difficult that some people think it's not even worth a try. After getting these old-fashioned, ill-informed stereotypes out of the way, today I would like to give a subjective account of what I think actually is difficult about Chinese.

Chinese does have a different approach not only to writing or pronouncing but also thinking. You'll need to revise your concept of language and how thoughts are formed into sentences. It is not easy but it can be extremely mind-opening and actually fun. Being able to understand the thought behind a line in a foreign language is always a source of that tremendous feeling of success. In itself, this could be enough motivation to keep going. 

But learning words for words and figuring out new sentence structures are far from being the whole thing. Every language is closely connected to the culture it was born into and it's probably even more so for Chinese. I'm not only talking about culturally rich phrases referring to historical events, or works of art that are so common in higher-level texts, but also the way Chinese language organizes basic concepts. 

Take, for example, time. In our minds time moves horizontally, so for us it's surprising to see when Chinese people use vertical locator words like "above" and "under" to represent relativity in time. (For example in some contexts, events that occur before others are said to be above to signify before. Events that follow are said to be below as a signifier of after.) Of course this doesn't mean that you need to understand everything about ancient Chinese cosmogony, but it can be helpful to get familiar with some basic concepts that are different. The more you know about culture and history, the easier time you'll have advancing your language level from single word-translating to understanding coherent sentences and paragraphs.



















I left the most difficult point as the last on this list: Chinese society and the rules of being and interacting with others in that society. I find this one to be the most challenging, partly because it's something you don't usually find in textbooks. It's difficult to get trustworthy sources on it. Just like everywhere else, in Chinese society there are countless rules, mostly unwritten and unspoken, that every member of the group understands. They might choose to break them but it doesn't mean that they don't know them. But for us foreigners, it can be a very difficult game. First of all, we were not born and raised in a Chinese family, so we didn't have the chance to learn the rules naturally, without words. Second, when we enter that society as "outsiders," people will treat us as such, which usually means "with utmost politeness" usually in any personal relations. (I'm not talking about general strangers on the street. If you ever got stuck in Shanghai at rush hour you know what I mean.) Politeness is a good thing in general, but in some cases it can be harmful. 

People will not tell you if you break the rules or make a mistake, and it's really hard to make friends when you constantly offend them, though unknowingly. Since they won't confront you, as that would be considered rude, the most likely outcome is that people would keep their distance or just stop communicating with you altogether. You would probably sense that something is off track, but you wouldn't know what. If you ask questions, you'd get smiles and reassuring words, but unless you have a very good friend who dares to be "impolite" to you by being honest, you may never understand what went wrong. It's very hard to improve when you don't know where the problem was. Although, as a foreigner, you will be forgiven more often than natives, but in the long run they still expect you to "fit in" and play by the rules like everybody else.

In my opinion, this aspect of living and functioning in a Chinese speaking environment can be more challenging than learning the language, because you can easily get access to tons of textbooks and teachers who would correct you and help you to improve your language. With the society's rules, however, you have to figure out everything by yourself from very limited resources.

As intimidating as it may seem, it is not impossible to overcome that invisible barrier. It does require, though, that we step outside of the comfort of textbooks and prepared materials and learn to search "in the wild" for sources. In my next post I'll share some tips that worked for me.

I just posted about the myth of Chinese being a difficult language in my Hungarian blog the other day, and today I got my nose rubbed into this poorly informed nonsense again. A friend sent me an article from the Guardian written by Tom Meltzer, explaining in eight points why it's unreasonable to expect people to learn the language. It's not new but sadly it still represents a common misbelief. You can read it here but I feel bad for giving more popularity to such a piece of careless writing.

Others have already nicely pointed out the nonsense of those eight "arguments", but I can't resist pointing them out one more time, in my words. I'll  list them here quickly for your convenience if you haven't read the original article, and give a very brief reaction to each.

1.You'll find the writing baffling...
No, I don't know how you know what I feel, but I actually love the characters. It's very different, right, but it's only "baffling" if you expect it to make sense in the way you learned to understand writing. 

2. ...and the tones a nightmare
Seriously? Nightmare? I'll discuss this one later. 

3. The mistakes can be filthy.
Once again the choice of words seems highly unprofessional to me, but that's just one thing. You are talking about the danger of pronunciation mistakes when your first language is notorious for representing the same sound three different ways and pronouncing the same letter in three different ways.

4. Your progress will be glacial.
Again, the writer knows me better than I do! I won't even start to explain personal differences in learning habits and skills here, as I think those should be very obvious to anyone who ever talked to another human being.

5. You won't be able to text message. 
"See you tomorrow at the bookstore." - 28 characters
"mingtian zai shudian jian." - 22 characters

6. Good teachers are in short supply.
What's good teaching for me may not work for you. By the way, have you ever heard of e-learning?

7. In any case, most of the people don't speak it.
He's talking about the standard "official" mandarin. Yes, many people speak local dialects as their first languages. But they understand mandarin and they can read it, and most of the people I met in Shanghai could speak mandarin without difficulties. 

8. ...and nor do their leaders.
Hey, you are not mixing up standard pronunciation of a specific dialect with general competence of a language, are you?

This kind of writing is extremely harmful for both teachers and students. How many people who were thinking about giving it a try will change their minds because of this? And in general, why on earth would anyone write an article telling people not to try something just because it might take longer to succeed than to order a meal at McDonalds? Actually, the more I think about it, the angrier I feel about this useless article, which is only there to discourage people from what could be the start of a life-changing journey like it has been for me.

It may look like the author is showing off his superior knowledge about the language, talking about tones and characters, but in fact he doesn't seem to know much about those things. Otherwise he wouldn't pen phrases like "tones are a nightmare." No. Tones are NOT a nightmare. Tones are a crucial part of a living, functioning language. Just because the author's first language doesn't happen to have this specific feature, dismissing tones as "a nightmare" is, in my opinion, arrogance. What it says to me is "I don't understand it, therefore it must be difficult/useless/pointless."

I wonder what people like the author of that article would think if someone wrote an equally nonsensical, superficial article about their own first language? How would they feel about the overgeneralization and unprofessional approach then?

No, it's time to treat Chinese as a language like any other. Not "mysterious," not "exotic," and definitely not "notoriously difficult." Opening people's minds to accept and even enjoy cultural, linguistic or any other difference IS apparently what is notoriously difficult.

To celebrate the new year and to continue building he community of Chinese learners, I started up a page on Facebook! I'm planning on posting a variety of things there, including learning tips, cultural articles and news about the Chinese-speaking world. If the page has enough followers, we might have polls, games and prize giveaways! Check it out here, and like the page for daily updates on news and learning!

(From my older blog, but worth reposting)

If you've ever been to China or other East-Asian countries for a longer time, I'm sure you've realized that things just don't work the same way as in the "West". Decisions and priority choices that would be obvious for you seem to go without anyone even considering them, and problem solving methods can simply shock you.

How you react to such a different world around you depends on your personality. Some people get frustrated, some constantly try and "educate" people who think differently, some try hard to ignore, and some work hard to understand it. This book can help you a lot if you choose try to understand.

When I first read this book, I have already spent a year in China and some time in Taiwan, so I had personal experience about the differences. As I was reading the book, many of those experiences started to make sense, as I gained a deeper understanding of the structure of the society that formed people's world view.

The main argument of the book is that different geographical circumstances affected the early Eastern and Western societies, so they developed different values that helped them to survive and grow, and those values are the roots of the differences in observing the world and thinking.

I'm aware that categorizing as "East" and "West" can be problematic, and can be seen as oversimplifying, but if you take these clear, almost-opposite polarities as models and remember that personal diversity is not taken into account in this discussion, then you can enjoy the clarity and simplicity of the explanation.

I believe this book can be very helpful to those Westerners who want to learn Chinese and also learn how to function in a Chinese-speaking society. In my experience, these two can be equally challenging to master. But what you gain from them is very valuable, as though learning about different cultures and world views, you learn about your own, and learn to challenge things that you used to take as unquestionable axioms of life. That mental flexibility can greatly affect every aspect of your life and take you on trails you've never thought of.

On Amazon, you can read some parts of the book.

I'm so excited today! I have a student who has been learning with me for over two months, he started from zero. We are using a well-known textbook and we have been following the "proper" path of the traditional way of teaching and learning. This is exactly the way I was learning many years ago. 

We've been progressing slowly but surely, this student is a hard worker plus he doesn't have any other job now so he can put serious time into learning Chinese. But I've been worrying that I might lose him. Why? Because our classes were kinda boring. Pronunciation drill, vocabulary list, reading the text, moving on to the next lesson, lots of explanation in L1. Lots of work, not too much fun.

So today I decided to give him a different challenge. I just taught a couple of TPRS lessons before our session, so I wanted to give him a taste of something new. Without any warning or explanation, I just started to ask him questions in Chinese, using the words we just learned. I tried to do some circling with the grammar and vocabulary he has been working on for weeks. It was great to see how his mind started to work differently right away. He stopped looking at his notes, and his eyes were looking up - showing that he was searching for the answer inside instead of in the notes. We "played" like this for about 15 minutes around the end of his 90 minute session. His face lit up and he kept saying as we closed our session "this was great!". I felt good about it and even more so when about half an hour after our lesson ended, he wrote me a message saying again how excited he became by experiencing his own ability to use the language. I definitely need to incorporate more CI and more TPRS into my "regular" classes too as it just makes learning so much more fun and it gives students such an enormous feeling of success and competence.

TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling/Asking) is a language teaching method that has proven itself very effective since its first uses in the 1990s.

It is radically different from traditional ways of teaching language. There are no textbooks, and often there are no tables in the classroom. The idea behind this method is to help students learn a language exactly the way they learned their first language – naturally. Our brains are equipped with the ability to acquire a language, and if the circumstances are right, learning will happen effortlessly.

The teacher’s role, then, is to provide those circumstances: A LOT of input in the target language, specifically Comprehensible Input (CI, see Krashen) and lots of repetition. Students are not expected to produce the language until they feel ready to do so, but it doesn’t mean that they are not active participants in the class; they may not have to speak but they are required to pay attention, react and answer questions by gestures, expressions or any other way. Grammar rules are not taught as rules but are still acquired naturally through input and repetition, just like when we acquire the grammar of our first language without even knowing what a verb or a clause is.

Another important aspect of TPRS is that it is FUN. Without the prefixed tracks of a textbook, the teacher follows the students’ interests, talks about the students and makes them active participants in building stories together so that the class will always be interesting and engaging. 

Here are some great resources for learning more about this awesome teaching method:


Watch the awesome Terry Waltz explaining TPRS
Check out Blaine Ray's blog about TPRS