Infrequent Nights

I look upon Shi Da's Chinese Language and Culture Program partially as a tool of Taiwanese aggrandisement. The most popularly used text is quite overtly patriotic. Moreover, the sheer number of scholarship students, such as myself, suggests an attempt to build an army of people who's perception of Taiwan has been heavily influenced by the free money, and relaxed life style. My favourite aspect of this exercise is the maps placed in every single classroom at the Language Center. Every room has one map of Taiwan, and one map of the World. They are identical in every room. The Map of Taiwan (R.O.C.) is quite unremarkable, with little worth commenting upon. The World map at first glance appears to be the same, unremarkable in every way.

That is until one takes a closer inspection. The first thing you're likely to notice is that Taiwan is part of China on this particular map. This isn't particularly noteworthy as this was the official government stance for decades and of course is an opinion still held by a not insignificant minority. Beijing is referred to as Beiping, effectively changing the meaning from Northern Capital to Northern Peace. Fair enough, we wouldn't want the illigetimate commie/fascist government center to be considered the capital. This too is unsurprising, the GMD tried for years to get people to call Beijing, Beiping, and some do.

What is remarkable are the flags surrounding the map. There are flags of all the nations of the world, except of course the PRC. Smack in the middle is the flag of the Republic of China. It's in a special box, reserved for Taiwan and one special friend. Now, maps are often subject to slight nuances depending upon their country of origin. American maps usually put America in the centre, and use projection methods which make the USA look bigger than it really is. Some eccentrics in the Southern Hemisphere flip the standard map upside down orienting the South Pole at the top and the North Pole at the bottom. These are somewhat silly, but understandable idiosyncrasies. This particular map's idiosyncrasy is perhaps more nuanced, but equally as silly. For some unknown reason in the middle of all these flags, twice the size of all the other flags, are the flags of the ROC and the United Nations side by side in their box of happiness. I have tried to reconstruct in my head the rationalization that went into this design feature, but have as of yet been unable to produce a satisfactory line of thought:

Cartographer: Right, so here's your map. As you can see I've put Asia in the middle, that's standard for maps around here. Anything else you want before I send this puppy to the printer?
Publisher: Well, we were thinking we could have, I dunno, flags all around the outside. So like, if you want to know what a country's flag looks like, it's right there.
Cartographer: Sure we can do that. Lots of people like flags on their maps. Makes sense really. You want 'em alphabetical or what?
Publisher: Well the order really doesn't matter. But we want a box in the middle for the Republic of China, OK?
Cartographer: Sure thing. You're the boss.
Publisher: No make the box a bit bigger. Let's put two flags in there.
Cartographer: Ummm...OK. Who else? America? They're a good friend and ally, plus they've got a really pretty flag. I like stars.
Publisher: We were thinking the United Nations.
Cartographer: You mean that pasty powder blue thing with the weird laurel leaves?
Publisher: That's the one.
Cartographer:: What the hell? They kicked us out! We're not even a member country! Why would we put their flag in the box of honour. That doesn't make any sense.
Publisher: Yeah, but you know...maybe...well, maybe they'll see on the map that our flags are friends, then they'll wanna be friends too. Then we can be a member country again.
Cartographer: What the hell is wrong with you? That makes absolutely no sense. I can think of no good reason to put Taiwan's flag beside the flag of the UN. If anything it just draws attention to our status as a pariah nation.
Publisher: But I like blue.
Cartographer: Yeah well I like Pamela Anderson. You don't see me putting her in a box.
Publisher: YOU! Insolent Cartographer! You will obey me now! The ROC & UN will be friends forever in our flag box of happiness. I will do anything to fulfill my quest. I would bear Kofi Annan's love child if I thought it woud help, and if I didn't lack basic female reproductive organs. Print my map!

Posted by Ryan at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Foshata. A site where one is finally free to randomly subtitle Japanese television commercials. I sense endless hours of procrastination here.

Links to a few I just made: fshMVR, fshMU7 and fshMUJ You can watch more by clicking 'random foshata' on the left. If you register you can vote, and make your own.

Posted by Ryan at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My tip of the day to Taiwanese marketers: If you absolutely insist on naming a condo project "Blog" because you like the way it sounds, you would be well served to at least register the domain name that you plaster all over the adverts. The geniuses who thought up this marketing campaign have "http://www.myblog.com" on all of their promotional material. If you take a trip to myblog.com you'll quickly realize that is in no way affiliated with this large condo project. It's just (as one would expect) a blog service. How the marketing gurus sold this idea to the rich real estate developers, I have no idea.

Marketer: "So we've got a great name for the new building: Shi Da Blog! Whadda you think? Pretty hip huh?"
Developer: "That sounds very hip indeed. The word blog is so hip and youthful."
Marketer: "We can also have a website."
Developer: "Yeah everybody has websites these days. What'll ours be?"
Marketer: "Myblog.com. How's that sound?"
Developer: "That's great! I can't believe we can get myblog.com, such a great name for my new multi-million dollar condo website!"
Marketer: "Welllll...we can't ACTUALLY get myblog.com, but we can write myblog.com on all our posters! It'll look great!"
Developer: "We can do that?"
Marketer: "Sure, why not?
Developer: "Well common sense would dictate that if we have a huge marketing campaign including massive four story tall billboards that we put a domain name for our OWN website on it."
Marketer: "Yes, but this isn't common sense. This is hip-sense. And trust me my hippness sense is hipper than yours."
Developer: "Man, I'm so glad we hired a hip marketing company. I'm so damned hip. 'Myblog.com.' Damn that's hip. 'Shi Da Blog' what a hip sounding building. If we didn't have you guys around to be hip for us, we'd have ended up putting our OWN domain name on the promo. How un-hip would that have been? Phew!"

Posted by Ryan at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (5)

The fellow who lived in my room before I moved in left me a bunch of books. Included in the pile were a few aimed at self-learners of Chinese. "A Guide to Proper Usage of Spoken Chinese" is by far the most useful amongst them. This book is meant to supplement one's study of Chinese. It is by no means a stand-alone text book. Guide to Spoken Chinese aims to clear up a large number of grammatical and vocabulary issues often encoutered by English speakers learning Chinese. This is exceptionally helpful as the issues tackled are just the sort often overlooked by broader ranging textbooks, and even by teachers in the classroom.

The book aims to clear up incorrect usage before it becomes "fossilized" by helping students to learn where they may have misunderstandings, and clarifying the rules for them. Those who will benefit most from this book are intermediate Chinese learners. They will have a sufficient language base to be able to understand the lessons and examples given, but will still benefit greatly from the clarifications provided.

The book is not written in such a way as to require reading from front to back. One is free to browse through the lessons to focus on the areas where she has difficulty. There are 114 lessons in this slim book. As a result of covering so much ground they could be slightly more indepth. Most of them are sufficiently detailed, but others could use more example phrases to help clarify the distinctions made. For those who wish to practice there are exercises and an answer key in the back of the book.

This book is useful. It does what it sets out to do, which is all that can really be asked of it. It won't teach you Chinese, but it might help fix and improve the Chinese you already know. I recommend it to supplement one's studies with more indepth clarification of grammar and vocabulary usage.

Posted by Ryan at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May the junk mail of Taiwan be damned by all that is holy! It is absolutely out of control. Our mailbox is constantly stuffed with this crap. I have severe doubts of the efficacy of direct mailing when there is such a high volume. One would need to give up hours of time every week to read all ths crap. Thus, my suspicion is, in most households it goes directly into the trash, or rather into the recycling. Because with Taipei's, none too cheap, mandatory garbage bags throwing one's junk mail into the trash is prohibitively expensive. You'd reckon that on a tiny island plagued with waste disposal problems (so much so that they used to ship it to the Solomon islands, heaps of room there y'know...) there would be a law against what equates to walking around town and leaving garbage at every single household one passes.

I have nothing personally against the individuals who distribute the junk mail. I have caught them red-handed on a number of occasions cramming useless crap into my mailbox. I hesitate to ask them not to though, as I realize they are just trying to put food on the table, and likely get paid by the piece. That said the sight of endless flyers poking out of my mailbox every time I come home gets my hackles up. And I don't even know how my hackles work, so this is obviously an instictive reaction of some sort. Most likely my junk mail induced anger is an evolutionary artifact originally intended to defend my ancestors from that god-damned monkey who would always come by with sample banana skins from the bananas his tree was producing. Back in the day my ancestors could just beat the crap out of the junk mail monkey until he learned not to come around anymore. These days that sort of behaviour is frowned upon and I await the enactment of a law of some sort to keep the monkeys off my back.

Posted by Ryan at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The administration staff at the CCLC (Center for Chinese Language and Culture) are quite possibly the rudest, most inept group of individuals I have ever had dealings with, and I've dealt with my fair share of rude ineptitude. As I've mentioned before, I like the school. The teachers are good. The facilities are nice. That said, dealing with the school on an administrative level is incredibly frustrating. I am not alone in my opionion. Just about every student has their own horror story of having to deal with the administration. Those who don't have horror stories stil have a marked distaste for the way they are treated by the office staff.

I am a scholarship student. This means every month the government of Taiwan pays me to study Chinese. If my marks fall below a certain level, or I miss too much class I do not receive my scholarship. Fair enough. Last month there was an error calculating my attendance at the CCLC office. As a result this month when I went to withdraw money from my bank account there was nothing there. You see they don't inform you if they are going to withhold your scholarship mnoney. They just do it. So students are treated to the nice surprise of having no money for a month, and wondering what the hell they're going to eat in the meantime.

Today I dealt with the mass of administration to get my problem solved. At first they told me there was pretty much nothing they could do. After a bunch of haggling, and going from office to office and desk to desk I sussed out my difficulties. I had my teacher from last term write a short note explaining that there had been an error and I had indeed been in class on the days they had me marked as absent. I again did the desk shuffle presenting my note to numerous individuals trying to get them to help me out. I finally got my records changed and went to the scholarship lady smiling with the proof that I had indeed been in class last month. She says "fine you'll get your money at the beginning of next month." Which means I essentially have to go three weeks without my money. Which means I'm looking forward to eating sawdust for a few weeks. I asked her why she couldn't get the money in sooner (they already have the money sitting in their account). To which she replied she has to wait for all the other students who have errors from last month's scholarships to sort out their problems so she can deal with them all at once. When I suggested to her that they start informing students when there is a problem regarding their scholarship before they withold the money she looked downright surprised, as if the thought had never crossed her mind. Her reply was that it was a good idea, but she wouldn't be able to do it. With that I was dismissed.

Posted by Ryan at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Wenlin is my absolute favorite Chinese learning resource. I can honestly see myself using this computer program, or some incarnation of it, until I either miraculously acquire Mandarin fluency or I die. At first glance Wenlin appears to be an electric dictionary. Which it of course is, but it is so much more. The real power of Wenlin is its interface. One can search by pinyin, stroke count, radicals (by number or stroke count), character components, word, phrase, English meaning, character frequency, word frequency, unicode number, and more methods I'm likely forgetting to mention. If one is really stuck he can even use his computer's mouse to draw the character into an input box.

What this all means is that when one needs information Wenlin makes it easy to find. If I'm reading and I see a character I don't know I can find it easily as I have numerous ways of looking for it. If it's used it conjunction with another character I can search by words containing that character. If it has a component I recognize I can search by that component. If I can guess how its pronounced I can search by that sound, and so on and so forth.

Wenlin has sound files for every character, plus stroke order animations. These features are especially useful for people earlier on in the process of studying Chinese. Cantonese pronunciations are also included for many more popular characters. Many characters are accompanied by interesting etymological data, and some even have tips designed to make remembering the character's structure easier. Furthermore all characters are available in simplified and traditional forms.

Beyond all the regular functionality of a dictionary Wenlin offers much more. It can be used as a word processor/text editor or to view documentation. I often cut and paste Chinese news stories off of websites into Wenlin when I read them. Not only can I make the font nice and big to make reading the Hanzi easier, if I run into reading difficulties I can scroll over the characters and the program will display a definition at the bottom of the screen. The program is smart enough to know that if two characters used as a word are together the word's definition should be displayed. Included with the full version of the program are numerous full length texts drawn from China's long literary history. The texts are accompanied with English translations and offer students a good way to practice their Chinese and learn more about Chinese culture.

There is a high-quality flash card training/testing system included. I have used it briefly, but as I find my preferred learning methods do not jive with flash cards I haven't tested it extensively. Nonetheless this should be an attractive feature to many students.

Like I said, Wenlin is my absolute favorite resource. It makes my studying faster, more efficient, and easier. This means I am able to get more done in the hours I put in, which I like to think means I'll progress faster than I would otherwise. All that said, it isn't cheap. Purchasing information is available on their website. Note that academic, and institutional discounts are likely available. There is a demo version available for download, but it is severly hampered by the size of the dictionary included.

Posted by Ryan at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

New photo: http://www.ryanwhalen.com/album/Still%20Life/slides/PICT1402-01.html. I call it "Fish Out of Water"

Posted by Ryan at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chinesepod is a relatively new resource for people interested in learning Chinese. Podcasted from Shanghai on approximately a daily basis it mixes good instruction technique, with high production values and amiable hosts. As the podcast just started in September of 2005 the selection of lessons is still heavily weighted towards the beginner/basic level. However for those with appropriate levels of Chinese experience these lessons will provide valuable assistance.

The podcasts themselves are free. If one wishes she can pay a subscription fee for access to supplementary training materials. I can't speak to the value of these as I've never used them. I do occasionaly listen to the 'intermediate' lessons and often find them useful. If anything, listening to extra Chinese lessons, whether I find them too easy or not, certainly isn't doing any harm to my Chinese abilities.

Interestingly this podcast has climbed up yahoo's ranking of podcasts to consistently rank in the top five. This speaks both to the growing popularity of Chinese as a foreign language, and to the overall quality of the service. I highly recommend chinesepod to beginners and even people who consider their Chinese abilities at an intermediate level.

Posted by Ryan at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (1)