San Francisco Fog (Dominic's Blog)

While at the Korean Bell of Friendship in San Pedro, I saw these two wooden figures that had written on them 天下大將軍 and 地下女將軍. (They also look like they've seen better days.) I was puzzled, took a picture, and now have looked them up on the internet.

Apparently these are called jangseung 장승, and traditionally they're placed outside villages to ward off demons, etc. There's even a 184-page photo book of them, called Changsŭng, Village Guardian God of Korea (1993, Hwang Hŏn-man 黃憲萬).

I've been reading Traveler's Tales: Tibet (link to Google books), and I must say it has some pretty incredible stories... I recommend!

I've been going through an old book entitled Everybody's Cantonese (1949, by Chan Yeung Kwong), and although the vocabulary is pretty basic, I did find some old pronunciations and interesting characters. For example, 咁 is transcribed as gom3, with a back rounded vowel (nowadays usually pronounced gɐm3); and 粒 is transcribed as nɐp5 (which I've always heard as lɐp5). These appear to the old pronunciations which have gone out of fashion.

Interesting characters include 氈 dzin5 'blanket', 笪 daːt3 'classifier for places', 樖 pɔ5 'classifier for trees', and 擸𢶍 laːp6saːp3 'trash' (now usually written 垃圾). I've always wondered about the word for trash, which in mainland Mandarin is pronounced la1ji1, but in Taiwan is pronounced le4se4. Why the difference? Are one or both of the variants related to the Cantonese word, and how?

i finally got an intel mac, and i've been spending part of the last few days reinstalling files that didn't get transferred automatically. Imagine my horror when i opened my web page and discovered that the font had suddenly turned ugly! what had happened to my beloved charcoal font?

as it turns out, charcoal is a classic-only font. i ended up retrieving it from my old OS9 System Folder, along with such oldies-but-goodies as Gadget and SteveHand. I also downloaded a San Francisco-inspired TrueType ransom note font called St. Francis:

St. Francis font

ah, the memories!

It's finally done! You can download it from the following link and look at all the pretty charts.

Lizu and Proto-Tibeto-Burman

The newspapers are making a big deal about how the mainland translation skips out on "communism" and "dissent", which got me looking for the full, uncut translation from Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Satellite Television, which is mentioned—but, rather inconveniently, not linked to—in the English-language media. So I extracted the text and have posted it below for general (and translators') interest's sake.

Having been surrounded by Asian American people all my life, I've been kind of shocked at how white grad school is. My house has almost 60 people, and last semester there were around 6 including me, which is an increase from previous years. My department has the same ratio: about 6 Asian Americans out of almost 60 grad students.

According to the official figures from UC Berkeley (download a copy), out of 8372 graduate students from the U.S., 1776, or 21%, are Asian American or Pacific Islander. Compare with 4258, or just over 51%, who are White. Certainly API is the second largest group (third is "No data" at 860, followed by Chicano/Latino at 640, "Other" at 395, Black at 328, and Native American at 115), but it pales in comparison with the undergraduate population: 10456 API out of 24076, which is 43%, compared with 7740 White (32%).

When I was admitted to grad school, I thought it a little odd that my financial aid was from the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, which (as I understand it) is for supporting underrepresented students, but now it makes total sense.

As a side note, there are 1886 international grad students, and out of those 1305 are male, 581 are female. That's almost 70%!

One of the things that always bothers me about mainland China are the weird usages of certain words. Take 文化 'culture', for instance. If someone here says that someone "has culture" (有文化), what they really mean is that they've been educated. Having taken, e.g., Anthro CIV my freshman year, this is totally bizarre to me. Everyone has culture (note that the Chinese word 文化 has the anthropological meaning as well); just because it's different doesn't mean it's not as good as yours. But that seems to be exactly the implication here: if you haven't received a proper education in Chinese, you don't really have culture.

I noticed a similar thing with 识字 'literate' when my language consultant said that his father was illiterate (不识字). I was confused---didn't his father read Tibetan? But what he meant was that his father couldn't read Chinese characters.

Then there are all sorts of weird naming conventions, like "Culture Road" 文化路, "Liberation Road" 解放路, "Unity Road" 团结路, and things like "People's Road" (人民路) and "People's Park" (人民公园). I guess they all show how cultured, liberated, and unified the "people" are now.

But perhaps the most bizarre is 文明 'civilized', which you see everywhere in mainland China. There's apparently a great push there for people to be more "civilized". At urinals there are signs that say 向前一小步 文明一大步 "Step a little more forward, be a lot more civilized". I can't decide if this is insulting (i.e., you're so backwards that you don't even know how to use a urinal) or false security (look at how civilized I am, I don't drip all over the floor when I pee).

Pictured above is a "Safe, Civilized Building". In case there's any doubt, it's been posted four times.

Here's another example, an effort to have tourism be more civilized. My favorite part is where it tells you, "Don't force foreign tourists to take photos." Here's the complete English translation (copied verbatim from the sign) for your enjoyment:

In order to build a civilized and harmonious tour environment and to improve the moral standards of both tourists and our citizens, please abide the following rules.

1. Please keep the environment clean. Don't spit. Don't spit the chewing gum. No littering. No smoking except in the designated area.

2. Please follow the public order. Keep silent. Don't jump the queue. Please keep gateways clear. Please don not talk loudly in public places.

3. Please protect the ecological environment. Don't step on the grassland. Don't pick flowers or fruits. Don't chase or beat animal. Don't give animal any food without permit when you are in the zoo.

4. Protect the historical relics and sites. Don't paint or carve on the historical relics. Don't climb up the historical relics. No photos without permit.

5. Value the public facilities. Don't dirty or destroy any installment in the hotel. Don't destroy the public facilities. Do not be out for small advantages. Save water and electricity. Don't waste food.

6. Respect other people's rights. Don't force foreign tourists to take photos. Don't force other people to buy or sell something. Do not occupy public facilities for a long time. Respect people in the service sector. Respect religious customs of different nationalities.

7. To be polite. Wear clean and proper clothes. Do not wear clothes exposing the neck or shoulders in public places. Take care of the elderly, children, the sick and the handicapped. Do not utter dirty words.

8. Advocate a happy and healthy way of life. Resist superstition. Avoid pornography, gambling and drug.

Listening to my field recordings, it's kind of amazing how much better I can understand the Sichuanese Mandarin that my consultants spoke now (compared with when I first got there in June). Simple things like [m̩˩ te˦] 'no'/'not have' (compare with Standard Mandarin méiyǒu 沒有).

It's hard enough understanding a different dialect of Mandarin, so it's annoying when people modify it to try to accommodate you. So in this segment I was going over today, my consultant was telling me that [zɿ²⁴] meant [ɕje¹¹ tsɿ⁴⁴]. So at first I was like, oh, it means 'write' (xiězì 寫字). It didn't cross my mind that he meant xiézi 鞋子 'shoes', because in their dialect 'shoes' is [hai¹¹ tsɿ⁴⁴] (or more accurately, [xai], but let's not confuse the IPA-rusty). He had switched from "hai" to "xie" because he knew that was the standard form! This is actually apparent in the recording if you listen carefully to it... he says [xa... ɕje¹¹ tsɿ⁴⁴], correcting himself. (Also, the tone for 'write' is different from the tone on 'shoe', which is what finally tipped me off.)

Gah! Don't try to accommodate me by mixing dialects! It only makes it more confusing!

what has dominic been up to in the last two months
don't look at me, i just sit on his desk all day

i get so bored sitting here
lately dominic's been leaving the lid up on the laptop
to record arthur
the tv show
so now i figured out how to post on this blog
don't worry he's still alive

life hasn't been as amusing after we got back from china
except for london
that's me at the british museum
dominic headed straight for the rosetta stone
i liked the roof and the shadow it cast on the walls

If you're in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Hong Kong and need to eat, I highly recommend 洪利粥店茶餐廳 (Hung Lee), on Hau Fook Street 厚福街, which is not on the tourist map but is right in between Granville and Cameron, off of Carnarvon.

The 粥店 part means they serve jook, etc. (the etc. part being noodles). The 茶餐廳 part means they serve milk tea (奶茶) and other drinks, and Hong Kong-style breakfast (A餐 B餐, etc.). Before you go, brush up on your Chinese---I didn't see any English menus.

Wikipedia on 茶餐廳:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cha_chaan_teng

and the Cantonese version:

http://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/茶餐廳

Hong Kong is so great. I forgot how great it was, after being in mainland China for so long. I forgot how great it was to have people smile at you when you pay for dinner, or be friendly when you pick up brochures at the tourist info booth. I forgot how nice it was not to live in a police state. (According to today's HK edition of the Epoch Times, foreigners in Beijing are afraid of the stern police marching around on the streets.) The police here can chat with each other while they're patrolling, they look like they enjoy their jobs, and they actually look like nice people.

Anticipating my Guangzhou metro trip in a couple days (the machines only take 1-kuai coins, not bills), I asked if they had coins at the counter after having dinner.

"冇啊," she said. "有嗰陣時又冇人要。" ("No, and when we do no one wants them.")

I laughed. I guess the preference for light paper bills over annoying, heavy coins is universal (note the reluctance of people in the U.S. to replace the dollar bill with a dollar coin).

Here's a lovely little supermarket logo. I think it's a person on a bike. The unfortunate part of it is the string of letters of along the top, which seem to make no sense at first glance. Guess what the letters SCSHHSYYXZRGS stand for... (scroll down for the answer)

OK, here's the answer: 四川省互惠商业有限责任公司. I found it on the side of a package of toilet paper, right about the time one of the ladies in the store walked over to me and said, sir, you can't take pictures here.

Today I went to the Sichuan University Museum, which, according to reviews, is one of the better museums in the southwest of China, with a good ethnographic section.

Peh! This does not make me want to visit other museums in southwest China.

I found the collections to be rather sparse and superficial. I suppose it was, perhaps, worth the 10 kuai student admission (about USD 1.50---I actually had a conversation with myself to convince myself that it would be worth that much to take a look even if it sucked), and their "ethnicities" section dutifully displayed artifacts and clothing from Tibetans, Qiang, Miao, Naxi, and Yi, but it hardly does justice to the complex ethnographic and linguistic make-up of southwest China. The language that I'm studying, for example, is not even mentioned (since it's subsumed under the general category of "Tibetan", even though the language isn't Tibetan at all). The English descriptions posted on the walls were passable at times, and utterly nonsensical at others.

There's a kind of interesting archaeology section in the basement, but it too is superficial. It briefly introduces various archaeological sites that have been excavated in Sichuan, displays some artifacts from them, and shows you the innards of a scaled-down model kiln. I still have no idea how a kiln actually works. (Maybe you stick bricks in one end, and plates and bowls come out the other...) But there's so much more they could have said. What was significant about these discoveries? How did they change our understanding of history and pre-history? How does modern development, e.g., the building of the Three Gorges Dam, affect archaeological excavation? For the ethnography section, which groups have become more Sinicized, and which groups have maintained their own language and culture? How are people dealing with the loss of language and culture in the face of Han expansion? Are there efforts being made to preserve or at least document these cultures? None of these questions are addressed in the museum exhibits.

I expect the party line in tourist brochures and web sites. But from a museum affiliated with an academic institution, I expect better.

(To be fair, the shadow puppets were pretty damn cool.)

There is a brief moment of levity at every bus stop in Chengdu, when the name of the stop is announced (prerecorded) in both Mandarin and English. The English version is the following: "Now. [insert name of stop in Mandarin here]."

If you ever need to add passport pages, I highly recommend doing it abroad, where they do it while you wait. Every page of my passport has now been stamped or visa'd, so I went to the consulate here in Chengdu, which (after getting past the security) was an extremely pleasant experience, since the waiting room was air conditioned and they had old copies of the South China Morning Post (the Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper whose front page is one of the ones posted outside Moffitt, for those of you in Berkeley). Since I get no news here, even week-old news was welcome. I don't make an effort to watch the TV news here, since it's mostly sob stories about various natural disasters happening around the country---either that, or reports of where the "holy Olympic torch" was paraded around today. International news is pushed to the very end, it seems---you know, the spot where, in American news broadcasts, they show pictures of the cute puppies from today's county fair dog show. Newspapers are probably better, but I don't bother spending money on those either since all information is filtered by the you-know-who.

I've been doing a lot of transcription on the computer lately, and my left elbow is starting to bother me again. I think I have to switch to paper transcription. If only there was handwriting recognition that recognized IPA! Computer technology just isn't "there" yet; we have to adapt ourselves to computers, when it really should be the other way around.

In the town I'm in (Mianning), there's been a particularly disturbing and/or hilarious sound change in their variety of Southwestern Mandarin, namely /ʂw/ > /f/, the result of which is that, e.g., 'drink water' (喝水) is /xo⁵⁵ fei⁵⁵/, 'fun' (好耍) is /xao⁵⁵ fa⁵⁵/, and 'read' (看书) is /kʰæn²¹ fu⁵⁵/.

This sound change, as I hope all my Ling 130 students will recall, is a kind of fusion, since /f/ retains the manner of articulation from the fricative /ʂ/, and the labial place of articulation from /w/.

I confess... my guilty pleasure here is the National Geographic channel. (Actually, English-language TV in general, but the other two channels are movie channels and the movies are usually a family affair. Hot Fuzz is a great movie, by the way.) Last night I watched "Whitewater Kayak China". It was definitely superficial on the cultural commentary (one of the guys was even going to stay in China for a whole six months to learn "the language"), but it was definitely well-shot and the kayaking was pretty damn cool.