Chinese Backflips

Remember in grade school when the weird/abnormal version of stuff was the “Chinese _____. “

“Oh, you think backflips are hard, my cousin can do a Chinese backflip.” And it would mean like doing it one-handed except your off-hand had to be holding some specific object (hammer/sickle?).

In the imagination of elementary kids in the US (or Michigan at least (or Mount Pleasant, MI at least)), in China every day was opposite day. “If you dig a hole deep enough, you end up in China,” our parents would tell us; the other side of the world. And if we made it all the way we would find people “Chinese waking” down the street, probably a three-limbed crab walk or something.

There is also the idea that Chinese is naturally the most difficult language for English-speakers to learn. There are all kinds of claims about the challenge of tonality, the difference in expression of ideas, the drastically dissimilar writing systems.  But it’s also interesting that this isn’t said as often of Japanese, which has much more complicated grammar and a writing system that isn’t even the same as the spoken language. It is even less often said of Eastern European languages that often rank among the hardest for English-speakers, such as Hungarian, Czech and Polish.

Maybe these are related. Young English-speakers’ conception of a “Chinese backflip” may not be too different from their adult counterparts’ lack of ability to understand the processes of “Chinese eating” (using chopsticks), “Chinese talking” (speaking in Chinese), or “Chinese school” (really intense) as part of the every day lives of people, rather than comical oddities happening in mythical Opposite Country.

To close this thought, I would like to present you with the ‘Aztec Push-Up.’ This guy’s militaristic zeal is matched only by his physical strength.

Hoping and Waiting

In the Spanish language, the words for “to wait” and “to hope” are one in the same: “esperar.” I think this might explain a lot of the cultural differences found here.

‘Esperar’ comes from the Latin “sperāre” which means “hope” and has no mention of waiting. In English, ‘wait’ and ‘hope’ are drastically different. While hoping usually involves waiting, its implications are much more grandiose: we ‘hope’ for a miracle, we ‘wait’ for the bus. The first instance of ‘wait’ shows up in the English language c.1200, while the temporal origins of ‘hope’ are not as well known, which implies it came earlier. It is known, however, that both words come from Germanic roots.

The time frame here seems to be important. In 1200, the English- and German-speaking worlds started to do a lot of hoping. In the heart of the crusades, it was important to draw a distinction between the waiting of every day, natural life and the hope of eternal redemption. There was nothing much to wait for in the life of the crusader or crusadee, in fact, life on earth was rather painful, and was purposely construed as such by the church. But there was plenty to hope for, as any of us at all familiar with Christianity (as I barely am) know. Eternal happiness, harmony, absence of hope. Nothing to hope for, it’s all at your fingertips (of which you have none you intangible angel, you). So it was necessary to describe the way in which, even though there was nothing to ‘wait’ for, your life totally sucked, there was much to ‘hope’ for.

In Spain at this time, the situation was slightly yet importantly different. The Spanish, fighting their own battles of Reconquista (Reconquest) were more concerned with reclaiming land ruled by the Islamic Moors. Spain, with a history containing a milder Christian zeal, was fighting a land battle rather than angrily attempting to impose a particular religiosity. So the Spanish language never found it necessary to draw a distinction between ‘waiting’ and ‘hoping.’ Though the Spanish were not pleasant people at this time, it was at least never an assumption that there was nothing to wait for. The idea of life on Earth was never completely rejected as a pointless step toward salvation. You could wait while hoping, for something to happen in your current life, or in the world around you.

So here I am, an English-speaker in a Spanish-speaking country, and I seem to be the only one who is distinguishing these two terms (besides the other gringos or otherwise Westerners). I am 10 minutes early to class, I arrive exactly at or slightly later than the agreed upon time, when waiting for the bus I get jittery and constantly look for it to round the corner. It’s because I am the only one waiting. Everybody else is both waiting and hoping, a miracle of simultaneity that my brain can’t figure out.

In the US, perhaps in the “West,” we consider ‘waiting’ to be an empty, bland place to stand around until some predictable, particular event occurs. The notion of waiting implies that we know what we are waiting for. The bus, the mail, class, to exhale. This is a big flaw in our culture, as I see it. The idea that point A leads directly to point B and all empty spaces are automatically filled with this empty waiting, empty anticipation of points B/C/D/Etc. But here, in the world of waiting/hoping, the empty spaces are not boring hindrances of our plans. They are places of possibility. Here, point A seems to lead directly to point B, but the empty spaces are always filled with, in addition to waiting, the underlying hope we might be sent flying to point ! or point ↓ or to a land where points no longer exist.

Words say a lot about cultures. It is my sense that there is something important to be gained from this difference in language use. I have been trying to interpret moments of waiting, which normally frustrate me, as moments of possibility, of hope. I have been trying to find a happy medium between the boredom of waiting and the impossible grandiosity of hope. With this distinction intact, it is hard for me to discover things anew. It is hard to understand that empty spaces in time can be filled with exploration rather than anticipation.

I hope you have enjoyed this. Hope a minute to take it all in and… hope for it, BAM! Maybe it didn’t work. If this doesn’t make me famous, I’ll just become a hoper. I hear they make good tips.

Immersion, Difference, and Recognition

The barriers of our world are many. Between any two individuals exist innumerable protections against human interaction. By human interaction, I mean recognition of the other. The ability to understand the situation in which another human exists. Seeing oneself in that person.

We know that this interaction requires proximity. We know it requires communication. We know it requires historical similarity, the ability to relate to past events. But to interpret these as barriers rather than, forgive the cheesy metaphor, doors, is problematic and prevalent.

While it is true that these divisions exist, our cultural attitude is to reify them, and give them more attention than they deserve.

Ultimately, of the requirements listed above, proximity, teamed with a bit of hard work, is all that is needed. Communication and historical meaning follow. Over time, if we remain close to another person, or another culture, communication becomes easier and we begin to have shared experiences. And thus we begin to understand one another.

This is the frustration and difficulty in the early stages of an extended stay in another place: the lack of mutual recognition. I have passed the first test in deciding to immerse myself in another culture, perhaps a naive decision. Naive because now I have to bear the discomfort of this absence of recognition until communication is possible.

Fernando, my host brother, and I, had a slightly awkward relationship. We only spoke in Spanish, which meant that our interaction was limited. However, since he is learning and practicing English, our relationship has taken on an unspoken precedent of Spanglish. And the mutuality of this dynamic has allowed us to find more of the necessary recognition. Even though our conversation remains limited, I am able to relate to his language struggle, and he to mine. Before, we existed in a sort of Master-Slave binary, in which he knew all of the answers and I was fighting to keep up and understand.

I feel very young here, like a kid who doesn’t know why all of the adults are laughing. Do you know that boy who repeats the same clever information about trains, or Star Wars, or Video Games in an attempt to relate to the dinner party-goers at his parents’ house? That boy is me. That is the exploration necessary to destroy the cultural and historical barriers. Memorize stock phrases that you may or may not understand, use the hell out of them, and listen really closely. Open ears and open mind, I tell myself.

Six days after arriving, I, like the Quiteños, seem to be accustomed to living at high altitude. Add it to the list, stock phrase: “¡Que lindo vivir en las montañas!” and listen to the answer. Now, we all live here. Most of us take the bus. Most go to the Rio Coca bus stop, I get off earlier. Proximity leads to shared experience, leads to historical meaning, leads to the understanding that where you come from, what you value, who you love, what you have seen, may not be the same for everyone. But, most importantly, that these people are not unavailable. Engage in proximity. The world is no melting pot where we sit and wait for the flames to get hot enough to mash everything together into homogeneity. The world is a small dish filled with oil and vinegar: more delicious when you make the effort to mix it up a bit, but ultimately different.

People with different languages, different experiences and different lives are always around. Live to learn.