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19 April 2008
I’ve just been reading through some of my previous entries, and I feel that before I write anything else I must apologise for the horrible style in which some of them are written. This applies particularly to the ones about my first movements in Beijing. Apparently the lack of intensive practice has also made me sloppy in my punctuation, and sometimes grammar. I’m intending on going through them closely and correcting the nasty little mistakes I’ve just noticed. I think perhaps I have become a little complacent, and need to pay closer attention to how I use my words. The nastiness results in part, I believe, from my having simply dashed off the posts to get down the facts or feelings before they were forgotten. I then posted them without editing. The total lack of capitalisation in some of the previous entries has a more practical reason behind it: on some occasions when using the school’s computers I found that every time I pressed the Shift key the computer shifted to Chinese language input mode, and began spitting forth an array of incomprehensible characters in place of what I was trying to write. My temporary solution was to stop using the Shift key. In fact, since then I have learnt a little more about the Chinese input mode (including, vitally, how to disable it), and even been able to use it to render a few very basic words I’ve learnt into proper characters. The Chinese computer text input system is rather interesting. Essentially, it functions the same way as predictive text. That is, the user presses a combination of keys, and the computer attempts to guess the intended meaning based on a stored database of possibilities. However, what makes the Chinese text input system particularly complicated is that it requires that the user know Pinyin, the modern romanisation system for Chinese words. For example, to write ‘Qingdao’ in characters, I can activate Chinese input mode, and type ‘Qingdao’ using the roman alphabetical keyboard. The computer then flashes up several numbered options for me to choose between. Sure enough, number 1 is 青岛. This is easy enough to a foreigner, knowing primarily as one does the Pinyin name of the city. However, it means that as a Chinese person you must know the Pinyin in order to be able to type the word. Of course it is far from impossible to learn Pinyin, and China’s millions of computer users don’t let it get in their way, but I found this point interesting from a cultural point of view. I imagine that this (very necessary) system must make it slightly more difficult for the elderly and the poorly-educated (or, indeed, the simply poor) to use computers at all. It’s Friday evening, and the time is getting on, but as ever this is less of a concern to me tonight as I grant myself the luxury of a lie-in on Saturday mornings. My China lie-in is by no means as ridiculously lazy as my England lie-in. It might be because of the way I adjusted to the time difference all those weeks ago, or it might simply be because my bed is nowhere near as comfortable, but I find myself unable to sleep in for too long here. My plans for Saturday and Sunday are, as usual, minimal. Investigate parcel-sending. Read a little, perhaps. Eat the tomatoes I bought, because they’ve been sitting in the fridge all week, waiting. I’m even eating them with chopsticks at this point. They’re rather good, sliced into chunks and put in a bowl, to be fished out piece by piece. Saves the juice making my fingers sting, too. I really have been eating almost everything with my chopsticks. I tried using a fork for my noodles last week, and it felt awful. So big and clumsy and metallic –feeling, and I couldn’t pick up the little pieces of vegetable in the broth at all… … After I wrote the above I decided that it was really about time I got to sleep, so I’m adding to it now at midday on Saturday. I woke up this morning, moved my head, and nearly died. Or so it felt. Overnight something has happened to my neck, and it is absolute agony to move. I decided that the best course of action would be to spend the rest of the morning lying down, with a hot water bottle applied to my neck in an attempt to ease the pain. I’m not sure how well it really worked. Certainly, it felt good, but only as long as I was just lying there. The minute I started to move it would twinge and ache again. But I didn’t want to mope in bed all day, and the loud building noises outside were beginning to really bother me, so very slowly and carefully I got up and got everything together to go out. I’ve wrapped my trusty old H&M scarf around my neck in an attempt to keep it warm and minimise movement. I’m currently in the old favourite, Starbucks, as it really is the best place to get a comfortable seat, something to drink and a free internet connection. Also, the one I am currently patronising has the advantage of being rather quiet. It being a Saturday, and a nice day, the streets of Qingdao are teeming with people. It’s nice, then, to go somewhere reasonably calm and quiet. Possibly the next best thing to the natural stillness and calm of home that I crave from time to time. As I remarked to Mum on the phone yesterday, I haven’t been out of the city in 9 weeks of being here, and I do miss nature. Doubtless Dad, at least, will laugh to read this and say that I am forever complaining about the countryside but am shyly admitting that really I do like it. Far from the truth: I am not ashamed at all to say that I have a deep and passionate love of nature. I may love the city, too, but it amazes me in a different and complementary way. There’s a passage on love of nature from Orlando (which I’ve been reading, having found it among the somewhat limited selection in the Foreign Language Bookstore), which caught my attention, and which, to conclude my post, I will reproduce here for you: ‘The English disease, a love of Nature, was inborn in her, and here, where Nature was so much larger and more powerful than in England, she fell into its hands as she had never done before. The malady is too well known, and has been, alas, too often described to need describing afresh, save very briefly. There were mountains; there were valleys; there were streams. She climbed the mountains; roamed the valleys; sat on the banks of the streams. She likened the hills to ramparts, to the breasts of doves, and the flanks of kine. She compared the flowers to enamel and the turf to Turkey rugs worn thin. Trees were withered hags, and sheep were grey boulders. Everything, in fact, was something else. She found the tarn on the mountain–top and almost threw herself in to seek the wisdom she thought lay hid there; and when, from the mountain–top, she beheld far off, across the Sea of Marmara, the plains of Greece, and made out (her eyes were admirable) the Acropolis with a white streak or two, which must, she thought, be the Parthenon, her soul expanded with her eyeballs, and she prayed that she might share the majesty of the hills, know the serenity of the plains, etc. etc., as all such believers do. Then, looking down, the red hyacinth, the purple iris wrought her to cry out in ecstasy at the goodness, the beauty of nature; raising her eyes again, she beheld the eagle soaring, and imagined its raptures and made them her own. Returning home, she saluted each star, each peak, and each watch–fire as if they signalled to her alone; and at last, when she flung herself upon her mat in the gipsies’ tent, she could not help bursting out again, How good to eat! How good to eat! (For it is a curious fact that though human beings have such imperfect means of communication, that they can only say ‘good to eat’ when they mean ‘beautiful’ and the other way about, they will yet endure ridicule and misunderstanding rather than keep any experience to themselves.)’ utterly utter [
06:32 ]
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Good words.
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