Learning a song now and then is an easy way to play with the language. We found out pretty quick that the lyrics to Chinese pop songs are just as… what’s the word… vapid? as the lyrics in most English pop songs. Except a lot of Chinese pop songs seem to involve more cutesy-ness and less prostitution. That means the lyrics are simple and safe, assuming that large doses of aural saccharine can’t hurt you.

We’ll post songs occasionally, and for each song I’ll put the music video so you can hear it, and post a download link to the lyrics and guitar chord sheets that I made to practice the song… in case you wanna sing along!

老鼠爱大米 / Mouse Loves Rice / lǎoshǔ ài dàmǐ

Our teachers tell us that this is maybe the cheesiest Chinese pop song ever. It’s famous, and has been redone in many different languages, but don’t go looking for the English version on Youtube because you’ll find it, and it’s horrible. Also, Chinese mice don’t eat cheese, they eat rice. Actually come to think of it, most Chinese people don’t eat cheese. Anyway, you can play the song while you look at the lyrics below:

Or you can play the mp3:

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Lyrics & Guitar Chords

Download: LaoshuAiDami.pdf (lyrics & guitar chords with pinyin/English cheatsheet).

歌词 / gē cí / Lyrics (the English is a little overly literal):

我听见你的声音 / wǒ tīng jiàn nǐ de shēng yīn
I hear your voice

有种特别的感觉 / yǒu zhǒng tè bié de gǎn jué
Have a special kind of feeling

让我不断想 / ràng wǒ bù duàn xiǎng
Makes me constantly miss (you)

不敢再忘记你 / bù gǎn zài wàng jì nǐ
(I) don’t dare forget you again

我记得有一个人 / wǒ jì de yǒu yī gè rén
I remember there’s one person

永远留在我心中 / yǒng yuǎn liú zài wǒ xīn zhōng
(who) forever stays in my heart

哪怕只能够这样的想你 / nǎ pà zhǐ néng gòu zhè yang de xiǎng nǐ
Even still all (I’m) able to do is miss you like this

如果真的有一天 / rú guǒ zhēn de yǒu yī tiān
If really there’s a day

爱情理想会实现 / ài qíng lǐ xiǎng huì shí xiàn
(when) ideal romance is achieved

我会加倍努力好好对你 / Wǒ huì jiā bèi nǔ lì hǎo hǎo duì nǐ
I will doubly strive to be good to you

永远不改变 / yǒng yuǎn bù gǎi biàn
Forever not changing

不管路有多么远 / bù guǎn lù yǒu duō me yuǎn
No matter the road is however far

一定会让它实现 / yī dìng huì ràng tā shí xiàn
(I) will definitely make it happen

我会轻轻在你耳边 / wǒ huì qīng qīng zài nǐ ěr biān
I will softly beside your ear

对你说，对你说 / duì nǐ shuō, duì nǐ shuō
Say to you, say to you

Chorus:

我爱你，爱着你 / wǒ ài nǐ, ài zhe nǐ
I love you, loving you

就象老鼠爱大米 / jiù xiàng lǎo shǔ ài dà mǐ
Just like a mouse loves rice

不管有多少风雨 / bù guǎn yǒu duō shǎo fēng yǔ
No matter there is how much wind and rain

我都会依然陪着你 / wǒ dōu huì yī rán péi zhe nǐ
I will still as before be there with you

我想你，想着你 / wǒ xiǎng nǐ, xiǎng zhe nǐ
I miss you, missing you

不管有多么的苦 / bù guǎn yǒu duō me de kǔ
No matter it’s however bitter

只要能让你开心 / zhǐ yào néng ràng nǐ kāi xīn
So long as (I’m) able to make you feel happy

我什么都愿意 / wǒ shén me dōu yuàn yì
I’m willing to do anything

这样爱你 / zhè yang ài nǐ
This way love you

More help for your karaoke repertoire:

• Nothing to My Name – 一无所有
• Liang Shanbo & Juliet – 梁山伯与茱丽叶
• Even in Death I’ll Love – 死了都要爱

Mainlanders often feel exasperated by constant Western criticism, as if no matter what China does and no matter how much China accomplishes, it’s never good enough in the eyes of Western nations. The poem “Chinese Grievances” (aka “What do you want from us?”) expresses this feeling well.

Every society, including Mainland China, has an over-arching public narrative through which the society describes itself and its place in the world. The author I’m quoting here describes and then critiques the global narrative shared by Western societies, that is, the Big Public Story that modern, liberal, democratic Western nations and peoples use to understand the world and the role of their nations in the world. Although the author isn’t writing with China in mind, I think it’s worthwhile to read the quote below and consider where and how China fits into the West’s understanding of the world. Discovering the roles that China is currently playing in the West’s “Big Public Story” helps explain why the West never seems happy with China.

The excerpt below comes from Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996), an award-winning book on forgiveness and reconciliation. The author, Dr. Miroslav Volf, is a Croatian writing here in reference to the 1990′s Balkan ethnic bloodshed. I’ve quoted from a section titled, “The Dubious Triumph of Inclusion”:

The desire to distance “Europe” — “the West” and “modernity” — from the practice of ethnic cleansing is, however, driven by more than just the simple displacement mechanism by which we locate evil and barbarity with others so as to ascribe goodness and civilization to ourselves. It has as much to do with certain aspects of our philosophy of history as with our moral perception of ourselves. What makes ethnic cleansing seem so “nonmodern” and “nonWestern” is that is it starkly at odds with the major public story we like to tell about the modern democratic West — a story of progressive “inclusion.” Here is a version of such a narrative of modern liberal democracies as described by Alan Wolfe:

Once upon a time, it is said, such societies were ruled by privileged elites. Governing circles were restricted to those of the correct gender, breeding, education, and social exclusiveness. All this changes as a result of those multiple forces usually identified by the term democracy. First the middle classes, then working men, then women, then racial minorities all won not only economic rights but political and social rights as well. (Wolfe 1992, 309)

To put it slightly differently, once “hierarchically segmented” societies gave way to what sociologists call “functionally differentiated” societies, inclusion became the general norm: every person must have access to all functions and therefore all persons must have equal access to education, to all available jobs, to political decision-making, and the like (see Luhmann 1977, 234ff). The history of modern democracies is about progressive and ever expanding inclusion, about “taking in rather than … keeping out” (Wolfe 1992, 309). By contrast, stories of ethnic cleansing are about the most brutal forms of exclusion, about driving out rather than taking in. Hence, they strike us and “nonmodern,” “nonEuropean,” nonWestern.”

But how adequate is the modern story of inclusion’s triumph? I pose this question as an insider who wants to help build and improve rather than as an outsider who wants to destroy and completely replace. To a person, such as myself, who experienced “all the blessings” of communist rule, the suggestion that there is no truth to the liberal narrative of inclusion and the claim that its consequences are mainly unfortunate sounds not only unpersuasive but dangerous. Similarly, most women and minorities would not want to give up the rights they now have; and most critics of liberal democracies would rather live in a democracy than in any of the available alternatives. The progress of “inclusion” is one important thing to celebrate about modernity.

Yet, though the narrative of inclusion is in an important sense true, like some magic mirror which gives the beholder’s image an instant face-lift, it was also crafted in part to “make us feel history has a purpose that in some way corresponds with a more positive understanding of human potential,” as Alan Wolfe rightly underlines (309). but how would the face look if the mirror were to lose its magic? How would the face look in a mirror that was not made by us in order to court out vanity? In the mirrors made in the sweatshops of “submodernity” (Moltmann 1995b) and held by the exploited and emaciated hand of “the other” a mean streak appears on the face of modernity, acquired through the protracted practice of evil. Those who are conveniently left out of the modern narrative of inclusion because they disturb the integrity of its “happy ending” plot demand a long and gruesome counter-narrative of exclusion.

———————

Luhmann, Niklas. Funktion der Religion. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977.
Moltmann, Jurgen. Public Theology and the Future of the Modern World. Pittsburgh: ATS, 1995b.
Wolfe, Alan. “Democracy verses Sociology: Boundaries and Their Political Consequences.” In Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, edited by Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier, 309-325. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

I see two roles that China currently plays in the West’s global narrative, and both of them make Western nations and peoples feel very uncomfortable. Within the confines of the Western Big Public Story, (1) China’s presence as an authoritarian state with a hierarchical society directly opposes the Western Story’s ‘happy ending.’ Obviously, this is a bad thing in the eyes of modern, liberal, democratic Western nations; it’s a direct contradiction of their core values. But, (2) the presence of millions of China’s poor, exploited workers making products for the West exposes a dark sub-plot in the Western Story (what Volf calls a “counter-narrative”). This exposes the West’s selfish hypocrisy and makes the West look bad in its own eyes. Either way, China’s presence messes up the happy story that the West wants to tell about itself.

Of course China has its own self-centered global narrative. China also has a Big Public Story, an over-arching narrative that Mainlanders use to understand the world and the place of China and the Chinese people in the world. Much of the conflict between China and the West happens because each culture is working out of a different Story. China interprets foreign nation’s and foreign people’s actions according to whatever roles are available to foreigners within China’s Big Public Story, just like the West does to China. I think identifying and understanding the differences between these different narratives is one big step on the long road toward getting along better, and perhaps even a more just world.

I’m curious what you other Westerners think about the public narrative we’ve inherited.

For some creative, active responses to the damning Western counter-narrative of exploitation and economic oppression, see the conversations and activities of some our friends who hang out at Toward Simplicity. You can also check out Where Am I Wearing? and meet the author who traveled the globe trying to locate the specific factories that made his clothes.

For more from Dr. Miroslav Volf (but less academic), try:

• “To Embrace the Enemy.” A post-9/11 interview from that September in which Dr. Volf discusses his ideas on forgiveness and reconciliation in light of the 9/11 attacks.
• A Religion & Ethics PBS interview in whicn Dr. Volf discusses violence, forgiveness, reconciliation, Christian-Muslim relations, and related topics.

P.S.
I adapted this post for Fool’s Mountain, and asked their Chinese readers two questions:

1. How does the Western “Big Public Story,” as described here, sound to you? Or, how do you think it would sound to most Mainlanders?
2. How would you describe China’s “Big Public Story”? In the big picture, how does China understand its place in the world, and its place in world history up to this point? If China achieved its ‘happy ending,’ what would that look like?

You can see what becomes of that discussion here.

A knife sharpener, from today on the way to lunch:

“Welcome the Olympics, be more civilized, establish a new atmosphere.”

“Civilized traffic”
When we first arrived and Tianjin was clearing out all the street markets, “hygiene” (卫生 / wèi shēng) was the big theme in most of the local propaganda banners. But this year “civilized” (文明 / wén míng) is about the only propaganda theme we see – and we see it everywhere; you can’t go outside and not see a civilized slogan on a building or vehicle or advertisement. It’s like they think people need to be told or something.

Today, on the way back from buying a pet cricket, I saw “civilized” on the flag used by the traffic cop who was standing in the bike lane at an intersection, making sure the bikes actually stopped for the red light, which is well before the time we usually stop. Red lights aren’t the same here. In North America, a red light is like slamming the door shut; it marks a very well-defined line. In Tianjin, a red light is like an early warning signal: “Hey those other people are gonna start going now, so you’d better speed up if you want to get in their way before they make it 2/3 the way through the intersection and get in your way.” At a green light, the cars and bikes start going, and then stop part way through the intersection because other cars and bikes and buses are blocking the way. Once those all clear, then you can go. Intersections are more porous here. Anyway, this traffic cop’s flag had something about “civilized traffic” written on it, and he used it to make us all stop at an arbitrary white line on the road because a little light changed colour, instead of just letting us go fill up the empty space in the intersection before us.

The “Eight Don’t Asks”
Mainlanders, especially the ones in government, love expressing policy in neat little lists: the Three Represents, the Four Modernizations, etc. They’ve been doing this for decades. Now, we have the “Eight Don’t Asks” (八不问 / bā bù wèn). If you’ve read Jessica’s most recent few posts, then you can already guess what the “Eight Don’t Asks” are targeting: eight things you shouldn’t say to foreign visitors during the Olympics. Someone else at Peaceful Rise has already translated a 八不问 poster:

Today I happened across a new series of posters on the neighborhood propaganda bulletin boards about etiquette to be observed during the Olympics. … Most delightful was a list of eight questions Chinese are not to ask us, which if observed, would leave these curious and enthusiastic hosts with essentially nothing with which to make conversation.

Here they are:

• Don’t ask about income or expenses,
• don’t ask about age
• don’t ask about love life or marriage,
• don’t ask about health,
• don’t ask about someone’s home or address,
• don’t ask about personal experience,
• don’t ask about religious beliefs or political views,
• don’t ask what someone does.

I’m sure our neighbours are disappointed. I sort of am, too. It seems like overkill. If they’d just said, “Don’t tell foreigners they’re fat or have big noses, or ask about money” that would have covered it. And what else is there to talk about – the pollutionweather? As long as people are friendly about it (and 99% of the time they are), it can actually be kind of fun playing outside your culturally acceptable boundaries.

A little personal update (there’s new Regular Zhou, July’s propaganda, and some geeky culture stuff on the way soon):

It’s hot and humid as all get out. I don’t even know what that sentence actually means, but you can see the weather forecast picture of Jessica’s computer. We’ve discovered that hot summers in the city aren’t the same as hot summers in suburbs that are just a drive away from lakes, forests, and mountains.

Summer Mandarin Bootcamp
At the end of the spring semester I got together with a teacher and put together a daily study plan for the summer. I’m in homework and hanzi (Chinese characters) up to my eyeballs every day, but it helps. Jessica has a lot of homework, too, but she doesn’t require a daily checklist to be a good student. This takes up the bulk of our time, basically like a full-time job.

Writing
Tianjin’s leading expat magazine is desperate for anything resembling a decent contribution, so I’m still getting paid for recycled blog posts. Actually, most stuff isn’t recycled. They gave me two articles in the Olympics edition (one half of a two-part cover story and a Regular Zhou profile). In a good month it pays the rent, and it gives me language practice, but transcribing the interviews is so tedious and requires help; my Mandarin just isn’t there yet. Jessica will probably get something in there eventually.

Cursing the spawn
The cicadas are deafening. Like a Chinese restaurant… that’s full of banshees. I’m not kidding, you have to yell under the trees. And they leave whole intact shells – eyes and legs and all – on bushes outside our stairwell when they molt, or whatever it is they do. Fascinating and gross and annoying. I’d read in Chinese stories these sort of romantic scenes where some old scholar listens reflectively to cicadas in the evening… load of crock! He couldn’t sleep, that’s what was happening. But thankfully there’s a conspicuous proliferation of dragonflies eating the even more conspicuous proliferation of mosquitoes. I’m going to get another pet cricket soon. (You know you want to click those bug pictures and see a high-resolution macro shot!)

Thanks for building the Olympics, now goodbye!
The migrant workers are mostly gone from the roofs, walls, parks, and sidewalks. The parks aren’t full of tents and slogan banners anymore. They built the Olympics, but won’t be around to see it. The parks and buildings looks much improved but less populated with them gone. Street food is getting a little harder to find, and some window shops are being forced to close temporarily (until after the Special Olympics). We’ve noticed a correlation between fresh asphalt and scarcity of street food.

Green
It’s green now, because everything grows and our neighbours plant stuff in every available space, including holes in the sidewalk. We even have people growing grapes along the heating pipes. This is one of the things we love about our neighbourhood in the summer, when the community back yard turns into a jungle.

Péngyous and wǎngyǒus (朋友和网友)
Jessica’s learning to make some special Xi’an noodles tonight because one of our friends’ parents are in town from Xi’an, and we had dinner with them last week and tonight. The Thursday night dancing should start up again, now that the teacher is back from Sichuan province, so we aren’t becoming total hermits this summer, even if the heat+homework combo makes that tempting.

Creepy, I know, but we recently met some “net friends” (网友). People who blog about Chinese culture aren’t actually so many. Dr. Mary Ann O’Donnell and her husband Yang “Muer” Qian, who were in town visiting his folks (Muer grew up in Tianjin). Mary Ann has lived in Shenzhen for 11 years and blogs from the perspective of a PhD anthropologist about the city (Shenzhen was the government’s first experiment city used to test the Reform & Opening policies of the ’80′s). We used one of her blog posts in a culture discussion meeting in our NGO. Muer is a playwright, and you can see translations of some his work here, here, and here. We’ll be meeting another wǎng yǒu soon, too, who is a friend of a fellow alumnus that we’ve only known online through his Laowai Chinese blog. She just moved up here from down south, and needs an intro to the city. Maybe we’ll take her to the bug market…

Literally: 8 no ask
Pronounced: bā bù wèn
Means: “The Eight Don’t Asks” is an official list of conversation topics that the government is discouraging citizens from asking foreigners about during the Olympics, specifically: income or expenses, age, love life or marriage, health, someone’s home or address, personal experience, religious beliefs or political views, and what someone does.

Mainlanders, especially the government, love expressing policy in neat little lists: the Three Represents, the Four Modernizations, etc. They’ve been doing this for decades. Now, we have the “Eight Don’t Asks” (八不问), as in, eight things you shouldn’t say to foreign visitors during the Olympics.

“Today I happened across a new series of posters on the neighborhood propaganda bulletin boards about etiquette to be observed during the Olympics. … I stopped to take a closer look. Most delightful was a list of eight questions Chinese are not to ask us, which if observed, would leave these curious and enthusiastic hosts with essentially nothing with which to make conversation.”

Personally, I feel sad for the legions of curious and enthusiastic Mainlanders, much like our neighbours, who must be wondering what there is left to talk about!

Our friend Shannon returned to the States a week ago after a year of teaching English in China. Now she’s having ‘fun’ re-adjusting to her home culture, which doesn’t look or feel the same as it did before (and never will again).

“Zhang Lijia is an author and journalist who spent most of the 1980s as a worker in a missile factory in Nanjing.

Atlas and Co. recently published Zhang’s memoir of her time there, written in English called “Socialism is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China.“

One British writer seems quite certain.

“…what do Chinese journalists really think about these issues? In an effort to gain a more nuanced answer to this question, CDT interviewed four working Chinese journalists. Most of the interviewees prefer to remain anonymous. They are all based in Beijing and work in various national magazines and newspapers. CDT has not edited their responses.” See here (1) and here (2).