This was a cool opportunity. Tianjin’s drama school, which trains kids to eventually become Beijing Opera (京剧) performers and TV/film actors, let a group from our language school come and observe their Beijing Opera classes in action.

(I suggest you let this video load while you read, since it’s a few minutes long.)

The kids were elementary to high school aged, and the older ones study around 12 hours a day (I didn’t hear about the younger ones), beginning with exercise at 6:30am (the acrobatics required by some of these roles is no joke). They live on the campus and their studies include regular schooling. By the time they’re done, they will have learned around 15 different roles from various operas. These kids will hopefully find jobs with opera troupes in various cities, once they graduate from a two-year college program.

The student at right is practicing the role of a female general, which looked physically demanding with all the jumps and twirls and spear-spinning and exacting technical expectations of her teacher, who would often step in to adjust the angle of her hand or arm or posture. When in full costume her face paint would indicate that her character is a fierce and capable warrior.

Click the photos for a bigger view. The classrooms were a little dim for taking photos and video, but you can still get a little bit of feel for it.

These boys are playing generals. In ancient China the flags on their backs served as armour protecting them from behind.

Only the highest ranking people, like generals, would get to wear the platform shoes.

This girl is playing a woman wrongly accused of killing her husband (hence the chains). The girls in front of the mirror are practicing dealing with their extra long sleeves, which served to hide civilized women’s hands and keep them from appearing too “开放” (open, loose) in public:

The female actors have to move as if their feet are bound, and generally carry themselves as ancient cultured women were expected. These beginner students are learning the basics:

At one point this nice grandma of a teacher suddenly in mid-verse pointed at one girl whose posture wasn’t quite right and said, “肚子!” (tummy!).

These boys were practicing navigating their beards while performing what looked like a long, painful dance routine, where they were required to hold difficult poses for long periods of time, jump, and switch feet in mid-leap without tripping on the beard. In this pose, the student had to slowly bend his right knee down and then up again:

A civilized warrior would be able to fight without getting his beard too messed up; a well-kept beard displayed one’s civilized nature.

These girls were practicing a singing part that required very little movement, but the teacher required that every movement, down to each finger, be placed exactly so:

The boy on the right is playing the Beijing Opera equivalent of a clown. When in costume his face would be painted in a way indicating his role as the comic relief, and his stick would be a long pipe:

On our way out we passed the high school girls’ dorm. There were a couple of blond toddlers in our group (some students brought their kids) and they became magnets for an adoring mob of female students. In China, you can’t get much cuter than little blond white kids.

We went for walk today on the canal. Here’s a many-layered Jessica, with an ice-fisherman in the background. There is a city back there… you just can’t see it for all the “fog.”

Jessica is still sick, but managed to get out for a walk this afternoon. It’s her birthday week, so I’m trying to be a good husband. We’re hoping she’s feeling good by this weekend, when we plan to go with friends and skate on the artificial lake up the road.

Unlike most of you, our year hasn’t ended yet. Normally we’d be starting a new semester, feeling as if another page was turned or mile marker laid down during all the Christmas and New Year’s family festivities. But this time we’re missing that feeling; our rhythm is off. Imagine if it was still last semester for you and the big holidays were still coming up, even though it’s mid-January. That’s what it’s like. For us, it’s the last week of school, and then winter break just begins. The supermarkets are packed with people getting ready for the holidays. It’s weird – Christmas came and went, although in a much less spectacular fashion, and it still feels like 2008 hasn’t arrived.

Anyway, Jessica’s 29 now, and still getting hotter every year!

These are the Fuwas (fú wá), mascots of the Olympic games. Aside from taking cute to a whole new level, there’s some interesting (and even more cute) symbolism and word-play involved, all of which, it could be argued, makes the Fuwas just that much more “Chinese.”

Mandarin is a language of homonyms; compared to English, there are way more words that are pronounced the same, and there’s a rather limited number of available syllables. Chinese culture is full of phonetic word plays, allusions, and even superstitions (door numbers on the 4th floor are often changed because the word for “four” (四; sì) is pronounced the same as “die” (死; sǐ) but with a different tone).

You’d think all these homonyms would make it harder to communicate, but that’s not necessarily so. First, Chinese language and culture emphasize the context of statements in order to understand their true meaning, placing more emphasis on non-verbals and less emphasis on literal meaning than we do in English (this is a perennial point of culture stress).

Second, when people need to clarify the meaning of a word during a conversation (and they often do because of all the homonyms), they’ll use their finger to trace the character on their palm (yeah, big help for beginning language students!). Or, since most words in Chinese are made with more than one character, they’ll say “[example word]‘s [character].” For example: 国家的国; “nation‘s” guó, as opposed to any of the other “guo’s.” We use this almost on a daily basis, and it’s part of the routine of sharing our names.

The Olympic Fúwás are a fun example of Chinese homonyms in action (“fú wá” means “good luck doll”).

Note that the names for each are double-syllables: Beibei, Jingjing, etc. What they did is take each syllable in the sentence, “Beijing welcomes you” (北京欢迎你 – Běi jīng huān yíng nǐ), and double it. The characters for three of the Fuwas don’t match the corresponding characters in the sentence. They used homonyms instead to give those names more meaning.

The blue one, Bèibei (贝贝), is a fish. She represents the aquatic sports. Instead of using Beijing’s “bei,” her name borrows its character from “treasure” (宝贝). She’s gentle and pure, and represents prosperity. “Fish” (鱼) is pronounced the same as “surplus” and “remainder” and is a traditional Chinese symbol for prosperity.

The black one, Jīngjing (晶晶), is a panda. He represents weightlifting, shooting, judo, and stuff like that. Instead of using Beijing’s “jing,” his name uses 晶 (jīng), which is from “crystal” (水晶). Pinyin.info says you could get something to the effect of “Sparkles” if you were translating “晶晶” into English. Jīngjing is an honest, optimistic, and happy panda, despite (or maybe because of) the gun.

The red one, Huānhuan (欢欢), is the Olympic flame. He’s enthusiastic, extroverted, and passionate, and represents ball sports. 欢 (huān) means “joyous” or “pleased” (as in the “pleased to meet you”), and keeps the first character in “welcome” (欢迎).

The yellow one, Yíngying (迎迎), is a lively, vivacious, and healthy male Tibetan antelope. He’s the track and field mascot, and keeps the second character from “welcome” (欢迎), which just means “welcome.”

The green one, Nīni (妮妮), is an innocent and joyous swallow of good fortune (the bird, not the verb). If they’d just doubled the character for “ni” from the sentence (你), it just would have said “you you,” as in, “Not me-me, but you-you.” Instead they chose a different “ni,” which means “girl” and is used in a girl’s name. But this Fúwá also alludes to Beijing because the character for “swallow” (燕) is used in Yanjing (燕京), an old name for Beijing. She’s the gymnastics mascot.

Wikipedia, which – of course – we can’t access in China, has a nice overview with additional info on their personalities, attributes, corresponding elements, and symbolism. Pinyin.info goes into a little more detail.

And speaking of interesting symbolism, that panda with the gun (a.k.a. Fúwá Jīngjing) is an officially approved image.

I passed the local elementary school during recess on the way to the library this last Wednesday.

From my desk-top at a fantastic history lecture by Tim yesterday morning:

It says, in white-out: “Liú Zhōu-chéng [hearts] Guō Jìng-míng.” (Awww…)

Beauty… with Chinese characteristics
Ha, I’m really going overboard with that phrase. There’s not been much to report lately, since other than go to class and study and practice we don’t do much… not that that bothers me. Funny episode in class this week, though: After seeing photos from my glory days, my teacher thanked me emphatically in class for cutting my hair and shaving my beard. She just can’t believe that anyone would actually choose to look like that, and finds it even harder to believe that Jessica liked it. I asked her why, and took the opportunity to ask what the deal was with Chinese people’s obsession with white skin, and she said white seems clean, and darker skin or facial hair looks dirty. Scruff is out. If you didn’t already know, in China it’s the whiter and cleaner the better. No cowboys, and forget playoff beards. Our friends even saw armpit whitening cream in the store the other day. We’ve seen whitening products for body parts I won’t mention here; just take our word for it that in China, white is beautiful.

[Edited to add...]
I just found a description of the apparent “enduring beauty standard” of the Chinese on ChinaCulture.org, thanks to The Journal of Intercultural Learning. Both links have the article’s full-text, and it’s a nice introduction to general traditional Chinese perceptions of feminine beauty, sans reference to feet. But what’s weird is that it gives the impression of describing present day China, as if this traditional perception of feminine beauty still dominates:

…a rosy plump oval face, new-moon-shaped eyebrows, delicate and soft limbs and fingers, and fine porcelain skin. More than skin deep, a Chinese beauty should also have good manners, temperament, tastes, and style of conversation.

Perhaps it still does – most of the teachers at our school seem to be aiming for that standard, actually – but as the Journal points out,

We find the article very interesting, but one might come across very different views when you ask the younger generations, particularly those who were born after the opening-up, i.e. the-post-80s-generation.

Either way, it’s a short article worth the read. I’d be curious to know how the different generations of today’s China feel about it.

I also found it interesting that an article on ‘the’ Chinese perception of beauty, which completely avoids anything negative and upholds a traditional emphasis on feminine morality, happens to come from China’s Ministry of Culture.

It had always been the plan to let him go. Animals in cages – except for hamsters – are a little too metaphorical for me, especially birds. I mean, if you’re not gonna eat it, then let it live! We let Mr. Knightley out in the backyard tonight after a picnic dinner by the canal. During dinner we put his cage in the grass and he started chirping, and two little crickets came and crawled in the cage and started eating his food. We figured his days were numbered anyway, since I think they die off when winter comes, so might as well let him die free. We tried to pick the bushiest place in the backyard where the birds and kids wouldn’t get him. You can see some more Mr. Knightley pictures here.

Here’s a depressing excerpt from “Chinese Cricket Culture” by Jin Xing-Bao of the Shanghai Institute of Entomology, about one possible origin of pet crickets in China:

…it was not until the beginning of the Tang dynasty that they were kept purely for the enjoyment of their song. We find a record of this kind of captivity in the book of “Kai Yuan Tian Boa Yi Shi” (Affairs of the Period of Tian Bao, 742-759 A.D.):

“Whenever the autumn arrives, the ladies of the palace catch crickets and keep them in small golden cages, which were placed near their pillows so as to hear their songs during the night. This custom was also mirrored by common people.”

Most of the ladies of the palace were concubines to the Emperor. With emperors typically having three thousand concubines, their life was typified by a rich material life but starved emotional and cultural experience. A similarity can be drawn between the concubines and their captive crickets in their golden cages. Rather than enjoying the sweet chirps of the crickets, the concubines heard a reflection of their own sadness and loneliness in the cricket’s chirp.

I heard they’re cheaper during winter (crickets, not concubines)… maybe we’ll get another one and let it go next summer.

Yesterday we had a school trip to a local museum, the Shi Family Mansion (Shijia Dayuan), which was a preserved old style home like you might see in kung-fu movies. A couple families brought their kids. Oscar and Toby (blond, glasses) have lived in Tianjin for about two years, and I think they’re handling their pseudo-celebrity status rather well:

Poor guy on the left… wonder what he’s thinking.

It can actually be pretty tough for kids when they have to deal with this kind of attention, but these two have come through the woods and are in the process of working this to their advantage. I almost died laughing when a bus load of uniformed school kids, led by a guy in an army uniform, came marching past us and these two suddenly jumped into the middle of it and started dancing around. The museum wasn’t bad, but I think that was the high point for me.

We have a ton of photos that I just haven’t had time to upload yet. We’re busy getting the apartment up to shape (sealing the windows, putting in U-bends so the sewer gas doesn’t flow up the kitchen and bathroom pipes and wake us up… again, etc.) I’ll try to get them up this week so you can see the neighbourhood. April is a really beautiful month in Tianjin.

In case you were wondering what had happened to this one:

崇恩和秀青 (Abe and Suzy) have just adopted Fire Chicken (火雞)!

Lǎo Zhào took us out tonight for dinner at a friend’s restaurant. His family’s restaurant is halfway between our apartment and work, so over the year we had some fun hanging out, exchanging gifts, learning má jiàng, sharing food, and stuff. In this video clip we were talking about going to China where the national standard Mandarin is the “common speech” (普通话) a.k.a. Beijing Mandarin (北京话). Taiwan’s “National Language” (國語) has a different accent, and our Taiwan friends sometimes like to poke fun at the Beijing accent, which drowns the end of every word in an “r” sound. The sentence Lǎo Zhào uses as an example near the end is 你是美女, which means “You are a beautiful woman.”

Merry Christmas!

When we interviewed for our Taiwan job last Christmas, they told us that Christmas isn’t that big a deal here and that we’d be working on Christmas Day. That’s what we were expecting. But Mingdaw rescheduled our classes so we wouldn’t have to teach today. He didn’t have to do that, and we’re glad for the break.

It seems like most people don’t observe Christmas at all, though the MRT (subway) was so packed Christmas Eve that Joel actually couldn’t reach the camera in his pocket to take a picture (lots of parties/dinners out, we guess). And for the people that do observe it, it seems more like a one day thing, rather than a whole season. But the church where we do the English class on Sundays makes a huge deal out of Christmas. They put on a Christmas program at a local community centre on the 23rd, and then another program at church on Christmas Eve. Lots of people put a lot of work into it. They let Joel play with the band, our English class sang two songs in English, and we sang an English song. There was a Christmas Pageant (with very cute little sheep), lots of music and singing, ribbon dancing, candle light, and even some caroling.

After the English class sang, the MC made two of the students say some stuff in English on the stage. After our song, he got us to try and say some things in Chinese. Jessica went first, and used up most of what we know to say that fits such occasions, and Joel was left trying to make stuff up. But it was lots of fun for us and everyone laughed, and we probably made our English students feel better!

Jessica is making Mexican food for Christmas dinner, since we’re sort of Mexican food deprived over here. For the next two days we’re hibernating and trying to get over our bad colds before the weekend, when we take a long awaited trip to Hualien with some friends.

You can see lots of photos from the Christmas shows here.