Bamboo Lake

As the weeks pass and I learn new words in Chinese, I have begun to notice that the MRT stops on the subway are often named after physical landmarks in the countryside.  The stop by my house is named after bamboo.  The next stop on the MRT, going north, is named after red trees.  When I told my Chinese teacher about this discovery, he explained that there isn’t any bamboo there.  There aren’t any red trees either.  Then he told me a funny story.

One time, he was going to the national park located behind my house, called Yang Ming Shan, to find Bamboo Lake.  He looked and looked, but couldn’t see it anywhere.  Finally, he asked someone and they said, you are in it.  All around him were lots and lots of bamboo trees.  There was so much bamboo growing there that they had named the place Bamboo Lake.

The next day, when I was talking to my wife, I told her we had a lake in our house, called Shoes Lake, because she had so many shoes.  Quite bright, she quickly turned around and in Chinese told me that I have Stupid Lake.  So funny, she is.

As I learned to read and write Chinese, it takes me back to when I was little.  I learned a lot of English in the same way, reading books and then trying to write my own stories.  So here is the story of Bamboo Lake told in Chinese.  I’ve had some of my students read it and correct some errors for me.  However, mostly they struggle with the particular expressions I choose to use.  My writing ability is limited to the particular phrases I’ve learned in Chinese and this must sound a little strange to them, just like when I try to correct their stories written inEnglish.

我這個星期在中文課告訴我的老師：

「我的新房子旁邊的捷運很有意思。」

他說「為什麼？」

我說「有一站叫竹圍，

也有一站叫紅樹林。」

他告訴我這個故事。

有一天， 他到陽明山去了。

他對自己說「我想要看竹子湖。」

然後他試試看竹子湖，

可是他不能看。

忽然他看見兩個人，

所以他說「我沒有看看竹子湖。」

「在哪裡？」  他問。

「在這裡啊！」  另一個人說。

在這裡有很多竹子。

我的老師說「  沒有水嗎？ 」

「沒有啊！」 他們一起說。

「嗯…」 我的老師一邊說一邊看看竹子湖。

Classroom Chatter

Tony

Kindergarten is a great place to learn Chinese.  I mean as a teacher, not as a student.  In Kindergarten, little children are learning to communicate with each other for the first time.  The simple meanings they struggle to convey are short and to the point.  For someone like myself, who’s got the ability to speak Chinese like a three year old, I usually feel like I fit right in.

Often their attention turns to me, the most animated object in the classroom.  I’ve learned how to talk about the size of my belly (肚子好大) and how fat I am (太肥了), how to describe the gray color of my hair (白頭髮) and the shiny bald spot on the top of my head (沒有頭髮).  But I struggle with being called bald (光頭) and I try to let my hair grow long to cover up the inevitable signs of aging (我不是光頭, 我有頭髮).  Nevertheless, little children find these strange characteristics fascinating and relish the excitement that comes from contemplating the way I look.

Teaching older students has given me access to bigger, less personal, phrases.  “Teacher is coming!” (老師來了) and “Is it class time?” (上課了嗎).  What has surprised me more than anything is the level of English conversation I’ve heard in and around my classrooms.

“Teacher, why do we have to go to school on Thursday?” Michael raised his hand and asked before I had time to call on him.

“Because we had a typhoon on Monday,” I replied.

He was silent for a moment as I went back to teaching.  Then he raised his hand again.

“Teacher, why did we have a typhoon on Monday?”

Wow, Socratic method, I thought.  I wonder how long he’ll follow this line of reasoning.

“Because, out in the ocean, we have hot air and cold air and…” I began, but was interrupted.  Tammy raised her hand and started speaking rapidly without my permission – a habit I hoped wouldn’t spread to the rest of the classroom.

“Teacher, teacher, I know.  I know!” she said and ran to the whiteboard.

Before I had time to stop her, she commenced with diagramming an outline of the ocean and the hot and cold air weather patterns, explaining to the class how typhoons worked.  She could have been a weather reporter on TV – she was that good.

By now the class was heading in a new direction, not the one I had intended, but I let it go just to see what would happen.  I’d witnessed this one time before while teaching Kindergarten.  I had just explained to the students that animals have tails and people don’t.  One boy raised his hand and told the class that his mom said we used to all be monkeys.  I felt like some of my students still were monkeys, to be facetious.  However, debating evolution vs. creation wasn’t a road I wanted to go down with a bunch of six year olds.

As Tammy wrapped up her speech on typhoons, I erased her diagram from the whiteboard and sent her back to her seat.  I resumed teaching, yet in the back of my mind I wondered whether or not Michael would ask the next logical question:  why do we have hot and cold air out in the ocean?  Fortunately, he never did and I got through the lesson on time that day. 

When I reflected on these conversations later, I was impressed that my students could understand everything so well, considering English is their second language.  Nothing was ever explained to them in Chinese.  Sometimes, although rarely, there’s a moment of “flow” in my classes when the students begin to comprehend things far greater than anything covered in the teacher’s book.  Those are the moments I wish could happen every day.

Finding My Name

Dan and Diane

I needed a Chinese name. Diane and I had gotten married and I needed to sign a document in Chinese to register our household with the government of Taiwan.

For the first character, we started with “Bi” (白), because my family name is “White.” Wanting a simple name, one that could be easily written in Chinese, I suggested something like “Bi Yi Yi” (白一一). Diane laughed. Then I tried something a little more challenging, like “Bi Er Er” (白二二), which got our friends and family laughing, too. Next I considered “Bi Si Ke” (自行車), which means “bicycle” in Chinese. By now, everyone was laughing at me. Finally, someone came up with “Bi Shi Hong” (白士杭). It was the kind of name that sounded eastern. It sounded mystical and far away. And when I told it to my friends back home, they suddenly realized I’d become a part of a culture they knew little about.

I thought it was a foolproof name that no one could make fun of, but little did I know about the genius of children. When I went back to school the next semester, the kids quickly found out. They’d wait for me to enter the classroom, chanting, “Bi Shi Hong! Bi Shi Hong!” I felt a sense of pride as I stood before them. I took their enthusiasm as a good sign. Then, one day, a young girl named Emily approached me after class. “Shao Shao Hong!” (小小杭) she said with delight. I knew right away that it meant “Little Hong,” the kind of name one child might call another.

I resisted the urge to defend myself. I resisted the need to say something back. But at that very moment, something unexpected happened. A little light went on in the back of my mind. This foreign sounding name suddenly meant something to me – it was a name worth standing up for; it was my name. If the kids believed it was a name worth taunting, then it had to be a real name. That was the day I first began to understand the real meaning behind my Chinese name.

My Name is Fifa

Benson in Class

Fifa likes to play soccer.  So when it came time to pick an English name for him, his parents looked toward the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) for help.  Fifa is one of the most active boys in my class when we play games.  While the name is unusual, you have to admit that it’s better than calling him, “Soccer.”

 Cases of amusing names show up in a lot of my classes.  One of my most remarkable students was called Dak Forz.  Although the name sounds German, I usually pronounced it, “Dark Force.”  He was young enough to have never seen the Star Wars movies in the theater.  So when I mimicked Darth Vader one day and said, “Use the force!” the joke fell flat.

One of my brightest and most outgoing students is called Euran.  His parents are highly intelligent, I suspect, because they took the word “European” and cut out the “ope” to come up with this unusual name.  As clever as it looks on paper, though, I’m certain they never suspected students would be calling their son a name that sounds like the word for “urine.”

Then there are boys in my classes with names like Golden, King and Master.  While these names might reveal high aspirations on the part of the parents, in English, names like these are simply pretentious.  In some cases, however, the name has been taken from the student’s Chinese name.  One time I even taught a Captain and a General.

More and more parents are choosing to stick with their child’s Chinese name, by finding an English spelling for it.  I taught Efane for over a year before I realized that this was his Chinese name with an English pronunciation.  If the name has something of a western ring to it, this works out, because the name is not that difficult for foreigners to pronounce or remember.  Some Chinese names are like tongue twisters to native English speakers.

In Kindergarten, recently, I noticed a trend toward sticking with Chinese sounding names.  Wei Wei is really common.  But sometimes a name like that may backfire on the student.  In one class that I heard about, there was a girl named Yume.  Whenever they’d finish singing a song, the teacher would say, “You may sit down.”  It took a while to understand why Yume always sat down so quickly and the rest of the students remained standing.  “Yume” sounds like “you may.”

Other girls I’ve taught had names like Cola.  Air was a bright young girl, nothing of an airhead.  Ring’s name had a nice ring to it.  Nina and Sylvia are names found in our class books.  Candy has always been popular.  Daisy and Dolly almost sound like names you’d call your pet. 

I taught Sunny one time, who was a boy, and in the same class we had another Sunny, who was a girl.  Kind of reminds me of that song by Johnny Cash, “A Girl Named Sue.”  I currently have one student called Sun, but he’s not my son.  Sometimes the students like to call him “Evil Sun,” although I’m not sure why. 

Some English names sounds like other English words, and then the nickname gets modified into something of a joke that classmates like to use.  Vicky was often called Whisky.  Euran was branded Uniform.  And Master became Watermelon, although there was no real connection in that case that I could see.  I’ve found that students really like it when you make a big introduction out of their name, as if they were lining up to play baseball or basketball and have just been called into the game.

Then there are the really unusual names.  One of my students is called Borg.  I’m guessing the parents where under something of a Scandinavian influence at the time, or else they might be really big Star Trek fans.  For the longest time I thought Henman was really Herman.  I figured that someone had misspelled the “r” and made it look like an “n” and the name stuck.  Then I found out that there really is someone by the name of Henman out there, Tim Henman, the professional tennis player from Great Britain.  The name wasn’t just a mistake.  When I asked my student if he’d prefer Herman over Henman, he proceeded to stick his tongue out at me.

Whatever the name, it gives someone a face, and if all goes well, the name will stick.  But sometimes, for whatever reason, the name will change.  Brittany became Beth, just because it was easier to pronounce.  Candy became Cindy, after everyone teased her all the time.  Annie had a hard time with her name, because it sounded just like “any” and when I once asked her in front of the class, “Annie, do you have any homework?” the students laughed until she cried.  I never asked that question again; likewise, she always brought her homework to me on time.

One Brittany that I taught became Sophie, which followed the trend of using names that end with the long “e” sound.  In one classroom I taught:  Annie, Emily, Sheri, Tammy, Jimmy, Peggy, Cathy, Sophie and Cindy.  Everyone was so happy and crazy and funny all the time.

Then there’s the case of having more than one student in a class with the same name.  Usually they get tagged as John1 and John2, because they don’t have English last names.  In one class that I taught we had both a Tim1 and Tim2 and a Vivian1 and Vivian2.  I don’t care much for this kind of name, so I encouraged the students to make a simple change.  The two Tims became Tim and Timothy, the two Vivians, Vivi and Vivian.  Right now I have a class with three Erics.  In this case, we call them Eric C. and Eric L. and Eric G.  I often get them mixed up.  Sometimes I’ll just say Eric Z. and see who raises his hand.  Usually it’s none of the above.

Name picking is an art.  It’s a wonderful joy that parents get to experience, and in the case with students learning English in Asia, the parents get to choose both an English name and a Chinese name.  I was required to pick out a Chinese name when I got married to Diane, here in Taiwan.  By the way, Diane used to be Sandy, but that was long before I met her.  If you read my article called, Finding My Name, you’ll know that when my students want to tease me, both my English name and my Chinese name will do.  Any name is fair game, when it comes to getting a laugh out of someone.

Whatever your name, I hope you like it, whether it’s respected or not.  By the way, the names in this article have NOT been changed to protect the innocent!  J