East Meets East (Liz is in India
Aaron is in China)

Liz!

Apologies, apologies, apologies.  December got the better of me but I’m back and ready to restart our project for the new year.  I actually just finished finals at school and now have an extremely long holiday until mid-February.  Unlike the rest of the city, I have no plans to fly or train anywhere during Spring Festival, so with any luck I’ll be posting regularly.  My grad school applications are done and for the first time in a while, my desk is clear to do anything I want, which feels great!

By forces both procrastinatory and whimsical, I did some research back in December on English words that originate from China and India.  Disappointingly, the majority of the Chinese and Hindi word loans listed by linguists are ones that are really obviously Chinese or Indian: dim sum and chutney; feng shui and dharma; ginseng and bungalow; typhoon and jungle.  I don’t know about you, but the pleasure I get from etymology is best when the word’s origin hides its foreignness completely, incorporating itself chameleonlike into the common vocabulary.  Like how English takes ‘compound’ from Malay or ‘orange’ from Arabic (which I guess explains its resistance to rhyme?).

My research wasn’t completely hopeless though.  Anu Garg from wordsmith.org (link) recently celebrated her move to Mumbai with a series of place names in India that have made their way into English.  Courtesy of her series:

CALICO: n. a brightly printed coarse cotton cloth.
Etymology: From Calicut, former name of Kozhikode, a city in southern India from where this cloth was exported. Other words for clothes with Indian origins are bandana, cashmere, chintz, dungarees, jodhpurs, khakis, madras, pajamas, and seersucker (not all are toponyms).

GOLCONDA: n. a source of great wealth. 
Etymology: After Golconda, a ruined city in southern India, once known for its diamond mines in the nearby hills.

DOOLALLY: adj. irrational, deranged or insane.
Etymology: After Deolali, a small town in western India. It’s about 100 miles from Mumbai with an unusual claim to fame. It’s where British soldiers who had completed their tour of duty were sent to await transportation home. It was a long wait — often many months — before they were to be picked up by ships to take them to England. Consequent boredom, and heat, turned many a soldier insane, and the word doolally was coined. At least that’s the story.

Like you pointed out last year, Shanghai may win for overall prettiness of food, but I think India edges China out in this obscure linguistic category.  I would be totally doolally to not say so.

One word loan from Chinese did manage to win my heart though.  Were you at all aware that the BRAINWASHING came from Mandarin?  According to Merriam-Webster:

“The term xǐ năo (洗腦, the Chinese term literally translated as “to wash the brain”) originally referred to methodologies of coercive persuasion used in the “reconstruction” (改造 gǎi zào) of the so-called feudal (封建 fēng jiàn) thought-patterns of Chinese citizens raised under pre-revolutionary régimes; the term punned on the Taoist custom of “cleansing/washing the heart” (洗心 xǐ xīn) prior to conducting certain ceremonies or entering certain holy places, and in Chinese, the word “心” xīn also refers to the soul or the mind, contrasting with the brain. The term first came into use in the United States in the 1950s during the Korean War (1950-1953) to describe those same methods as applied by the Chinese communists to attempt deep and permanent behavioral changes in foreign prisoners, and especially during the Korean War to disrupt the ability of captured United Nations troops to effectively organize and resist their imprisonment.”

It truly disturbs me that the word didn’t come from the Soviets.  I took the liberty to look it up in Russian for you: ПРОМЫВАНИЕ МОЗГОВ.  You can confirm my suspicion that it also takes a cue from the Chinese origin.  It’s terrifying that besides its cuisine, one of China’s biggest contributions to global culture in the 20th century was its techniques in 思想改造, “thought reform.”

India, however, takes the prize with a word with a much more humane and real world sense of sanitation:

SHAMPOO: from chāmpo (चाँपो /tʃãːpoː/).  Its English usage in Anglo-Indian dates to 1762. In India the term chāmpo was used for head massage, usually with some form of hair oil. (Wikipedia)

Happy 2009,
Aaron

P.S. The justification I gave myself for not posting all last month was that since our one loyal reader was probably involved in exams and the holidays too, it wouldn’t even matter.  Hi to your sister!

P.P.S. Those photos of your book market are amazing!  When you get around to it, please comment on why Indian readers are so into self-help and general science books.

I’ll add explanations later — for now I’m just thrilled to have finally figured out how to add pictures!

Hi Aaron -

Sorry about the delayed response. Yes, I’m fine – I spent the bulk of yesterday and today sitting in my blissfully dull office following the events in Mumbai online.

There was very little discussion of the attack at work, aside from an email exchange between some of my expatriate colleagues – primarily on whether or not, in light of the abject conditions in which millions (HUNDREDS of millions) of Indians live, we should really “care” about what happened in Mumbai. A little extreme, perhaps, but it was a refreshingly honest and serious discussion for a mass email list on which exchanges are usually confined to mundane to odd requests (“Anyone has any idea, where it is possible to get an axe or at least heavy machete? It should be kind of reliable, not breaking after first few times of use”) and making weekend plans.

Although this attack was particularly vicious and dramatic, terrorism in major cities here is starting to feel discouragingly “normal”. After bombings in a few large cities shortly after my arrival, I darkly predicted that it was only a matter of time before something happened in Delhi, and sure enough, a few months ago several popular markets throughout the city were bombed. Most of these sorts of things are barely covered in the international news.

I don’t worry TOO much about my personal safety (what can you do to protect yourself against such random acts of violence anyway?) but I guess that I feel less safe as an obvious foreigner here than I did in Sri Lanka or in Kyrgyzstan. That doesn’t seem quite right somehow.

By the way, I visited Mumbai about a month and a half ago and really liked it. I hope that these events won’t scare others away for too long. It’s a cool city.

Completely random picture of a street in Mumbai - looking peaceful.

And let us not forget: Happy Thanksgiving! Can one find turkey in Shanghai?

- Liz

1) ‘Alien’ is 外星人 (wai4xing1ren2), literally foreign-star-person.  Nearly all of the time, Chinese really is this practical.

2) About your treat/brainteaser, I want to first mention that I used to do the same when I occupied a desk in Los Angeles.  Although I don’t think I ever reached this level of cryptic!  Now, for me each one of those words is representative of a different region of the United States.  The most obvious is y’all, of the southern persuasion.  Madison is the capital of Wisconsin and home to UW-Madison; it’s also a wealthy town in Connecticuit.  Finally Americano, obviously the Spanish for American.  My only thought is that each word can potentially be wielded antagonistically by outsiders to mock the in-group.  Y’all, famously, like ‘dude’ for the Los Angelenos, is used to infer that all southerns are uneducated rednecks.  Madison is generally used by midwesterns to mean extremely drunk (because of UW-Madison’s reputation as a party school - thanks urbandictionary) and used by east coasters as a catch-all for all filthy rich people and their filthy rich towns.  Americano, which again doesn’t so much touch on the hispanic population, but rather the white people in New Mexico and Arizona who use it in mockery of Mexican immigrants who want to become “Americano.”  It can’t be used by Mexicans to make fun of Americans; that’s what gringo is for.  Of course, y’all is actually used somewhat as a badge of honor by its in-group (the first definition of Madison as well for all I know).  Perhaps this is the epiphany you were referring to?  Probably not.

3) This is my third and final teacher, Teacher ??? who instructs our one listening class of the week.  I’m ashamed that I’m not exactly sure what her name is.  I am 90% sure it’s Liu.  My classmates don’t know either.  It’s really not our fault, I don’t think she ever introduced herself!  Teacher ??? had a rocky start to the semester, not particularly understanding our needs as intermediate learners.  But, to her immense credit, three weeks into the class she took the time out to hear our suggestions on how to change the class.  We had all but written the class off so we didn’t hold back in criticizing her every mistake.  I wrote on my report that she should take the time to erase the damn blackboard every once in while.  Miraculously Teacher ??? took into consideration every reasonable suggestion we made, and the class has been more than bearable since.  I never miss it now.

This is Estevan Wu.  He is a good corollary to my experience because like me, he came to China some time after graduating and is in close quarters with his dad.  But unlike me, he actually has to work for the guy day-to-day.  He manages the company’s glass exports to Mexico and everyday after school he has another healthy five to eight hours of work ahead of him.  He also is the only one of us who actually drives in Shanghai traffic.  He has my complete support for taking a mid-class nap.

Aaron -

How do you say ‘alien’ in Chinese?

- Liz

Just kidding, that’s not my post…

I was just sorting through my email. I can’t access my personal email at work, so I send a lot of miscellaneous thoughts to myself from my work email address to look at later. They tend not to be too fleshed out, as I assume I’ll know what I was thinking of later.

Here’s a treat/brainteaser from few weeks ago that I just discovered at the bottom of my inbox. The entire text of the email from Liz to Liz is as follows:

epiphanies:

Y’all

Madison

Americano

I have no idea what I could have been talking about, but I imagine it was something important. Any thoughts on the matter?

Sorry you’re finding the web site hard to use, Liz.  Of the three options, one is preferable, one I’m okay with as a last resort, and one is absolutely not allowed.  You can guess which reaction matches with which option.  We’ll figure this one out - after all, aren’t you a high powered editor now?  Don’t you have minions to do these things for you?

Today, meet Teacher Chen.  He’s there in the middle next to me refusing to smile.  Twice a week he teaches us reading and writing.  With thirty years plus experience teaching foreigners, Teacher Chen was our early favorite.  He has since slipped down a notch or two.  Why?  In October, he went to Beijing without warning for some training and left us in the hands of one of the most incompetent people, let alone teachers, I have ever met in my long extended career as a student.  All this woman, Teacher Yu, wanted us to do was imitate her heavy nasal accent, making us repeat again and again her intonation.  When mid-terms came around, she drew up a list of words she deemed to be important enough for the exam - completely discounting all the work he had done for the past two months.  I finally blew up one day in class and I think it was the first time in my life I have ever had to be  angry in Chinese.  I believe my moment of glory was when I yelled at her, “Are you a teacher or are you an alien who has stolen Teacher Chen?”  Anyway, Teacher Chen is back now.

Today’s photo is of the Suzhou river that I see everyday walking from home to the university.  Just beyond the bend there is the law school where my grandma attended in the 1930’s.  Those boats in the foreground transport human waste - to where, I’m not too sure.  I live just to the right of this photograph.  On hot summer nights when I first arrived, a pungent smell would sometimes waft through my window and laugh at me as I gagged.

- Aaron

Liz - This is Teacher Xu, my spoken language instructor.  I have three teachers at the university and twice a week Teacher Xu graces us with her wisdom of Chinese oral grammar and equally wise fashion choices.  As much as we all talk together in class, I still know remarkably little about Teacher Xu:

1. Teacher Xu is from the northeast of China where they eat a lot of roast pig.
2. Teacher Xu prefers men who have ambition for their lives.
3. Teacher Xu never eats or drinks in class.
4. Teacher Xu claims she has a very broken-down house that we cannot visit.
5. Teacher Xu buys her socks from a sock street downtown.
6. Teacher Xu got married one weekend in October and almost didn’t tell us.
7. Teacher Xu knows the extent of our vocabulary and kindly defines all else.
8. Teacher Xu is fond of the phrase “天啊…,” approx. = “Oh Heavens!”                   9. Teacher Xu has a three month old dog and it is very naughty still.
10. Teacher Xu drinks with her brother-in-law when he visits Shanghai.
11. Teacher Xu believes there are too many females teaching in China.
12. Teacher Xu thinks Shanghai overall is not very interesting.

This week I’ll be covering the people at my university - my teachers, the servicemen, my language partner, my classmates - and taking photos.  My plan is to cull the photos into an album for Friday, but each day I’ll try to post my favorite taken that day.  Today’s is of Andreas Lindgren of Sweden and Tina Binkowski of Germany, both classmates:

- Aaron

Liz - Your colleague’s food map of India is a testament to not only India’s culinary variety but also to its citizens’ finesse with photoshop!  As for your criticism of Indian food not being photogenic, I mean, hasn’t it been proven that color in food adds to the enjoyment of it?  It reminds me of that scene in Hook when Peter teaches the Lost Boys to imagine their food and they all end up eating highlighter pink and yellow cream pies.  I think you’re being too hard on the baked balls of wheat of Bihar.  (Also, was this a subtle challenge for me to make a China food map?)

This is another entry in the frivolous series TIEL (Things I’ve Eaten Lately).  I went to my first authentically Shanghainese restaurant the other day.  It was near the dentist where I’m currently at visit six of hopefully six to take care of my dying molar.  From the outside it looked like a hole in the wall, the kind of Chinese restaurant with a couple of floaters in the fish tank.  But inside, it was obvious that the place used to be a residence from the 1920’s, complete with foyer and art deco chandeliers.  I’m pretty sure I was seated in someone’s old bedroom.

Scanning the menu, I could see there were the old standards: fried dumplings, faux chicken with vinegar.  But there was also something called 狮子头 - Lion’s Head.  You can’t read something called Lion’s Head and not order it.

Pork stewed inside clamshells!  This way the meatball soaks up all the briney flavor of the shell - effectively becoming the polar opposite of all Kyrgyz cuisine.  They were juicy and the surf ‘n turfiness of the dish worked really well.  Overall, I think India beats China on the overall spice scale, but maybe China is higher on the invention.  The presentation is a little lacking here because this is actually a photo of the little guys after we took them home and made next night’s dinner with the leftovers.  You get it.

I know last week there was some celestial event in both our lives and neither of us posted.  To make up for it, I’m planning on posting everyday this week.  If I skip a day, you are allowed to punish me in a slight to mildly embarrassing kind of way. - Aaron