Friday, March 25, 2016

Minority Report

Visiting the Long Neck Karen village was a complete afterthought. I had left Pai at the crack of dawn and arrived in Chiang Rai that afternoon. I had only two objectives in Chiang Rai, the Black House and the White Temple, both eclectic modern takes on ageless spiritual concepts. However the two attractions were not merely opposite thematically but also geographically opposite from Chiang Rai center. With our late ETA, I had resigned myself to requiring two nights in an otherwise ho hum city to see both sights. But our bus had made an unexpected stop at the White Temple en route, enough to gaze at its spiky glory in a half dozen angles, and shortly after arrival at my Airbnb I caught a cab to the Black House. 

Through the chance sharing of both a bus ride and Airbnb booking, I had acquired a travel buddy, a Chinese girl named Qiao Li from Chengdu. We strolled around the Black House leisurely for an hour and I was feeling very content having knocked out the two birds with one stone, but Qiao Li wanted to keep hunting for a third bird. She pointed out that the "长颈村" was not far, and I had no idea what she meant. Long neck village? This wasn't highlighted in Wikitravel. She pointed at her tourist brochure and there was a picture of a woman in pink embroidery with shiny brass rings covering her neck. It took me a minute to mentally remove the rings, upon which I realized her neck must've been extraordinary long. Part of me was interested in going - there were many ethnic minorities I had only read about in the Demographics sections of Wikipedia articles of places. Part of me was fascinated to learn more. But part of me was reluctant because of the feeling that I wasn't going to learn more, and this part was right.

I visited a Miao village in Hunan within the past year, as part of a group of a few dozen Chinese tourists. The visit was one of the fakest experiences of my life, complete with a large sign at the town's main gate that said Miao People City … in Chinese characters. The whole place was a charade for tourists - an interesting experience, but not one that shed any light on Miao culture. Most real Miao people were adapting to modern China, doing regular life activities and trying to move up in Chinese society. Maybe there was some existential dread on how to preserve their traditions, but preservation wasn’t accomplished in this village by weaving baskets in front of tourists. For their part, I couldn't discern any sense of disillusionment or outrage from the other Chinese tourists.

At the beginning of this southeast Asian voyage I was breakfasting in a cafe in Sapa, at the northern tip of Vietnam. The cafe staff expressed their curiosity in me, and we exchanged pleasantries. Their English was good, and one of the girls had been learning Mandarin for all of a week. I smiled at her efforts, and she told me that it was her 4th language, after English, Vietnamese and her native language of Hmong. My first reaction was surprise - I hadn't been able to tell that they weren't Vietnamese. My second reaction was a light bulb going off - Hmong is the real name used by the people whom the Chinese call Miao. I tell them about the other Hmong people way up to the northeast, in China where the Chinese call them the Miao. They tell me that the Vietnamese call them Meo, which sounds the same as the Vietnamese name for cat, and so they don't like the Vietnamese. I hesitate for a moment, then inform that Miao sounds the same as the Chinese name for cat. The girl scowls. "Now I don't like the Chinese."

If I rack my brain hard enough, there is a bit more in there about the Hmong. They have been a stateless people for a long time, scattered from southern China by Han Chinese invasions and living in pockets throughout Southeast Asia - China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia. Many Hmong joined the US-led anti-communist efforts in the Vietnam war and its spillover into Laos and Cambodia, and when the war ended, they faced reprisals from 3 governments. The Hmong refugee crisis resulted in many Hmong being resettled in the US, seemingly chiefly in Minnesota of all places. One of my Georgetown classmates was born to Hmong refugees, and the movie Gran Turismo highlights this community. I'd figured their homeland was gone, inaccessible to someone like me, but here I was in a cafe speaking English to a Hmong college student.

All of this was in the back of my mind as I entered the Karen Long Neck village. I didn't know nearly so much about the Karen (despite having friends with that name). I had read something about them in Myanmar but had forgotten it all. We paid a 300 Baht entrance fee, which after free admission to the White Temple and Black House felt exorbitant. A long dirt path down the hill was calm and devoid of any extravagance and I held out hope that this could be a genuine village. Those hopes were dashed so fast.

It was towards the end of the day and several huts were empty. A single woman with the neck bracelets was there and smiled as she saw us, her hands mindlessly weaving on her wooden loom. As we walked past, other women materialized out from the huts and immediately went to work on their looms. Their bamboo huts were lined with scarves and trinkets for sale, because you know, who doesn't keep goods for sale on their front porch? Karen villages apparently are in a state of perpetual yard sale. 

The tour saw women and kids come out of the woodwork, all dressed in traditional dress and bangles. Everyone was very friendly, giving a Sawadee Ka and smiling for pictures. The women wore a full 8 inches of neck rings, with larger rings at the base. Some had on modern fleece jackets, but with more traditional-looking scarves, shawls and sarongs underneath. A little girl smiled and held some sort of game board, with a few inches of neck ring on her. I wanted to give everyone a hug and $100. Where are the men? Are they unfit for display because they don’t wear neck rings? Where are the "real" Karen people? Are they blended into Thai society, secretly waiting tables in Chiang Mai? Are they all still on the farms, tilling the land that the Thai people deigned to give them? How much more are they making in selling their culture to tourism?

This tourist site encompasses other villages, "inhabited" by other minorities, who aren't advertised as heavily because their necks are of normal length. I am introduced to the Akha, whom I had never heard of before. Their village is entirely inhabited by elders, and they're offering a set of wares that might have come from a factory. To my untrained eye I can't tell any difference in their appearance - they could all be Karen playing pretend for all I know. The women wear white headdresses and lots of bangles around their necks. Two of the elders who welcome us speak some basic English and even more Mandarin and throw many wares in our faces. As I ask them about their goods and history, I inadvertently get the elder man to call for a dance performance. Dozens of Akha elders with unenthusiastic expressions come out of their abodes and grab thick sticks, and drum the sticks straight down into the ground unleashing a deep earthen beat. I watch with 1 part awe and 9 parts embarrassment. After the minute long performance, Qiao Li walks away and I guiltily drop 100 baht into a jar in front of the dancers. I muster a thank you in their language, long gone from my memory, and feel pity that this community has to resort to performing like trained monkeys.

Walking back up the hill to the site entrance, I wonder what are the best options for impoverished village minorities here. In this region of Thailand, groups including the Karen, Akha, Lisu, Meo and Hmong are called “Hill Tribes,” mostly all relatively recent migrants from Yunnan province. They probably settled in the hills not because that’s the terrain best suited for their traditions - growing food in mountainous regions is rough work - but because the Thai wouldn’t let them settle in the better lowlands. They had to retreat to the more remote areas to not be bothered. And now they could try to continue their traditional lifestyles, subsisting on their crops and with limited access to modern infrastructure. I mean, how many scarves and brass rings does one need to trade for a car? Or do they try to assimilate into larger Thai society, starting from the dead bottom? Or do they engage in some sort of tourism contract like this, getting some revenue from curious people like me, and figuring things out from there?

How blessed am I to be from the world’s largest ethnicity, holding the passport of the world’s most powerful country? How would it feel to be a minority in every single country, speaking a language no one else deigns to learn, official absolute nowhere? 

I used to be idealistic regarding linguistic conservation and diversity, but I now believe that there is no way for people like the Akha to advance economically and simultaneously preserve their culture. When you read figures about how many languages are dying each year, they're languages like Akha and those of even smaller communities. Any stateless minority will eventually face the same challenges. There are some stateless people that we hear about in the western media, but most are not covered. Maybe my thoughts are too western-centric and bleeding hearty, and maybe most Akha people live happier lives than me. Nonetheless, my visit to this Long Neck Village reinforced a belief that the nationality and ethnicity you are born to matters far too much in this world.

The next day I boarded a boat to Laos, and drank beers with a bunch of western backpackers. We boozed lazily as the boat eased its way down the Mekong.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Guide to Cantonese for English speakers who know Mandarin

The official languages of Hong Kong are English and "Chinese", the latter in quotes because it actually encompasses a language family. The Hong Kong government calls this policy "biliterate and trilingual - 兩文三語" to indicate that printed texts have English and Traditional Chinese versions and spoken English, Cantonese and Mandarin are all accepted. Cantonese is the de facto spoken language, the home language of about 90% of the populace and the historical language of the region (although some of the earliest settlements in Hong Kong were Hakka speaking). Lots of educated people, whether civil servants, business people or Disneyland staff, regularly conduct services in three languages. While there are more multilingual regions of the world, the overall trilingualism in Hong Kong is still rather impressive. Since the colonial reign ended in Hong Kong in 1997, even the casual observer can tell that the general level of English has worsened but the level of Mandarin has improved greatly.

People often ask how different are Mandarin and Cantonese. It's suffice to say they are mutually unintelligible, but the nuances get complicated. If you are familiar with the Romance language family spread in Southern Europe, you could analogize that Cantonese and Mandarin are like Spanish and French. The Romance languages probably started diverging mainly following the decline of the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries, and Mandarin and Cantonese probably diverged from Middle Chinese around the 6th century. However the geographic spread between North and South China is much greater than between Italy, France and Portugal. Nonetheless a single Chinese written script and a sense of ethnic unity kept the language from diverging as much as it normally would, while the emergence of nationalisms and independent orthographies in Europe divided a dialect continuum into distinct official languages.* Tl;dr - you could say the Chinese languages are more divergent than the Romance languages in some ways, and less in other ways.
Carlos Douh - The poster boy for a westerner who's learned good Cantonese

Most English speakers who move to Hong Kong (and plenty who grow up there) don't learn Cantonese or Mandarin. They already speak one of the official languages so it's easy enough to get by in Hong Kong. Obviously though, being able to speak English and Cantonese in Hong Kong leads to a much fuller experience. Learning the language is difficult and the Hong Kong environment doesn't make it convenient. While Mandarin-learning resources are bountiful, Cantonese-learning resources barely exist - which is why I'm writing this. One major problem is the lack of a phonetic standard - there is a system called Jyutping but it's not commonly used. Nevertheless, I believe it's definitely possible to learn Cantonese in Hong Kong especially when you come in with a background in Mandarin. My office was very Cantonese heavy, and mainland Chinese arrivals would nearly always be conversant in Cantonese within a year. Hong Kong has a thriving community of former China expats, who eventually move to Hong Kong for its unique blend of China with western characteristics. If you're one of them and don't know Cantonese, this is for you. From my anecdotal experience, there are 100 adults who learn Mandarin well for every 1 that learns Cantonese well.

Every word in Mandarin can be said in Cantonese as well. In fact all Chinese speakers can read the same text. However the modern written language is similar to formal Mandarin, and so even though Cantonese speakers can read written Chinese, they will use different words and expressions in conversation. The most important things to learn are 1. common sound changes for the words that are mutually shared and 2. these colloquial expressions.

I know that I'm not the most qualified person to write this, but I don't see the more qualified people writing this, so here goes. Instead of using jyutping, I've chosen to use subjective phonetic English spelling, which is kinda what I've always used. I'm also going to ignore Cantonese tones here, even though there are 9 and they are important. However I subscribe to the school of not focusing your language-learning efforts on tones. Nearly every Cantonese speaker I've talked to would be hard-pressed to name all 9 tones, and do not actively think about tones while speaking. Languages are organic and make human sense, and I think with enough repetition, the tones will naturally come to you.
Let's start with the sound changes:

1. Sound Changes
qi -> kay
星期 -xīngqí - sing kay - Week
奇怪 - qíguài - kay gwai - Weird
其中 - qízhōng - kay zhong - Among them
國旗 - guóqí - gwok kay - National flag

zhi - > jee
一至九 - yīzhì jiǔ - yut jee gau - One to nine
只係 - zhíxì - jee hai - Only
支持 - zhīchí - jee chee - Support
手指 - shǒuzhǐ - sou jee - Finger
知道 -zhīdào - jee dou - Know
(jik is also a common change, such as 直 - Straight)

bai -> baak
一百 - yī bǎi - yut baak - One hundred
白色 - bái sè - baak sik - White color
(some other characters like 拜 are just pronounced bai)

xian - > seen
先生 - xiānshēng - seen sang - Mr.
電線 - diànxiàn - deen seen - Electric cable
 新鮮 -  xīnxiān - sun seen - Fresh

ji -> gay
幾多 -jǐduō - gay do - How many
飛機 - fēijī - fei gay - Airplane
自己 - zìjǐ - jee gay - Oneself
基本 - jīběn - gay boon - Basic
記得 - jìdé - gay duc - Remember

you -> yao
有 -yǒu - yao - Have
又 - yòu - yao - Again
左右 -zuǒyòu - jor yao - Left right
郵件 - yóujiàn - yao geen - Mail
石油 - shíyóu - sek yao - Oil
Note: when I first started learning Mandarin, I always got 有 and 要 confused. Cantonese 有 just sounds too much like Mandarin 要. Vice versa isn't quite so true, but it's still confusing.

yao -> yiu
要 - yào - yiu - Need
姚明 - yáomíng - yiu ming - Yao Ming
-yāo - yiu - Waist

gao -> go
蛋糕 - dàngāo - daan go - Cake
高興 - gāoxìng - go hing - Happiness
報告 - bàogào - bo go - Report

jian -> geen
再見 - zàijiàn - joi geen - Goodbye
一件事 - yījiànshì - yut geen see - One thing
建築 - jiànzhú - geen jook - Building
堅定 - jiāndìng - geen ding - Firm

(many jian are also pronounced as gaan such as 簡單 gaan daan and 一間房 yut gaan fong)

yang -> yeung
太陽 - tàiyáng - tai yeung - Sun
羊肉 - yángròu - yeung yook - Lamb meat

Ok I think that's a lot right there. First note: every single one of those sound changes have exceptions. They are just general rules that I tend to use whenever I come across a word that I only know in one language and need to guess in the other language. I'd say they work more than half the time. Second note: A bunch of sounds have no common changes, like shi and xi. Third note: I decided to just write all these examples in Traditional Chinese, as used in Hong Kong. If you are only familiar with Simplified, I honestly don't think it's that hard to gradually adjust to Traditional. This post may serve as a primer for your transition. However below, I do write the Mandarin phrases in Simplified and the Cantonese equivalents in Traditional.

2. Phrases 
是 -係 -  hai - To be
不 - 唔 - ng - Not
你怎么样? - 點啊你?deem ah lei? How are you?
为什么? - 點解? deem gai? Why?
什么 - 乜嘢 or 咩嘢 - mut yeh or meh yeh (interchangeable) - What
没有  - 無 or 冇 - mou - Not have. Cantonese just combines these two words into one. Despite this, the usage doesn't change. 有冇 is exactly the same as 有没有. Because the writing of Cantonese-specific characters is not standardized, you do see both characters used.
我们 -我地 - ngo** dei - We. 地 is used exactly like们. 你地 (lei dei) means you plural and 佢地 means they (keui dei). 他 is only used in writing.
这里 - 呢度 - ni dou - Here. Substitute 呢 in all cases you would use 这
哪里-邊度 - been dou - Where. Substitute 邊 in all cases you would use 哪
刚刚 - 啱啱 - ngaam ngaam - Just now.
现在 -而家 - yee ga - Now.
听得懂  - 聽得明 - tang duc ming - Understand.
喜欢 - 鍾意 - zhong yee - Like
饭馆  - 餐廳 - chaan tang - Restaurant
乘电梯 - 搭𨋢 -daap leep - Take the elevator. Hong Kongers throw in more English words in general than Mainland Chinese, but this is an example of a nativized word. Leep actually comes from "lift"
当然 - 梗係 - gun hai - Of course. Although dong yeen has now entered common parlance.
美女 - 靚女 - liang leoi - Pretty girl. Useful.
帅哥 - 靚仔 - liang jai - Handsome guy. 仔 is used much more in Cantonese to denote child or dude.
老外 -鬼佬 - guai lo - If you're a white guy, this might one of the first phrases you learn.
的 - 嘅 - gor - possessive indicator. This is slightly tricky. Cantonese doesn't do possessions quite the same way, using the measure word instead. This word is used when the measure word is 個, as in 佢嘅朋友 keui gor pung yau, his friend. In fact most people just write 佢個朋友, but technically the tone 個 changes slightly. For different measure words, just use that measure word, i.e.貓 - ngo jek mao - my cat.
你吃饭了吗? -你食左飯未呀? - lei sic jor fan mei ah? Have you eaten yet? There's quite a lot going on grammatically here in this common greeting. First, Cantonese has it's own word for eat, 'sic'. Second, 了which is pronounced lieu in Cantonese, is hardly used in conversation. "jor" (which sounds similar to the pinyin zuo) is used instead to denote past tense with the character for left typically adopted, and is (usually) used in verb + 左 + object pattern unlike the Mandarin 了. Third, 未 is the Cantonese word for yet. This word is in Mandarin too, but isn't used as often or in the same way as in Cantonese. Sometimes 未 replaces 还, other times like here, it comes at the end of the sentence like in English. Finally, 呀 is a common Cantonese interjection at the end of sentences, like it is in Mandarin. 吗 is not often used as a question word - in fact in Hong Kong Cantonese, ending a sentence in an upward inflection can in fact connote a question, just like in English.
谢谢 - 唔該 or 多謝 ng goi or duo jie - Thank you
Ah the Cantonese thank you. This tricked me up when I first moved to Hong Kong and I kept using the wrong thank you for months. The two thank you's are for mutually exclusive scenarios! Use 唔該 when someone does a basic task for you or something that you asked for, and 多謝 when someone does a medium to large favor, especially if you didn't ask for it and definitely if money is exchanged.

Hope that's a good starter course! If you want to thank me, please say 多謝.

*It's an urban legend that Cantonese was 1 vote away from becoming the official language of China. The language in Beijing has been the government language for three dynasties, and got its English name because government employees (Mandarins) were required to learn it regardless of origin. The Qing Dynasty promoted Mandarin for official purposes in 1909.
**If you can't pronounce the ng in 我, just say o (same vowel as in wo) - half of Hong Kong has dropped the ng anyways.