Max started Mandarin shortly after he arrived. The one thing he often questioned was how such brilliant people could have come up with such a complicated language system. Now I know what he means. Mandarin has four different tones and depending on the tone, one word can have up to four different meanings. For example "Tang" depending on the tone ("Táng Tàng Tăng Tāng") can mean "soup," "sugar," "to lie down," or"boiling hot." To top it all off, the language forces your mouth to say sounds you never thought existed. One has to go through a whole book of "initial" and "final" sounds before one even begins to delve into vocabulary 101. The one thing I have going for me is I work with an assistant Chinese teacher and am consequently used to hearing at least some of the sounds on a daily basis. I haven't even tried to learn Chinese characters and although I am sure at some point I will, I am settling for pinyin, the Romanization of Mandarin (using our ABC's).
I like my teacher. She is around my age and engaged to a westerner, (surprise, surprise)... Our first class we got totally off topic and started talking about food for about a half hour (another surprise, surprise)... Hence I walked away with some interesting facts.
1) In a country of 1.3 billion, 0.9 billion are farmers. (They farm smaller plots of land because the majority of farmers are without machines. Consequently they can't dominate as much land as those with machines). This is why food is soooo cheap.
2)No legs (fish) are the healthiest, two legs (chicken) are the second healthiest, and four legs (cow, sheep etc.) are the least healthy. The Government recommends eating as many "no legs" as possible.
3)They don't use ovens so... 2 legged, 4 legged, and no legged friends are either boiled, steamed, or stir-fried.
4) They almost always use rice wine, scallions, and ginger for cooking our 2 legged, 4 legged, or 0 legged friends,
5)Almost everything is cooked with bones. They believe bones hold the most nutrition.
...more Mandarin and cultural tidbits to come!
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