I am sitting in a chair of burnished steel looking at a black and white photograph of Paris. I am drinking tea while soft music full of uplifting major chords plays in the background. I have sat in many similar cafes with black and white photos of Paris. The last one was in Guatemala, in Santa Cruz de Quiche where I ate granola. It was the Maya heart of Central America, but the town was named for a religion brought five centuries ago from Andalucia. This cafe is in the Cantonese part of China, in a City called Foshan. This is a Chinese word, but it means Mountain of Buddha, named for a foreign religion brought eighteen centuries ago by missionaries from India.
My first week here, I went for a health check up. Doctors in white coats sitting behind grey desks looked at clipboards, had me close one eye and observe E's in various positions on a wall chart, tapped my knee, and gave me a plastic specimen cup. Everything seemed very familiar in all respects except the language. The words out of their mouth and the things written on the clipboard were Chinese, which I hardly understand. But the objects and the motions were almost instantly recognizable.
The writing is the obvious marker here. Western Europe, the Americas, and Australia all use the alphabet developed 20 centuries ago by the Roman Empire. The regular lines and curves of the letters are visible here as well—all the city trash cans are labeled in English and Chinese, as are many bus stops. But while not difficult to find, the English letters are smaller, and uncommon. Stores, soft drinks, and ingredients are labeled in the older writing system developed even earlier here in China.
I am trying to teach students here at Foshan University to speak English—which they do. Of course, to make their words, they often string together the sounds they are familiar with from Chinese. This is why their diction seems imprecise on words like "because" or "work". Like anyone speaking a new language, their first instinct is to build the new words out of the sounds they are already familiar with. When I try to describe my surroundings, I also string together images familiar with from other places I have been. So perhaps my attempts to reproduce and describe what I see are a little distorted by the accent of my previous cultural environments, an accent I hope I will lose.
Foshan is a very large town, 2 million people: larger than any city in Central America, but it is only a suburb of Guangzhou. The area I live in is on the edge of downtown, full of skyscrapers, and wide boulevards traveled by cars, motorcycles, bicycles. Children shop for clothes and ipods in fashionable boutiques conducting themselves much like Southern California kids in malls. But not everything has been brought over. Among the kids browsing the endless malls, there are no skateboarders or long-haired hippies. I bought a guitar at a music store featuring large black flags with Anarchy symbols and pictures of Che Guevara, but everyone working there looked clean-cut and semi-preppy. Occasionally I see beggars, often with very visible disabilities. And I am sure there are parts of town where people ar every unhappy. Much of Western culture has been imported, but in Foshan at least, one significant part of Western culture has not been imported: the Western sub-culture of Rebellion against the mainstream: there are none of the signs of middle class angst in urban zones, or working class gang-membership I saw in Guatemala. In High School when we went to pep rallies—I was always a little uncomfortable. And in college I met people who actively made fun of them. But here in China, everyone seems like the type ready to cheer for the home team, despite how similar the hallways and lockers and class schedules seem.
Sunday 11 November 2007
Saturday 7 July 2007
Postcard from the Achisphere
The computer screen shows the sharp green peaks of a sound file, with five seconds highlighted. The man in front of the screen turns to the man in front of the microphone. "Ronohey?" he asks. The first man nods. We have been recording excerpts from the Rabinal Achi, an epic poem passed down orally from more than 3 centuries before Columbus, older than the Canterbury tales. The poem is in the Maya language Achi, as is the word "Ronohey" all of it. In addition to the green sound squiggle, the display contains a controller with universal recording icons ("Red Triangle, Black Square") familiar from tape and CD players. The computer operator occasionally uses pull-down menus written in Spanish, but mostly uses icons and wave highlighting, which are independent of language. Much of what he does could be done by some one illiterate, or illiterate in Spanish. And when the two men discuss operating the computer, many of their words are in the same language as the 800 year-old poem we are recording.
Another day I travel in the back of a pickup with a friend to a rural village forty-five minutes from town, where he teaches first grade. All but three of the students speak only Achi and he teaches them in that language: teaches the alphabet, simple words and a few nursery rhymes "Katzenoj we lik katkikotik, ha ha ha!" It occurs to me that although the words are foreign, much of the non-verbal content of the class: the pictures, the activity, even the tune of the song ("if you're happy and you know it") would be recognizable to a teacher in the United States. Like the computerized recordings, these social technologies can be transplanted into all sorts of cultures without separating children from the voices of their grandparents. Of course the classroom is much more basic than anything in the United States and the morning refreshment (a cup of atol cooled over an open fire and served in cups students store and wash themselves) reflects a school system where there was a telethon a few years ago so students would have pencils.
The question of bilingual education in this valley is reminiscent of the issue in the United States. In the US the question is to what extent it is necessary for brown people who speak Spanish to master English, the language which dominates culture and business. In Guatemala the question is to what extent it is necessary for brown people who speak Achi, or other Maya languages, to master Spanish, the language which dominates culture and business. And my friend says, most of the peasant farmers recognize the importance of Spanish for life beyond their valley and want their children to be fluent. Much of the pressure for bilingual education comes from more urbanized people who live very differently from their parents and for whom language is one of the few things connecting different generations. But in places like this, theories about bilingual education matter less than teaching staff. Although most students start off with no Spanish, the fourth grade teacher only speaks Spanish, so all the class takes place in Spanish. Some time is set aside for learning Achi names of plants, but she cannot direct or inspire them having anything beyond a third-grade conversation in the language of their ancestors.
The Rabinal Achi drama is still performed, by people wearing masks and elaborate feathered costumes, and the man we recorded is one of the ones who helped keep the oral tradition alive. During January a few dozen people watched the drama in any single performance, one morning it seemed half the people watching were foreign. At the same festival the mayor sponsored another "Dance" with a huge sound system, roped off and a dozen or so people in Halloween style masks and Costumes moving to booming techno beats. Thousands of people pressed against the ropes to see that performance, without quite so much traditional significance. Of course that is much more in line with modern ideas of spectacle, and in the US as well more people watch the spectacle of WWF and Monster Truck rallies than Shakespeare or recitations of the Canterbury Tales. And even in Shakespeare's time the loudest applause was probably not for the things people study in literature classes.
Throughout the Rabinal Achi, both peoples speak often of nuhuyubal, nutaqahal: my mountain, my valley, to denote where they are from. The play tells the story of how the Achi people won their independence from the much larger K'iche people of several western valleys, who had dominated them for several centuries. The story focuses on a single symbolic event in that battle: the capture of a K'iche warrior by a local warrior, the Rabinal Achi, and the K'iche Achi's execution as a prisoner of War. This is a reminder that war and conquest were not European invention—and would have played a role in the last five centuries of history on this continent even if Columbus had stayed home. But it is significant to compare how different peoples speak of war and battle. The K'iche prisoner of war who dies at the end has many more lines than the Achi characters... as if Beowulf had been devoted more to the words of Grendel and his mother, rather than the eponymous hero, or the Song of Roland had talked about the glory and faith of the Muslims rather than caricaturing them as vicious idolaters. Here the captured prisoner speaks, is killed, and his words are recorded by those who kill him. Unlike European War stories, those who preserve the words of the foreign warrior do not need to describe their enemy as a sub-human monster in order to assuage their guilt about killing him.
The way in which the traditional languages and folkways have survived despite the influx of globalized technology is visible throughout the valley. There is a new supermarket, owned by the Walmart Chain, well-integrated into the streetscape, a metal-roofed two story yellow building between older one-story tile roofed buildings housing a doctor's office and an internet cafe. No sea of parking, just a mass of bicycle and motor cycle taxis (tuc tucs) in front of the entrance. Inside you see women in traditional clothing and headgear looking at the plastic-wrapped frozen foods in the freezers and tall shelves, the way other women examine salted fish in wicker baskets in the centuries old market two blocks away. I take a minibus out to one of the outlying communities, and listen to people chattering in Achi as the Korean-made minibus speeds the dirt roads past adobe houses and cattle pastures with too many plastic bags. Many items from beyond Guatemala make it into this valley, the market is full of CDs from Mexico, t-shirts with WWF figures like John Cena, the Marine, even the Argentinian Che Guevara. But to the people who make a livelihood selling these things, like the minibus drivers, or the man who runs the internet cafe, these items by themselves are not necessarily evidence of cultural erosion. I am sure that when the Rabinal Achi first celebrated the defeat of the K'iche army the markets of this valley were filled with trade goods such as weavings, cooking pots, maybe even songs, from the many valleys of the K'iche nation. Some of these no doubt out-competed the products of this valley, but a Rabinal musician playing a K'iche song is still a Rabinal musician. A Rabinal vendor selling CDs from Mexico or cellphones from Norway is still a Rabinal vendor. The products come from many valleys: some Achi, some K'iche, some Yankee. Some patterns of commerce enrich the residents of this valley, others do not. I suspect some one driving a minivan earns more than some one working for Walmart, some one selling internet time more some one than selling John Cena t-shirts. And if I am wrong in those specifics, it is questions like that which matter more for the economic health of the valley than the origins.
Another day I travel in the back of a pickup with a friend to a rural village forty-five minutes from town, where he teaches first grade. All but three of the students speak only Achi and he teaches them in that language: teaches the alphabet, simple words and a few nursery rhymes "Katzenoj we lik katkikotik, ha ha ha!" It occurs to me that although the words are foreign, much of the non-verbal content of the class: the pictures, the activity, even the tune of the song ("if you're happy and you know it") would be recognizable to a teacher in the United States. Like the computerized recordings, these social technologies can be transplanted into all sorts of cultures without separating children from the voices of their grandparents. Of course the classroom is much more basic than anything in the United States and the morning refreshment (a cup of atol cooled over an open fire and served in cups students store and wash themselves) reflects a school system where there was a telethon a few years ago so students would have pencils.
The question of bilingual education in this valley is reminiscent of the issue in the United States. In the US the question is to what extent it is necessary for brown people who speak Spanish to master English, the language which dominates culture and business. In Guatemala the question is to what extent it is necessary for brown people who speak Achi, or other Maya languages, to master Spanish, the language which dominates culture and business. And my friend says, most of the peasant farmers recognize the importance of Spanish for life beyond their valley and want their children to be fluent. Much of the pressure for bilingual education comes from more urbanized people who live very differently from their parents and for whom language is one of the few things connecting different generations. But in places like this, theories about bilingual education matter less than teaching staff. Although most students start off with no Spanish, the fourth grade teacher only speaks Spanish, so all the class takes place in Spanish. Some time is set aside for learning Achi names of plants, but she cannot direct or inspire them having anything beyond a third-grade conversation in the language of their ancestors.
The Rabinal Achi drama is still performed, by people wearing masks and elaborate feathered costumes, and the man we recorded is one of the ones who helped keep the oral tradition alive. During January a few dozen people watched the drama in any single performance, one morning it seemed half the people watching were foreign. At the same festival the mayor sponsored another "Dance" with a huge sound system, roped off and a dozen or so people in Halloween style masks and Costumes moving to booming techno beats. Thousands of people pressed against the ropes to see that performance, without quite so much traditional significance. Of course that is much more in line with modern ideas of spectacle, and in the US as well more people watch the spectacle of WWF and Monster Truck rallies than Shakespeare or recitations of the Canterbury Tales. And even in Shakespeare's time the loudest applause was probably not for the things people study in literature classes.
Throughout the Rabinal Achi, both peoples speak often of nuhuyubal, nutaqahal: my mountain, my valley, to denote where they are from. The play tells the story of how the Achi people won their independence from the much larger K'iche people of several western valleys, who had dominated them for several centuries. The story focuses on a single symbolic event in that battle: the capture of a K'iche warrior by a local warrior, the Rabinal Achi, and the K'iche Achi's execution as a prisoner of War. This is a reminder that war and conquest were not European invention—and would have played a role in the last five centuries of history on this continent even if Columbus had stayed home. But it is significant to compare how different peoples speak of war and battle. The K'iche prisoner of war who dies at the end has many more lines than the Achi characters... as if Beowulf had been devoted more to the words of Grendel and his mother, rather than the eponymous hero, or the Song of Roland had talked about the glory and faith of the Muslims rather than caricaturing them as vicious idolaters. Here the captured prisoner speaks, is killed, and his words are recorded by those who kill him. Unlike European War stories, those who preserve the words of the foreign warrior do not need to describe their enemy as a sub-human monster in order to assuage their guilt about killing him.
The way in which the traditional languages and folkways have survived despite the influx of globalized technology is visible throughout the valley. There is a new supermarket, owned by the Walmart Chain, well-integrated into the streetscape, a metal-roofed two story yellow building between older one-story tile roofed buildings housing a doctor's office and an internet cafe. No sea of parking, just a mass of bicycle and motor cycle taxis (tuc tucs) in front of the entrance. Inside you see women in traditional clothing and headgear looking at the plastic-wrapped frozen foods in the freezers and tall shelves, the way other women examine salted fish in wicker baskets in the centuries old market two blocks away. I take a minibus out to one of the outlying communities, and listen to people chattering in Achi as the Korean-made minibus speeds the dirt roads past adobe houses and cattle pastures with too many plastic bags. Many items from beyond Guatemala make it into this valley, the market is full of CDs from Mexico, t-shirts with WWF figures like John Cena, the Marine, even the Argentinian Che Guevara. But to the people who make a livelihood selling these things, like the minibus drivers, or the man who runs the internet cafe, these items by themselves are not necessarily evidence of cultural erosion. I am sure that when the Rabinal Achi first celebrated the defeat of the K'iche army the markets of this valley were filled with trade goods such as weavings, cooking pots, maybe even songs, from the many valleys of the K'iche nation. Some of these no doubt out-competed the products of this valley, but a Rabinal musician playing a K'iche song is still a Rabinal musician. A Rabinal vendor selling CDs from Mexico or cellphones from Norway is still a Rabinal vendor. The products come from many valleys: some Achi, some K'iche, some Yankee. Some patterns of commerce enrich the residents of this valley, others do not. I suspect some one driving a minivan earns more than some one working for Walmart, some one selling internet time more some one than selling John Cena t-shirts. And if I am wrong in those specifics, it is questions like that which matter more for the economic health of the valley than the origins.
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