SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the Changing Scripts Podcast, where we describe our personal language learning stories with the focus right now on Mandarin Chinese. My name is Stephanie, and I was a language instructor for about 15 years, mostly in Asia. I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for about a year now. This podcast is part of the Changing Scripts Pod Tube experience. The podcast part is where I chat with other language learners and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese about their language learning experience. And the YouTube channel is where I share my own personal successes, failures, and questions while I slowly but steadily learn to read Mandarin Chinese. In this episode, we talk to Eric Olander about his 33-year Mandarin Chinese language learning experience. Eric is a journalist, blogger, media executive, and co-founder and managing editor of the China Africa Project, which includes the China in Africa podcast, which he co-hosts weekly with COBIS Van Stadten. Last time we chatted with Eric in episode 8. He shared his controversial learning methods, but this time we dig more into the cultural side of Mandarin Chinese. We learn about how learning about the time indicator law can be thought of as a time bridge, how he knew he achieved a certain level of language learning competency when he got yelled at and cursed at in Chinese, and so much more. Let's get to it. Thank you so much, Eric, for coming back to Changing Scripts.

SPEAKER_05

It's great to be back.

SPEAKER_02

So you were with us last time in September and what is it now? January 8th?

SPEAKER_05

Right, we were talking about studying Chinese.

SPEAKER_02

We were, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And some of my unconventional views on studying Chinese.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes, and and paying the teachers' aid to teach you outside of class and bad teaching practices and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_05

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So how much time have you spent learning Mandarin Chinese in mainland China?

SPEAKER_05

I've been studying Chinese for 30 years, living here in Shanghai, going in and out of China for those 30 years. I'm not one of these people who've lived continuously in China. There's a lot of people who have been here for 10, 15, 20 years, and I'm not one of those. I find that I have a complicated relationship with both China and the United States. That I live in the US, and after about two or three years, I get frustrated, so I have to go back to China. And I live in China for two or three years and I get frustrated, and so I kind of ping-pong in and out of China for those different things.

SPEAKER_02

I do more of a year and a year, or at least I used to do a year and a year, so I'm I'm jealous that you lasted three years.

SPEAKER_05

If you look at my LinkedIn profile, it does bounce around quite a bit. You know, there have been stints of three years, but for the most part, it's it's shorter periods, and I find that I never want to be one of those foreigners who's here who hates it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And you you we all know those people. They sit there and they just complain and they hate the Chinese, they hate China, they hate the politics, they hate the economics, they hate the culture, they hate everything. And I never want to be one of those people, and I don't want to be grumpy about it. I love being here. And when I find myself getting frustrated, which after three or four years, because life here isn't easy, it is frustrating, it's a challenge every day to get on the internet and to go from point A to point B. And and so you really have to want to be here. And so for me, that's why little short stints tend to be better. Uh but I still, no matter where I am in the world, continue my Chinese studies two, three times a week. Um I still read, I still follow China, I'm still as engaged in China whether I'm actually in China or out of China.

SPEAKER_02

Awesome. And you've been studying Chinese for so many years.

SPEAKER_05

33 years now. 33 years. So which I'm embarrassed to say because Well, I'm embarrassed because other people have been studying. I I see these, you know, these young kids. I'm almost 50 now, so I see these young kids.

SPEAKER_06

I feel like the old man get off my lawn.

SPEAKER_05

Um I I see these younger kids who have been who are so talented and they speak with perfect Beijing Ha accents, and they're on YouTube and Instagram and doing these great things. And I just I envy them so much. Now, a lot of those kids, A, are like my son who have grown up here. So already my son's Chinese is coming along quite nicely, and kids have this really brutally unfair advantage of that their brains are so optimized to learn languages, and so they can pick up tones and they can pick up the accents, and us old people have a much more difficult time.

SPEAKER_02

They're slow learners.

SPEAKER_05

Yes, and so so I started when I was teen and 48 now, so I've been doing it continuously. The longest break I took was two months, and that was a disaster because it's amazing how quickly the language just evaporates from your brain. Yeah, it's really amazing. It just after two months, you feel like all the years you put in, poof, gone. So so that so that's why for me I'm a little bit shy sometimes. I speak fluently, I read and write, I do all of that, but nowhere near what somebody who has been studying for 33 years probably should be speaking at.

SPEAKER_02

But here's the thing, and I keep saying this to people around me, and I'm in language testing, so this uh sometimes doesn't go over very well. But a lot of people assume that if you're in a language classroom, like all the people in one classroom with one teacher will learn the same way at the same rate and come out with the same language. And we're totally comfortable as as a society to say, okay, different people have different athletic abilities, but we get really uncomfortable when it comes to the cognitive stuff. But I really, really think different people have different abilities when it comes to language learning.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, totally. I have to be honest with you, I I speak fluent French and I speak fluent Chinese, but I am terrible in languages. And that is completely counterintuitive. Exceeded in Chinese was sheer brutal persistence. The obsessive compulsive disorders that's required to do Chinese well, which is to sit and memorize characters and flashcards, just agreed with my neurosis and my neurotic personality. A very structured Chinese is a very structured type of language. You memorize, you regurgitate, you memorize, you regurgitate. I grew up in France, I was educated in France as a TCK, a third third culture kid. So I didn't learn the language, I was just kind of thrust into a public school, and as a nine-year-old, I just absorbed it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So I've never been particularly good with languages. I've just been blessed to be in circumstances where I have been optimized to learn.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

As opposed to somebody who's actually talented with it.

SPEAKER_02

Well, if I keep going, I'm I know you you you went more of the speaking route, but I am much more of a visual person, and the characters drew me in this time, and it's taken me a long time to get here. But I'm going the HSK route because there's so much repetition. And I I'm 47 and I've never learned a language to fluency. And so if I keep going in probably a year or two, I'll probably be speaking in more than two-word chunks. What HSK are you at now? I just to I just barely passed three.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So I'm studying four, but I'm going back and reviewing one, two, and three because there's a lot of stuff the first three times I went over them that I missed.

SPEAKER_05

My wife is doing HSK, and it's the first time I've been exposed to it. And I like it much more than when I started studying Chinese because it does provide some structure, some benchmark of where you are relative to other people. And I think that is really useful. When I was starting out, there was no HSK, there was no standard, there was no, you just kind of studied Chinese, and you just went from grade one to grade two to grade three to grade four, and you just kind of moved up. And teachers did an assessment and they said, I think you are advanced middle beginner, whatever. And they just kind of put you in things, and it was much more impromptu. So I think having HSK is good. I still get frustrated, as I mentioned in our last discussion, with the way that Chinese teachers teach foreigners, which I think for the most part is terrible. Um, I think Chinese uh teachers have not understood the way that we learn is different than the way that they learn.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And I think there's still an opportunity for someone out there, this is a business opportunity, to create a learning method that is really geared for Westerners and particularly Americans. Um I don't because Europeans in some ways, particularly French, have a much more rigid uh learning system. So it's more similar to the Chinese way. Whereas the American way we learn is is very, very different.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, that's really, really, really, really, really true. But let's go back to that beginning time. You've traveled around China a lot, and we didn't touch on pronunciation so much or dialects or like different variations of Mandarin Chinese. So where have you been in China?

SPEAKER_05

I've been to more than 15 provinces. So when I was a young reporter for the BBC World Service back in 1992, 1992 or 1993, I'm dating myself, I forget which one. Uh, somewhere around there, 92, 93, uh I did a series called Postcards from China. And I spent nine months traveling by rail through the various countries through the countryside and the provinces. Uh, and at that time it was to report on it was I'm sorry, it was 93 because it was after Dung and the Southern Tour. Okay. And the point the BBC kind of contracted me because they had heard that Dung opened up the South and that there was changes were taking place in the countryside. They couldn't get their reporters to leave Beijing because of the events that happened on June 4th.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

So their reporters were locked down. So they I was anchoring at the time in Hong Kong, radio news, but I was still technically a student at UC Berkeley.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_05

So they came up to me through some mutual acquaintances and they said, You're you're still a student, right? And I said, Yeah, technically. He said, We'll we'll offer you a deal. If you go and report from us for the countryside, we will air your stuff. And we want you to tell us about all the changes that are taking place in the economic reforms that are just starting. In fact, in some ways, it's right now we're celebrating and commemorating the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up period. Well, this was really the beginning, early stages of that reform and opening up when it started to materialize. And they said, but there's a caveat if you get caught, we'll have nothing to do with you.

SPEAKER_02

You're on your own. You're on your own.

SPEAKER_05

And I went, let me think about it. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Well you were really young then. I was very young, I was 23 at the time.

SPEAKER_05

Which was just the break of a lifetime.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And so what I did is I just started riding trains through the countryside. Now back then, you know, the countryside was rough. They're not the high-speed trains. It was hot, it was sweaty, it was uncomfortable. It was very much the developing country that China emerged from.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

Since then, I've traveled a lot into Xinjiang, into Gangsu, into we were just in Guizhou. Uh, and so and and the Chinese countryside has changed so much in part because the economy has changed. Sure. And and so it was such a a shock to me to go recently over the Golden Week holiday. I was in Guizhou, and you the big difference between 1992 and and 2018 that I've seen kind of progress, but now more than ever, is there's no more middle-aged people in the countryside.

unknown

What?

SPEAKER_02

I thought it was mostly middle-aged people, not middle-aged.

SPEAKER_05

And babies. And the adults' children are in the cities.

SPEAKER_03

That's right.

SPEAKER_05

That was remarkable. When I was in in the early days in the 90s, it was more the 18, 19-year-olds that after high school would go off and leave to the cities to go to the factories in Dongguan and places like that in southern China. Uh today it's the it's the it's the adult children that are gone too. So that was remarkable.

SPEAKER_02

Well, let's let's connect it to the language part. Did you because you were in Gui Guezhou just Guaizhou in 1993 and just a few weeks ago? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

A few months ago.

SPEAKER_02

Two months ago, okay. So was there a big difference language-wise from what you heard around you? I mean, I know that's a long time ago to remember.

SPEAKER_05

No, not really. I mean, people's Mandarin for the most part is still a second language, a very strong second language, but nonetheless a second language. I always like speaking Mandarin in the countryside because people like me speak it as a second language. Um, I I find it that they speak slower. Uh, it's a little bit harder to understand sometimes, but the speed for me was always the key thing. So when I got to Beijing or you come to Shanghai and people are just and you're just like, oh my gosh, I can't keep up with it, my ear. But when you're in the countryside, they are struggling with the language almost as much as I am in some cases, where they're speaking in very basic terms. In Xinjiang, for example, in Kashgar, when I was out there, uh, they really don't speak Mandarin as a native language. And so, because they have a Turkish language in the Uyghur dialects. So when they're speaking Mandarin, it is, it was, it was very, very rudimentary and basic. In Guizhou, or even outside of Shanghai in some of the countryside areas here, uh, it's just that hard accent and the vocabulary that they use oftentimes is more basic. So for me, I find it preferable. Uh and the speed and the and the and the choice of vocabulary is more simple and slower.

SPEAKER_02

Did you find yourself at any point in your time in China picking up any of the dialects?

SPEAKER_05

No. I've decided, I made it a conscious decision never to focus on dialects, and that includes Cantonese. So I lived in Hong Kong, I did my graduate school school in Hong Kong, and I really made no effort to learn Cantonese simply because learning Mandarin for me was difficult enough. You know, four tones plus a neutral tone was enough, and then all of a sudden Cantonese has nine tones. Some of the dialects go up to 13 tones. Um I was in Vietnam for five years. Vietnam is really an offshoot of Chinese in many ways linguistically. Um I did study it, but I found that I was getting confused with my Chinese. So in order to focus on Mandarin, I decided that I'm just gonna stick to Mandarin.

SPEAKER_02

That's a wise choice. I'll probably end up going that route too.

SPEAKER_05

I mean, there are a few people, and again, I'm envious of them, that can speak perfect Cantonese, perfect Mandarin, or perfect Shanghainese. Um typically it tends to be in my experience, people who are married to Shanghainese, Cantonese, and whatnot, and then they pick up the dialect that way. Yeah. So they studied Mandarin and then they live with the dialect language, so then they kind of absorb it, especially if they have kids. Um it I've never really met a foreigner who has learned both dialects fluently without having that personal reason for it. Exactly. I'm sure it's out there, and there's some just amazingly talented people who can do that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I see some of them on YouTube and Instagram and things, and they're talking about think of this language over on this side, this language on this side, or color code the languages in your brain. And I'm like, I'm just going for one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

It's hard enough to do one. That's right. It's hard enough to do one.

SPEAKER_02

I can I can speak and read as much as I want in Mandarin, then then I'll think about what's my third language. So, okay, so what would you say was the easiest place to understand what people were saying as you were traveling around China?

SPEAKER_05

I didn't really think I don't think there's really a big variety. Once you go outside of the native Mandarin speaking zones, so for example, in Beijing, linguistically uh it is, you know, very easy in in in in Taipei and in Beijing to kind of get lost in the native Mandarin. And then for me, everything that's not native Mandarin generally goes at a similar speed, where your ear is tuned for this kind of you know, listening through the accent, listening for the different ways that they say things. One of the things I find that's more difficult in places like Beijing is that they will use a lot more of the tongue-you's, which are the sayings.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And they will, and so you're having to understand the meanings a lot more as opposed to a direct literal vocabulary. Whereas in the countryside, what I find, just in my personal experience, people are not using chung-yus as much. They're using the the you know, just a straight, you know, point A to point B type of communicating. And I find that, particularly in office environments and more professional uh environments where the tongues in my experience, uh everybody's experience is different, but I I I find that to be a lot more common. And that's that's different, it's more difficult for a foreigner uh simply because those chung yus are hard to kind of know.

SPEAKER_02

So just to recap for the listeners, the cheng yus were the um like what is it, three or four.

SPEAKER_05

Oftentimes a four-character saying.

SPEAKER_02

So it's pretty much an idiom, isn't it?

SPEAKER_05

It is an idiom, but it's the way that a lot of I mean, of more highly educated, uh and I think I'm getting into treacherous territory here, but it is the way that kind of a more literate type of uh Chinese is spoken. And it's really when you, as a foreigner, when you can start weaving in these idioms into your language, uh you are really at that point of fluency. So um I will say for, and it's really, you know, it just enhances the ability to communicate in such a way that shows cultural dexterity beyond just knowing the language. And so, you know, when you talk about, you know, you know, people will always ask me, you know, you're so far away from your parents. And so I will always say that, you know, I go home regularly, I want to go take care of my parents so much as possible when I say younger fang lao, which is just to, you know, as a son to be raised to take care of the parents. Okay. And they go, oh, you know, they'll say, they'll hear that that saying, and it shows that you have a a cultural fluency in addition to a linguistic fluency.

SPEAKER_03

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_05

And but for me, understanding these idioms and these tongues has been an incredibly difficult challenge because not only do you have to memorize the odd combination of characters, because these characters don't always go together naturally. Sure. They're four distinct concepts sometimes smooshed together in order to relay a much more textured, complex story. So n number one, you have to then piece together characters and memorize them, and number two, you have to know exactly the right time and right conditions to use them.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, that's hard.

SPEAKER_05

And that is where i i it gets hard. And so uh, but it's one of my linguistic challenges that I said when I'm 60, which oh my gosh, is not actually that far away.

SPEAKER_02

Well, my my goal was only to get be able to form full sentences beyond two or three words. So uh I think I might reach mine.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, you might reach yours, but when I'm 60, my goal is to be able to speak it with a lot of those idiom that idiomatic way because that is how so much of even daily Chinese is is spoken. So actually, let me amend that. Um now that I'm thinking about it, it's not just even a literate, educated Chinese that does the idioms. It's actually even in day-to-day Chinese force. Sure, sure, sure. So it is a but it is a very idiomatic language in that sense.

SPEAKER_02

Is that a mainland are are Cheng Yu's a mainland Chinese thing, or is it it's using the diaspora and everything?

SPEAKER_05

It's using the diaspora. It's a cultural thing more than anything.

SPEAKER_02

So the Confucius sayings are different than the Chenggyus.

SPEAKER_05

Um I'm they're kind of overlapping in a I'm not expert enough to give you a definitive answer on that. I am sure there's probably some overlap on that. Gotcha. But the Chenggyus, so in my Chinese class, I'm constantly running into tongue use with my teacher. And so I have literally a list in my Evernote of all the Chung Yus. Yeah. And unfortunately, I have not had the time to memorize them. And so, but I'm keeping them for one day when I will actually have the time and I'll sit there and go back to the neurotic kind of with the square boxes and memorize them because that's the only way I know how.

SPEAKER_02

Do you have a favorite one?

SPEAKER_05

Um no. Or a least favorite one that you I don't have a I don't have a preference on them because for me it's all about the timing of using them well. And when you land a good tongue, it feels so good because you can see the reaction on people. Because they they get this kind of this this wow. A foreigner not only can speak Chinese, but actually also knows how to use the language to its maximum effect. And that is such it's the real joy of speaking a foreign language when you when you're able to kind of communicate in that way.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Or the opposite happens. When you're speaking and there's no reaction, but that's an indication that they're treating you as a peer.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_05

You know, you're speaking to a person as a normal, not as, oh, you know, which is oh, your f your Chinese is so good, and you're just you know, you want to get past that. Like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, fine, fine, fine. And so I I'm always very honored and humbled when people say nothing to me.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_05

And I just talk to them and they talk back. Exactly. And that to me is a sign of respect that I've been.

SPEAKER_02

And they don't switch into English.

SPEAKER_05

And they don't switch into English, and they don't do that welcome to my country, you know, that kind of thing. So I like the fact that is, you know, they don't slow down their Chinese, they just speak to you like a normal person. Um and that for me has been the the greatest accomplishment in studying Chinese, is to get to that point where Chinese people just talk to you normally.

SPEAKER_02

I'm so glad you're listening to this interview with Eric. I certainly enjoyed chatting with Eric about his language learning experiences in and outside of China. My goal for this podcast in 2019, to be completely honest with you, is to spread the language learning conversation and joy by finding more wonderful listeners like yourself. And I need your help for that. If you could take one minute of your time right now, pause the podcast, I don't mind. Go over into social media or your email and send one person the information for this podcast. I have some ideas on this. Screenshot the logo and send it to them. Or send them the link. Changing script.podbean.com. Or you can introduce us on any social media platform. I'm S T E P H F U C C I O. I'm even back on Facebook now. So Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, WeChat, if you're in China. Literally, you can find me anywhere. Just mention me. And I'll give them the rest of the information. However, you do it, I appreciate your help in spreading the word about the changing script podcast and the pod experience. Thank you so much. I have a big issue with time in Chinese. I as a my only fluent language right now is still English. Time is very much so, mostly in verb inflections, which don't exist in Chinese. I thought I would really like that. I thought there would be one word for past, one word for future, one word for you know happ continuous, those kinds of things. It is not like that in Chinese at all, which you are very, very aware of. How would you explain to someone just starting to learn the language, or someone who's just curious about the language but isn't going to learn it, how time is addressed in sentences and phrases and whatnot?

SPEAKER_05

Let me see if I understand what you're saying. When you're saying time, is it more of the abstract conceptual meta kind of concept of time that the Chinese see time differently than we do? So the Chinese, in general, as a cultural trait, tend not to, particularly in contrast to Americans, we see time in a much more immediate sense. Things are instant. I want things now. Th there's a great saying about the Chinese in time is that and I and this and this to me says everything. The Chinese can wait for a hundred years, but can't wait for a red light. And I think to me that is as a cultural observation, that is absolutely so true. I mean people can't you you know, you you you're on the street, you know, they can't wait just to you know, the motorbike can't wait two seconds until you cross the street. Or on the subway, someone has to you feel that edginess, that it that anticipation that they have. And at the same time, the Chinese have a remarkable ability to step back and to let things marinate for a very long time, particularly in business negotiations, which can stretch out just interminably long.

SPEAKER_02

So I guess I'm talking about chronological time, when you're referring to the past and the future and things that are happening now that started in the past or things that are just so they have so for me, I'm not an expert, but I'll I'll give my observation.

SPEAKER_05

I'll pretend to be one on TV. Um, which is so they have the concept of la. But it's also a transformative, it's something that has changed. So the character, the way it was explained to me was it's like a you're sitting on a bridge and it's the river of the water that's going underneath. The water at one point is not the same as the water at another point. So you look at the water from one side of the bridge, and then you look at the water from the other side of the bridge, that water is transformed. It's transformed in time, in distance, in location, in all sorts of different ways. That then characterizes la. And I think that's a very for me, that's interesting that they combined transformative with time.

SPEAKER_02

So as well, the bridge.

SPEAKER_05

Well, it's the water that you're looking at. The water is transformed from its location to its position. So you look at the water on one side of the bridge, you look at it another. And again, this is the way it was described to me. But so anything that goes undergoes a transformation requ can then the can be added to it.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

And the fact that that was fused with past tense is to me something that I've always wondered is very, very interesting because it's a much less precise definition of time than what we have.

SPEAKER_03

Sure.

SPEAKER_05

I think we will say, for example, you know, come at 4.45. And the Chinese have, you know, Sudyan Su, which they don't usually really oftentimes don't use. They'll the time is much less precise in again in my experience. Sure. You know, people will say sidyan ban, wu yan zong, they'll say kind of half hours, hours, but time as a meaning tends to be less precise in general. There's oftentimes when people say I want you here at 445, they'll say 445.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

But I generally find that it's like that la, where it's a much more ambiguous concept. And that may relate to the concept that we talked about with you know, being unable to wait for a red light and can wait for 99 years or 100 years, that it's a much more fluid thing than it is in our more precise framing of it. Again, I'm not speaking anywhere near what my level of competency is on this, but you know, but that's just been my observation.

SPEAKER_02

I'm completely bringing this up out of the blue, so don't even worry about it. I'm just curious, because I keep asking this time question to different people, and I keep getting very different viewpoints on it. I think all of them together are really interesting.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, see, I look at time less from a language point of view and more from a cultural point of view.

SPEAKER_02

Well, how can you separate the two though?

SPEAKER_05

Well, you probably can't. I just haven't looked at it linguistically. And it's one of these things that, you know, in Southeast Asia we have something called rubber time.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_05

And rubber time is, you know, and you see foreigners, particularly Germans and Japanese and Singaporeans, who are very precise on time.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

You know, when when when they have a meeting at 10 o'clock, they are there at 9.58.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_05

And when you get to Manila or you get to Ho Chi Minh City, uh, or Malaysia, Indonesia's right. Or Indonesia as well, and a meeting's at 10, 10.20, 10.30, 10.45. You know, you're just, you know, and and I found that it's just the way that we as people interpret time differently. They don't think it's rude to show up 20 minutes, 30 minutes late.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_05

And what I and the the other thing which I noticed, and it doesn't happen in China as much, but it happens in other parts of the world. In Vietnam, my schedule almost every day, 15 to 20% of my appointments would be canceled right before the meeting. We're talking 10 minutes before people call and say, I can't make it.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And I just thought at first, that's so rude, you know. But the beauty of that is it works both ways.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So then people cancel on you, well, then you can turn around and say, Oh, I can't make it. But it's a different concept of time. And so, and I find in China, depending on the countryside or the city, the city is this kind of you know, very fast-paced, gotta go, go, go, go. It's more like what we are accustomed to in the West. Yeah. But in the countryside, I think it's more rubber time.

SPEAKER_02

But even in Shanghai, like there's uh appointments, like even doctor's appointments, which back in the US, you would get uh you would have like a certain minimum fee if you cancelled the same day.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And like I've canceled and rescheduled doctor's appointments like crazy because other things had shifted, and they're like, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. So there is no problem.

SPEAKER_02

And I'm waiting for the fee, and there's no fee. There's not nothing happens. And it's just like, wow, that's a very different sense of time.

SPEAKER_05

Clearly, the language and the culture interact with one another.

SPEAKER_02

Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

You know, it's chicken and egg, which guides the other? Yeah. It's probably impossible to separate the two.

SPEAKER_02

It is. Well, I mean, language was created to talk about the things that are happening in the culture.

SPEAKER_05

So I mean And culture creates language.

SPEAKER_02

It's such a circle. The circle of life. Well, since we're talking about circles, let's talk about emotions. You mentioned that you were a TCK as a kid, and I recently connected with Tanya Crossman that did this amazing book on TCKs called Misunderstood. And I interviewed her for changing scripts because she grew up learning Chinese in Australia.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02

And then moved to China. Right. And now she's, you know, a full-on adult and a published author and all this kind of stuff. So she has a Chinese identity along with her Australian identity. Oh, and then she lived in America, so she's got this American identity. So there's all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_05

Just a mishmash.

SPEAKER_02

So at the end of the interviews for changing scripts, I always ask people what should I ask guests in the future? And she said this one, and I love this. How did you learn your emotional language? In this case in Chinese? How did you learn to express emotions in Chinese?

SPEAKER_05

That's a hard one. Um Okay. Um it's a hard one for a couple different reasons. One, because the vast majority of my use of Chinese is largely in a business context. So I've never dated anybody Chinese.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Um I I you know, it's funny because when I came over here as a young person, particularly I so my first time over here was nine, eighteen years old in 1989. And uh and then I came and then I was living here 22, 23, 24. And it's very typical for white men to come over here and to get Chinese girlfriends. And it's also very typical for white men to talk amongst each other and say, Do you have yellow fever, Asian fetish, all those wonderful things.

SPEAKER_03

Yes.

SPEAKER_05

Despised and loathed those labels. Uh, because I was here for the culture, for the language, for the politics, for the work. Found it creepy to be like that.

SPEAKER_04

Sure.

SPEAKER_05

And so for a long time, and so that kind of pushed me away from any Chin kind of dating or any type of relationships. Okay. Now, in business relationships, so most of my Chinese is done in business relationships, either managing people or doing you know contracts and business deals. Um that's a and that's a whole separate set of relationships and language and emotions that go into it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_05

Let me let me just do on the business side, because this is a really important one, which is so you focus so much on face. And for me, and particularly on business in negotiating, because sometimes it doesn't always go well, you're playing a game, but at the end of the day, you're always maintaining face, both your own face and their face.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Um, and so you're you're again never taking your eye off the ball of emotion, of how you are communicating and what the desired impact is. So for me, I'm oftentimes thinking about is my presence as a lawyer in the room with you know, to help a salesperson or to help a deal helping or hurting the situation?

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

It because and that affects the emotional kind of temperature of the room. Sometimes the presence of a foreigner can really help.

SPEAKER_04

Sure.

SPEAKER_05

Sometimes it can force the price up three times. Right. Sometimes it can uh, you know, it can change the whole dynamic. And so as somebody who immerses yourself in Chinese culture, you're you have you develop this very acute sense of how people are feeling, how they're reading you, how you are reading them, how you're reading the room. Um, and and then you're also very conscious of your behavior. And so one of the things that I made a mistake, I made this mistake late into my Chinese career, is I I was invited to meet a VIP. And typically in the United States, in Western culture, when two VIPs sit, it's very un very common to have your legs crossed and just as a sign of relaxation. And two executives will sit face to face with each other, legs are crossed, drinking some coffee, and that just shows an informality.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

And so I did that, and I was having my shoe facing the person, and the sole of my shoe was facing them. It never occurred to me that that would be offensive.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

And a protocol officer afterwards was very angry with me and said, what disrespect that I did and how it threw off the whole m tone, and I was mortified because I I'm I I pride myself on being acutely aware of these things and yet made a mistake. And that is the joy, frustration, exhilaration, you know, exasperation of being in China, is that you think you know something until you're corrected by a protocol officer on something as basic as that, but yet throws off the emotional kind of dynamic in the room. I think that the person that I was speaking with just wrote me off as a Lawai, as a foreigner, did not take personal insult at it because we as foreigners are given some latitude on these types of things. But in some ways, the protocol officer was also expecting that me, as someone who's been in China for so long and speaks Chinese so well, should have known something as basic as that. Couldn't they come in, have come in and just kind of slipped through a node or something or just kind of did some probably, but I'm afraid I think that the protocol officer who's lower in status than the VIP I was meeting with would have been concerned about uh distracting and causing uh problems for him.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_05

So they just but afterwards I got a scolding. And that is one of the things that an emotion here is that it is sometimes super difficult. And the other thing that I find hard to read sometimes, again, this is a cross-cultural difference, is that Chinese people, like French people, can go from zero to enraged super fast. Like that. It's really I and and and you have to be able to read that about is my behavior constant? Now, you may want to provoke that, some people want to do that, uh, but understanding that to get from zero to a hundred can happen in 2.2 seconds. I find the French do that as well. My experience living in France, I grew up in France, I've worked there for a long time. People went from eh bonjour to oh la la very quickly, and it was just like, oh it in for it for an American it was a little bit head spinning.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Um, and that's another, those are some of these kind of these tripwires in China that you have to be very, very careful of. But those have been some of the challenges that I've got to do.

SPEAKER_02

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Well, that emotional angry language that was coming your way. If we can dissect it for a moment. Well, did you notice anything about it? Was it was it faster? Was it more complicated? Was it simpler?

SPEAKER_05

Like what I remember to the day. Okay. Really? It was maybe not to the day, but to the year, 2005.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Uh, and it was the first time that somebody swore at me.

SPEAKER_02

You knew what exactly was.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, it was very, very clear. I mean, like aggressively laid into me, F-bombs, S bombs, you know, to me personally. And it was, I it was shocking to me. And I remember going home angry, sad, and depressed of like, now, and then another, so one of my Chinese friends, I've said this the first time, because again, I pride myself on really trying not to be in that situation. But my friend, she was very, very kind and she consoled me and she said, No, no, you don't understand. She says, the fact that this woman swore at you, again, is a sign of respect that she A, thought you could understand it, but more she's starting to treat you like she treats other Chinese.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And this is something also in Vietnam that I noticed as well. The way that Vietnamese and Chinese treat foreigners is radically different than the way they treat each other.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

The way they treat each other isn't very nice very often. It's a very tough, rough, and tumble place. Yes. People are very, very hard on each other in this culture.

SPEAKER_03

Very raw.

SPEAKER_05

And very, very raw. And so for now, as I get exposed to that, and people start kind of, because they say you speak Chinese well enough, you should know better. Right. That's the, you know, that is the expectation. That if you at you get to a certain level of Chinese speaking and all of a sudden they stop treating you like a foreigner and they start treating you more like one of themselves. So on the one hand, you are honored and privileged, on the other hand, it is hard. It is much more. And I find this in my work environment, where my staff sometimes again has that same expectation. So I'll be brought into the politics a lot more. I'll be, they will uh you know hurl accusations or you know, rumors or things like that that they do to me, and they start treating me more part of the Chinese cultural dynamic than, say, a traditional foreigner who would be kind of above it because they don't understand the language. So it's it's it's a it's a dual kind of feeling. On the one hand, it's exciting because you if you think of the layers of the cultural onion that are being peeled back, you are one or two layers in. You and I, no matter how much we study, will never get to the core. But I love the fact that you know thin membranes of the layers are being peeled back for me that I get to see that others don't. But on the other hand, it's it hurts. It's tough, it's rough. They, you know, and people will say things and they will um, you know, and they're it's very, very direct. And it's and it's it is a a brutality of language sometimes that we are not accustomed to in the US, which is just like as you're saying all of this, I'm going, that sounds normal to me.

SPEAKER_02

Because I have Italian parents, like from Italy, Italian parents, and they go hot and cold in two seconds.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

And just because they get angry and do stuff like that doesn't mean two seconds later they won't be joking and back to being loving. Like, you know, it's just it's very, very emotional existence.

SPEAKER_05

So so for me, who comes from who's married to a Swede, comes from Swedish descendants, and who's who's who's been raised in a culture of suppressed emotions, which is what Scandinavians and Northern Europeans generally are, we are very you know tightly wound, don't show emotion, you know, it's the opposite of the Italian.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

It is kind of like, oh, yeah, you know, and that's where you it's the it really is that zero to enraged which uh French, Italians, you know, you know, romance languages, Spanish, that's the kind of the the Catholic side of Europe versus the Lutheran Protestant side.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Now do the Chinese because I don't I don't I don't have this level of interaction locally yet, do they bounce back and go back to you know however friendly they were after the anger moments generally, or is there an awkwardness or coldness that exists after something happened?

SPEAKER_05

So, in in my experience, it it's very similar again to the French.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

The French, which is so again, I it just baffled me. So you would be in a meeting and people at first you'd be like, Bonjour Jean-Pierre, bonjour, and then all of a sudden it's like blah! You know, like screaming at you, and then afterwards it'd be like, You want to go get a cigarette? And you're just like, wait, you were just yelling at me, and now you want to go out and have a coffee and a cigarette. I I'm just perplexed because it wasn't personal.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

It and we as Americans, we personalize it. It's just again, cultures are different.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_05

If I start yelling at you or raise my voice, uh in in France, I'm just trying to make a point in a more animated way. Yeah. But at the end of the day, it's not necessarily personal to you. Yes. And I find that in China it's it's similar in some respects. That at least on the street, it depends again if face has been lost.

SPEAKER_02

Sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_05

If face has been lost, there's it's very difficult to recover from that. If you're just getting into an argument with somebody, I've found that I can you can you can diffuse it and then just go on and everything's fine.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

But if in a work environment, if face has been lost publicly, and then it it's hard to recover. Sure. It can recover, but it takes time and it's but it is hard. So face to me is is the key kind of variable in this.

SPEAKER_02

And is that a difference? Because again, I'm the only thing I'm pulling on is is my Italian heritage, my relatives, and things, and depending on how like what the argument was about and how deep and personal it got and how much it made the person look bad, it could have caused a rift in the future.

SPEAKER_05

So it could, but I I oftentimes into little tiffs on the street where people are pushing and shoving, and they will kind of say something to me, and they're not expecting me to say something back, and then I'll say something back.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then, you know, they and and I find it's a little bit like New York, where you know, this is a culture that respects strength.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And if somebody kind of pushes you and you go, mm-hmm and you don't respond, they don't have much respect for you. They push you and you push them back, they go, hey, and this is how I got through living in Vietnam. And Vietnam is the same way. These are cultures that respect strength.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05

And so what I've found a couple times is when somebody pushes me and I get right back in their face again, then they smile and they're like, oh my god, that's great. And you start speaking, and you start and so you can take a situation which was potentially hostile and turn it into fun or light, depending on how you response. But strength, particularly for men, is something that is respected.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And uh and so so that's where, but again, there's no loss of face there.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

In in a work situation or in a personal emotional situation where somebody publicly loses face, ooh, and now again, that can be used to your advantage too. That you can, if you really want to hurt somebody, you can publicly attack them in a in a meeting or something like that. And if that's a part of a strategy of some kind, face can be your advantage, but that is part of politics. And that's what people use politics all the time. Um, and you see it in in working in cross-cultural Chinese environments, face is something that is prov pervasive everywhere in what people are doing, how they're communicating, how they're talking to and organizing with one another.

SPEAKER_02

It's so complex.

SPEAKER_05

It is complex.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, final question, final question. So on changing scripts, I have both people who have learned uh Mandarin Chinese or are learning it, and I also have native speakers that come in and talk about their experience, learning it as a kid, and then the other languages they learned as adults. Keeping that in mind, what uh what questions should I ask future guests?

SPEAKER_05

Future guests. So, ooh, I knew you.

SPEAKER_02

Of either population, it's totally your okay.

SPEAKER_05

So the thing that I'm thinking about right now, and and this is I've just started an initiative uh particularly focusing on US-China relations and China and culture.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So I gave a talk uh at a university a couple months ago.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And it was uh so my background's in China Africa. Um, but I was invited to speak about China-Africa. Yeah, and but because I'm American, the students right off the bat said, What do I think of Trump? And I could see the blood draining from the professor's face. But I thought this would be a really interesting opportunity.

SPEAKER_02

Sure.

SPEAKER_05

Because uh so we're talking about Chinese students, not foreigners studying Chinese. Because when you come to China, we as foreigners are constantly lectured that if you're going to be successful in China, you must know our language, you must respect our culture, you must know 5,000 years of history, all of these different things, or else you will end up like Dolce and Gabbana.

SPEAKER_02

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05

Okay. Uh and we are, and it's it's it's lorded over us and beaten into us as companies and as individuals that you must know us if you want to be successful here. Now, I agree with that because if you go to another person's culture, you should know their history, culture, language, and have respect for it, whether it's coming to China or going to Vietnam or whatever. Um, these kids uh they they you know, we started talking about it, and I said, you know, they said, you know, why does, you know, why do why is it that America doesn't really understand China? And I said, you know, and I said, well, I said, this is very interesting because this is uh with the trade disputes, things like that are going on. And I said, well, let me let me reverse the the equation here. You know, I actually think that Americans do pretty well in understanding China. Pretty much every major university in the United States has a Chinese language program, has a Chinese PhD program. We are graduating thousands of masters and undergrads and PhD and PhD students uh in Chinese politics, history, art, culture, whatever. Um we have tens of thousands of young people coming over here to study Chinese language and culture.

SPEAKER_02

Um and lots of Chinese international students at universities in the US. Although that's singling.

SPEAKER_05

But here's the here's the catch, though. And so I said, I think we're making a really good effort. And I think over the past 30, 40 years, Americans, even people like me, have dedicated myself to understanding Chinese culture. How much do you know about American culture? Not English as a concept, but how much do you know about my culture? How do you learn about my culture? And all of a sudden, you know, it's quiet in the room, and you know most Chinese college students don't raise their hands. They say, Tell me, how do you learn about American culture? And you know, no one so I pointed at a young woman and I said, How do you learn about American culture? Terrified, she kind of sheepishly, you know, she was like, you know, well, she didn't really know, because I I gave him a stump question. And I think this is a really interesting question right now at this moment in history, where we are, because I think the Chinese in general are making a lot of misjudgments and misunderstandings about Americans and who we are and where we are at this moment in our history. So I said, let me help you. I know where you understand our culture, which is Big Bang Theory. You learn about our culture from watching TV. And I said, let me tell you, that is offensive, it is disrespectful, and it is naive. And I really encourage you to never tell an American that that's how you learn about our culture. Because my culture is too complex, too rich, too varied, and your arrogant, condescending attitude that says, well, you only have 240 years of history, we have 5,000, is meaningless. Because my culture means something to me.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And when you boil it down to a 30-minute comedy show, you really don't know anything about my culture. My point is, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but my point is here is that my culture deserves as much respect as your culture does.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And so you studying English is not because you want to understand American culture. Yeah. You studying English is because you want to work in an Italian company or a German company. It's an international language. And really one of the things that I so I'm starting this thing now where I'm with uh on a WeChat community and I'm writing about American culture.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And so I want young people who are studying English to really understand the cultures of the different Western countries. So this idea that Omei, which is Europe and America, that's a phrase that they use in Chinese quite a bit. They just lump together Europe and America. My Swedish wife and her friends, one of the worst things you can ever accuse a Dutch or a Scandinavian of saying, you're starting to sound a little American. And they'll be like, no, how dare you insult me like that? And this idea that we are all, just because we're white, which we're not even white anymore, uh, just because we're, you know, we're presumably white, we're all the same, is a very antiquated way of looking at the outside world. So my challenge to young Chinese people is, you know, what are you doing to learn about the culture? Because you can't fully understand the languages we talked about with the tongue use and the idioms and all of that if you don't understand the culture. And at the end of the day, watching Big Bang Theory is nowhere near enough. It's insulting. So I want young Chinese people to go that extra effort. You can go online, you can meet with Americans, there's tons. One of the greatest things about Americans is that we are incredibly approachable as people.

SPEAKER_04

Very.

SPEAKER_05

We are very, very open. Ask those questions, find out about who we are as cultures so that you stop making the mistakes that your leaders and your society and the culture at large here is doing about the United States today. Yeah. Because we are so very what the difference between LA and Salisbury, Maryland, and Miami, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Just so different. Mind-blowing.

SPEAKER_04

Just so different.

SPEAKER_05

And and so even though a lot of Chinese students are studying abroad in the United States, one of my columns is going to be Chinese students, when you go to study in the United States, don't hang out with other Chinese students. But too often they'll go to the United States, end up in a Chinese dorm, sit on WeChat all day, eat Chinese food, and never really interact with American culture.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, I was in Ames, Iowa, in the smack dumb middle of the country, and there was an entire street of stores where all the signs were in Chinese. They catered to the Chinese international students.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. And the kids. Now that I can understand in some sense, but then the kids all cluster together. Yeah. Now, that's no different than the American kids at Beijing who are doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05

I'm just saying it's a mistake either way.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

That this is your one opportunity to learn about American culture before you come back to China for the rest of your life, and they're missing it. And they don't really take advantage of the opportunity. But more importantly, we're in very precarious political times right now, and we need, as people, to understand each other from a cultural point of view. So I want the burden to be more on the Chinese to make an effort to understand American culture and not just English language.

SPEAKER_02

And that importance of the different countries there are different countries out in the world. I keep having to correct my lovely local friends who keep saying Chinese and the world, Chinese and foreigners. Chinese and foreigners. And they're like, no, no, no. There are how many countries in the world? 180 something? That you can't just say China Chinese people are one people and then the rest of the world is the other one. Like there's just a misconception that the white foreigner is the rest of the world. And I'm like, how is that possible?

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Like that's there's a lot of different cultures outside of China. There's a lot of different countries outside of China.

SPEAKER_05

And understanding the subtleties of each one is something that is still relatively new here, but I think it's really something, and so I'm doing this, writing this in Chinese for WeChat communities to try and spark a discussion among young people that you you this is a burden on this generation now that they have to figure out because if they don't figure it out, things are going to go from bad to worse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. That's very, very, very cool. Is that something our listeners can join if they're on WeChat?

SPEAKER_05

Yes, I will send you the link. And but it's in no, it's in Chinese and English. This my articles are in Chinese and English.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

So we do them both in English and Chinese. But I'll send you, I'll share you the WeChat link and you can join the channel.

SPEAKER_02

Well I'm in a I'm in two WeChat groups for learning Chinese. One's low level, one's only in actual Chinese with Hansa characters, so I'll put it in there. So thank you so much for coming on Chinese. It was my pleasure. Thank you so much. Really, really great. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Changing Scripts Podcast. Just a quick reminder that all the information is available in the show notes, which, if they're not available in your podcast app, you can find them at changing scripts.podbean.com. That is changing scripts with an S at the end. Dot Podbean.com. You can also find all of my podtube experiences at Steph Puccio, S-T-E P H dot Weebly, W-E-E-B-L-Y.com. I have three different podtube experiences because I am that crazy. I really look forward to your feedback and if you're interested in being a guest on the podcast. Thank you so much and such in more soon. Okay. Test, test, test, test, test. Experience.

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