Wife's Birthday 生日

It was my wife’s birthday 太太的生日 and this was her birthday cake, a big thick slice of jackfruit 波羅蜜 with candles. In this second photo you can see what looks like a giant violet that is growing wild in our backyard. Maybe some of you out there can identify it better than I can and let us know. In the third photo you can see another wildflower, my wife celebrating her birthday.

Chinese do not make as big a fuss as Americans, with some exceptions. For one thing, counting can be different. Though they count by the Western system as well, one can be as much as 2 years old at birth. Other things about birthdays can be different. Cards 生日卡 are a good example. They aren’t that common or important, which is nice if you are lazy or forget to send out birthday cards like me.

There are certain birthdays that are more important than others. For example, the 60th birthday or the 1 month birthday are more important than they might be in Western culture...well, I guess we don't have a 1 month birthday but I'll talk about that in a future post.

On a personal note though, I just do not understand my family’s taste for ice cream cakes 冰淇淋蛋糕. It seems that everyone I have ever been related to likes ice cream cakes and I don’t! I’m a purist. It’s either ice cream (preferably pumpkin, rose, banana or French vanilla) or cake that isn’t too sweet, not both. But since my birthday isn't coming up for a while, that isn't going to be an issue.

Easter 復活節

We had a wonderful Easter service at our church. Now I’ll bet you are wondering why I am writing this more than a week after Easter. Well, I like to sit on things and think about them a bit before I comment. As you can see I didn't take any photos at the service so I had to do something as dumb as take a take a photo of a photo of it...which does look kind of interesting with the crinkles.

Easter in Western cultures seems to be a time when a lot of people go to church who don’t normally go, hence the term ‘Easter Christians.’ Pastors do their best sermons 信息 and try to lead people to Christ or at least attract them to come back in the future. There are usually not a lot of spaces in pews, even in churches that normally have quite a few. There are even sunrise services which, not being a morning person, do not often attend.

Among Chinese Christians, I notice there is not the same variation in attendance. Of course the pastor gave a great message about the resurrection and we had a wonderful flag dance / singing by one of the choral groups, but they were just as crowded as they normally are. We also had more than 30 baptisms 受洗 just in our service!
They normally have very good attendance and I did not notice really that much of a difference. …maybe a little bit more overflow, but not much more than usual. That is probably because there is no secular tradition 沒有這種習慣 of Easter in Chinese culture as there is in Western culture where people who otherwise would not darken the door of a church suddenly dress up and attend.

Idioms in Language 成語: 英文與中文

This is a photo of my daughter's homework. She will memorize 揹書 several poems from the Tang 唐and earlier in the Three Kingdoms 三國 period. She really seems to like the stories involved in the learning of the culture, though we have explained to her that the 4 Famous Beautiful Women 四大美女from that time period are quite a bit different from today's ideal of beauty.

The use of idioms, sayings and literary allusions are quite a bit different in the Chinese language than in English. Idioms are used in English, but not that much. It would be a little strange for someone to keep bringing up idioms in conversation. Needless to say, literary allusions are rare in spoken English except for references to popular commercials.

In Chinese, idioms 成語(4 character sayings) are quite common. They neatly summarize a feeling or a script for some situation. There is even an idiom game 遊戲 that is similar to that geographical place name game in English. Two teams form and a team must come up with an idiom that starts with the same sounding character as the ending one thought up by the opposing team. It's a popular icebreaker in our church house group meetings.

Table Manners 餐桌禮儀

Table manners differ quite a bit across cultures but, as you can see in these photos, toddlers’ eating styles are about the same wherever they are in the world 手忙腳亂. In the first photo, he is in the thick of eating 吃冰淇淋. The second photo shows the messy results and you can see that he is proud of it. A few minutes previously it was up to his eyes but I didn’t have my camera battery charged so he happily demonstrated for me again.

I’m not going to talk about differences in utensils 餐具, just the importance of utensils and decorum. In Anglo cultures, decorum is really important. Remember how your parents told you not to play with your food…well, mine told me that. Especially in formal circumstances, eating the correct way is very important in Western culture. I remember eating at this formal French restaurant, the ones where there are 8 different spoons and 7 different forks and knives each with a specific use. My father put his fork down in the wrong place and a waiter came by and sternly put it in the correct place…upon which my father put it back in the wrong place. If you say to yourself “that doesn’t happen that often”….think about that interview lunch you might have with your employer. Why are they taking you out to lunch, eh?

By contrast in Chinese culture, the use of utensils is not that important. As I have said in other posts, it is the food that is important. It’s not that there is no decorum at all. For one thing, food at a Chinese table is at the center of the table for public use 共用的. Unlike the Western table, each person does not have their own individual plate with their own individual portions. Sooo, at a formal occasion, people are expected to be polite by serving those next to them before taking a spoonful for themselves. It is only later, after others are full and perhaps drunk, that one can surreptitiously shovel half of those tasty morsels onto the plate.

A book I read previously is the memoirs of a son writing about his Chinese widower 鰥夫 father and his children who remarried an English wife. They generally got along well together but mealtimes were a real change. What used to be a noisy, tasty free-for-all dinner became a polite formal occasion with finger sandwiches. It was a really funny account of these cross-cultural differences in table manners from the viewpoint of (at the time) a little boy.

Appearance and Culture 外表與文化

I’ve given a little bit of thought about outward appearance and culture recently. It is very much a part of American life and dialogue though we think of it in a very different way from Chinese. I have this observation and then I’ll say why I believe this. I believe that Americans don’t like to talk about physical differences, but they matter a lot. On the other hand, Chinese talk a lot about physical differences in ways that would not be acceptable in the West, but it does not matter as much to them.

Normally, people in the West, at least in the United States, avoid talking about race unless there is a specific reason to do so. We also do not talk about a person’s physical features: fat, thin, tall, short, etc. It is not proper and of course there is always the ever present chance of offending someone. Does it matter? Yes, a lot. Groups discriminate by race, but they usually refer to it as ‘culture’ or ‘identity.’ A person’s appearance is also very much an issue. The fat kid or the short kid will be very much of an outsider even though there may not be open teasing.

On the other hand, it seems that in Chinese culture, outer appearance is talked about a lot. People call each other nicknames based on appearance, “bean cake head, 燒餅頭” “fat fat 肥 肥,” etc. but it does not seem to matter as much as in American culture when it comes to social relations. We are still using our small tube of “White Man Toothpaste” 白人牙膏 we picked up last summer in Taiwan, which is often cited as evidence of deep seated racism, but I don’t think that’s the way it is meant. To climb out on a limb here, I had a Chinese friend from Singapore who told me that a cartoon character in the U.S. whose stereotypical features would definitely be offensive to Asian Americans, and was offensive to me, mattered not in the least to him because he felt that was not their intent. That was just outer appearance, so who cares.

Picnic 野餐

Outdoor events recently seem to depend on the uneven weather we have been having, but I am happy to report that weather for our picnic cleared up天晴了 just as we were beginning. It was a success in that we had a lot of fun, got to know some new friends and shared some testimonies with them. We even had a little drama at the beginning as someone, for some reason unbeknownst to me, threw his keys 鑰 匙 high up in a gum tree and had to climb up to get them. He was able to get them without injuring himself even before we could bring the fruit picker around.

This first photo is of some of our people wielding plates and food. The second photo is of our daughter whacking away, I believe her third or fourth shot, at the piñata. The third is of some of our friends talking before the meeting, and our pianist for that day warming up.

Borrowing and mixing between cultures, or hybridity is one of those academic jargon terms I hate to hear and use but it seems appropriate to what you see here in this second photo. It is very common for people to borrow from other cultures. Our term ‘ketchup’ is actually from the Cantonese term ‘catsup.’ The famous Japanese cuisine ‘tempura’ 天婦羅 is actually from the Portuguese 是葡萄牙來的, since the Japanese tended not bread and fry their foods. Now we see here a piñata girl hung up to be beaten to pieces by a group of Chinese who here seemed to have adopted this fun tradition in their birthday parties for children. We got her as a present from a friend.

Singing “Knees and Toes” 忙於無事之忙

Since I had a little bit of free time this week, I have been incredibly busy catching up on all the things that I should have been doing but have not yet gotten to. Just yesterday as I was running from place to place on the streets of a business district like a mouse on a wheel, busy but not quite finishing anything, I noticed one of the businesswomen passing me by looked at me strangely. It was one of those looks that says, well there are all sorts of colorful people around here in the crowds of people on the streets. Then I realized…I was cheerfully humming the song from our 2 year old’s class happily to myself: “Head 頭部 and shoulders 肩膀, knees 膝蓋 and toes腳趾, knees and toes!” I had snapped.

But hey, if you’re going to snap…it’s perfect weather for it. Just look at this photo I snapped on a nearby hilltop. Click on it for a larger photo.

On a related note, the Chinese I used in the title is a description of characters' lives of daily angst from the Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢, a famous Chinese novel. It is a novel I really enjoyed and which I'll write about in the not too distant future.

Ducks and Geese 鴨子與鹅

It was one of those picture perfect days recently, so I just couldn’t resist going on photo shooting trip nearby our house. The light was just perfect, sunlight shining from a deep blue sky and a couple of puffy clouds. This lake seems to be a nexus for birds from all places. There are tropical birds here and there are also northern birds that stop down in the wintertime to get their bit of sunshine and warmth. They all make for a real cacophony in wintertime, but this is spring

…the time it seems for little geese to be hatching and walking around. When I got too close the mother hissed at me but fortunately I have somewhat of a telephoto and 8 megapixels of size so I got a good close up. It brought me back to a similar scene in Hsin Dian 新店 near Taipei, where we were out on a lake in peddle boats. We saw, and I got a nice photo of a large white crane 白鶴. (The crane has a special place in Chinese culture, remaining high above worldly concerns. In fact, 焚琴煮鶴 or burn the zither and cook up the crane, refers to destruction or disregard of high culture….so we can safely assume that cranes weren’t considered game birds.) The only geese-like birds we saw there though, were the boats we were peddling which were in the shape of swans.

Activity 活動

In addition to dodging the rains, April seems to be a season of activity for us. There have been meetings scheduled to determine direction and get everyone's input on it. We have also had lots of activities with our group attending various spring events.

In this one evening shown here, we had dinner first教會的異象會. If I published the original sized photo here you could see my name and my wife's name in Chinese. (Incidentally, these photos were still quite good considering I forgot to plug in my charger and so the shutter speed was off as my battery was slowly dying.) We had enough time to listen to some of the speakers before rushing down to a play 30 minutes away.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of cooking some of my favorite dishes for about 35-40 people. When I cook for activities I usually stick with hardy favorites like chicken curry 咖喱雞and ma po tofu 麻婆豆腐. Not gourmet but they serve lot. In addtion my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting people who work elsewhere in ministry while praying for a team that is going to Southeast Asia.

Language Mishaps不小心得鬧了笑話

No, I haven’t had a language mishap recently, but looking around the kitchen reminded me of just how easily it can happen. Take a look at this can that boasts “Premium Gold Chicken Powder,” from mainland China or this fine example of “All Purpose Sauce” (not bad tasting) from the Philippines. Their not exactly incorrect, just a little bit off from what we would expect in native-speaking English areas. There are plenty of examples of brands or names that don’t quite translate well. One such brand from Japan is Pocari Sweat, a sort of sports drink and a yogurt drink from Hong Kong I believe that promises ‘millions of bacteria in every serving’. There are of course plenty of American mishaps. Probably the most famous is the marketing of the Chevy Nova car, or ‘No Go’ car in Mexico.

I think one of the differences between people who successfully master a second language and those that don’t is the ability to laugh at one’s self. When I was first learning Chinese I wanted to tell this very bright and eloquent Taiwanese woman I respected a lot that it is easy for me to get lost in her city. After she broke out in peals of laughter, I realized I told her that it was very easy for me to topple over. Which I guess is also true if I am trying to ice skate…coordination is not my strong point. There is a story that may be apocryphal of the American who was trying to communicate that his parents 父母是在船上認識的 ‘met aboard ship,’ when what he actually ended up saying was that父母是在床上認識的 ‘his parents met in bed.’ There is just a little difference between boat ‘chuan’ and bed ‘chuang,’ so this is actually quite an easy mistake to make.

Food Fights: A Difference in Chinese and American Views of Food 中國菜與美國菜: 不同的看法

It's live from the tank or the field to your plate! We regularly enjoy prawns 游水蝦, fish 游水魚 or chicken 雞 that was live the day we ate it. Yechhhhhhhhhh. Is that what I hear you saying? Not in the least. Whatever you ate for dinner tonight was alive at one time or another, whether veggie, sea life or dry land dweller. The faster it gets to your table and on your plate, the better it taste..but I am getting ahead of myself.

Today, I had a discussion with some people about freshness in food and I was reminded once again that in general Americans do not really care about it as much as they do about cleanliness 注重乾淨 and a pretty arrangement. Now before you flame me or click away, let me explain. This seems to be of northern European origin. I remember a Danish friend of mine who informed me that "freshness" in his country meant that food was wrapped in plastic and touched by no human hands. That spotless hermetically-sealed lunch meat sandwich is good food as long as it's within the expiration date. Americans and Northern Europeans do not understand (and are somewhat offended by) the Chinese emphasis on freshness.

Chinese, on the other hand, 以新鮮為主 seem to have the opposite view that they care more about freshness than cleanliness. They do not understand all the fuss about cleanliness standards. As long as everyone knows it was kicking that day, and it is steaming hot, it should be good to eat.

That is why I think, despite the large number of Chinese restaurants, Chinese food is greatly misunderstood in Western culture. It is much more so than Japanese food which is similar in more respects to Northern European food. Chinese food made to Western standards loses its soul.

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You can now click once and view all of the topics so all to find all of the past posts on Cross-Cultural Family Blog by category. Go there now. I'm making it sound boring, but it's actually quite nice.

Chinese Card Game: Big Two 大老二

One of the easiest way to spend family time on a long trip is through card games. They are cheap, a pack of cards is now 2 for one dollar and they are portable. Everyone can join in and usually with the element of chance involved, everyone has a chance to win at least some of the time. We have in the recent past spent time playing UNO, fish, hearts, and various complicated games made up by our daughter with rules that adjust to fit her particular mood or desire for the moment.

I assumed one such game seemed complicated and unpredictable enough that it was something our daughter made up, but I was wrong. Then I assumed it was something that my wife made up perhaps to gratify a desire to cheat in card games, but I was also wrong (at least this time.) It was actually the Chinese card game, Big Two. I admit that I am not a real expert in card games. For example, some people have their bridge clubs, which incidentally are popular among Chinese as well, but I never really learned them…probably because I had more of a desire to play war games. So, I don’t have much to compare it to, except that it seems to me to be a little like a cross between hearts 紅心 and poker 撲克.. The objective is to get rid of all of ones cards as quickly as possible 最先把手上的牌打掉的人贏. When I get that far, I’ll update you.