Beneath the Willow Branches

I had a modest moment of anguish riding my bike to the gym the other morning: I wasn’t making any progress on my Chinese.  It’s been on the same plateau for quite a long time.  Whenever I’m on the stair master I give my struggle with illiteracy some life-support by doing flashcards.  It’s something.  But lately as regular readers know I’ve been biking it into the gym and back for months now and this means no stair master, and no cards.   More than one conversation came to mind where I ought to have pushed forward but instead capitulated and switched to English.  Biking along beneath the willow branches I felt guilty about all this. 

At my best I could stumble through a newspaper article, recognizing most of what I saw.  But I’m not there just now and haven’t been for a while.  Every morning I kill more time than I should reading the New York Times, then the Huffington Post, and finally the Washington Post.  Often, when I just can’t work anymore I go back to the paper and search to see if a new article has been posted.  Perhaps the other shoe has finally fallen on Mueller investigation?  Oh look, the NYT has found a new aspect of Chinese civilization to mock.  I should use that time more intelligently. 

If I can, than I should read something in Chinese and practice it, till I can read it unassisted.  Indeed the New York Times has a Chinese edition, but it took me about three full minutes to realize that I was trying look up words in traditional characters.  They do not publish in simplified characters.  I wonder if that was deeply debated or just a chauvinistic preference for the more beautiful, but far less widely recognized traditional characters?

So I went to our favorite party broadside, the People’s Daily.  And for the last three days I have taken whatever article from the front page that seems most interesting and translate a few paragraphs to read and review the words.  As always, they default to the stentorian.  Everything is “resolute”, "firmly grasped" and “penetrated deeply.”  It’s so loud and confident I would have a hard time reading it, if this were all the news that was fit to print.  And one recalls that Chinese make an art of reading between the lines, if today they read the newspaper for news at all.   I must try to use resolute in a real Chinese conversation some time and see if anyone grins. 

Monday, 10/15/18