What a journey...

How learning Chinese feels like

Okay, so I have been eagerly writing down all my thoughts about my immediate environment, but in the course of doing so, seem to have forgotten what this is actually supposed to be all about.

Maybe not forgotten, but delayed and put off at least. And that is mainly for two reasons. First, some things might start to feel trivial, once they become part of your daily routine. So does learning Chinese right now. Secondly, the topic feels overwhelmingly big, I always seem not to get the right grasp on it, not to mention actually bringing it to paper. But I think I might start this with an analogy.

Do you remember that feeling you had as a child, whenever you saw, heard or read about magic? I always found myself wondering how it would feel like, wielding such powers and most likely performing the most wondrous nonsense with it. The same feeling emerged, when I had my first contacts with the Far East and its cultures. I contemplated how living on the other side of the world must feel like, if there was still any connections to their mythology and history to be found in their culture. One of the things most fascinating to me was, besides samurai and monks of course, the languages. Lacking any major connection to European languages, they felt and feel so exotic to me. The complex characters also played their part in this, I looked at them with the same fascination one would expect to show towards a magic wand or maybe and ancient sword. Meaning, it was pure magic for me. The best part about this is that even though I necessarily grew up (sobering process, really) and got a little bit of maturity along the way (although I am happy to say I managed to dodge most of it), somehow this strange sensation of magic lingered, the spell was never completely lifted.

And now that I am studying it… I suppose someone great in the history of literature is required to give my thoughts their shape this time:

“It’s still magic, even if you know how it’s done.”

I admire Terry Pratchett’s words for how precisely they strike home, how wholly they manage to visualize my fascination for something as trivial yet complex as a language. I see myself writing my homework, which both lacks complex grammar and use of synonyms, and I still cannot believe that this has flown out of my feather (getting carried away there - it’s a black gel-ink pen for 1$). When I hear Mandarin being spoken on the public transports or at local foodcourts, I am unable to do anything but listen, fascinated that I can actually understand not only something but most of what is being discussed.

Is is not by any margin comparable to how I felt when I was learning English or Spanish, the latter of which is so rusty by now, a strong breeze might finish it of once and for all. Rather, it feels like Gandalf has stepped out of Lord of the Rings to teach me the language of the elves or dwarves, as if I had lessons in na’vi from Jake Sully. There is something exceptionally childish in the satisfaction I take from this, but it nonetheless is an amazing sensation to wonder like this at the real world.

I sincerely hope that I could convey at least the barest scrap of this inspiring awe. For it is indeed great, to see a whole world that I was denied, now slowly opening up before me. I can only encourage you to pick up this language as well, maybe to take a look at some Chinese history or similar before, to get you in the right mood. I mean, who said learning had to be a serious business?

That’s it for now, those thousands of unknown words with no connection to Europe whatsoever won’t just learn themselves. That’s the hard part about it. Building up the fundamental vocabulary provides the real challenge. Contrary to learning European, more familiar languages, you cannot just guess the majority of the words by using analogies or even the given context. The sounds are so completely distinct and the characters even independent from those that you have to learn every single the hard way, often even two times, for the pronunciation does not give you too much hints about the shape of the character. It’s easier though when I think about what I am doing just now. I mean in the end, I am actually learning Chinese, right?

Viewing life through the lens of anxiety

This short text may not be what you expect it to be about, having read the title. But currently living in southeast Asia, I feel the irresistible urge to write this down.

It is something that caught my eye in Europe more than enough already, though it definitely feels more present here in Singapore. I am rather sure that all of us have felt this way before.

Imagine yourself in the most beautiful situation you have been during the last few months. In my case this is pretty recent, I had walked back from the beach, salt in my hair and sand between my toes. I could still feel the waves gently pulling at the ground beneath me, and I had this warm afternoon breeze playing with my curls. The lively chatter and noise of Sentosa island did not bother me anymore. You could say I was truly content, as the afternoon sun broke through and began casting light in low angles to the ground, both warming my skin and stretching the shadows around me. So what did I do? Did I sit down and wrote poetry, inspired as I was? Did I maybe draw, as I very much like to do? Did I just soak in the atmosphere of the moment? Well, one could argue that I actually did the latter, as I think that this moment will be one of those that I will remember longer than most others. But the actual sin that is so present here, and which I myself committed to at that moment is the attempt to capture it, use it, to not let it escape. I was walking alone, felt disappointed that no one would ne able to capture me in the frame of this moment. So I decided to take some pictures. Of me, the area around me, other people, the light, of me again. I have to admit that I almost destroyed the simple pleasure I had felt before. By shooting one picture after another, I could have dimmed a memory that I would otherwise surely not forget so soon. Luckily, I noticed soon enough and continued staring into the distance and letting the sun warm my skin.

It is this phenomenon that makes me cringe almost daily, when I see young men and women waving around their selfie sticks, merely looking at some beautiful landscape before judging it suitable as a background and turning around to take pictures of themselves in their ludicrously unsuitable clothing, with way to many layers and way too few wrinkles to be appropriate to actually talk a longer walk through a city. This is made worse by the fact that said individuals often go through the whole process alone. One might argue that pictures shot by good friends or the partner might reflect the shared love of the other, but I cannot find anything similar to say about selfies for that matter. I can see the joy behind selfies all too well, do not mistake my words here. To show yourself as you want to be seen sometimes requires to take the snapshot on your own (even moreso since some people really do not know their way around a camera). But it does not even require taking pictures of yourself, to destroy a beautiful moment. Here in Singapore I have got to know to many (a significant number of which are European, this is by no means an Asian exclusivity), who would crush a beautiful flower beneath their camera lens, rather than taking time committing it to memory.

So let me, someone who has himself been subject to this temptation of promised immortality of memory, gently remind you; it is not the sum of the pictures on your camera's SD card or on your phone's memory, nor is it the beauty of the situations in which you achieved to have taken a picture, that will warm your heart and bring you happiness on cold days. It is the moments in which you where so filled by awe and inspiration that you forgot to take out your camera and lost yourself in the instant.

I know it is all too easy to forget, but we should try together to not put a lens between our eye and the magic of the world too often.