Dreaming in Chinese

by Deborah Fallows
June 2011

This is the second book I read this summer about someone from America living in China. Unlike Susan Conley, author of The Foremost Good Fortune, Deborah Fallows embraced China and tried to enter into the culture and language as fully as she could. Susan Conley resisted and remained a stranger in a strange land even before her diagnosis of breast cancer. Deborah Fallows found everything in China an opportunity for learning and growth.

The main point of the book is the Chinese language. Through the story of her language quest we learn a lot about the Chinese people (the Laobaixing) and their culture.

The Laobaixing are quite different from "The Chinese" - the government and the societal leaders. She tries to explain the difference, but I feel that it can be compared to the idea of "the people" from the movie The Grapes of Wrath: "They can't lick us. And we'll go on forever, Pa... 'cause... we're the people."

The Chinese language (Mandarin dialect) fascinated me. In some ways, it seems to be a very simple language. Words are usually small and made up of one or two syllables. Longer words are just a combination of those short words. (lao=old, bai=hundred, xing=names....kaixin=hai(open) + xin(heart) = joyous...Fangxin=fang(put in place) + xin(heart)=set your mind at ease....)

The sentence structure doesn't seem to be very complicated either. It seems to leave things to the speaker's body language, inflection and the context of the speach. But, it's one of the things that makes Chinese a difficult language - that and the sounds. The way a word is said can change the meaning of the word. For example, the word shi can be pronounced several ways. I don't have the right diacritical marks here, so I can't show the difference in inflection. Depending up on the rise or fall of the voice, shi can mean lion, or ten, or to make or to be...

There was a writer named Chao Yuen Ren who designed an early version of a way to render Chinese in the Roman alphabet. He wrote a story about a lion-eating poet that consisted of 92 Chinese characters, all pronounced "shi". Deborah Fallows says that "shi" sounds like "sure". I imagine it's probably "sher" not "shyoor".

"The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is the story of a poet (shi) named Shi who loves to eat lions (shi shi) goes to the market (shi) to buy ten (shi) of them, takes them home to eat (shi) and discovers they are made (shi) of stone (shi). Such language play works because the Chinese sound system usus only about 400 syllables, like shi that have multiple meanings."

This book was so fascinating to me. I'd love to learn more about the Chinese language. I don't think I'd ever be able to pronounce it - I wouldn't be that good at the subtle nuances of the sounds.

It was an interesting experience to read the two books about China this summer. I'd love to continue with more books. I'm glad I did read these because they gave me an appreciation of the Chinese people. I get so upset with China, but know I know that I can respect the Laobaixing.
This is the cover of another edition of the book. I thought it was interesting.

The Foremost Good Fortune

a memoir
by Susan Conley

I was looking for something to read, specifically something to read on my Nook. After browsing through the library's ebook offerings, this caught my eye (along with It's All Relative by Wade Rouse).

Susan Conley's husband, after a longtime interest in China, gets a temporary job in his favorite country and moves his wife and two children to Beijing. Susan is excited about the move but is not as enamored of the country as her husband. Her two boys, Aiden and Thorne, have trouble adjusting at first but like most children, soon learn to quit worrying and embrace their new land.

I'd like to read another memoir from the perspective of someone who really enjoyed being in China. I suppose Susan Conley did enjoy many things about her adopted country, but she struggled for the most part. To be fair, she didn't get much of a chance to experience a normal life there. Partway through their stay she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The memoir is not only about her struggles in a strange land called China, but her struggles in the land of Cancer as well. While she spent quite a long time going through the healing process, both in mind and body, this isn't fully portrayed in the book. She goes through a depression after her treatment and mastectomy, but she doesn't seem to recognize it as depression. At least, she doesn't give it that name. Perhaps she couldn't tell the difference between depression and just the disorientation she experience upon first arriving in China.

The book was very interesting and worthwhile reading. It gave me a view of China that I had never had before. Actually, I have not read anything about China outside of school assignments. Its not a country I'd like to live or one I'd like to visit, mainly because of the ridiculous Communist government and its strange laws.

But still, I'd like to read another book about someone's experience in China. I'm willing to change my mind. But I still don't think I'd ever live there.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
by Jennifer 8. Lee
Finished October 17, 2009

What a fascinating subject. I was worried, at first, that the book would be an expose about the Chinese restaurant industry and that I'd have to swear off eating Chinese food ever again. Instead, it was just an examination of Chinese food and Chinese restaurants in America - and the world - but mostly America.

Chinese restaurants are, for the most part, independantly owned. Only a few are part of a franchise. But if you go to any town in America you're likely to find the same dishes; the same take out boxes; the same decor and menus; the same fortune cookies. Some variations exist, but the similarities are amazing.

"McDonalds and its golden arches represent an epic achievement of twentieth-century America, the story of highways, homogenization, and a nation in a hurry. The standardization of menus, decor adn experience is regarded as a postwar organizational triumph, coordinated form the company's Oak Brook, Illinois, corporate headquarters. Chinese restaurants - which outnumber McDonalds franchises in the United States by two to one - have achieved largely the same efect, but without a central nervous system."

"If McDonald's is the windows of the dining world (where one company controls the standards), then Chinese restaurants are akin to hte Linux operating system, where a decntralized network of programmers contributes to the underlying source code. The code is available for anyone to use, modify or redistribute freely."

Lee searches for the origins of the Chinese restaurant in America. She looks at the first Chinese delivery and the impact of restaurants on Chinese immigraiton (or vice versa). She travels the world to the find the source of General Tso's Chicken and fortune cookies.

One of the launcing points for this whole journey is the fascinating story of the time that dozens of people across America won the Powerball lottery on the same day because of a set of numbers given on a fortune cookie slip.

This is a food book, a history book and a sociology book all in one. A lot of fun.

One interesting thing... the edition I read was a pre-publication copy. I have never read a pre-pub copy with so many spelling or typographical errors. Maybe the smaller publishing house is the reason. Twelve Books is a company that was established "with the objective of publishing no more than one book per month." You'd think, then, that errors wouldn't get by. But - to be fair - I did read a pre-publication copy.