It sounds kind of dubious, really, but what it seems like it will be (at least to begin) is a reading of the early chapters of Shiji (i.e., 1st century B.C. history of the world as known to its Chinese author), together with some other materials from around the same time that are considered less orthodox. The professor was a little frightening--thin and vehement, with very black eyes. At certain angles, because of a trick of the light, he looked like his eyes were all black, kind of like the Usher on Carnivale. (At right is the Usher, not my professor!)He tended to repeat some of his words and phrases, which overall is a good habit from my point of view, and I think once I get used to his accent I will be okay with comprehension. He spent a good bit of time discussing the difference between myth and legend--and, of course, history. It made me a bit worried of course, as I always am in approaching the early chapters of Shiji. There's so much irritating muck that's said about it, and Prof. RB's careful treatment of that period in archaeology has made me quite allergic to such muck. But this prof didn't say anything too disturbing. He mentioned arguments that have been made about the historicity of this or that dynasty--this one is legend and that one is myth, etc.--but added his own opinion that we cannot make such judgments on a dynasty by dynasty basis, but should take into account possible differences in the spread and usage of writing among different regions and ethnic groups. I think RB would still see something suspicious about the approach, the assumption that differentiation is possible--indeed, the assumption that any of even the so-called history could be historical. (RB even doubts the Shiji's king list, which has been "verified" by archaeology. RB says, kings invent some or all of their own ancestors all the time.) Unlike RB, though, I appreciate the difference between greater and lesser degrees of wrongness. I think it is better for someone to be closer rather than farther from the truth, even if they haven't quite reached the truth!
After the break, the professor handed out an unpunctuated page, chapter 1 page 1 of the Shiji, and requested us to punctuate it. This seems to be an important part of his pedagogical technique! I should add that being able to punctuate a classical Chinese text is almost tantamount to understanding it, though certain formal features allow you to cheat a little. Nonetheless, my first advisor SD tells of classical Chinese final examinations which consisted entirely and only of punctuating a text. As a pedagogical technique it's a bit odd, but has the effect, I suppose, of making one read more slowly. Not a problem for me--I read slowly anyway, having a tendency to stumble over unfamiliar vocabulary. But if you are a fast reader and consider yourself already familiar with a text, yeah, having to punctuate it would slow you down, make you more aware of formal features. I guess this is what he was going for.
Of course I was terribly intimidated at first, but in the end it turned out to be rather fun. After all, the Shiji is a text I have worked with a lot, and I was able to do it to the patient satisfaction of my seatmate, another auditor who insisted that I go ahead and try (the paper was for us to share). Once or twice she offered a suggestion or correction, for which I thanked her. She was older and surely already college educated, probably post-college. She showed me her "auditor" document, but I am not good at understanding documents quickly, so I couldn't quite figure out what she was. In any case, she gave off a very different energy than the anxious, childish undergrads or the fierce, intense grads, and I liked her.
I went home for lunch and had homemade grilled cheese sandwich and the last of my instant cream of mushroom soup.
My first afternoon class was one I was very excited about: a graduate course in the Chinese department focusing on the first extant bibliographic treatise in Han history (dating from the first century AD). I have spent a lot of time looking at certain parts of this texts, and was very interested to see how a graduate course on it would be taught. Unfortunately, I didn't find out on this occasion. I got there early and took a seat in the half-empty classroom. Then I waited, and waited…and waited. About an hour after the class was supposed to have started, I gave up and left. The thing is, since empty classrooms are always occupied by people studying, it's impossible to tell if they're all waiting expectantly for a class like you are, or if they're just in there comfortably studying. I wandered down to the Chinese department to ask about the class. "Oh," she said, "didn't you see the notice? That course has been postponed until spring semester." I wandered around the building until I found the notice-board, which had quite a great number of time and room changes and cancellations, and so on. Now they tell me. Well, at least it wasn't a mere room change, which would have meant that the class had gone on somewhere else and I'd missed it.
I didn't really feel like going home again. I made an unsuccessful second attempt to get a library card. There is scary amount bureaucracy involved with that. I was told in the library to go to the Like building, such and such room, and in such and such room the said, "3rd floor, get picture taken." "What if I already have a picture?" "Third floor." Duly got my picture taken--a weird picture because at the last moment before the shutter clicked I got distracted and turned my eyes to one side--and stated my student number. Dismissed by the camera people I went back down to where I had been. "3rd floor, get picture taken." "I got my picture taken." "3rd floor, get picture taken." "I went to the third floor. They took the picture. They said, okay, go away." This made the grim bureaucrat crack a bit of a smile, but not a kindly one. "If they said 'okay, go away,'" she said a bit mockingly, "then come back next week." I tried going back to the library, but the library people said, no, you can't get a library card until you have that other card. "They said next week!" "Then next week." "I can't get a library card until next week? Oh no." The library card desk people laughed. "I guess I will have to go buy books," I said as I walked off.
In fact, I did go to the bookstore and looked for the book of the guy who'd taught the inspirational literature class on Tuesday. It wasn't easy to find it--in the third bookstore I went to, they finally dug it out of a back cupboard. A started reading it over dinner and realized why. The man himself was so inspiring! but his book, at least the first ten pages, was both dry and vague, also thickly larded with quotations from Marx and Engels (always paired like a song and its echo), an occasionally incomprehensible snippet from Hegel thrown in for variety. Ugh. Well, that was only the first ten pages. Maybe it will improve.
A funny thing happened over dinner. I was in the foreign students' cafeteria again, because it's uncrowded and peaceful and clean, and I was eating the green stems again, which I asked about (they are called shuan or xuan miao--miao is some kind of shoot or sprout, but I can't find the word in any of my dictionaries). Anyway, as I was sitting there, a white girl came up to me, looking sort of desperate and disturbed. "Is this the cafeteria?" she asked me in halting Chinese. I said that it was, and said "Got tickets?" She looked upset. "I've got money. I haven't got any tickets." I said, pointing, "Go over there and get tickets."
Of course it's sounds brief to the point of rudeness when I translate it, but really I was trying to be helpful, and it was exactly the natural thing to say in Chinese. Only, after she walked away, I realized that I was doing just exactly what I had got so upset at all the Chinese people for doing--even this very day--namely, telling her only as much as she absolutely needed to know without putting in any of the comforting explanatory details. Why I myself had been quite similarly upset about the tickets only a few days ago. "Tickets? What do you mean, tickets?" "Go over there. Get tickets." The girl came back over to me, helplessly holding her handful of tickets. "I'm sorry," she said very apologetically, "do you speak English?" "Of course," I said, laughing. "I thought you were just having a good time practicing your Chinese on me." "Oh no," she said, bemusedly. "So I've got these tickets, now what do I do with them?" So I explained to her in great detail how all you have to do is go over and point to the type of food you want and they'll give it to you, and how I usually hand them all the tickets to save time and misunderstandings, and they take the correct number for how much your thing costs, and so on and so forth. I explained how they were sort of like currency, and you could keep them and use them the next day or any time. And I don't think I put in all the detail just because I was more comfortable speaking English. I am perfectly comfortable saying all that in Chinese. It's just that I wouldn't have. I'd probably have said, "Go over there, get food, pay with tickets." Go figure. Maybe English is just a more loquacious sort of language, as far as giving directions is concerned.
After dinner, I went early to my last class of the day, a special history course on the Qin and Han dynasty, which promised to be "multi-media." It was in a much fancier, newer building. I would say "cleaner," but really it was like the difference between Penn Station and Grand Central in New York. Penn Station is shabbier, so the dirt is more obvious. Grand Central is shiny and new, but it doesn't mean you'd be willing to eat off the floor. Vast numbers of people passing through--even if they're clean, tidy people--just generate dirt and grunginess. That's how it was in this fancy new building. It felt fancy and new but also heavily occupied. Anyway, found the classroom. Sat in it. Waited. This time, I wised up and left after half an hour. I still haven't figured out the deal with that class, since there was no notice-board section of the history department.
Well, I got home by 8 and had a nice chat with Colin, which I might not have gotten to do if I'd actually found the class, so every cloud has silver lining. But still, I ended up feeling a bit frustrated at having wasted most of my day hanging around waiting for classes that didn't happen. Has anyone ever heard of actually putting a notice in the classroom where the class was supposed to have been? No, that would be too easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment