Tainan - "supernova Chinese" and speaking English
My Taiwanese friend recently told me that most foreigners' spoken Chinese is called "huoxingwen," which translates roughly as "firestar language" or "supernova Chinese." When pressed for an explanation, he said "Supernova Chinese is where the Chinese words are all right but the grammar is not. So when you hear it, it's like listening to an explosion of words. When we begin to study English, our English is the same way, so we know how you feel." Even though after two and a half years of study I have mostly passed the supernova threshhold, my Chinese is far from perfect. I was told recently by my classmates that my Chinese is very clear and straightforward - in as many words, that I speak Chinese like a man. In Taiwan, this is not exactly a compliment. I have since been working with a friend to improve my vocabulary and make my speech a little more "xiuqi"; refined and elegant. I have made some progress but I believe it's a lost cause. I am not even able to speak "xiuqi English," let alone Chinese.
This study of "xiuqi Chinese" has also led to discussions on gender differences in Taiwan. One of these pertains to women and sports. Most of my male classmates are fairly athletic, on par with their counterparts in the United States. However, most women in Taiwan do not play sports at all, primarily because they stay indoors during the day in order to avoid tanning. Another reason is a cultural preference for women who are "soft and pale," so most activities that enhance muscle mass are discouraged for women. One of my classmates said that out of every ten Taiwanese women on average, seven will do no exercise whatsoever and perhaps three will enjoy sports. In our graduate class, he believes the ratio is even lower. Out of the fifteen or so women in the class, I asked who he thought these three women might be; he said "Hanning Hsu. And you. In Taiwan, you are both exceptions."
Over the last few weeks I have been able to learn more about my classmates through teaching than through studying. At the beginning of the semester my classmate Liwen asked me to help her teach conversational English to our classmates and, as a native speaker, I could hardly refuse. We have had several weekly sessions so far and the class size has fluctuated between four and eight students, depending on who feels like getting up early on Friday morning to speak English. The class originally centered on reading an English newspaper and discussing the articles, but lately this has been supplanted by some handouts with English slang words gleaned from Hollywood tabloids, and in the last couple of classes we have barely discussed the news at all. I started making the handouts to keep up the interest level in the class, and the payoff has been listening to our classmates use phrases like, "Wow, you are really a tough cookie!" "Did you have to shell out for a new computer?" and "Did you know Jessie's sister works in Tinseltown?" Liwen and I are both hoping to attract more students to the class, in order to raise everyone's English ability, so in the future we plan to use the handouts as well as speech exercises and English songs to keep our classmates from getting bored or frustrated. Initially I was ambivalent about teaching English to my classmates since I had no teaching experience, but the Friday morning sessions have become enjoyable, and our classmates have started calling us "xiao laoshi" - the little teachers.