Alligator lessons

"Now, sadly, my alligator is very unwell."

"Excuse me?" I said, moving my elbows to the table and my ears halfway across it. "What is unwell?"

"My alligator. It's been terrible for years now."

"You have an alligator?"

"No, of course not. I studied alligators."

I had grown used to both bizarre comments and misunderstandings; otherwise I could have sworn that this man—currently tearing apart chicken feet with his chopsticks—was an aging PETA member intent on promoting animal-sensitive language.

"Where would one study alligators?"

"In schools of course. It was a major part of the curriculum in my day."

"What?"

"Yes, we all had to learn about alligators."

"Excuse me, sir, I'm a little confused. Would you mind writing down 'alligator?' I think I'm misunderstanding you a bit."

"No, you've understood perfectly. Today everyone learns English. You're learning Mandarin, and I learned about alligators."

"Why?"

"It was important for the Chinese-Soviet alliance. Man, did that go to hell." He took a shot of baijiu and hiccuped.

"You mean you learned RUSSIAN."

"Yes, that's what I said. ALLIGATORS." He pushed a bowl toward me, and threw some beans on my plate with his chopsticks. "Here, have some more."

"Spaciba," I said. "Do you want more baijiu?" I asked, pointing to the bottle on the floor.

"Mozhet bit," he smiled, his face a dark red.

For the rest of our dinner, I mentally blamed the misunderstanding on Mr. Wei's accented Mandarin. But as I walked home that night, I mumured in time with my footsteps: "èyú, alligator, éyǔ, Russian; èyú, alligator, éyǔ, Russian; èyú, alligator, éyǔ, Russian."

Recalling the man's voice in my head—and the context—I realized the mistake had been entirely my own.

Those damn tones.

Gone to Guangzhou

Changsha, Hunan

There was only one other man in the bar that night. Dressed up to the nines—and drunk with as many shots—his brief sentences were interrupted with hearty sips of his drink and lengthy (presumably indecipherable) texts on his phone. Yet the bartender, young and affable, seemed intent on talking to him anyway.

Eventually the bartender turned to me. "Are you waiting for your friends?" he asked.

"Friends" was understood to mean "foreigners."

"No," I said.

"I've never seen a foreigner alone before," he remarked.

I was used to this. As a single foreigner, I was invariably understood to be lost. He began to ask further questions, but was interrupted by the drunk man, who had broken out into a song he couldn't remember how to sing and wouldn't remember having sung. "How is he?" I asked.

"Well enough," he said. We watched the man tip a shot into his mouth and balance the empty shot glass on his nose. He began to laugh.

"Dear God," sighed the bartender. "Sometimes I hate this job."

The customer continued giggling. The shot glass fell off his nose and landed in a glass of water, sending its contents across the wooden counter.

"Seriously?" exclaimed the bartender. He moved in with a sponge and refilled the empty water and shot glasses. The customer giggled and murmured a vague thanks.

"Maybe this should be his last drink," I suggested as the bartender returned.

"Oh, he had his last a few shots ago now. The bottle with the blue lettering is really water."

I laughed.

"But don't worry, I'm not charging him. I keep telling him he's already paid and he believes me."

The water-filled shot glass fell on the floor, and the bartender grimaced as we heard a high-pitched shatter.

"I wouldn't blame you if you did charge him," I said, as the bartender sulked off to fetch the broom.

He returned a few minutes later. "I'm sorry, I didn't ask you what you wanted to drink."

As he poured my Guinness—which proved to be flat and stale—I asked him where he was from.

"Sanyi, do you know it?" I could tell from his tone that he almost hoped I did not.

"I know where it is, but I haven't been. It's not far from Changsha, no?"

His face contorted slightly, and he looked down at my foaming glass. His silence told me I had said the wrong thing. He moved the glass around in his hand, as though recovering from an offense, but when he spoke their was no spite in his voice. "Sanyi is a very long way from Changsha." He picked up a glass and began to polish.

"How long have you lived in Changsha?"

"Two years. I used to come in on the weekends, and eventually I got this job." Perhaps it was merely a reflection from the glass he was polishing, yet a glimmer seemed to flash across his eyes.

"You came in every weekend just to look for work?"

"Well, of course," he said. "You don't find work by sitting around, do you?" It was more his tone than his words that confirmed his pride. He had a been a country boy once, but he had found a job in the city and his country life was over now. His accented Mandarin did something to expose his origin, but otherwise he had succeeded magnificently. Sporting a Oxford shit of the latest fashion, surrounded by a wall of Western beer, he was as far from the country as it was possible to be. He continued wiping the glass long after it shined, and when he spoke it was as though my observations had paralled his thoughts: "I don't return to Sanyi often."

At the other end of the table, the drunk man's night had taken a turn for the worst. His head and hand formed an arc above the table, his head resting against it and his hand rising above it. The hand held a cell phone, its fingers groping lazily at vodka-splattered keys. He began to cry.

Instinctively, the bartender and I moved toward the drunken man. The bartender took a cloth from under the bar, and feigned wiping the table. His real motive, however, was to make the man move into a sitting position. His phone fell from his limp wrist, and his bawling stopped.

"I can't read it," the man said groggily, motioning toward the phone. "I can't type."

"What were you trying to say?" I asked. "I can type for you."

He pushed the phone toward me, and mumbled, "I wanted to tell her to eat shit, but I can't see the damn characters."

I picked up the phone. He had selected the wrong character; identical in pronunciation, instead of "eat" he had selected an obscure character denoting a short-horned dragon.

"I'll save this message," I suggested. "If you feel like this in the morning, you can still send it." Though I knew none of the particulars of his misery, I suspected they little concerned short-horned dragons.

"Guangzhou," the man said slowly, "Damn Guangzhou."

"What about Guangzhou?" the bartender asked, folding the man's phone and handing it back to him.

The drunken man pulled himself into a sitting position again. The left side of his face still bore impressions of the bar, wettened by tears. He inhalled deeply, and began to recount his misfortune.

Though interrupted by sporadic hand movements, yelling, crying and nearly falling asleep, the man divulged his misfortune. A woman—until today his woman—had moved to Guangzhou, having found a job there in finance in accordance with her major. The man had meant to accompany her there—and had even found a job—but had been held back. His family wouldn't hear of it. He was born in Changsha, they said, and it was a very fine city indeed. There was no need to run off chasing places like Guangzhou and the people that moved there. They had felt these things a long time, it seemed, but today they finally told him how they felt.

Tonight, he had told the woman what his family said, and explained that he would have to remain behind. That was too bad for him, she said, because she was getting out of this place; she was going to Guangzhou, with or without him.

"So I'll stay in Changsha," he sighed. "But I hate Changsha." If the bartender took any offense, he was far too good at what he did to show it. He offered a few words of wisdom—both praise and admonishment—and told him that there was nothing to be gained in a city like Guangzhou anyway, nothing to miss about a city full of people willing to leave all that was good behind. He was better off without a girl who went to a place like Guangzhou.

The two of them argued for a long time, Guangzhou against Changsha, Guangdong versus Hunan. The bartender's comments were cautious and mild, not extenuating the qualities of Changsha nor diminishing the draw of Guangzhou. "But you're from Changsha," he said after a while,"that should mean something to you, even if it didn't to her."

"But she's not from Changsha," he said. He had begun to sober up. His tears had ceased, and his senses had returned enough to ask for a kleenex. Wiping his eyes, he told us that he had met the woman in college, but that she was from the country—one of those small towns south of Changsha where the train didn't stop.

We helped the man find a taxi. The taxi was glad to find a passenger and the bartender, after nearly an hour of circular conversation, was glad to be rid of him. "Do you know where to go?" the bartender asked. The man nodded and yawned.

"Guangzhou," the bartender said after the man was gone. "She's probably there already." He paused and added, "Have you been to a bar in Guangzhou?"

"No," I said. "I've never been there long enough. I've just passed through really."

"You're not missing anything," he said tersely. "Guangzhou is no fun at all."

While I waited for the next taxi, I watched him return to the empty bar. Perhaps it was the darkness or my angle, but as he passed through the door, I saw no glimmer in his eye.

The Long Train Ride

Between Shenzhen and Changsha

I had been polite, and I thought my Mandarin had been clear. There was no need to cut in front when the line was stalled. "Wait a minute," I repeated as another man shoved me aside. "They'll move forward soon." But I had no way of knowing this; from my angle at the foot of the train steps, I could not see far inside the car. I could see only a dozen people staring into the space I could not see, where others were surely storing their luggage about to take their seats. Once they had, everyone else could move forward. There was no need to push by merely to wait. They could wait politely at the foot of the train steps as I was.

I checked the time. The train was leaving in two minutes, and yet the people had not moved forward. I was alone on the platform. Tired from a night of little sleep, and anticipating another of still less, I felt angry that behind the opaque windows people were so slow to store their luggage and take their seats. I walked up the train steps and into the car, supposing passengers would settle down after the train departed.

My pushy fellow passengers had only exacerbated my fatigue, so that when I boarded the train, I half thought my first impressions were the beginnings of a dream—or, more accurately, a nightmare. The luggage had already been stowed—in rows along the ceiling bins, under seats, and in the aisle. Where there wasn't luggage, there were people—standing in the aisles, or spanning the laps of fellow passengers. A few were trying to lie on the tops of seats as Snoopy might have done. There was simply no space for anyone.

I found a place in the middle of the aisle and sat. Folding my knees up to my head, I closed my eyes and hoped it would all be over soon. Guangzhou isn't so far away, I thought. A lot of people will be leaving then. If I can sleep for just an hour, it will become more comfortable then. Perhaps there would even be a free seat.

I awoke with pain in my left leg. For a frantic, confused second, I thought the train had hit something. Instead, something had hit me—a rickety food cart driven by an old, unhappy woman. Seeing me awake, she pulled the foodcart back and pushed it forward with a strength not at all suited to her age. I stood up and let her pass.

"She'll be back," said a voice behind my head. "There's no sense trying to sleep in the aisle when you have to stand every five minutes. You'll go crazy that way."

The voice belonged to a young man, who through better luck and better planning, had managed a seat. I rose and stood perpendicular to the aisle, hoping that when the cart returned it could roll by me.

"Don't try to sleep standing up," said the young man. "You can't do it. Or if you can you'll just fall down. It's a lose-lose situation." He said this last sentence in English. I could not recall ever having been this tired before; despite the man's warning, sleeping while standing up seemed perfectly feasible, even natural. "Don't do it," he repeated.

I had managed to store the better part of my bag under a seat. Kneeling down, I extracted my book, and began to read. "Why are you reading a dictionary?" asked a man sitting opposite the younger man. I had the suspicion this was his father.

"It's not a dictionary," I explained.

"It looks like a dictionary," he said, standing up in his seat to get a better look. "It has a boring cover."

"It's an anthology."

"An anthology of what?"

"The writings of Mao—pre-1948."

"Mao?"

"Yes, Mao." I thought perhaps I had said the wrong tone, and added for clarification, "Mao Zedong."

"I know who Mao is," exclaimed the man, somewhat taken aback.

"Well yes, of course, I just thought..."

"You thought what?" His tone was not unpleasant, and I noted he was smiling. I was grateful as our conversation was providing entertainment for the whole train car. Most heads were pointed directly and me and my fat red book, and those that weren't were silent, listening.

"What essay are you reading?"

"'On Contradiction.'"

"And what do you think?"

"It's very..." I visualized a mental list of every adjective I had ever learned in Chinese. "Interesting." I concluded. "It's very interesting." I recalled, with a tinge of guilt, my frustration that my students consistently used that word as a cop-out. I made a mental note never to give them a hard time again. "Interesting" was a wonderful word, a perfect word.

"Is it a contradiction?" the man asked.

"Well, no, it's about a contradiction. The essay isn't the contradiction..."

The whole car was laughing now. It sounded rather like the laugh-track on a dated sitcom. I realized that to everyone in the car except me, it might as well be. Train-rides didn't get more fun than this—watching the foreiger make a fool of himself.

"And what is that contradiction?"

"What?"

"The essay is about what contradiction?"

"Oh...social classes. That the proletariat and the bourgeoisie form a contradiction." That sounded right. I was only a few pages into the essay and it certainly seemed to be going that way.

"Do you agree?"

"Do I what?"

"You're American, no? And America is capitalist. China is a working state. So is there a contradiction?"

"Between our socities?"

"Yes."

The question was unfair. The situation was unfair. The man's philosophical reasoning (as far as I understood it and his Mandarin) was not solid; he could not extrapolate a class struggle between the worker and the employer into a culture clash between a nation that theoretically supported one and a nation that theoretically supported the other. Moreover, it was unfair to ask me these opinions in public about a essay I had not finished reading and couldn't hope to fully understand. I felt conscious of every part of my body, from my dry and tired eyes to my pounding heart.

"It's really all rather like marking the boat to find the sword," I ejaculated. I did not remember having thought that sentence before I said it, but the explosion of laughter—whether of praise or derision—told me that I had nothing to fear.

The expression—a chengyu—suggests that a debate has been made superfluous by changed circumstances. It made my own circumstances change for the better; the man seemed satisfied, and did not ask many more questions. And the rest of the passengers, their evening entertainment ended, turned their heads and ears elsewhere. Those who had seats drifted into sleep, and those who didn't stood idly by, hoping it might come to them anyway.

"Give me that book," said the man after a while. "I should be frank, I've never read it." I reluctantly handed him the book, bequeathing unto him the only thing I had to pass the time. Perhaps he'll fall asleep soon, I thought. Then I can get it back.

Yet the man did not seem tired at all; he opened the book to its first page, and as the minutes passed I saw the left side of the book grow thicker as he perused its pages.

I took in my surroundings. The train, I noted, was rather tall. It was a waste of space, I thought. If only someone had installed hammocks above the seats there would be more than enough room for everyone. And then I realized that there was space after all—not over, but under.

A row of seats would be about long enough. Slipping under one, I found that in the fetal position I could keep most of my body under the seats and away from stray legs or the food cart. My backpack was stored a few seats away under other luggage; it was too bad, for I could have used a pillow. I spied a small spider a few feet away and hoped it would ignore me. Then I decided it did not matter; that night I could sleep through anything.

I awoke with a start. I remembered no noise, and did not have the sensation something had touched me. Instead, it was the sensation of being watched.

A woman, about my age, was crouched in the aisle staring. She was not at all abashed about staring at me as I slept, nor did she seem to think it strange I had taken refuge under dusty train streets. She clearly wanted to say something.

"My English name is Strawberry," she said in English. "And I really want to practice speaking English with you."

I wished that the train would jolt—hit something even—not enough to derail us, just enough so that I could hit my head on something and lose consciousness for a while.

"I am going to ask you a few questions," she began.

I did something terrible then, but a terrible something I maintain is within the rights of any spider-bitten, sleep-deprived man to do. "I'm sorry, but I really need to sleep," I said in Mandarin. She looked devastated.

"I really didn't sleep at all last night. I'm really sorry."

"I understand," she pouted in English, and she walked away.

Yet I was not left alone for long. The man, despite his comfortable seat, had not managed to sleep. He knelt down where the woman had just left and asked heatedly, "That was so rude," I knew from his tone that he meant her and not me. "What did she want from you anyway?"

"To ask a few questions. To practice English."

"I see," said the man. He did not look pleased.

I hoped he did not want to talk again. I felt that after our conversation earlier there was a sort of connection between us, so that I could not ask him to let me sleep as I had of Strawberry. Yet he did not continue talking. Instead, he held out his hand.

He was returning the book.

"You finished it?" I asked.

"No, but I read enough," he said. "But I thought you needed a pillow."

Surely I had misheard him.

"Lift up your head," he repeated.

I obeyed, and when I laid down my head again, it sunk into that boring red cover—a thousand pages above the spidery floor.

On Dialects

Aided with a few footnotes, Chaucer is largely intelligible to a reader of modern English. Such a reader would endure peculiar forms of familiar words and other words not familiar at all, yet the written text could be enjoyed and largely understood. And yet listening to Chaucer is like entering a freshly cleaned college dorm room; everything is still there, it's just rearranged to the point of complete unfamiliarity. Chaucer's words have a ring to them that sounds like they should be English, and occasional bursts of familiar words lets us know that they are. But these few grains of familiarity are insufficient for a modern speaker to enjoy his work.

After seven-hundred years, we are unable to understand an ancestor of our own language. And yet Chaucer's English probably became unintelligible long before our own time; spoken Chaucer was probably opaque even to Shakespeare, whose rhymes suggest pronunciation similar to (if still distinct from) the current modern standard.

The history of English underscores that even in European languages, whose writing theoretically preserves and transmits pronunciation, pronunciation still changes. Words themselves change too; like last year's fashion trends, old words fall out of use and new words replace them. Like the species that created it, language is an organism that dies, evolves, and adapts.

Understanding the rapid evolution of English—which developed with a phonetic transcription in a small, politically centralized region—helps us understand the radically divergent dialects of Chinese. Though its borders have shifted throughout its history, China has always been vast. The Han people, the majority ethnic population that speaks related languages the West calls Chinese, have for millennia lived in nearly all regions of that territory, forming communities divided by huge rivers and impassable mountain ranges, severed by political realignments and incessant war. Isolation breeds evolution, and every town in China boasts a dialect that has been developing for millennia.

Sinologists argue about the particulars, but Chinese languages are generally divided into about seven languages: Mandarin, Hakka, Wu (Zhejiang province), Yue (Guangdong province), Gan (Jiangxi province), Min (Fujian province), and Xiang (Hunan province). Yet the Chinese languages are not languages as Dutch or Italian are languages--that despite wide regional variations have accepted spoken standards. Each Chinese language in turn has dialects and sub-dialects, so that nearly every town speaks with a distinct flair. Native speakers of Hakka are often unable to understand one another if they come from different cities; even dialects of Mandarin are not mutually intelligible.

Importantly, this classification into "languages" is a model created and sustained by the West. The Chinese themselves do not generally arrange their dialects under larger linguistic nodes. Instead, dialects are referred to simply by adding a character for "speech" (话 huà) to the end of a given place name; therefore "Beijinghua" denotes the language spoken in Beijing, and "Shanghaihua" refers to Shanghainese. This practice is convenient because discussion about the relationship between Chinese languages is really more a question of historical linguistics than it is practical usage.

For millennia, the written Chinese language (see later post on "characters") served as a means of linking the speakers of these distinct dialects. Written Chinese allowed the Han people to share literature and a recorded history; the lack of a clear phonetic system allowed speakers of different dialects to read a written text aloud in their own tongue.

Yet in the modern age, a written lingua franca alone has proved insufficient. Accordingly, the past dynasty—the Qing—made efforts to promote education in and of  putonghua（普通话, Standard Mandarin), an effort that has accelerated under the current Chinese government. As its English name suggests, Standard Mandarin was the language of the mandarins—the officials of the imperial court. However, English usage of the term became clouded in the twentieth century when "Mandarin" came to refer not only to the specific dialect of the imperial court, but rather to the wider branch of northern Chinese dialects. This widened usage has made the Western term "Mandarin" distinct from the Chinese term putonghua. A Westerner, for instance, would say that someone from Chongqing natively speaks Mandarin, whereas a Chinese person would say that their first language is Chongqinghua—the speech of Chongqing, but hardly standard putonghua. Accordingly, Western scholarship has recently sought to avoid confusion by borrowing the term Putonghua to refer to the lingua franca of China. That is a practice I have chosen to adopt.

Originally, Putonghua was modeled on the speech of Beijing. However in recent decades the two have begun to diverge. New words and accent changes spoken on Beijing streets have not been accepted as official Putonghua. So the question emerges—where is Putonghua actually spoken colloquially today?

A tempting answer is "nowhere", in much the same way that "proper English" isn't spoken colloquially anywhere either. "Proper English", like Putonghua, is a throwback to a time and place that has since passed away. Plenty of well educated English speakers, for instance, will use terms like "gotta" and "gonna" in colloquial speech, although they are well aware that they are "incorrect" and avoid such colloquialisms in other situations. Similarly, even educated Chinese speak in their dialects often, but will switch to Putonghua for formal occasions or when speaking to someone who does not understand their dialect. It is this function as a lingua franca that has led to the prominence of Putonghua in recent decades.

Putonghua, as a lingua franca, thrives in cities. Even in cities that speak dialects very distinct from Putonghua (i.e., Shanghai or Guangzhou), the influx of Chinese from other regions necessitates that locals speak it with high proficiency. This tendency has diminished the prevalence of local dialects, though they still persevere. Shanghainese, for instance, can still be heard on the streets of Shanghai, but in recent decades it is spoken increasingly behind closed doors among Shanghai natives.

Yet in rural regions, into which few non-locals venture for work, Putonghua is generally less common and more nonstandard. Although most people can understand Putonghua if it is spoken accurately, a large number are unable to speak it well, if at all. This is particularly true of the older generations, whose school system did not—as the modern system theoretically does—promote education in Putonghua. Yet the younger generations, too, often incorporate their native accents when speaking Putonghua. While accents are a natural part of any language, the accents of Putonghua are particularly disparate.

The problem, in part, is that standard Putonghua has very few syllables and phonemes. The language has a mere 400 syllables (ignoring tonal variation); most begin with a consonant and end with a vowel, "n", "ng", or (rarely) "r". This means that—at most—a Putonghua syllable has two consonants, rendering syllables that sound similar to both foreign and Chinese ears. This paucity of syllables is particularly difficult for Westerners, who are used to a greater flexibility in syllable formation, as evidenced by such consonant-packed English syllables as "splurge" and "strapped."

Because many phonemes in standard Putonghua are absent in local dialects, speakers of dialects often fail to produce them when speaking Putonghua. In many regions the phonemes "zh", "sh", and "ch" are indistinguishable from "z", "s", and "c". This phenomenon is increasingly widespread in some communities—notably Taiwan. Other regions have still more changes. In my town in Hunan, these and other convergences shrink the 400 syllables of standard Putonghua to under 250 syllables. Consequently, words that are distinguishable in standard Putonghua are indistinguishable when Putonghua is spoken with a strong Hunanese accent.

In order to promote literacy and the pronunciation of standard Putonghua, the Chinese government introduced the pinyin (拼音) Romanization system in 1958, though widespread teaching of it did not occur until later. The pinyin system provides a consistent pronunciation guide that young Chinese use to learn characters and literate Chinese use to learn to the pronunciation of obscure ones. Originally designed to help combat illiteracy by facilitating self-study, the pinyin system has proved useful as a simple way to type characters and send text messages. And yet, as knowledge of pinyin is not widespread among older generations, it has only exacerbated the technological and generational gap.  Those who speak nonstandard Putonghua struggle to type or send messages as they are often unaware of the "correct" pronunciation and Romanization of a character.

Schools, theoretically, are the realm of Putonghua. At my Hunan high-school, faded signs adorn hallways that remind students to speak in Putonghua, yet they are most often ignored. Lectures are given in Putonghua, and questions are asked in Putonghua, yet as soon as the bell rings, students and teachers revert to the local dialect. Hardly a word of standard Mandarin is heard in offices, cafeterias or basketball courts.

The campaign to create a nation speaking Putonghua principally and fluently has been under way for over a century, and has been increasingly successful in recent decades. In an age of technology and greater mobility, spoken Putonghua has been disseminated in a way it never could have been a few generations ago. A more mobile population needs a lingua franca and a national spoken media has offered one.

Though they may not be able to replicate it, older generations still enjoy listening to Putonghua television in their homes and shops, aided perhaps by the subtitles that accompany every Chinese television program. Younger generations move to cities and universities in which poor Putonghua is increasingly unacceptable—perhaps even shameful. An era has ended, an era in which the likes of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping could stand as the most powerful and respected men in China although they spoke Putonghua only with heavy accents. Instead, this modern Chinese era laughs off films like Western critics' beloved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat speak Putonghua with perceivable Cantonese accents. This is an era in which tongue twisters are designed just to expose (and occasionally ridicule) southern accents.

Putonghua is often viewed (in the West as in China) as the "proper" form of Chinese, the standard against which all other dialects are measured. While Putonghua has long been the accepted language for all things legal or official, other dialects have gained prestige too. The clearest example is Cantonese (a dialect of the Yue branch of Chinese), that enjoys official status in Hong Kong and Macao as Mandarin does elsewhere. Cantonese is also an important language of cinema, music, and other art forms. It remains the most widely spoken and best understood dialect among the Chinese diaspora.

In the mainland, music has long used local dialects. Notable examples include Xiang opera (which uses the Changsha dialect) and Peking opera (which uses a pronunciation of Mandarin distinct from both modern Putonghua and the Beijing dialect). Some younger singers have chosen to record in local dialects, or to learn and sing in Cantonese to appeal to a wider audience—generally to Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora.

It is questionable too, that Putonghua best preserves the language spoken by the great Chinese poets or philosophers. Many argue that classical Chinese poetry sounds more natural when read in many southern Chinese languages, as their phonology better preserves the intended rhyme schemes than does modern Putonghua. Moreover, many words that are considered archaic in Putonghua are alive and well in southern dialects.

The rich diversity of the Chinese languages and dialects is a testament to the diversity of China. The dialect is as much a part of a place as its food or its history; it is the lens through which people understand each other and express themselves. But in today's China, too, people seek to communicate—to communicate across the geographical boundaries from which the dialects diverged. Putonghua—literally "the common speech"—can facilitate these new conversations and friendships. It is the bridge over provincial borders and even national ones, as overseas Chinese perfect their Putonghua and record numbers of non-Chinese seek to learn it.


With a little luck, modern China can hope to avoid the linguistic wars that have plagued India, Indonesia, Canada, and even Spain. Whether their dialect closely resembles Putonghua or not, many young Chinese take great pride in it—in its literature and its media, and in the interconnected China that the dominance of Putonghua represents. In the end they can have their Mandarin and their dialect too; they can preserve the unique dialect that has incubated for millennia among their ancestors while mastering the language that is the voice of modern China.

To the Hills

Mr. Li had boasted many times about the comforts of his van. He assured me that today it would be particularly pleasurable as I had the whole back seat to myself. Through no design of the manufacturer, the back seat did offer some comfort. The metal core of the seats was broken in several places, and the surrounding foam had grown soft, giving the passenger the sensation of riding on a rocking waterbed. "The whole back seat"—technically speaking—offered three seats, but gaping holes in the floorboard rendered the side seats defunct. It was lucky too, since only on the remaining center seat could the passenger hope to slide forward between the front seats (instead of into them) in the highly-likely event of a sudden stop.

Mr. Huang—the driver—had drifted into the left lane. As an oncoming car approached us, it moved gradually toward the center and then toward our far right. Both vehicles passed each other on the left side of the road. Turning my head into the muddy back window, I did not see the car return to the proper side of the road. Nor did we.

We could not be far from Dayao, but I did not recognize these roads at all. Mr. Huang and Mr. Li did not seem to recognize them either, and I tried to overhear their conversation as they argued in rapid dialect about directions. Mr. Huang (seemingly in defiance of Mr. Li's directions) veered to the right and onto a dirt road. It rose quickly as we approached the hills, and its width shrunk with altitude. Soon it seemed the van would not fit at all. Mr. Huang seemed to realize this, and lifted the emergency brake halfway up the hill. Turning off the engine, he let the van roll backwards. Slamming the other brake to the floor, we veered off onto the grass, and accelerated upward.

This section of road—perhaps because there was no road at all—was far steeper. The engine and Mr. Li both screamed as the van threatened to die. Unbothered, Mr. Huang gradually downshifted until we were climbing in first gear. The road flattened suddenly, and the van lumbered forward, splashing mud in all directions, the last remaining puddles of the night's rain.

Several miles and close calls later, we seemed no nearer to our destination. We were nowhere I had ever been—or anywhere that Mr. Li or Mr. Huang intended to be. We had passed a few fallen scarecrows and abandoned homes a while back. We had seen people too, though they had been scare, mostly farmers trudging through the mud as they pushed their oxen through the wet fields. The road—if that was indeed what it was--had not been driven on for a long time.

Homes had grown scare too. There were a few graineries, and other buildings that had fallen into utter desuetude. Then for the better part of an hour there were no buildings at all, until we espied a small farm house on a hill off to our right. Mr. Huang drove toward it. I did not have to ask to know he was looking for directions.

A man sat on a chair along the dusty path before the house. He held a baby as young as he was old, and both bore the signs of having been recently asleep. The afternoon sun was hotter today than it had been for months, and man and baby had meant to drift away on the hazy thoughts the sun engenders.

Mr. Li stepped out of the car. Through the window shield, I could hear the murmur of Mr. Li's voice, but when the old man spoke I heard nothing at all. Sensing the man was deaf, Mr. Li's voice grew louder with each word, yet the old man's voice remained soft, his sentences brief.

Mr. Li returned to the car. "What did he say?" I asked.

"Nothing I could understand," said Mr. Li tartly.

We began to pull away, but the old man stood up. Still holding the child, he motioned to a metal pot—blotched and peeling—on an adjacent table. We had been asked to tea.

The tea had been heated long ago, but the heat of the afternoon sun had kept it warm enough. The baby and the old man were both silent as we drank. I was unsure if it was the man's age or the few hours of aimless driving that had made him indecipherable to us. Perhaps it was some of both; we were a long way from Dayao, up in the hills where a dialect from a distant town would have been of little use.

The three of us talked for a while together, mostly about the temple we had been looking for, and that Mr. Li and Mr. Huang wished to look no longer. The temple was for another day, they said. They had driven long enough, and could scarecly remember the way back to Dayao let alone to a temple they had not visited since their youth. The man and baby were silent throughout the conversation; yet their eyes rested on us, the ears of the baby resting on our every word.

Who Will Sweep Their Graves?

The characters were hard to discern. Faded, obscure, and stylized, I was not expected to understand them. But I was supposed to stare for a while, and meditate on the ancient stone block on which they were written. One character--larger than the rest--bore the surname Li. Beside was a date in the old agricultural calendar which I had never successfully learned to read.

"How old are these graves?" I asked my friend.

"A few hundred years old I think," He Jiang replied solemnly, "though this stone isn't so old as that. It's relatively new I think."

"New?" I exclaimed, brushing my hand against the moss. "How old is it?"

He leaned in close to the stone and examined the date, feeling the characters as though they were braille.

"I don't know," he concluded after a moment. "It's too hard to read. Someone here must know." He looked around hopefully at the scores of people crowded around us. A handful were watching us talk, and the rest were busy sweeping, weaving about two piles of earth with long brooms that scratched the cement like wooden spiders. These two mounds were the real graves; the stone block merely marked them.

An old man stood feebly some way off. He rested one arm against the hill and the other against a crooked cane. His arms shook as he walked toward us. He paused for a moment, regained his breath, and then withdrew two cigarettes for Jiang and I. I politely refused while he and Jiang puffed in silence.

Now that he was near, I wondered how old the man must be. His chin was shrivelled and his eyes cataractous, but his grip on the cane was firm. When he lifted a hand to remove his cigarette, he did so with truculence, as though daring old age to deny him his last remaining pleasure.

When he finally spoke, he spoke quietly, pausing occasionally to find either his breath or the words to continue. Minutes were punctuated with a solemn puff on his ashy cigarette.

I could tell that even Jiang--a Dayao native--was struggling to understand the old man, but he nodded politely all the same, and after a few minutes turned to me, and said in Mandarin, "He asks if you know who these people are." He pointed to the two mounds of earth encircled by men and brooms.

I shook my head. No one had said anything about the names of these people, and I had believed it was a gap in conversation I was not intended to fill.

"He says their names have been lost, but that they are very ancient ancestors of Dayao. Most of us here are still related to them somehow." He paused and added silently, "Though of course you're not." I thought this last phrase was Jiang's own, until I saw the old man's wrinkles twist into a smile. He was evidently proud of his little joke. I smiled in return.

"He wants to know where you're from, and if people in your country are sweeping tombs today."

I turned to the old man, and spoke slowly and clearly so that he might understand. "I'm American, and in my country we do not have Tomb Sweeping Day. This is my first time."

The man looked confused, and I understand his next sentence before Jiang translated it: "But then who will sweep their graves?"

In truth, I had never thought about this. I had always imagined a grave as an end in itself, the end of a life. It was the life that was to be celebrated, not the tomb. A life looked nothing like a tomb anyway--nothing about a life is cold, flat, or inconstant like a stone is. But as I looked at the men and their brooms, I knew they did not come to respect a stone; they came to remember. They came to remember what hundreds of years and thousands of busy days might make anyone forget--where they had come from and where they were returning to.

No one could read the date on the block and no one could remember the names of the people it commemorated. But that didn't matter. Sweeping a tomb--like a tomb itself--is not for the dead, but the living. As the men return with their brooms each year, they know they too will be remembered--even after their names are mute on every tongue and weathered from every stone.

"How is it," he said, "That you do not sweep your tombs?"

Mad Dogs and Drivers

My noodles slipping through my shaking chopsticks, I realized I could not go back as I had come. Undoubtedly it would still be there, baring its teeth and biding its time. Though I had not seen the thing clearly in the darkness, in the light of the night café I could imagine it perfectly--with dark, protuberant eyes and yellowing teeth.

Of course I had not actually seen these things, because one could not see anything on the long, uneven street that connected the high school with Dayao proper. There were no streetlights and no cars. Careful attention to the road's many bumps by day was the only way to avoid them by night. But that night I had seen something, or the shape of something, as it moved across the road with an unmistakably canine gait and angry growl.

Though a lifelong dog lover, the stray dogs of Dayao had done little to reciprocate the affection. Having grown accustomed to the strange animosity these dogs bore me, I found little joy in meeting a large and angry one on a dark, deserted street.

As the dog came steadily nearer, I smelt its rank breath and heard again a low growl. Only its silhouette was visible, slowly circling me. Though my impulse was to run, experience with stray dogs told me to remain still. Eventually, it had to go away. Staring ahead, I saw the light of the night café in the distance. I could no longer see the dog, and assumed it must be behind me.

A motor taxi approached. Its light was dim--almost burned out--but it must have been strong enough to see the dog and I, for it rumbled to halt in front of me.

"That dog's mad," the driver said. It was not the voice of encouragement or assistance. His tone was matter-of-fact, as though he had just noted the night was dark.

"Can you help me?" I asked, my voice tremulous. "Can you scare the dog away with the light?"

"The dog's gone," the man noted. "It just ran away. Get going."

I didn't need telling twice. I walked as quickly as I could without drawing attention to myself, and collapsed in the night cafe. A frequent customer, the vendor brought me a bowl of noodles and asked no questions. I ate slowly, reflecting, wondering if the dog was mad or I was mad for walking down a dark road. Then I recalled that dogs are usually hunted at night anyway. He had probably been as terrified as I was.

I finished my noodles and left a wrinkled five yuan bill on the table. It was late--very late by Dayao standards--and there were no motor taxis. I would have to walk.

I crossed the street and peered down the long road. The light of the high school was barely visible in the distance. I wondered if the dog was still prowling somewhere in the darkness.

A red car rolled slowly down the main road, stopping at the intersection with the dark street. I thought--briefly--that I might be blocking the car, but realized I was not on the road and had never known a car to stop for pedestrians anyway. The car then inched forward, and I saw a head emerge from the driver's seat, staring at me as the car moved onto the curb.

I was used to staring in Dayao, but this was absurd. The driver seemed to forget that he was driving at all, and I half expected the car to collide with a building before he audibly pulled the emergency brake. A man in the passenger's seat lean over the driver and ask excitedly, "Where are you from?"

Before I answered--before I endured the gasps and the awkward questions--I knew I'd found a way to get by that dog. The car backed out of the curb, and promptly stalled in the middle of the intersection. The few cars remaining at that hour were honking impatiently, yet neither of the men seemed to hear. "We'll give you a ride!" yelled the passenger as the car nearly side-swiped the night cafe.

Just your luck, I thought to myself, as I stared into the lair of the mad dog, and again at the two men who seemed unable to handle a gearshift. "Hurry up!" smiled the driver. I sighed; there was no other way.

The car moved no more quickly down the long dark road than it had on the main road, as neither man was anxious to let me go. It seemed they hadn't had this much fun in years; while the passenger descanted on the weather, the driver spoke at length about the pitiful roads in Dayao, and that I shouldn't judge a place by its infrustructure, but rather by its people. As if to demonstrate, the driver took a bottle of baijiu from his bag and shoved it into my hand. "Drink!" he chortled. "Yes, drink!" repeated his friend. I doubted I had ever seen anyone so happy.

I politely took a sip of the baijiu, and tried to turn my grimace into a smile. It tasted like lighter fluid.

"Good, no?" said the passenger smiling. "It's not that Jiangxi stuff, no! This is authentic Hunanese baijiu!"

Still trying not to gag, I mumbled something polite about the flavor and returned the bottle. The passenger then took a drink as well, and smiling broadly, he told me they had been saving the bottle for a special occasion like this. I pretended not to notice that the bottle top had already been broken.

We were now parked in front of the school gate, and every time I moved toward the door, one of the men would hold my arm and pull me back into the seat. "Do all Americans have noses like yours?" asked the passenger in a genuine tone of curiosity. "Is it true that Americans don't drink baijiu?" the driver asked, "or is that just a terrible rumor?"

It seemed I would never leave.

Then slowly the gate opened, and the night guard stepped out into the pavement. "Hurry up and get inside," he said impatiently. "That damn dog is about again." He looked frightened at the mere thought.

I thanked the two men again, politely refused another round of baijiu, and scanning my surroundings for the mad dog, passed through the school gate.