From the AllSet Blog: Web-savvy learners of Chinese have known for some time that there’s no single comprehensive grammar resource for Chinese grammar on the entire internet. Sure, there are some very helpful pages out there, but they’re not comprehensive or interlinked, or at least not publicly available.

We initially created the wiki to scratch our own itch. AllSet Learning provides highly personalized study plans for its clients, making use of a variety of materials, often including such disparate sources as ChinesePod lessons, textbooks, magazines, online articles, blog posts, and Weibo posts. While offering a variety of materials is great for keeping learners interests high, it does create a problem for tracking progress. How can we keep straight what our clients have studied, and what they still need to study?

The Chinese Grammar Wiki is our solution to the grammar part of this issue. Tracking client progress in grammar started with static lists of grammar points, and gradually involved into the current Chinese Grammar Wiki. We tried a number of approaches, but realized that the ideal solution needs to be online, easily edited, easily expanded, and heavily interlinked. Wikipedia was the obvious model for such a resource, and the Chinee Grammar Wiki is powered by MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia.

The site is still in early days, but already has more than 500 articles on Chinese grammar in the wiki. Unlike a wiki like Wikipedia, the Chinese Grammar Wiki doesn’t allow anonymous editing. However, if you feel you have something to add, John and his team hope you contact them to be an approved editor. All content in the wiki is released under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license, and so is free to share, distribute and re-use the information in a variety of ways.

As an on-again, off-again Chinese learner, I’m pretty excited for the resource. Few people I’ve met have spent as much time as John thinking about language learning, particularly as to how it relates to Chinese. His blog and various resources at Sinosplice have been extremely helpful over the years, and I have to imagine that with his ambition and love for the language behind the wiki, it’s sure to be fantastic. With some hefty Year of the Dragon mandarin learning resolutions to myself, I’m certain I’ll be wearing out my bookmark to the site in no time.

Jonathan Levine has been in China for almost a year teaching American studies in an English-speaking Tsinghua University class. According to him, China is a treasure trove of jobs for Americans, as demand for native English speakers is “white-hot.” And frankly, he is correct. I’d wager that the majority of secondary school principals would jump out of their chairs if an American walked into the office asking for an English-teaching job. Educational consulting businesses would claw at the chance to have, ahem, a white face to put on their college-prep advertisements. The chances for Americans are plentiful – especially white Americans.

This is something any CET study-abroad student could tell you. What Mr. Levine does not mention is the definite tiered system of jobs for native English speakers in China, wherein most involve copy-editing or English training at a price of 6,000-10,000 RMB per month ($1000-1500, and no health insurance) – more than enough to party it up in Sanlitun. For sure, China can be a whirlwind of crazy daily experiences, fascinating conversations, good food, and cheap drinks; a real paradise for singles in their twenties without a strict career path (I would know). But for non-teachers with a specialized skill set, especially those coming from middle-level American jobs, and especially those with families, I dare to suggest that China is a step down for them in terms of income and professionalism.

The next tier up includes Western-salary companies, who hire native English speakers to audit, manage, train, and communicate. It’s not a bad gig if you can get it; most of those end up in Guangdong, where the factories are, or nestle into random pockets of IT activity. There is a plethora of consulting jobs in Shanghai; most Americans can land one of those at China-salary, while big-name consultants (Bain, KPMG) are reticent to hire anyone who is not a native Chinese speaker. To my friends and classmates who have worked their way into the latter positions, I have the utmost respect. They could not have done it without years of perfecting their Chinese language skills.

This brings me back to my frustration with an article about working in China from someone who knows very little about the place. Those who have high-paying, health-care-providing jobs in China generally do so either because they are hired by a Western company first and then move to China, or because they know about China and speak Chinese very well. This group cannot afford, however, to be looking at the jobs that Mr. Levine rightly claims to be so plentiful (i.e. teaching and copy-editing). First, almost anyone who has lived in China more than a few weeks has done one of these jobs. Chinese majors and freelance scholars, therefore, tend to have plentiful TESL experience to blog about. However, these people generally do not go to China to be Western. They seek something more meaningful; something that is a testimony to the work that they have put in learning Chinese and about China.

I dare to say that, ironically, finding a real career in China is hardest for this group. They have sweated over memorizing characters, perfecting tones, mastering the nuances of discussing sensitive issues with Chinese people. They are invested and, in many cases, in student debt. The American with the best Chinese I have ever heard graduated from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center last year. While teaching English at a high school in a second-tier city, he buried himself in Chinese culture. He labored to this end for eight years before returning to the US this past year. Why did someone so skilled have to leave China? Because, in his words, the only things he was qualified to do in China were teach English or open a bar. He is now a US federal employee.

My other friend graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Chinese language and literature in 2008. He moved to Beijing and taught English, then copy-edited, then freelance translated, for a total of three years. It was a charmed life for sure, but the aimlessness of translating and copy-editing spurred him to return to America to start a career.

After six months in America, he’s back in Beijing. When asked why, the question of employment doesn’t come up. “Everyone in America just talks about politics or the TV shows they watch. When you mention that you’ve just lived in China for three years and speak Chinese, the conversation basically stops,” he says. After a certain point of delving into China, this friend is faithfully and irretrievably a laowai, wherever he may go (laowai is the Chinese word for foreigner). I expect Mr. Levine to end up in this group one day, as well, and maybe then he’ll be more humble.

For those who graduated with degrees in China studies and have an honest, vested interest in the country paired with deep humility from having learned the language, Mr. Levine’s sort of article borders on offensive. Was he just trying to rile up the political feathers of those who claim that China has stolen American jobs? “If you don’t have a job, go to China” – and manifest destiny! Just be careful about getting into the language and culture; if you go too far, you might not qualify as Western enough to be employed.

Seventy six trombones led the big parade in the Music Man. One hundred and ten cornets were following right behind. All of them were delivered by the Wells Fargo man. It’s a shame that Wells Fargo doesn’t have their act together as well as they did back in River City. Maybe if they did, my parents would still have access to their bank account. Of course “parents” starts with P and that rhymes with T and that stands for “trouble” so it’s possible that something would have still gone wrong.

I religiously keep track of my expenditures as a matter of course. I find that when I write down how much money has gone out, every time it goes out (even for sums as small as half a yuan), that less money goes out overall. So, since I happen to have a fairly large chunk of money in my corporate account for the translation agency, there was no reason for us to ever touch my mom and dad’s money during their visit to China. They’d be able to put the dollars in my US account when they got back to the States.

In the Beijing Airport, the 50 or 60 renminbi in leftover money my friend Mike had from his last trip to China wasn’t nearly enough to cover two coffees let alone their overweight luggage fee and dad went to an ATM. Although this would have raised a flag which should have indicated that the cardholder was in China, this is not what caused the problem.

I’ve had my US card stopped at least twice since I’ve been in China. Once, it was my fault. I lost the card. The other time, it was the bank’s fault but it was a temporary stop, and although it inconvenienced me, I had used the card in four countries in a 36 hour time period and it’s somewhat reasonable for that to be flagged as “suspicious”.

The problem was that my parents, like most people over the age of 20, even when on holiday, still have bills to pay. Even in this modern world, not all bills are the same amount every month, and not all bills can be set up for automatic payment. Furthermore, my dad is the kind of person who likes to look at a bill before the money is taken out of his bank account. I am the same, so this is probably an inherent personality trait rather than something learned from the time one of his banks tried to take 2.5 million dollars out of an account that had $250.00 in it.

After they’d been in China for a few days, my dad logged on to his Wells Fargo online bank access, using a name and password different from what is written on the card, and paid one of his bills. Predictably, since my parents had both called Wells Fargo and gone to their local Wells Fargo branch prior to their flight so as to inform the bank that they would be out of the country and that their US phone number would not be answered for the next three months, the Online Payment Department notified the Fraud Department that there was suspicious activity originating from a Chinese IP address.

The Wells Fargo Fraud Department should have looked at the file which said “cardholder in China”. They should have looked at the file which had the cardholder’s Chinese phone number. They didn’t.

Instead, they called my parents home phone number and no one answered. Even though the Wells Fargo Fraud Department conscientiously called three times, no one answered the phone.

So when my dad next went online to use his bank card, he was locked out.

It’s a joint account with my mom so they tried using her online access to at least talk to the bank. But Wells Fargo refused to talk to her (about an account that she is listed owner as) because it wasn’t her card that had been canceled. Obviously, since they’ve shown an unwillingness to look at the basic “WE ARE OUT OF THE COUNTRY” information along with my parents’ international contact number, my parents are none too willing to attempt enabling e-pay through her account as it will almost certainly be canceled for suspicious activity when the Fraud Department also can’t reach her at her home number.

Today my dad used his MagicJack (a USB powered phone jack for making calls from a US phone number) to call the bank and tried to explain to them that every late fee on every bill that goes unpaid will eventually need to be picked up by the bank’s Loss Department and that it is very likely that they will also have to pay him damages, but they were more interested in telling him that he should be picking up messages on his US phone when he is out of the country, doesn’t expect to be back in country for two more months, and told them a week before he left where he would be and what number they were supposed to reach him at.

The Wells Fargo Online Banking Department also told my dad off for having assumed that both calling the bank and going into the bank in person to let them know he would be out of the country would have any effect at all. He ought to know that they don’t have any place in the Online Banking Department to take note of such information as “will be out of the country,” or “please use my international contact number”. He also ought to know that whether or not the Wells Fargo Credit Card Department had shared information with the Wells Fargo Online Banking Department, it is not the Online Banking Department’s responsibility to save that information.

Though how calling the Fraud Department will manage to resolve the fact that Wells Fargo has already sent a new bank card to my parents’ US address is a mystery, my dad has been instructed to call the Fraud Department between 5am and 8pm Pacific Standard Time.

This past November the following question was posted on Quora: Why do so many Chinese learners seem to hate Dashan (Mark Rowswell)? He seems like a nice guy. Does he secretly eat children or something?. I’m sure we all have our own answers to that question, but none are likely to come close to the insight and self-reflection that the big Canuck himself answered with yesterday.

Mark Rowswell, the man behind the Mandarin, broke it down into 5 reasons:

1. Overuse – People are sick and tired of hearing the name “Dashan”;
2. Resentment (Part A) – Dashan’s not the only Westerner who speaks Chinese fluently;
3. Resentment (Part B) – Being a foreign resident in China is not easy and Dashan gets all the breaks;
4. Political/Cultural – People wish Dashan had more of an edge;
5. Stereotyping – The assumption that Dashan is a performing monkey.

The whole answer is a bit lengthy, but well worth the read. Here are a few choice excerpts:

On why Dashan is so popular (related to #2 above):

… Dashan represents or symbolizes something very powerful to a Chinese audience. I don’t want to get too deeply into this, because my answer is already running too long, but let me say this: Chinese have a very complex and conflicting view of themselves and the world at large. They have a very strong self-identity and sense of pride, and this leads to a strong sense of “us vs. them” and of being misunderstood and misaligned by the rest of the world, or the West in particular, as well as a strong sense that they are gradually losing their language and culture in the process of globalization. In the face of this, Dashan represents a Westerner who appreciates and respects China, who has learned the language and understands the culture and has even become “more Chinese than the Chinese”. It’s a very powerful and reassuring image that appeals to very deep-rooted emotions.

On being Canadian (related to #4 above):

Culturally, the Dashan character does tend to be quite Canadian. We’re just not as aggressive in general as Americans. The adjective most used to describe Canadians is “nice”. How dull and boring can you get?

Although Canada and America are very close culturally, there are some fundamental differences. Primarily, Canadians never consider themselves to be number one in anything apart from hockey. And although we are both relatively young nations built by successive waves of immigration, Canadians have a much weaker self-identity than Americans. We don’t have a strong mainstream culture of our own, which I think makes us more malleable culturally. When Canadians come to China, we don’t do things “the Canadian way” because nobody has the slightest idea what “the Canadian way” is. So we tend to adapt pretty well to different cultures.

On why Dashan isn’t political (also related to #4 above):

… So I work within cultural norms. This spills over into the political realm, because, to be honest, Chinese cultural acceptance of foreign political criticism is almost nil. In short, I don’t have to worry about what government censors might say because Chinese audiences would never let me get that far anyway.

I could make a short public statement like that of Christian Bale recently or Björk a few years ago. It’s very easy to do and ensures you get very good coverage in the Western media. You go home and everyone thinks you are a person of moral conviction who stood up to the great Chinese monster. But the fact is that these kinds of statements elicit almost no sympathy whatsoever from ordinary Chinese citizens. They simply are not culturally acceptable to the broad Chinese audience. And it’s very difficult to see what impact they have other than to further convince ordinary Chinese people that China is misunderstood and that the Western world is antagonistic towards China and resentful of China’s development. What use is that?

I’m curious to read what others think of Dashan. John, of Sinosplice, mentioned in his post on this topic that, “the hubbub about Dashan has finally started to die down”. I can’t tell if this is true, or if after a certain number of years you just stop noticing it. Any FOB laowai still cringe at the mention of Dashan by a taxi driver? Do the new generation of foreigners in China even know who Dashan is?

A new year and a new douche bag to add to our “Bad Laowai” category. Ryan Fedoruk, a 40-year-old former part-time English teacher from Canada, sublet about 30 apartments to more than 100 foreigners in Shanghai before taking the money and running.

Eva Gao, the Chinese lawyer representing his victims, sums things up on her blog:

Fedoruk began subletting apartments in Shanghai in early 2011. He would post ads online, particularly SmartShanghai.com using multiple accounts, and describe himself as the landlord. He would also refer to himself as the landlord in his contracts with tenants.

He rented one apartment after another, and his so-called business gained steam in the middle of the year when many newly-arrived university students, mostly from Europe, were looking for housing. At its peak, he was renting close to 30 apartments in Puxi and Pudong to more than 80 tenants at the same time.

Then the school semester started and business slowed. By mid-semester, the perpetually increasing number of tenants that he had relied on for cashflow had disappeared. He had trouble finding tenants for a couple apartments in the French Concession area and, compounding the problem, would give steep discounts to fill empty rooms in others. “For him it became nothing more than filling rooms,” wrote one tenant who worked part-time for Fedoruk. “It seemed like he was desperate.”

Over time, a rumor started going around: Ryan Fedoruk does not return deposits. In August, a prospective tenant had even written a lengthy email to warn others about renting from Fedoruk. According to her email, a realtor told her that “everyone knows Ryan. He is what we call a second-hand landlord (二房东). He rents and sublets, then he takes the money from the tenants but doesn’t pay the landlord. Always finds a way to run away.”

The email unfortunately did not circulate to many of Fedoruk’s tenants and he, according to those he abandoned, left Shanghai on December 24, 2011 without returning rent deposits and without paying rent to many of his landlords.

For additional coverage, check out the initial story on Shanghaiist, along with a follow-up post that tracks down a bunch of pictures of the con man, as well as relays the story of one of his victims:

Ryan picked me up with his taxi where I was and he took me to his place. I was very cautious, you know, I asked many questions, asked for a real contract, read everything, asked for a deposit receipt and he gave me his passport photocopy as a proof of his good will. I had told him on the phone about all my previous issues with flats in Shanghai, the difficulties to communicate with Chinese Landlords, my previous deposit which had been taken from me and he replied me with a text I still have: “I understand my dear .. I hear that a lot about landlords .. but I am good guy”.

This dude’s certainly not the only laowai loser scamming his way through China, but he’s the first I’ve heard of with so many victims. If you have any information about Fedoruk or his crimes, be sure to get in touch with Eva Gao.

So I paid attention when a number of students started talking about a new movie called You are the Apple of My Eye (Chinese title: 那些年，我们一起追的女孩) It’s a new movie, released in 2011, from Taiwan director Giddens Ko who has a badass pen name: 九把刀. It has been a major hit in Taiwan and Hong Kong, breaking all sorts of box office records (including one which was previously held by Kung Fu Hustle) but has not yet been released in mainland China.

“If you want to understand what Chinese high school was like, then you should watch this movie,” my best friend told me. The movie is about a group of high school kids navigating school, life and falling in love. It’s a pretty typical story, slacker boy meets high achieving girl. They hate each other at first, but he saves her one day from humiliation in class (and takes the punishment himself) and afterwards she takes him on as a project, insisting he work harder and study more. Of course the two fall in love, but then life, and emotions, gets in the way. The movie ends several years after college and has, not quite a happy ending, but a happy-ish ending.

It’s a typical coming-of-age story but done so well even I was feeling nostalgic for my youth (despite it being totally different than the movie). The acting is great (just ignore the fact the high school girl is played by a 26-year-old) and the characters, setting and writing is top notch. I watched it with horrible English subtitles, and I still got really immersed into the film so obviously something was done right. It is even quite funny at times.

I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand Chinese youth culture, especially what high school was like for these kids, but I like trying. And I like watching a cute, fun, romantic Chinese film. So I would definitely recommend this film.

Also, what about you? Do you have any good Chinese teen dramas to recommend?

Trailer for You are the Apple of My Eye

My parents are visiting from the US and we celebrated Christmas in traditional Jewish fashion — Chinese food at a restaurant followed by going out to a movie.

I like to play movie roulette. Walk into the theater and buy a ticket for the next show. I hate buying tickets in advance. It seems to me whenever you buy tickets in advance and are enjoying your meal, you have to rush to leave. Perhaps the situation in larger cities like Beijing or Shanghai is different from Haikou (or Baltimore for that matter) but there are always enough empty seats 20 minutes before the show that I and my other similarly inclined friends manage to get seats together.

In the preview I saw for it when I went to see Transformers in 3D, “Flying Swords of Dragon Gate” had English subtitles. Whether or not this was limited just to the previews is a mystery as the copy we saw was all in Chinese. Even so, had I not been inclined to translate for Mom and Dad, it would have been fine as 3D martial arts films don’t really need dialogue to make sense.

In fact, less dialogue helped. I think in playing Mystery Science Theater 3000 with each other during the film, they got more out of it than I did as I was trying to follow the random poetry, classical allusions, and formal language. It’s been a long long time since a film made me feel like a first year language student instead of a translator. When they did speak normal speech it didn’t much move the plot along in understandable directions and the logic behind the black sandstorm, buried city of gold, or why the poor thief was a double for the evil prince remains a mystery. There was also a hero, a lost love of the hero’s who was pretending to be him while riding around the countryside righting wrongs, an apparently pregnant assassin pretending to be a runaway concubine, and a guest house in the desert where the former owners were rumored to have engaged in cannibalism.

Gosh! How did I forget to mention the underground caverns, city of ships, or super thin razorwire that took the place of laserbeams from a scifi, spy, or bank robbery film?

If that weren’t confusing enough the non-Chinese characters (generic barbarians speaking another language and displaying a confusing mash-up of minority characteristics in terrain that didn’t match their apparent ethnicity) started out using translators but switched to not needing them halfway through the film. They also had access to magical poisons.

But 3D knives flew at your head with sufficient regularity to make up for the convoluted plot, and the cinematography was gorgeous.

Well worth watching. Go with friends. Don’t try to figure out what’s being said. You’ll have much more fun that way.

Trailer:

And on YouTube.

China Daily: Foreigners who stay in China for more than six months will be required to give their fingerprints to local police when applying for residence certificates, according to a draft law submitted to the top legislature on Monday.

The draft law on the management of the exit and entry of personnel also empowers the ministries of public security and foreign affairs to decide if a foreigner should leave their fingerprints or other human biological characteristics when they enter China.

The proposal also stipulates that foreigners staying for longer than 180 days should apply for a residential certificate and leave their fingerprints.

Yang Huanning, vice-minister of public security, told lawmakers on Monday morning that the draft law can facilitate increasing people exchanges, while preventing those who should not come remaining outside the country.

The proposal also stipulates that foreign nationals, who own companies and delay wages to workers in China, cannot leave the country.

Foreigners suspected of illegal entry, stay and employment can be detained and investigated for 60 days at the longest if the case is complicated, according to the draft law.

I’m not at all against the government cleaning up the rather dodgy immigration system, but if time, money and energy is going to be spent to improve things, why not put some effort into making it more legitimate, friendly and fluid; rather than making foreigners feel like criminals the moment they arrive in the country. And what the hell is meant by “other human biological characteristics”… hair samples? Blood? Urine? Semen?

More at CRIEnglish.com.

For those of you who haven’t been following the controversy involving Mr. Bale, the movie is a period piece set during 1937′s Rape of Nanjing. Since it’s a war film, and especially since it is a Chinese-made film about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, it naturally involves a lot of violence and, although the camera never focuses directly on it, rape. That’s to be expected, you’ve had fair warning and should know what you’re getting into if you choose to watch this movie. And I think if you are a laowai living in China, you should choose to see it. More about why in a bit. What you’ll not need to worry about is the language of the film: it’s in Chinese, sometimes in the local Nanjinghua, but it has terrific English subtitles.

The film’s been accused of being a propaganda piece made by the Chinese government, and I can understand why those accusations were made. It’s in some ways your typical Chinese war movie: Chinese soldiers = brave and heroic, Japanese soldiers = scum of the earth. To be honest though, if you’ve seen any of the historical photos of what happened in Nanjing, or read some of the Chinese survivors accounts, you might start to understand why the film shows the events that it does.

Yes, it’s very one-sided, but I think it’s understandable considering the atrocities that really did occur in Nanjing, and in China’s current political climate it would be unheard of to release a movie that didn’t portray the Japanese in that way. I think it’s unfortunate that this kind of movie is often the only viewpoint on the Japanese that many Chinese are exposed to. I, of course, do not condone the sort of xenophobic knee-jerk hatred that spews from my students’ mouths every time the subject of Japan comes up, but I really don’t think you can expect anything else out of this kind of movie — made in China, at this time. Watching this movie may least help shed a bit of light on why those reactions happen.

I went into the movie expecting all that. Actually when I first heard that it was a propaganda piece about Nanjing, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see it at all. But then Christian Bale went and decided to try to visit Chen Guangcheng in Linyi, and I suddenly decided it might be worth a watch. You know how, in advertising, they say any publicity is good publicity? I know the Chinese government is not terribly pleased about Bale’s little stunt, but I bet it will increase box office for The Flowers of War! A lot of people are saying that what Bale did was little more than a publicity stunt, and are criticizing CNN for their role in it, but I have to say, I really respect what he tried to do.

Bale came into China knowing basically nothing about the country. The New Yorker states:

“He told reporters that he knew little of the history before starting work on the picture, and, when asked on the red carpet about whether the film was over the top, he blinked, “I haven’t ever considered that question before.”

His character in the movie knew nothing in the beginning, either. He struggled to speak even a few words of Chinese, and he was the stereotypical money-grubbing, drunk, womanizing laowai that I cringe to be associated with. Watching that part of the movie was frustrating. I wanted to shout at Christian for agreeing to such a negative portrayal of us laowai… did he even know that he was playing into all the stereotypes? Sure, he could go back to Hollywood and all that but the rest of us have to live here and get all the dirty looks and negative associations.

But Christian Bale decided to learn something about the country he was in. Not only did he learn something, he decided to try to do something about it. He decided to try to visit Chen Guangcheng, his new personal hero. Hopefully you’ve heard of Chen Guangcheng and how he is being held under house arrest in Linyi. After reading his biography in several posts at Seeing Red in China, he’s become one of my heroes too. Bale caused a ton of controversy, but I think his heart was in the right place. He was trying to use his celebrity to make a difference the way so many of his film personas (Batman?) do. How many of us use the tiny bit of laowai celebrity we have to do something to make a difference?

In Flowers of War, (slight spoiler alert) Bale’s character also has a change of heart, steps up and does something heroic to redeem himself. In spite of my low expectations going in, I kind of ended up liking this movie, because it takes people, real, flawed people from the dregs of society and gives them a chance to do something good, something heroic, something that will make a real and lasting difference.

I don’t know if Christian Bale was really changed. I wonder whether he will continue with his activism, whether his concern about issues in China will lead him to continue doing heroic and perhaps foolish stunts or whether he will go back to his movie star life and forget about life in Linyi, but I have to say, I think he did something worthwhile with his time here, both with the movie and with Chen Guangcheng, and he’s made at least one new fan here in Hainan.