Reflections 2013
Series 20
November 9
China IV: China Potpourri 1

 

Gratifying Confirmation   The original opening section written for this posting is now below. I've decided to open instead in this manner, because of two recent gratifying indicators of confirmation.

 
 

The original mailing list for this website had grown to 132 addresses, the majority of them people I'd met traveling over the past decade or so, plus other friends and family. But I had the feeling that there were too many on the list that either were always less interested, or had become disenchanted with the website. So on August 7 of this year I took the risk of asking readers if they wished to opt in to a new, updated mailing list as subscribers, and was gratified to see the opt-ins rise into the low 60's, a gratifying confirmation of the work we do here.

 
 

Then, on the last Sunday in October, I went to a Mensa reception at New York University, this one in the guise of a Halloween party. There I struck up a conversation with Chun (aka Curtis) a young gentleman from, as luck would have it, Hong Kong. He's recently started a six-month temporary work transfer from the (Spanish) Santander Bank in Hong Kong to its branch in New York. We had a long conversation about Hong Kong, Macau, and China. I was gratified again to see that Chun felt I knew quite a bit about the area, and I had to smile when he was surprised that I'd even heard about the magnate Stanley Ho—but that was information I'd gleaned long ago from the New York Times, just like I first read in the Times least summer about the former Kai Tak Airport being converted to a cruise terminal. Chun and I will continue our conversations at an upcoming dinner here in New York.

 
 

After Chun had had a chance to look at recent (and older) writeups on the website, he wrote me an email, and has given me permission to excerpt some of his comments below, which provide additional gratifying confirmation of our work.

 
 
 I took a deep look at your travel reflections in Hong Kong and Macau and it is very interesting and fascinating to see my home town from your eyes. I am indeed very surprised of how much you know about Hong Kong and Macau, especially about their history, somehow I feel like you know more than I do! As I read through them, I have highlighted a few things that hit me most below.

Kai Tak airport: When you talk about Kai Tak airport, I quickly recalled my childhood memories. In Hong Kong, I live in a place called Kowloon Bay, and it is exactly where the Kai Tak airport was located. When I was small, often do I hear the noises produced by the planes as they arrived / departed. The planes flied [flew] so low that you could actually see the whole plane out from the window!

Escalator in Central: Escalator in Central is another thing that hits me. I didn’t know that the escalator would go downhill from the period 6-10 am. I thought it was always uphill as I never use it before 10 am. Indeed I work in place very close to the escalator and I usually go up the escalator to a place called Soho for lunch. . . .

Calligraphy: When you talk about Calligraphy, it hits me again. When we were small, we all learned about the basics of Calligraphy at school. There are a few different types of writings (scripts) at different time in ancient China (related to what dynasty you were in) and the characters actually look different. . . .

Wong Tai Sin Temple: In its name, Wong is actually a common surname and Tai Sin actually means mighty demi-god, or not demi-god exactly, as Sin actually means the half god that humans transformed into after they did something good. . . . And you are right, incense has to be in the number of 3, but I don’t know exactly why. From what I know, in a temple gods usually come in the number three, one in the middle, and two by the sides, maybe that’s the reason. In Hong Kong, we have a tradition that someone in the village in New Territories will Kau Cim for Hong Kong’s prosperity in Chinese New Year, but I am not too sure of why he can represent us though.
 
 

Travel Parameters   Before we start with some general points about China, I'd like to categorize more precisely the travel parameters I use. I like being a traveler who's more serious about the experience, proceeding in academic mode, as an explorer, a discoverer, an observer, and a student. I enjoy a trip in advance by planning it and its details. After doing the travel, afterward I take a third taste from the wine glass by acting as a reporter and commentator, supplementing earlier research by additional, after-the-fact research, of topics that only came up during the trip. I think the recent posting on Macau is one good demonstration of that.

 
 

Potpourri   You may already know the word "potpourri" (po.pu.RI), as did I, but I now found out its interesting derivation. It began in the 1610s with meat, or rather meats, all mixed together in a spicy stew. The name of this mixed stew was Spanish, olla podrida. The first word means "pot", and, oddly, the whole phrase means "rotten pot". The phrase entered English (check your dictionary) meaning both the stew and also a mixture, or medley, of disparate things.

 
 

It then became a loan-translation into French as pot pourri, same stew, same meaning, same figurative sense of a mixture, same entry into English. The concept then moved from the culinary to the floral, with the French version being conceived now as one word, and by 1749 a potpourri was also understood as a mixture of dried flowers and spices used to freshen a room, so we've moved from a taste to a scent, in English as well. Finally, beyond stews and dried flowers, the primary meaning of potpourri did become figurative, meaning a collection of varied miscellanea. It's in that sense we use it in this and in the next two postings, a potpourri of varied information, mostly on China.

 
 

We've talked about Hong Kong and Macau, and also referred to Taiwan. We now cross into China proper at Lo Wu. It's the same world, and yet a very different world. Before continuing beyond Lo Wu, there are a number of general topics we really need to talk about that mostly apply to China proper, but also to some extent to the other three areas. That's the purpose of this potpourri. We'll start with some topics that are more superficial, perhaps even lighthearted, and then go a little deeper.

 
 

Yuan   Exactly what is the currency in China, and why does it seem to have two names? Is it the yuan or the renminbi? The answer is yes, both. This is a good example where one language's way of categorizing things is different from others.

 
 

If your currency is named dollars, euros, or pounds, and you see a price of 10, you simply say the item costs ten dollars, ten euros, or ten pounds. In China, though, the currency is the renminbi ("people's currency") and when you see a price of 10, you say it costs 10 yuan. Look at it this way. "Yuan" in a sense, means "unit". If it costs 10, it costs 10 units (of currency), or 10 yuan. What currency? Well, the renminbi, of course. In other words, the official name of the currency is renminbi, and that will appear in currency exchanges and banks, but when you use it, you say how many units something costs, and you use the word yuan. It's a little different, but makes sense when you think it through. I can compare it to a country that has a president, fully in charge, as opposed to one that has a prime minister in charge (the yuan) opposite a figurehead king (the renminbi).

 
 

For an acceptable Westernized pronunciation, stress the second syllable so that it rhymes with "[Are] you ON [the phone or not?] Otherwise, I understand it's pronounced yü.EN. In Taiwan, the currency is officially called the Taiwan dollar, but you also deal in yuans. Both formal names are used only in banking circles and in foreign exchange. There is nothing parallel in Hong Kong or Macau.

 
 

A yuan in China is worth about 16 US cents, so ¥100 is about $16, and you calculate from there what ¥50 or ¥200 are worth. It's similar to Hong Kong and Macau, where one HK$ (or petaca) is worth about 13 cents.

 
 

The hànzi used for the word "yuan" means "round", based on the shape of coins. Although Japanese, Korean, and Chinese are not related, they use almost the same word for their currencies. As with many things in East Asia, I would speculate that the word started in Chinese. From now on, think of it as a variant of yuan when you think of the Japanese yen; then drop the Y from yuan to see how closely the Korean wan is related.

 
 

The word "yuan" is also used to express other currencies in Chinese. The US dollar is called the Měiyuán ("American yuan") and the euro is called the Oūyuán, ("European yuan"). Following that logic, you can see that the renminbi is the Chinese yuan. As you've noticed, the symbol is a Y with a double slash, ¥, similar to many monetary symbols that use the double, or sometimes single, slash through a letter.

 
 

Train Classes & License Plates   Even knowing that the Latin (Roman) alphabet is used to write pinyin, I was surprised to see to what extent that alphabet is used in China under the following two circumstances.

 
 

Classes of Chinese trains are designated by Latin letters. Varying in speed, the fastest trains are G, C, or D trains, slower ones are Z, T, and K trains. The Tibet train was a T, as you can see from this ticket, where the train number, T27, is clearly marked. It's the train I took that goes all the way from Beijing to Lhasa (alternate spelling: Lasa), which is written both in hànzi and pinyin. We'll be dealing more shortly with the directions we learned, but you may remember that xi is west, so Beijingxi is Beijing West (Station). Note the sequence of the elements in the date, something I like that is also used elsewhere: 2006-07-29 (July 29). It left at 21:30, the international, and by me also preferred, way to say 9:30 PM. Below that is the price, with the ¥ symbol. From experience I can tell you that this person sat up all night, for two nights, because he was in car 8 seat 87. Our Tibet tickets also had the car number, but then the berth number, four to a cabin. There was also a Chinese symbol telling upper or lower—I know you remember what the symbols have to be—which I could read but the others couldn't until I told them. If you don't remember your symbols, or don't want to look them up, I'm not going to remind you. You'll have to wait until the Tibet posting when all will be reviewed.

 
 

Latin letters are also used on license plates, which the guide pointed out to us when we were in Beijing. This car's plates (Photo by Krokodyl) have the letters L and U along with numbers. But at the beginning, there's always a hanzi character though, telling what city the car is registered in. This car, a caption tells me, is registered in Beijing, just like the one pointed out to us.

 
 

Another after-the-fact discovery, but this one we should have seen coming. Hong Kong, Macau, and China, each have their own license plates. For vehicles from Hong Kong and Macau to travel in mainland China, they have to get separate plates, usually from adjacent Guangdong Province. Conversely, mainland cars need Hong Kong or Macau license plates to travel there. I don't have any information on cars going between Macau and Hong Kong, but experience tells me they'd need separate plates as well. Right now that's pretty moot, but they are building that bridge . . . . Here we have a Hong Kong car (Photo by liuchoi) with a yellow Hong Kong plate, and below it is a Guangdong border crossing plate. These are typically black, and have a second hanzi character replacing the last number.

 
 

Dining in China   Let me distinguish between timing of having a pleasant, leisurely meal and the meal itself. I've stated that when I travel, I enjoy a nice breakfast, do not have a sit-down lunch, since it takes too much out of the sightseeing day, and then enjoy a nice dinner in the evening, when it's time to unwind. You can refer particularly to the previous Macau writeup, but also Hong Kong, to see how this falls into place nicely, giving me a chance to get the maximum out of the day. I only ate an ice cream sandwich out of deference to the heat, and also to relax and cool off for a while in Barra Square.

 
 

Guided tours do not reflect this practice, to my sincere regret. The closest I ever came was in Churchill (2011/28) where the all-day guided tour on the tundra buggy did have an inclusive lunch, but delightfully, it was an onboard soup-and-sandwich affair, which only added to the "picnic" experience of being out on the tundra. Any other day tour I've been on, even good ones, has sadly deferred to time-wasting sit-down lunches, which I suppose is what they feel people want—and maybe they do. I refer to the experience at the geysers in Iceland (2012/21) on the bus tour day trip from the Deutschland. I just checked back to that posting and see I only mentioned in passing the lunch across the road. Perhaps I was trying to suppress the thought, but I'll expand on that here. 1 ½ hours was allowed for the lunch, and a half-hour to cross the road and see the geysers. I was sure I could finish lunch promptly and have more time than that at the geysers. The sit-down lunch was excellent, in a modern restaurant, but the multi-course (!!!) service was glacial, pun intended. At the end, several of us stood up, served our own coffee and got our own desserts, which brought the manager rushing out to serve desserts himself. As it worked out, I only could add 10 minutes to the half-hour allotted. 40 minutes is good, but if I'd been driving, I'd have stayed easily an hour if not more.

 
 

Thus I was not pleased, but resigned, when lunches were listed as included on the China schedule. I indicated in Hong Kong that the two-hour lunch shortened the day considerably, and that was typical. Dinners in the evening would have been preferable to saving time and also have an unwinding time after the busy day. But that's the way it was.

 
 

That said, I have to say that the lunches we did have day after day in China were a top highlight of the trip. The lunches, in Hong Kong included, were always in top restaurants, often in park settings, so popular that they were always filled with other customers. We were brought to private rooms, where the two dozen of us would sit down at three large round tables, each seating eight each, and with a very large plexiglass lazy susan fastened to the center. Platter after platter—a dozen, maybe? I'm not sure—was placed on the turntable, and in the end, few platters usually had anything left. There were dumplings, soup, rice, unusual vegetable dishes, dishes with pork, beef, chicken, sometimes a whole fish (I avoid that), something for every taste, all served family style. Soft drinks and local beer was included, frequently Tsingtao, the most popular beer in China. Another advantage to this type of presentation to my mind is that service family style is very normal in Chinese culture and therefore in Chinese restaurants, something I've also seen in New York's Chinatown, which attracts many Chinese and Chinese-Americans.

 
 

I taught myself to use chopsticks as a teenager visiting Chinatown, and used them throughout China, (also Japan, Taiwan, more). I'm particularly adamant about eating any noodle dish only with chopsticks, actually dumplings, too—well, everything. I was unsure of what experience, if any, other tour members had in using them, but was pleased that almost everyone either knew how or picked up how to do it on the spot. Only one man regularly asked for a fork, although on occasion, when forks were presented during the meal without being requested, some people did switch to them.

 
 

We'll talk about technical tours during the narrative, but just their lunches now. The one-hour useless station visit in Hong Kong notwithstanding, four technical days were scheduled. The first one, in Guangzhou, was a special case that I ended up skipping, but that story comes later. The other three were fine, and all three companies served lunch. Two of them hosted lunches in public restaurants similar to what we'd been doing, but one, at first, seemed to be a little modest. We were brought to the company cafeteria after lunchtime for the employees. It wasn't a matter of joining any cafeteria line or anything like that, nor was it family style. The cafeteria ladies provided table service for us, bringing out individual trays with a variety of modest, but quite satisfactory items. But it was the dessert, served family style afterward, that I remember to this day. It consisted of small pieces of cooked yam, coated with sesame seeds, and probably some honey or syrup on them as well. We went after them with our chopsticks, and I remember the marvelous taste even now.

 
 

I have nevertheless become convinced that there are two levels of Chinese food service, one for Chinese, and the other, thank goodness, for Westerners. I eventually figured out that it was our guide in each case that ordered those dishes served family style, and she avoided ordering most things that the Western palate is not accustomed to.

 
 

When dinner time came, many of us did indulge again, but never as a group. In Nanjing, about half the group did go to a restaurant serving hot pot, but that will be a separate story later. I usually found it best to go to the buffet restaurant in the hotel, where one could pick and choose and avoid items that may be Chinese delicacies, but that otherwise looked like mystery meat. I remember the first evening in Guangzhou, when I ventured into what was billed as the "Chinese restaurant", and asked to look at their menu. It was lengthy, but there were far too many things, translated into English, that I found unappetizing, so I proceeded instead to the hotel buffet.

 
 

But the most memorable dinner took place in Qingdao, where they make the famous Tsingtao beer (we'll explain the differences in the two version of the name later). Most of the group had wandered off elsewhere, there was no buffet in the hotel, and the main "Chinese restaurant" was close to deserted, it being a Monday night. There was only one couple dining when I arrived, and they were from the group, but they left shortly after I arrived, and so I was the sole customer in the restaurant. I was handed this huge, multi-page (bilingual) menu to pick and choose from. I kid you not when I say that the choices included chicken claws, fish maws, duck tongues, and duck hearts. This was not for the faint-hearted, pun intended.

 
 

Nevertheless, along with my Tsingtao beer, I was successful in finding three outstanding items. There was an extensive dumpling menu, and I got a serving that included some 20 small pork dumplings, a favorite. Marvelous, especially with chopsticks. Another dish was two scallion pancakes, which I'd had in New York, but never saw elsewhere in China. Two down, one to go. On the soup page, they offered hot-and-sour soup, by far my favorite of Chinese soups. Following local custom, all three dishes were served at the same time, just as had been happening on the lazy susans at lunch.

 
 

The only unusual thing is that they served that delicious soup in a bathtub. OK, I exaggerate, but he brought it in a soup tureen that was large enough to serve an army. I exaggerate only slightly when I say that if the whole group had suddenly appeared, I could have offered soup to all of them. Normally, when you have more food than you need, you just leave it, but it was SO GOOD! I started dishing up a bowl or two—the individual bowls were petite, Chinese style--and then salvation arrived in the form of Bob from DC, a member of the group. I asked him to join me at my table—why not?—we were the only ones there--and then to help me out with the soup. He ordered a main course, but then the two of us kept ladling hot-and-sour soup out of the "bathtub". We did a yeoman's job between us, although in the end, there still might have been a bowl or two's worth left in the tureen. It was a fun meal, even though Bob and I had the restaurant to ourselves until we left.

 
 

So all in all, including the breakfast buffets in all the hotels, there were three full meals a day. However, with all the daily activity, but also because so much Chinese food is low-calorie, I came home with absolutely no weight gain at all. No weight loss, but no gain, either.

 
 

Squatting Toilets   I was originally considering putting the topic of toilets at the beginning of this posting, as an attention-getting appeal to the junior-high-school-age scatological mentality that secretly lurks in everyone, even though we've actively suppressed it since the age of fourteen.

 
 

Instead, I decided to put it directly following the article on food. This is the point where you may chuckle, while pondering the logic of cause and effect. Being beyond junior-high-school age, we shall review just what the traveler might discover when entering those "male toilets" and "female toilets" we mentioned in the Hong Kong posting. When they say that travel broadens one's experience in life, that thought covers the gamut from lofty, intellectual experience all the way down to the toilet experience, which is equally a part of life.

 
 

I will start with the bottom line (pun intended). Travelers using public facilities around the world will eventually come across another type of toilet than what they are used to. It's at floor level--in actuality set somewhat into the floor. It has two large ceramic, metal, or concrete footprints over a flushable basin with a hole toward the back. There is no place to sit. One squats. This is a squatting toilet. There are often grab bars (like in some bath tubs) adjacent to help with balance, and there are always grab bars in squatting toilets in trains. As with sitting toilets—we can use that phrase to refer to them--males can urinate facing them in standing position, but otherwise, everyone turns around and squats. Some clothing should at very least be judiciously adjusted—better yet, removed.

 
 

They are found almost everywhere, but mostly in a region running from the Mediterranean across the Middle East and Africa, and then across Asia. Sitting toilets are also referred to as Western toilets, but that's not totally accurate, since squatting toilets are found in France and Italy and elsewhere in southern Europe around the Mediterranean. There is a plethora of names for squatting toilets, depending on a traveler's experience. Those who first discovered them in China would call them Chinese toilets, but they are in Japan, where you can call them Japanese toilets, or use any of the country names across Eurasia that you will. I'll stick to calling them squatting toilets, as opposed to sitting toilets.

 
 

It should be said that hotels across the world use sitting toilets in their rooms. It's only when travelers use a public facility that they discover the squatting toilet (in those countries that use them), often as the only choice, sometimes with sitting toilets in adjacent stalls. I would also assume that private homes in those countries primarily use squatting toilets, but I'm not privy to that information (pun most definitely intended).

 
 

Squatting toilets can be found in the south of France. This picture was taken in a motorway service station near Toulouse (Photo by Mintguy). My first experience with one was many years ago in the railroad station in Naples; this one is in Rome (Photo by Alex1011). The only public building I've used one in since Naples was in the Tibet Museum in Lhasa. Otherwise I've used them only on Asian trains, on the overnight train I took in Japan, plus the several overnights on the Tibet train. This is a squatting toilet (Photo by Wrightbus) in a Chinese train. Notice the grab bar. Here's another one, with a sink, (Photo by Yaohua2000) and also a grab bar.

 
 

Actually, I have to admit that I became nosy in China and on occasion, may have looked weird when I checked out stalls in male toilets, to see what was there—and no one else was about. (That's a reporter's duty isn't it?) The toilet a block away from the Man Mo Temple in Hong Kong, the one with the "Self-Serving Hand Sanitizer", had squatting toilets, as did the extensive facilities at Wong Tai Sin Temple. They're really the norm in the area.

 
 

I will add that, while Chinese trains usually had a choice between kinds of toilet, I always chose the squatting toilet, for several reasons. One is a "when in Rome" travel philosophy (is there a Rome pun there, too?). Another is the general concern about cleanliness of toilet seats in public facilities. If there's no seat, there's nothing to be concerned about. Thirdly, while I do not advocate we all install one of these, I'm nevertheless convinced that the position used is much healthier. Evacuation is always very prompt, so there's no need to set up a bathroom library, and reading would be awkward anyway in that position.

 
 

I would have thought it's impossible to find a squatting toilet in the United States, but now I have to say they're ALMOST nonexistent, because I understand this one is located somewhere in Michigan (Photo by Scottperry). It has an exposed flushing mechanism such as can still be found in the US, but I would guess it's located in some public building that serves an Asian clientele.

 
 

At this point it should be added that, while some readers may be surprised that squatting toilets exist, many of us have had a similar experience when outdoors. Perhaps when hiking in the woods, perhaps when driving in the open countryside, perhaps as a scouting or military experience, many of have had a call of nature with no public toilet available. So they found a convenient tree or bush for privacy, and did the natural thing, with the sincere and healthy emphasis on "natural". Historically, the only indoor toilets were chamber pots, so there we have it again. Perhaps in history museums you've seen what looked like a wooden chair on display, but when the seat was lifted, there was a chamber pot below. This would perhaps be the forerunner of sitting toilets, beginning a deviation from the original, more natural stance.

 
 

Consider this about squatting in general: when toddlers (Photo by Walter de Maria) are set down on the floor or ground to begin to play, they instinctively move directly from standing to squatting, rarely sitting, and can hold the squatting position (Photo by Matthew Hale) for quite a while. Then they'll stand, move about, and squat again somewhere else. It's perfectly natural. Most Western adults however rarely squat, if at all, usually to reach something on the lower supermarket or library shelf. When waiting for someone or for a bus, the only cultural alternative in the West to standing is sitting, almost never squatting.

 
 

But also note this: many, if not most Western adults CANNOT squat properly any more, since they've lost that childhood ability. Some can still do it, such as this coal miner in Virginia (Photo by Jack Corn), but coal miners are used to it because squatting is a stance often used in the mines, since standing erect can be difficult. Can you do what he's doing? Perhaps if you lean against a wall, but that's almost tantamount to sitting, isn't it?

 
 

How do toddlers squat so easily? Humans are built that way, and the young still have the ability to do a complete, flat-footed, heels-on-ground squat. Since Western adults culturally downplay and avoid squatting as a stance, they often lose the ability to squat with the heels on the ground, and always squat tip-toe. This usually requiring holding on so as not to lose their balance, or even yielding and shifting to a kneeling position instead. Standing tip-toe quickly becomes uncomfortable; in a sense it's pseudo-standing. If squatting on tip-toe does the same, it's really just pseudo-squatting.

 
 

Most Western adults lose proper squatting ability and can only pseudo-squat because their Achilles tendons have foreshortened substantially since childhood. This is due to the custom of sitting on chairs, but also wearing heels, the higher the heels the worse. It's a matter of "use it or lose it", and most of us have lost the ability to rest in a real squatting position, not on a tip-toe pseudo-squat.

 
 

That is not necessarily the case with most Asians and Africans. Perhaps you have seen pictures of Asians or Africans resting by the side of the road, maybe waiting for a bus or having a smoke, not sitting, since the ground may be wet or dirty, but squatting. It's a cultural thing, and they do it regularly and haven't lost the ability. I saw this happen a couple of times in the quiet back-street hutongs of Beijing.

 
 

I suppose the fact that most Westerners can no longer squat properly but do so on tip-toe is the major reason they may have an aversion to a squatting toilet.

 
 
 You would think that this is the first discussion about toilets we've had, but that isn't so. I'm a great believer in bidets, and had one installed in my home, but I had only read in the paper some time ago about a new Japanese invention, a combination bidet-toilet, that is, a bidet built into a (sitting) toilet. I never saw one in Japan in 2009, but the previous year in Honolulu (2008/24) the hotel I chose in Waikiki happened to be a Japanese hotel, and had this automaton of a toilet in my suite. It had a console in an arm on the side. One button caused a fine, extremely well-placed jet of water to spray from the back of the toilet seat, and another one from the front, as needed. As I recall, a button caused warm, drying air to be blown afterward, and I think another could warm the seat from the start. Finally, a button flushed the toilet and turned it off. In my opinion, this device should be awarded some sort of a toilet Oscar, because it was such a unique and comfortable experience.
 
 

High-Speed Rail   Standard highways were supplemented in the mid-20C with motorways for speed, and shrank distances. Since 1964, when Japan built its first shinkansen, often called a bullet train in English, many other countries have been supplementing their regular rail lines with high-speed rail (HSR). Some countries are way ahead, many are woefully behind.

 
 

Those that are way ahead are in Europe (Map by BIL--click), notably France, Germany, Italy, Spain--I've been on a number of HSR routes in Europe--and in East Asia (Map by WouterH--click), particularly China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea. Lying and the crossroads of Europe and Asia is Turkey, which is progressing well in expanding its HSR routes. When at one of the train car-body factories in China, the trainsets they were working on were meant for Turkey, with markings in Turkish. Note on both these maps that there are different levels of HSR, with different speeds on each kind of route, each route having been built to the standards for a given speed, with corresponding trainsets that run on them. In East Asia, I didn't have time in South Korea to take its HSR train, but in Japan I've been on the rails between Sapporo and Fukuoka, many of them HSR, and also on the one HSR line in Taiwan. As for which HSR lines (and others) I've now been on in China, and at which HSR speed levels, we'll discuss that when the narrative picks up after these introductory topics in the current postings.

 
 

HSR IN CHINA But do keep one thing in mind. Japan's HSR may be famous because you've heard of the Shinkansen ("bullet trains"). You've possibly heard of France's HSR because the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) is so well-known. But as surely as Macau has surpassed Las Vegas in casinos, China is surpassing everyone else in HSR to become king. Defining HSR as anything over 200 km/h (124 mph), China has, as of December 2012, the longest HSR network in the world, adding up to some 9,300 km (5,800 mi), and it's the largest transportation infrastructure project ever built. And it started only in 2007.

 
 

That total includes the longest single continuous HSR line in the world, which presently runs between Beijing and Guangzhou, but as discussed earlier, it's already been extended to Shenzhen on the Hong Kong border, and will reach the West Kowloon Station in Hong Kong, which is under construction. When finished in 2015, it will be 2,230 km (1,390 mi) long, and will be the only HSR in China to cross a border requiring immigration and customs clearance. It should be noted that this line was originally designed to run up to 350 km/h (217 mph) but has been temporarily downgraded to a 300 km/h (186 mph) maximum, which was what it was when I rode (about half of) it.

 
 

To solidify the image of what we've just said, copy-and-paste in a separate window this map of China's fastest HSR lines. It's dated 2012, and last year's map of China HSR is like yesterday's newspaper, but it does serve a purpose:

http://www.johomaps.com/as/china/china_hsr.html

 
 

Its purpose is that it's limited to the fastest of the fast, which stand out clearly, so this map can serve as an introduction to the rail lines. In addition to four other segments, the line from Beijing via Wuhan in the center to Guangzhou is clear, plus the already-built extension to Shenzhen and the planned further extension to West Kowloon in Hong Kong. You can see that our trip from Guangzhou South to Wuhan, where we changed to an eastbound train, is about half the distance of that longest HSR line in the world. You can also see the regular train we took to Guangzhou from the MTR station at Hung Hom, and the one we discussed from Guangzhou to Zhuhai, for access to Macau.

 
 

Typical, however, is the fact that the existing conventional railway line largely parallels the HSR line between Beijing and Guangzhou. That's important, and it significance should not be overlooked. In the US, when Interstate highways were built, they often paralleled the older US highways for much or most of the way, and both are still used, each for its own purpose. It's the same with rail. In addition, 155 pairs of trains run daily on new line in opposite directions, but there are still 183 pairs on the parallel conventional line. There are a lot of people in China, as you may have heard. (!!!)

 
 

The newest segment of this longest HSR route just opened last December and it was this segment we took, between Guangzhou and Wuhan. It had reduced travel time from about 11 hours to the 3h40 it took us. Right after this segment opened, the New York Times reported on 27 December 2012 that the entire route covered in about 8 hours a distance about equal to New York to Key West or London to Belgrade. It said that older trains on the parallel rail line take 21 hours, while Amtrak covered New York Miami, a shorter distance in about 30 hours. It was pointed out that China now has 37% of all the HSR track in the world, and that China wants to raise its HSR total to 18,000 km (11,185 mi) by 2015, in a total of 120,000 km (74,565 mi) of all kinds of track. That 18,000 goal breaks down to 6,700 km (4,200 mi) of track capable of accommodating train speeds of 300–350 km/h (190–220 mph) and 11,300 km (7,000 mi) of track for train speeds of 200–250 km/h (120–160 mph). I've since heard that by 2020 they want 20,000 km (12,427 mi) of HSR track, at which time HSR should reach 90% of the (rather considerable) population of China, at which time it will become the largest, fastest, and most technologically advanced HSR system in the world.

 
 

THE 4+4 NATIONAL HSR GRID For a quick visual image of what is being planned, picture a tic-tac-toe grid with two lines in each direction, then increase it to a larger grid with four lines in each direction. This second grid is meant to criss-cross China as an overlay on the conventional rail system. Picture four north-south HSR routes and four east-west ones, and you'll have the idea, although the reality is more fanciful than that. These routes are passenger-designated lines (PDL). Some of these lines, particularly on the southeast coast, link cities that never had any rail before. Those particular lines will also be allowed to carry freight, since they are the only rail available.

 
 

Let's look at a map of the 4+4 grid (Map by Alancrh), and if you're ready to play extended tic-tac-toe, you'll be in trouble, since the 4+4 concept actually forming a grid will seem a bit fanciful. For the N-S routes, click to enlarge the map in the northeast, to find in purple the ● Beijing-Harbin HSR line; then in dark green is the ● Beijing-Shanghai HSR line. In gray there is a link between these two that avoids Beijing. Then in yellow there's the ● Hangzhou-Fuzhou-Shenzhen HSR line. This is the line providing rail service where much did not exist before. (You'll also note that the inset box with the map legend does indicate that the yellow route actually starts in Shanghai.)

 
 

It becomes obvious that these three lines, while separate from each other, form a de facto single coastal route along the China Sea. Finally, down the middle of the country, we come to our old friend, in orange, the ● Beijing, Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong HSR line, the longest, and the one we've been discussing. Thus, what they're calling four N-S routes is more practically two rail corridors, one coastal and one further inland.

 
 

The east-west routes are more obviously in tiers. In purple is the short ● Qingdao-Taiyuan HSR route. Below that in light green is the ● Xuzhou-Lanzhou HSR line; I saw this under construction on a viaduct when coming back from Tibet on the regular train, in the Lanzhou area. Then in light blue comes the ● Shanghai (shown only as of Nanjing)-Wuhan-Changdu HSR line; now you can see why we changed at Wuhan to go on to Nanjing, later Shanghai. And finally, in dark blue, what visually seems to be the longest of the east-west lines, the ● Shanghai-Kunming HSR line.

 
 

The legend also describes three standard, not HSR lines, that however, are passenger-dedicated, a gold one between Chengdu and Guangzhou connecting three major HSR routes; a very light blue one between Lanzhou and Ürümqi in the Muslim Uyghur Autonomous Region, which serves as an extension of the light green line, and, in red, a line connecting Hefei and Fuzhou, which serves to extend the dark green line from Beijing to the formerly underserved southeast coast. It's a formidable national plan.

 
 

We have an interesting "time map" (Map by Yaohua2000) that shows the projected HSR network by 2020 (plus the other PDL lines) and the rail travel time from Beijing to each of the provincial capitals. You can see that Hong Kong/Macau/Guangzhou is within the 8-hour limit already mentioned, and Shanghai within 4. Distant Ürümqi is 12, and even Lhasa, in Tibet, which is too high for HSR service, is 24, less than the two overnights I had from Beijing.

 
 

Finally, we'll show this somewhat schematic Rail Map of China (Map by Howchou) that we'll be using from now on showing major railways and cities. Click to note in gray the conventional railways that run under 200 km/h (124 mph), including the ones to Lhasa (Tibet) and Ürümqi. Then, after this gradual introduction, you should be able to recognize the faster routes, or at least, the parts of the faster routes that are completed.

 
 

What particularly pleases me about this map is its currency. It's updated to 26 September 2013. While I left China on the 29th, I had my last train ride, from Lhasa to Xi'an, from the 26th to the 27th. How is that for a map being current?

 
 

Sinitic Languages   Don't be afraid of the word "sinitic". We already know that the local name (endonym) for China is Zhōngguó, and that the exonym "China" traveled across Eurasia to Europe over the many iterations of the Silk Road; its earliest European usage was in Italian, by Marco Polo. It appears in European languages in related forms (Chine, Cina, Kina), but was adopted into Late Latin in the form Sina, most likely because Latin didn't have any sibilant (hissing sound) closer than S to represent the name. It's because of that defect in Latin that we're stuck with these forms in S to refer to China.

 
 

We are aware of combining forms for countries like Anglo-, Franco-, Italo-, Greco-, Hispano-, Russo- and others. The weirdest one in the set is Luso-, which few people recognize as the combining form for Portugal, related to the Roman province of Lusitania (we also remember the ship of that name). Luso- might appear, for instance, in referring to Luso-Brazilian relations.

 
 

But the second weirdest one in my book is Sino- to refer to China, based on it being Sina in Latin. For instance, there were two Sino-Japanese Wars (not *Chino-Japanese Wars) the second one leading into, and becoming a part of, WWII. But the root exists across the board when referring to China. The study of things Chinese is not *Chinology, but Sinology; a person who studies China is not a *Chinologist, but a Sinologist. And the variations of the Chinese languages are not *chinitic languages, but sinitic languages.

 
 

PRIMACY OF (SPOKEN) LANGUAGE To help explain a certain situation in Chinese, we should point out something about English and other languages. Humans learn to speak naturally in childhood. It's the primary form of communication. Give someone instructions, and you'll most likely speak them rather than write them. After some years, young people are taught the written code that has developed for that language, in other words, they learn to read. This written code is secondary to speech, and is usually referred to as the "written" language, causing regular language to form the retronym (back formation) "spoken" language.

 
 

The problem is this. Because the "spoken" language came naturally, but the "written" language had to be learned, many lay people mistakenly perceive writing as primary. Expressions such as "that word isn't in the dictionary" is a putdown for new words, as though they didn't have a right to exist. Another indication is so-called spelling pronunciations. The word "cupboard" lost its written P years ago—though it's still written--so that the word is normally pronounced "cubbard", but I knew someone who went out of her way to actually pronounce it as "cup-board", in the belief of written primacy. This is the mind-set of many. So often one hears about how a "letter is pronounced" rather than how a sound is represented in written form.

 
 

SPOKEN AND WRITTEN CHINESE This out-of-balance spoken/written situation is even more pronounced in Chinese. Not counting the other major languages spoken in the west of China, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongolian, what is perceived as "Chinese" is actually a set of related languages, the sinitic languages. We'll list them in a moment, but we can mention the one with most speakers, Mandarin, and the other one that most people have heard of, Cantonese. The sinitic languages are not mutually intelligible without extended practice, and thus have no basis for being called dialects of each other. In addition, most are themselves subdivided into dialects of their own. For this reason, most linguists call these varieties separate languages, however, sinitic in nature. But the linguists we're talking about here are international ones, mostly outside of China.

 
 

Within China, though, most Chinese lay speakers—and even many Chinese linguists—persist in maintaining the fiction that the sinitic languages are really varieties of some single Chinese language, and insist on calling them dialects of Chinese. This is done exclusively for ideological and political reasons. "Political" here is not a reference to the current regime in China, but for a general feeling of national unity—if it's the same country, it's got to be the same language, right? The term "dialect" is stretched in meaning so that all the languages are thought of as major variety dialects, and the actual dialects of all those languages are thought of as minor variety dialects.

 
 

To further this fiction, Chinese lean on the written language even more heavily than English speakers and others do on theirs, as mentioned above. It is a common perception among the Chinese that the written language is common across the country (one language!) and that said written language appears regionally in a variety of distinct spoken forms, with the lay notion that they're not languages. I have come across a number of examples where, when I asked about a word, the first reference was made to its hànzi character, and then the word was discussed.

 
 

I can grudgingly accept all this as a cultural phenomenon attempting to show national cohesiveness. But that's all a cultural perception and not scientific fact. Moving from the humanities to the sciences it becomes obvious that unity argument is all voodoo science and does not reflect reality.

 
 

WHICH LANGUAGES ARE THESE? Let's take a look at this map of sinitic languages (Map by Wyunhe). We should be sure to eliminate the three cultural areas in the west that are not related. In beige to the north is the Mongolian area that's part of China; in beige to the south is the bulk (but not all) of the Tibetan area. Between these two is the cultural phenomenon, the area between plateaus populated by these peoples where the Silk Road ran. The third area we're excluding is the Muslim Uyghur area centered in Ürümqi, where the Han Chinese over time have extended their influence along the Silk Road corridor and have put a very strong layer of Chinese over the local population, which is why this suppressed area is periodically in the news because of political disturbances.

 
 

Otherwise, the rest of the map covers the sinitic languages. It's obvious that Mandarin, in brown, is the largest. The speakers of Mandarin alone come to 955M, and that number is almost triple the number of English speakers worldwide, 359M. (My totals, which are from 2010, will appear updated from the totals on the map). Jin, in dark brown, with 48M speakers, is considered by some a separate language, but most classify it as a variety of Mandarin. This is also convenient, since all the other languages group themselves together on the southeast coast.

 
 

Of the other sinitic languages, three are spoken by particularly large populations. In addition to their actual name, they are also referred to by the region they're spoken in. In order of approximate number of speakers, they are Wu, or Shanghaiese in gray, with 80M speakers—compare the Wu total with Korean or Vietnamese, which each have 76M speakers; Min, or Fujianese in blue, with 60M—Turkish has 63M; and Yue, or Cantonese in purple, with 59M—Italian also has 59M. (Yue is pronounced as in [What do] you weigh?)

 
 

There are smaller totals (smaller, but not really small—in China, population figures never seem to be small) for Xiang, or Hunanese in teal at 38M, Hakka in light brown at 31M, Gan in dark beige at 22M and Ping in dark purple at 2.3M. Below are some comments on three of the sinitic languages.

 
 

MIN Of these languages, apparently Min has more diverse dialects than any other. It's typically subdivided into five to nine dialects verging on languages of their own. Most prominent are Min Dong and Min Nan. (You should remember the directional vocabulary we learned when reading about the Pearl River Delta, bei, dong, nan, xi, because we're going to need it later, as we do here. I'll remind you that by coincidence, they're alphabetical going clockwise from north.)

 
 

CANTONESE Again, Yue, under the name Cantonese, is one that's well-known in the west, as there was much emigration from the area. These are the dialect areas of Yue/Cantonese (Map by Kanguole), except for the gold and terra-cotta areas in the northwest, which are Ping areas. Technically, the name Yue should be used for the entire language, and Cantonese should be limited to the pink area in the Pearl River Delta, including Guangzhou, which does also have the western name Canton. However, in common speech, it's all called Cantonese. But it should also be realized that the actual Cantonese, in pink, is the prestige dialect, not only in Guangzhou, but also in Hong Kong and Macau. While Mandarin is official in mainland China, Cantonese is de facto official in Hong Kong (with English) and Macau (with Portuguese), but most interestingly, it's always referred to as "Chinese". It always made me smile to see references in Hong Kong to announcements being in "English and Chinese", with no reference to the fact that this "Chinese" was Cantonese.

 
 

MANDARIN There are also of course a number of dialects of Mandarin (Map by Kanguole), and Jin is also included here, in data from the Language Atlas of China (1987).

 
 

Mandarin is the language spoken by the most people over the largest area, but it has always been associated with governmental use because the historic capitals of China were in the Mandarin area, including Xi'an, Nanjing, and Beijing. But until the mid-20C, most Chinese people living in southeastern China spoke only their local language.

 
 

During the Imperial period that ended in 1911, Literary Chinese, also known as Classical Chinese, was the official language. But then in the early 20C during the period of the Republic of China, that was replaced by vernacular Chinese, in other words, by everyday language. But the vernacular chosen was based on northern, Mandarin, speech, still the area of government. In the 1930's a standard national language was adopted, and the pronunciation was based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin.

 
 

Today, the result is bilingualism in southeastern China (not including Hong Kong and Macau) where most well-educated adults can speak both Mandarin and the local sinitic language, such as Cantonese, and others will have at least a good passive knowledge of Mandarin, as well as speaking the local language. The local language would be used among family and friends, and Standard Mandarin in appropriate situations. In Hong Kong (and Macau), where English (or Portuguese) is the alternate language to standard Cantonese ("Chinese") there is nevertheless wide recognition of Mandarin as well. To determine just how accurate my perception was of the extent Mandarin is used in Hong Kong in addition to Cantonese, I returned to our new in-house source once again, checking with Chun, as earlier. Here is his second email verbatim responding to Mandarin use in Hong Kong:

 
 
 That's a very good question actually. I think younger people (<20 years old) in Hong Kong can speak Mandarin better in general, because they somehow took some lessons at school. Since the handover of HK to mainland China in 1997, more and more secondary schools (but not all) offer Mandarin classes to their students, usually for 3 years from Form 1-3. If their Cantonese can be rated as a 10, I guess in general an average young HKer can speak Mandarin at around 6.

But for those who haven't taken any classes, they tend to speak Mandarin by just trying to twist their Cantonese towards the imaginary “Mandarin accent”, but often they have the wrong pronunciation.

My parents can speak some basic Mandarin, by memorizing how the words are pronounced when they watch tv programmes. When they have never heard the pronunciation, or if they cannot remember, usually they would just twist their Cantonese towards the “Mandarin accent”. But as you can imagine, often they have it wrong.

For me, I didn't learn Mandarin at school and I have never taken any classes to learn it systematically. I too learnt by watching Mandarin speaking tv programmes but additionally I have some Taiwanese friends and mainland Chinese colleagues, so I kind of picked it up by talking and memorizing. My boss in HK is from Shanghai, and I used to have some mainland Chinese customers, so I got more opportunities to practice. But as I did not learn it systematically (by pinyin), sometimes I have the wrong pronunciation too.

If I score 10 for Cantonese, I would probably rate myself a 8 for Mandarin and 6.5 for English.

These are all about speaking. For reading and writing, I think the sentence structures are more or less (say 80%) the same. The only differences are probably for them they use certain phrases more often, while we tend to use others, some special expressions used in different parts of China, and of course the difference between Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Hope you find it useful.
 
 

I hope you find Chun's point of view helpful. I wrote him back pointing out the major error he brings up. You see how well he writes English and I had a long conversation with him when we first me. He's very modest when he says his English is a 6.5. I told him his oral and written English skills approach native fluency, and is certainly a 10. But I fully understand what he's saying about speaking Mandarin, which is essentially "faking it". I've had similar experiences. After learning basics of Italian, I found I was able to use my strong Spanish skills to express myself in Italian to some extent by faking it, and the same worked for Portuguese. And expressing myself in Dutch or Swedish is generated by an underlying knowledge of German, modified after learning the basics of the other two.

 
 

But every English speaker reading this, whatever their second language skills, can immediately exercise their language "faking it" skills by working with Middle English. Finish this posting, and at the end I'll remind you where to find what you need to do it.

 
 

The fact that it's Cantonese and Mandarin that are known best to Westerners is indicated by the fact that both those names are not only of European origin, but both are specifically Portuguese. If you look at older Wade-Giles spellings for Guangzhou, you'll find both Kuang-chou and Kwangchow. With quite a bit of imagination, you might be able to visualize how the Portuguese got Cantão out of that (kuang/kwang/can and chou/chow/tão). Back in Europe, the nasal diphthong ÃO was changed via a nasal N into ON, and thus Canton is the Westernized name. However the name of the language, Cantonese, is the Western name. Locally, in Mandarin it's Guǎngdōnghuà, and in Cantonese it's Gwóngdūngwah.

 
 

Standard Mandarin is known in China as Pǔtōnghuà. So where did the west get the name Mandarin? Through the Portuguese again, at first, just to mean "Chinese official". The word has roots going back to Sanskrit mantra "counsel" and mantrin- "advisor", then moved to Hindi and Malay mantri "minister of state", after which it reached Portuguese. It becomes more obvious why an obscure should word should have caught on with the Portuguese. In Portuguese (and in Spanish) mandar means "to command" (notice MAND in both words) and that word, overlaid on the older form influenced the Portuguese designation of a Chinese official as a mandarim (remember the Casa do Mandarim in Macau), which became mandarin in other European languages. It was in c 1600 that the meaning spread from designating the officials themselves to designating the version of Chinese those officials spoke.

 
 

China continues to urge the use of Pǔtōnghuà (Standard Mandarin), in non-Mandarin sinitic areas. This is the façade of a school in Guangdong Province, (Photo by Cheezexyz) the heart of the Cantonese language. I'm informed that the writing means "Please speak Standard Chinese / Please write standard characters". "Standard characters" refers to the Simplified Characters used in China, but not in Hong Kong or Macau, where traditional characters are still the norm.

 
 

This is a high school in Yangzhou (Photo by Vmenkov). I understand the yellow sign says "Speak Pǔtōnghuà; welcome guests from everywhere; speak politely; send a true message". I was curious, and looked up Yangzhou. It's northeast of Nanjing, and nearby; and also northwest of Shanghai, but further away. When Yangzhou was prosperous in the past, people spoke Lower Yangzi Mandarin, which was particularly close to the official language of the courts of the last two dynasties, Ming and Qing in nearby Nanjing, when it was the capital. When Yangzhou declined, it began to associate itself more with nearby Wu, and adopted the Taihu Wu dialect of Shanghai. Therefore, it's particularly interesting here to see the government promoting Mandarin again.

 
 

"MANDARIN" EXTENDED There are two extended meanings of "Mandarin". One involves the mandarin orange (Photo by Scott Ehardt), which we most frequently see in segments, canned, but which look like this when whole (Photo by Allen Timothy Chang). They got their name because of their resemblance to the color of the robes worn by mandarins. I now find there's good reason why the canned segments seem so perfect and easy-to-use, with no waste to be had. It's because after removal of the skin and pith, the segments are further "peeled" chemically. They're scalded in hot water to loosen the membranes and additional pith, then bathed in a lye solution (!!!) which actually digests the membranes and pith, leaving the segments picture-perfect, with all waste removed. Then they are rinsed several times in plain water (thank goodness).

 
 

The other extended meaning involves the Mandarin duck, where the male has magnificent coloring, but where the female is quite plain (Photo by Roland zh). Despite searching, I cannot find why they are named after the mandarins, unless it's the regal look of the male. But I wanted to include them here, because of the insight I got in the Hong Kong Museum of Art (2013/18). I saw there exemplars of both the fantastic and real creatures that are used to decorate traditional Chinese art, and the real creatures specifically mentioned were the bat, deer, crane, and Mandarin duck—not just any duck, but the Mandarin duck. Pursuing this, I find that Mandarin ducks, unlike other ducks, are believed to form lifelong couples, and therefore are a symbol of love and fidelity. For that reason they frequently appear in Chinese art, and are symbolically used in Chinese weddings.

 
 

"Faking" Middle English   In 2007/11, we discussed Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales. Scroll down to the last entry, which discusses the Tales, and review the hints I put together, which were corroborated by what I read that a professor of Middle English had told his students. Then read some lines of the Prolog aloud. I'll bet you could fool Chaucer himself.

 
 
 
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