Encountering China by Duncan Campbell

Author:Duncan Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Massey University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

But what of the language-learning experience? Appearances sometimes to the contrary, learning Chinese in fact remained the primary goal for the majority of foreign students. Most language programmes ran Monday to Friday, with three to four hours of class time each morning, and afternoons left for review and preparation. There was little variety in learning materials back then, and our lessons were dominated by the ubiquitous Practical Chinese Reader textbook series, which chronicled the everyday lives of two foreign students in China. For many Chinese language students, the names Palanka and Gubo (or ‘Gubbo’ as an Australian classmate insisted on calling him) will be as familiar as old best friends — or worst enemies. Recently looking through the revamped New Practical Chinese Reader, I noted the homage paid to the original series with the introduction of a new character, Libo, evidently the offspring of ‘Gubbo’ and his then Chinese girlfriend Ding Yun. (Although presumably they were married before Libo arrived on the scene.)

Another language learning rite of passage was the sometimes awkward transition from speaking Chinese in the classroom to using it in real life, which in Shanghai was exacerbated by the locals’ heavily accented Mandarin. Like many foreign students, including those who had already completed entire Chinese language courses at their home-country universities, I arrived in China with limited oral fluency, and in the early days had to overcome considerable self-consciousness before managing to gradually extend my verbal skills beyond those of a small child.

Even as my language ability improved, the additional effort required to articulate myself in Chinese was a regular reminder of the language power imbalance that exists for a non-native speaker in a predominantly monolingual environment. The lived experience of always being on the back foot when using Chinese forced a much deeper acknowledgement of the default privilege I had of being a native speaker of English, the universal lingua franca. On the flip side, I also came to see the downsides of native English-speakers remaining monolingual, including the tendency towards more-fixed perspectives; on that score alone the revitalisation of te reo underway today is an enormously positive shift in New Zealand’s national identity.

As everyone will tell you, the surest way to improving your Chinese is by making Chinese friends. However, it did take time, and a few unsuccessful ‘language buddy’ experiments at my own university, for me to realise that more initiative would be required to find people whose company I genuinely enjoyed. It was with this in mind that I co-opted a fellow student to help me ‘infiltrate’ the Shanghai Theatre Academy (one of the top film schools in China), which led to us gate-crashing their in-house screening of The Last Emperor one Saturday night. As it turned out, after the screening we somehow managed to strike up a conversation with three graduate students at the Academy, and they were to become good friends for the remainder of my time in Shanghai.

Two of them, Yutao and Dehui, were acting graduates with the sort of good looks that today would not be out of place in an Asian boy band.

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