Music Meme #6
Aug. 27th, 2010 09:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
exhilarationDay 06 - A song that reminds of you of somewhere
So... this is some CantoPop. Three guesses as to where this reminds me of :)
The answer to this is Hong Kong of course. It's not that I particularly like this song (or ANY CantoPop really) but it sure is freakin' EVERYWHERE. I mean, this song and several others as well, and some Western music besides. Just like here, really. There are some songs you just can't escape unless you like... live in a cave or something. When you're a tourist? You most certainly are not hanging out in caves. So I very well might have been subjected to more CantoPop than the average resident of Hong Kong, because of courseI was always out and around and going places and seeing things. And like I said we did a LOT of socializing in Hong Kong because suddenly it was easy again! Because people speak English (or really like to try!) in Hong Kong. And besides there are British people there, and British pubs and stuff, but they're British people who have lived their entire lives in Hong Kong. And that's pretty fascinating too.
Finding this song on youtube? Not all that easy, lol. Fortunately it's got some English lyrics so eventually I was able to track it down. And that's Cantonese he sings in, so of course I don't even understand any of the words besides the English ones.
So... the thing about traveling around is that sometimes you pick up extra people. Which is good, because it's more fun, and you can share accommodations and stuff. And Hong Kong is expensive, so, that is a very good thing. And it's pretty cool to experience new things right along with someone else, who is coming at it with a totally different perspective than you are because they're from a different culture - from yours AND from where you are.
But... this also means that it can be hard to find some time to be alone. You know. ALONE. Like a boyfriend and girlfriend like to be. BUT. There are hotels where you can rent a room by the hour, oh yes there are :P
And so. There is one totally unforgettable night in Hong Kong, that started with a dinner out (of British food, with British people) and continued to a night club (which was... crazy... for lack of a better word to describe it) and degraded into wandering around in the middle of the night, me and B wandering away from the group, renting a hotel room (for an hour) and then... I mean by that time? It was like five in the morning. And this song was playing in the taxi that was taking us back to the place we were staying.
So... sometimes... I feel like I leave pieces of my heart all over the place. Or maybe not my heart - maybe that's a little too corny. Maybe it's more like pieces of my subconsciousness. Like how sometimes I'm not really sure where I am when I'm not quite awake - am I in my bedroom at my parents' house, with my mom and dad eating breakfast in the kitchen while I sleep in? Am I in my dorm room? The old house with the orange walls, with the smell of ink and paint clinging to everything? Am I in Cape Town, is the sun streaming down with that brilliant irreplicable light, beating against my windows forcing itself inside because somehow it's spring IN NOVEMBER? Am I in Italy, can I hear the motorini driving past my apartment, horns honking, announcements blaring - am I in Tongshan? A stranger in a strange family? Looking down at dirt under my feet that looks like no dirt I've ever stood on before? Feeling huge and tall and WHITE?
I was in Philadelphia yesterday. Let me tell you what I now know about that city: it is small. It is sparsely populated, poorly lit, and has short buildings. Never in my life have I felt intimidated in New York City. It's NYC. I get it. It's big, it spans several islands, has an extensive subway system - and some very, very tall buildings. Okay. I have never stood in the middle of the sidewalk just staring up gaping because omg I've never seen a skyscraper before. Even the time (whenever that was) that I actually HAD never seen a skyscraper before.
Okay Chinese cities are different.
I've been to Cairo. Didn't find the size or population of that city to be particularly overwhelming. The culture - yeah, I did actually, quite a bit. But not the size. It's a huge city. But it's not bigger than New York.
I think my American self thought that New York City was the biggest city in the world. I mean I knew it wasn't. In theory. But I guess I just figured... yeah well even if it was bigger, how would that really be different?
Ohhhhh yeah.
So we flew in to Shanghai. We spent like almost a week in Shanghai. I was... I mean I was overly cautious and obsessively careful on the plane and really? The flight over I survived pretty well (although getting on another plane right away probably would've wrecked it for me) so by the evening of the second day we were there - I was ready to go see what there was to be seen.
OMFG there is more in Shanghai than can be seen in a million years. Not only that but - standing in one place and just looking around? There is more to be seen than what MY small-town American brain can process! And it is PACKED with people. When you ask me how was Shanghai my first response will always be "crowded." I mean I know World Expo is there, so that's not even the regular population, that's everyone from all over Asia (and the rest of the world) who's come to see it. AND SHANGHAI IS THE BIGGEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
But more on Shanghai later I think. Unless this is going to turn into a 20,000 word entry. Describing the search for the spaceship and looking things up on the Chinese internet (which is different from the real internet...)
I've left pieces of me all over China.
So... it's like existing everywhere at once. And maybe every WHEN as well.
Like a Time Lord.
Fucking awesome.
And Bevan has left Hong Kong and entered China PRC. Visa and all. And by the time he comes back... he will speak better Mandarin than I do. And he will probably sound like someone who lives in Wuhan, because that's how Jason speaks, and that's where he is right now. I mean his accent's always been better than mine. But I am better at reading (because I studied in school) and I know more words that wouldn't necessarily be used in simple conversation but can be surprisingly useful to have on hand (again because I studied in school) but by the time I left... I think we were about equal. Different in who was better at what, yeah, but all in all, about equal. Which says a LOT, I think, about learning a language in a school setting.
And it says quite a bit about someone who was initially convinced he was totally incapable of learning ANY foreign language.
Embracing imperfection is a skill I think it's very important to master if you're gonna get all you can out of life. I can't tell you how many people we met, you know, other travelers, who were just all "yeah I don't know any Chinese." For that matter, since we're talking about Hong Kong - I can't tell you how many people we met who had LIVED IN HONG KONG FOR YEARS and didn't speak any Mandarin OR Cantonese. Because "yeah I'm not good at that."
Okay well you know what? NOBODY can fall asleep with a dictionary under their pillow and wake up fluent in a language that has NOTHING in common with ANY Western languages. And I AM good at languages. And Mandarin is VERY HARD. It's simple enough to memorize a bunch of vocabulary. It's very difficult to actually recognize it in conversation because the sounds are just SO different. And it's very difficult to actually reproduce those sounds, too, because there really aren't English equivalents. I mean there are. Really Mandarin doesn't have all that many sounds. Vowels and consonants I mean. But there's the tonal variable in there too, and that is VERY difficult to get your brain to even process, let alone understand.
THAT DOESNT MEAN IT CANT BE DONE.
Although I'm sure there are plenty of people who can never REALLY master the language (and I might be one of them, honestly) SOME knowledge goes a WHOLE LOT farther than NONE AT ALL.
And I'm not really regretting not taking more Chinese in school. I know too many people who have certificates or minors or whatever in foreign languages and are pathetically incommunicable in whatever language they studied. And it's not them - that's just how it works when you learn it in a classroom setting I guess. You learn ABOUT it. You don't actually LEARN it.
And yeah, am I ever going off on a totally different tangent here. At some point, yeah, there's going to be a big post all about me and my brain and languages and how I think languages should really be learned - and about Bevan and wtf goes on in HIS head when it comes to a foreign language, because it's totally different from mine and it's pretty interesting. But not today.
Today... well, today it's tonight already in China. And Bevan is there, and I am here. And tomorrow night - I will be sound asleep in my new apartment at school, and it will be Sunday morning in Wuhan and maybe then things will have, if not settled down, at least have SETTLED.
So... this is some CantoPop. Three guesses as to where this reminds me of :)
The answer to this is Hong Kong of course. It's not that I particularly like this song (or ANY CantoPop really) but it sure is freakin' EVERYWHERE. I mean, this song and several others as well, and some Western music besides. Just like here, really. There are some songs you just can't escape unless you like... live in a cave or something. When you're a tourist? You most certainly are not hanging out in caves. So I very well might have been subjected to more CantoPop than the average resident of Hong Kong, because of courseI was always out and around and going places and seeing things. And like I said we did a LOT of socializing in Hong Kong because suddenly it was easy again! Because people speak English (or really like to try!) in Hong Kong. And besides there are British people there, and British pubs and stuff, but they're British people who have lived their entire lives in Hong Kong. And that's pretty fascinating too.
Finding this song on youtube? Not all that easy, lol. Fortunately it's got some English lyrics so eventually I was able to track it down. And that's Cantonese he sings in, so of course I don't even understand any of the words besides the English ones.
So... the thing about traveling around is that sometimes you pick up extra people. Which is good, because it's more fun, and you can share accommodations and stuff. And Hong Kong is expensive, so, that is a very good thing. And it's pretty cool to experience new things right along with someone else, who is coming at it with a totally different perspective than you are because they're from a different culture - from yours AND from where you are.
But... this also means that it can be hard to find some time to be alone. You know. ALONE. Like a boyfriend and girlfriend like to be. BUT. There are hotels where you can rent a room by the hour, oh yes there are :P
And so. There is one totally unforgettable night in Hong Kong, that started with a dinner out (of British food, with British people) and continued to a night club (which was... crazy... for lack of a better word to describe it) and degraded into wandering around in the middle of the night, me and B wandering away from the group, renting a hotel room (for an hour) and then... I mean by that time? It was like five in the morning. And this song was playing in the taxi that was taking us back to the place we were staying.
So... sometimes... I feel like I leave pieces of my heart all over the place. Or maybe not my heart - maybe that's a little too corny. Maybe it's more like pieces of my subconsciousness. Like how sometimes I'm not really sure where I am when I'm not quite awake - am I in my bedroom at my parents' house, with my mom and dad eating breakfast in the kitchen while I sleep in? Am I in my dorm room? The old house with the orange walls, with the smell of ink and paint clinging to everything? Am I in Cape Town, is the sun streaming down with that brilliant irreplicable light, beating against my windows forcing itself inside because somehow it's spring IN NOVEMBER? Am I in Italy, can I hear the motorini driving past my apartment, horns honking, announcements blaring - am I in Tongshan? A stranger in a strange family? Looking down at dirt under my feet that looks like no dirt I've ever stood on before? Feeling huge and tall and WHITE?
I was in Philadelphia yesterday. Let me tell you what I now know about that city: it is small. It is sparsely populated, poorly lit, and has short buildings. Never in my life have I felt intimidated in New York City. It's NYC. I get it. It's big, it spans several islands, has an extensive subway system - and some very, very tall buildings. Okay. I have never stood in the middle of the sidewalk just staring up gaping because omg I've never seen a skyscraper before. Even the time (whenever that was) that I actually HAD never seen a skyscraper before.
Okay Chinese cities are different.
I've been to Cairo. Didn't find the size or population of that city to be particularly overwhelming. The culture - yeah, I did actually, quite a bit. But not the size. It's a huge city. But it's not bigger than New York.
I think my American self thought that New York City was the biggest city in the world. I mean I knew it wasn't. In theory. But I guess I just figured... yeah well even if it was bigger, how would that really be different?
Ohhhhh yeah.
So we flew in to Shanghai. We spent like almost a week in Shanghai. I was... I mean I was overly cautious and obsessively careful on the plane and really? The flight over I survived pretty well (although getting on another plane right away probably would've wrecked it for me) so by the evening of the second day we were there - I was ready to go see what there was to be seen.
OMFG there is more in Shanghai than can be seen in a million years. Not only that but - standing in one place and just looking around? There is more to be seen than what MY small-town American brain can process! And it is PACKED with people. When you ask me how was Shanghai my first response will always be "crowded." I mean I know World Expo is there, so that's not even the regular population, that's everyone from all over Asia (and the rest of the world) who's come to see it. AND SHANGHAI IS THE BIGGEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
But more on Shanghai later I think. Unless this is going to turn into a 20,000 word entry. Describing the search for the spaceship and looking things up on the Chinese internet (which is different from the real internet...)
I've left pieces of me all over China.
So... it's like existing everywhere at once. And maybe every WHEN as well.
Like a Time Lord.
Fucking awesome.
And Bevan has left Hong Kong and entered China PRC. Visa and all. And by the time he comes back... he will speak better Mandarin than I do. And he will probably sound like someone who lives in Wuhan, because that's how Jason speaks, and that's where he is right now. I mean his accent's always been better than mine. But I am better at reading (because I studied in school) and I know more words that wouldn't necessarily be used in simple conversation but can be surprisingly useful to have on hand (again because I studied in school) but by the time I left... I think we were about equal. Different in who was better at what, yeah, but all in all, about equal. Which says a LOT, I think, about learning a language in a school setting.
And it says quite a bit about someone who was initially convinced he was totally incapable of learning ANY foreign language.
Embracing imperfection is a skill I think it's very important to master if you're gonna get all you can out of life. I can't tell you how many people we met, you know, other travelers, who were just all "yeah I don't know any Chinese." For that matter, since we're talking about Hong Kong - I can't tell you how many people we met who had LIVED IN HONG KONG FOR YEARS and didn't speak any Mandarin OR Cantonese. Because "yeah I'm not good at that."
Okay well you know what? NOBODY can fall asleep with a dictionary under their pillow and wake up fluent in a language that has NOTHING in common with ANY Western languages. And I AM good at languages. And Mandarin is VERY HARD. It's simple enough to memorize a bunch of vocabulary. It's very difficult to actually recognize it in conversation because the sounds are just SO different. And it's very difficult to actually reproduce those sounds, too, because there really aren't English equivalents. I mean there are. Really Mandarin doesn't have all that many sounds. Vowels and consonants I mean. But there's the tonal variable in there too, and that is VERY difficult to get your brain to even process, let alone understand.
THAT DOESNT MEAN IT CANT BE DONE.
Although I'm sure there are plenty of people who can never REALLY master the language (and I might be one of them, honestly) SOME knowledge goes a WHOLE LOT farther than NONE AT ALL.
And I'm not really regretting not taking more Chinese in school. I know too many people who have certificates or minors or whatever in foreign languages and are pathetically incommunicable in whatever language they studied. And it's not them - that's just how it works when you learn it in a classroom setting I guess. You learn ABOUT it. You don't actually LEARN it.
And yeah, am I ever going off on a totally different tangent here. At some point, yeah, there's going to be a big post all about me and my brain and languages and how I think languages should really be learned - and about Bevan and wtf goes on in HIS head when it comes to a foreign language, because it's totally different from mine and it's pretty interesting. But not today.
Today... well, today it's tonight already in China. And Bevan is there, and I am here. And tomorrow night - I will be sound asleep in my new apartment at school, and it will be Sunday morning in Wuhan and maybe then things will have, if not settled down, at least have SETTLED.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-27 11:41 pm (UTC)Like a Time Lord.
Fucking awesome.
FUCK YEAH! ;) And we Americans are so weird when we think NYC is the One and Only City. XD It's like:
"Hey man, wanna go see Hong Kong?"
"Totally, I'd love to have some Chinese food. Let's go" *grabs purse/man purse*
"I think we need plane tickets first..."
"Whaddya talking about?? The food's not even an hour away."
"I meant Hong Kong, as in the city..."
"This is the city. New York City."
Sounds like you've been having traveling! That's totally awesome!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-28 12:43 am (UTC)Except for Parisians. Parisians are...different.
You & Zee are making me want to do this meme, lol.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-28 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-28 04:46 am (UTC)And yeah, I wish I had stuck with learning German. I hardly remember any of it now. But also, I think languages would always be a problem for me. I already have enough trouble with English. And yeah, singing in tonal languages always seems a little odd. Like they have to work a lot harder to fit the music to the words. or vice versa.
I too hope that stuff settles down for you.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-28 03:48 pm (UTC)Sure, public transportation helps but if you're talking about going from one side of the city to the other, it's not gonna help that much lol.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 05:23 am (UTC)