Recent Comments

Feeds
« mask
hymalayas »

help

Posted on December 16, 2006 @ 12:15 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog, china, travel, wordpress

 

subway-copy.jpg

In November 1994 I landed in Beijing’ International Airport, coming from Helsinki. As soon as I kept on asking those basic information I needed to get the city centre, I realized that the language would be the problem for me while in China. Actually very few of the Chinese population speak any English at all. Every traveller knows that a few words spoken in the local language will bring smiles of appreciation and establish friendly relationships between visitor and host. While I was well aware of the fact that my pronunciation of the local language did not correspond exactly to the pronunciation of native speakers (actually it was far beyond my objectives…), I was sure it must be within an acceptable range of variation! No way. I learned quickly that the tone can drastically alter the word’s meaning and these tones can not be learned from a guide book.
Just consider the sound “ma”: in the first tone it means mother, in the second tone it can mean hemp or numb; in the third tone it means horse, while in the fourth tone the meaning is to scold. Funny? You should also realize that the levels of the tones are not absolute but relative, depending on the speaker’s age or sex…A few days later I got lost in the over-overcrowded Beijing’s subway during the peak hour. Platform signs were only in Chinese and the mass around me was too damn busy and in a hurry to even notice me. I felt lost and lonely and really needed some help to get out of there, but nobody spoke a single word of English, not to mention my pathetic efforts with the local tones and the like…Finally a gentle lady approached me politely and -smiling a lot- put me on the right train.

Illustration Friday’s topic is: help

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 and is filed under blog, china, travel, wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 people have left comments

hehe… i like your story. nice illo btw.

enigma wrote on December 16, 2006 - 12:33 pm CET

Oh yeap! a friend of mine lived something like that up there… she couldn’t find her way to the restrooms and she had to make some signals to the airport’s workers ;)

I like ur illo, Aynaku ;)

Pati @-;– wrote on December 16, 2006 - 3:45 pm CET

I love the dance and the rythmn you have given to the people and the feeling of this is wonderful! Your story is always interesting and spellbinding! I knew about the tone only because I had a friend who studied the language and tones and I was and still am in awe! This is such a great post you always keep me intrigued…

valgalart wrote on December 16, 2006 - 10:05 pm CET

lol i was like that myself in japan til i learn a lil japanese and kanji for where i wanted to go. great lookin colors and rythmn set up looks just like u said every one busy going to where they needed to, except the blond guy up top

michael dailey wrote on December 18, 2006 - 3:32 pm CET

very cool!

Michelle Lana wrote on December 18, 2006 - 6:53 pm CET

nice illo!

roland wrote on December 19, 2006 - 5:22 am CET

My friend…you just astound me!!
beautiful, beautiful… both in illo and words, these last two posts of yours are simply awesome!!!!
WELL DONE!

Happy Holidays to you or have a great week, depending on what is going on in your life:)

ldahl wrote on December 22, 2006 - 3:44 am CET

I think I would have had a panic attack right then and there. How reassuring that a nice stranger came to your aid. I love this story and your visual interpretation of it. Hoping you have a wonderful holiday. Thanks for all your comments this year!

Amy Zaleski wrote on December 22, 2006 - 3:39 pm CET

One of the great pics I’ve saw in this blog!
There are a lot of delicate details, even the vertical aynaku names look like chinese letters :)

uvor wrote on December 24, 2006 - 12:29 am CET

feel free to leave a comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

All fields marked with " * " are required.


Comments links could be nofollow free.