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Notebook 5 – Reflection on my Zine

When deciding the object for my zine, I barely think of everything more personal, representative on who I am than my mother tongue –Cantonese. When first confirmed the object and tried brainstorming, I was too emotional and ended up listing all negative thought against how China has been placing Hong Kong into a situation that lost its identity, sovereignty, and freedom of people. The more research I do for information back up of the zine, the more anger I found inside my heart. “Is that what I wish my reader to know about Cantonese from my perspective?” I asked myself. In this first Ethnic Studies course that I ever had, with Professor Wayne unique teaching way, I do learn ask why (so often) throughout the quarter. As an international student who even didn’t have any western history concept before, it was really a hard time to understand what Professor was saying at the moment as it’s such “example-driven” –we have to understand what the example is in order to understand the framework. I started to ask why. Why indigenous people is vanishing? Why there are two narratives to interpret the St Louis World’s Fair?... Applying to the processing of Zine, I tried to think from why I and quite amount of Hong Kong people have that opposing feeling toward Chinese governing? Is it just solely discrimination behind? Or it is a predictable result about some events and actions Chinese government had done to our place. It is irrational to use the Zine to brainwash reader based on what I want they think, yet it’s my responsibility to promote and sustain thing that I care in my way.  

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MY ISSUE WEB ADDRESS

issuu.com/angelachau

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Draft Zine (each image here contains two pages of the zine)

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Zine page 2 and 4 ( P.2 is not completed)

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e) In David’s intersectional analysis for Chavacano, it examines how the location of this language (and its speakers) in the society which was full of racial classification plays a role on the racial formation – Indio, who is one stair above Negrito but below all other 6 races in Philippine. Indios although seem to be “luckier” than Negrito who neither understand Spanish nor speak Chavacano which can communicate with other races, they are still meant nearly nothing to the Spanish and other races. This is an crucial information for me, as a reader of this zine, to acknowledge what it meant to be a native speaker of this language at the moment of its formation and “heyday”. 

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@ethnicpotato812

d) when I watched some youtube videos about a philippine TV patrol reporting new with chavacano, there are some comments below said that it’s good to be a Chavacano speaker as you can well understand spanish and english at the same time. That’s why I think it would be fun and essential to include the above table (or something similar) in your zine. Your audience might than have a better understanding on how Chavacano can be a mixture of spanish and english. 

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@ethnicpotato812 

c) here is a map that indicate the distribution of Chavacano speakers in Philippine. you may want to use this map to emphasize the fact that although Chavacano, the creole language, is mostly concentrated in the  Zamboanga City only, it has arround 400-year history that would be considered as one of the world’s oldest creole language

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Notebook 4 -Feedback

@ethnicpotato812

a) Summary

The zine Chavacano: Spanish creole is physical and hand drawn. It is about the the Spanish-based creole language that being used as the necessary way for communication between Spanish colonizers and people surrounding them in Philippine – Chavacano. On the first page of draft zine the function and social status of Chavacano are presented. Throughout David’s notebooks, the zine can be either predicted or expected to involve the history of Chavacano, examine the way that this language played a role in the Spaniards’ complex racial class system, examine the process that it is being used as a tool of Spanish to civilize indigenous people.

b) compelling quotes

- From the first page of the zine, the quote “we will teach you how to be civilized, but you will never be our equals” is simply summarized the contradiction against how Chavacano is a necessity for communication between Spanish colonizers and others, meanwhile this will never as elegant and equal as Spanish. Therefore it shall be great to keep it in the zine. 

-  By assuming the intention of David is to create a zine that could advocate preservation of Chavacano, it might be useful to provide a sense to the audience about how this language is regarded to be so ungrateful that not even have any value. I suggest put the quote “Until very recently, Chavacano, which is derived from “vulgar” or “poor taste” in Spanish, has been ridiculed by many as a bastardized or watered down version of the Spanish language” in the zine.

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first zine page

For the first zine page, I planned to include the text

“ the US has been dominated by aliens throughout a decade. One day, the head of aliens urged the US government to switch official language from english to Ali -language that aliens use as english is so hard to learn and  With political concern, and benefits that the aliens are going to offer the government, it start thinking about it” -this is what cantonese in Hong Kong look like

within a thinking cloud or something to allow audience have a preview of my object from their perspective.

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Notebook 3

Notebook 3 – Relational Analysis

My object will remain unchanged as colloquial Cantonese. The nations that my object is and was circulating are still going to be Hong Kong, Mainland China, and places where Hongkongers migrated to before (and actually after as well) the “handover” to China of Hong Kong. After these few weeks of deeper researching, and the finishing of notebook 1 and notebook 2, I figured out what I am trying to offer to the audience is not just the arguing on “Cantonese should be a language!”, or “let’s me teach you some Cantonese! It’s fun!”, or even Cantonese is so valuable that people have to abandon ether language and learn this”. What the purpose of this zine is, seeking help from audience; regarding to the sensitive political condition of the current Hong Kong, it seems like, reluctantly, needing help from outsider –a awareness, wake work. Before Hong Kong Education Bureau legitimately eliminate Cantonese from the system, before the new generation being forced to speak in mandarin by parents for “their future” sake, we need wake.

Relational Analysis

As mentioned before, colloquial Cantonese is heavily linking at least three national groups together in a political way. Before the “handover”, or saying the 156 years of British colonialism, Cantonese has the right and freedom to grow, to expand, to circulate; it is appraised and learnt by who valuated it as a language –including colonists. The funny thing is, conflicts, hatred, and distrust between the interaction of this two races are even less than that of two Asian groups.

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Drafted Zine Cover

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script:

Cecilie Gamst Berg=C narrative=N

C: my last time is Kam, you can call me Ms Kam or Master Kam，the gawi (how white people usually being called) heirs of the dragon

N (title): Fan gawi lou (used for describing the White disrespectfully) teaches cantonese: Master Kam claimed, “Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong without cantonese.

C: Hello, Ah Tsang

N: Cecilie Gamst Berg, a Norwegian who has been basing in Hong Kong since 1989. Currently she is teaching foreigners cantonese…

C: this is not positive [affirmative sentence], it’s only general questioning

N: why so obsessed with cantonese?

C: Mandarin, is kind of a language used by [Chinese] communist party in my point of view whereas cantonese is more fun, like drinking beer, and also a language for joking

N: Cecilie thinks cantonese not only has the sense of humor, but also amiability

N: there is actually similarity between Norwegian and cantonese?

C: We [Norwegian] do have tails like those in cantonese -“ah ma”, “lo”, “le” stuff like that even though with different pronunciation, while english doesn’t have that. For example, the same with cantonese, when we say “Wai, you now first come back?” (in english grammar: hey! why are you coming back so late?), we also include that “first” in the sentence.

N: what encourage you to teach cantonese?

C: With more and more Chinese from inner part of China migrated into Hong Kong, just like those from Tibet and Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong will grow into a basic city of mainland China bit by bit. You might not know  that international schools in Hong Kong have been using mandarin and simplified Chinese for writing during Chinese lecture - they are trying to get rid of cantonese.

C: language is the core of the local culture. What is the point of having the local culture without its native language?

N: The culture of here is depressingly defended by a foreigner, who now turning into a part-time cantonese teacher.

N: Why people have to learn cantonese from you instead of from the Chinese?

C (chuckle): I don’t know neither. Maybe those who are more introvert are more willing to find me. I used to think everybody would just like me -be able to chat, drink beer, or play poker with others after being taught 50 vocabularies. Yet most of them are relatively shy.

N: why teaching in the Hong Kong style teahouse?

C (talking with her students): what do you want to drink?

Student (hesitantly): I like coffee…

C (respond to the narrative): she can order a beverage right after a 3-minutes cantonese lesson. She can get confidence by seeing the immediate reaction from waiter over there.

N: what is it about in the first cantonese lesson?

C: learn how to order a beer. The principle should be teaching words that are mostly used in daily life -foreigners typically love beer.

C (sigh): I wish Hongkongers could help foreigners (learning cantonese), rather than just telling them “you should learn mandarin”.

N: Cecilia deems that social integration is a condition of living in Hong Kong. And learning cantonese is a necessity with no doubt.

N: what would you do if Hongkongers just give up speaking in cantonese?

C: Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong without cantonese! That would be other place that I wouldn’t even know. If this is what people want, they can just go to somewhere else, i don’t know, like Beijing, but Hong Kong is not Beijing.

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Hong Kong is, embarrassingly, caught in the middle. We have no army or navy, but by the good grace of Beijing, are allowed to continue teaching and writing in traditional characters. We do, however, have to concede that Cantonese, our dominant native tongue, is a “dialect”, despite its full grammatical sophistications.

Alex Lo

From the article “Debate over Chinese characters is sensitive issue for Hongkongers”

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Notebook #2

Latest Update: On January 24th, cantonese was identified to be “non-official Chinese dialectic” in an article about importance of  “bilingualism and trilingualism” published by the Education Bureau of Hong Kong. After drawing the mass criticism of the public, the article was removed on February 2nd with apology on the language gaffe.

My object will continue to be the colloquial cantonese that was circulated around Hong Kong, Mainland China, and places where HongKonger migrated to before the “handover”, yet, is being marginalized intensively. The incentive to learn mandarin is always higher than to learn cantonese from most of the foreign perspectives -no matter it is the commonness or easiness of cantonese. The need of mandarin speaking skill keeps increasing with the fact that the role of China’s economic market is getting more crucial; people in Hong Kong and Macau generally understand mandarin and some of them can even speak fluently in mandarin and not to mention english is the second official language in Hong Kong -cantonese is then so unnecessary to learn as a communication tool even foreigners are going to work there. As a result, it’s arguably fortunate to say the remained reason that non-cantonese speakers willing to learn this language is going to be their own interests and passions.

Cantonese as a valuable, humourous, creative language which desperate to be preserved. Have you even been curious on the origin of english words and phrases such as “Typhoon”, “long time no see”, “no can do”, “Bok Choy”, “Ketchup”, while they’re actually appeared with wrong grammar and weird pronunciation? It may blow you mind to look at the literal or phonetic transliteration of these words and phrases into cantonese! 

Typhoon = 颱風 toi4 fung1 (phonetic) long time no see = 好耐冇見 hou2 noi3 mou5 gin3 (literal translation of common greeting) no can do = 唔可以 m4 ho2yi5 (literal translation of m4=no) Bok Choy = 白菜 baak6 choi3 (phonetic) Ketchup = 茄汁 ke2 jap1 (phonetic)

Then, it’s not hard to tell why Cecilie Gamst Berg, a Norwegian who based in Hong Kong for nearly 20 years and claims herself as “cantonese fundamentalist” so obsessed with this language -even craved of it during her trip in US

National Bind: Under the British colonization for 156 years, the mixture of  cantonese and english occurs during conversation since then with the diffusion of cantonese into western culture mostly through the interaction between British colonists (police officers, businessmen, government officers) and Hongkongers. The circulation era sustained with harmony until the immigration flow from Mainland China in the recent decades. Instead, it seems to be the beginning of cantonese marginalization era.

Intersectional Analysis: in this case, the role of immigration and class intertwine with each other with no doubt. the class of mainland Chinese, or actually their self-esteem, correlated to their migration to Hong Kong. And eventually, the replacement of cantonese which is thought to be a dialect that lacks of value by mandarin is become more and more common in the field of education, the field of workplace, the field of service industry. Best example should be the use of mandarin in many Hong Kong service industries which try to accommodate preference of Mainland Chinese, and their arrogance of considering themselves as “only monetary source of Hong Kong economic”. It has been a usual experience that: walking into a shop while talking with your friend in cantonese, salesmen are too busy to greet with the mainland Chinese behind you instead of trying to earn a little from you. Of course, it doesn’t represent the whole service industry, but a part of it -which getting larger and larger.

Hyperlink: http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1867801/craving-cantonese-america-say-something-anything-please

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There are a lot of colloquialisms in the Cantonese language that can never be represented aptly in Mandarin

Jia Zhangke, Film

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Notebook 1

The Importance of Claiming Cantonese as Language Instead of Dialect

           The object that I would like to dig into is my native language which is facing a threat of marginalization –Cantonese. Be more accurate, it should be Yue Chinese but Cantonese is a relatively common name that foreign people might have heard of (hopefully). Instead of exploring the entire language of Cantonese, which is enormous –total 16 branches of dialects that varied with little tone differences in different regions and provinces in Coastal areas of China– I will focus on Cantonese that used in Hong Kong and being diffused to mainland China, and circulated between the South China. Without any political offense, I personally differentiate Hong Kong and Mainland China into two nations.

Cantonese (or Yue), as an official language in Hong Kong and Macau, has an incredible history that can be traced way back to the dynasties of Han, Tang, and Song when China hasn’t even been formed. It is a little-known fact that all rhymes in older Chinese poems from thousand years ago are more significant through reading out loud in Cantonese than in Mandarin Chinese –the language that is approved as official language in both mainland China and Taiwan[1]. There are numerous grammar, vocabulary, written language and usage differences between Mandarin and Cantonese while the most obvious distinction must go to the pronunciation variation. Different from Mandarin Chinese’s four tones system, Cantonese has nine tones; meanwhile, colloquial version and written version of Cantonese are even two individual systems that are more complex than formal and informal version (vibe vs vibration for example) but the whole sentence structure and word choices. That explains why there is a saying of Cantonese is the hardest language to learn in the world.

Cantonese has been largely circulated between Hong Kong and its neighborhood –Mainland China for decades. “During its [Cantonese] heyday in 1970s to arguably 1990s when Cantonese popular music from Hong Kong was being circulated among Chinese around the world as the fashionable and desirable version of Chinese.” (Chow 2013). Yet, every values, cultures, rights, even the mother tongue of over 90% HongKongers are literally no longer guaranteed to exist in perpetuity once China took this British colony “back” in 1997 regardless to the moment that it abandoned Hong Kong to keep its own safe after war. Thus, the insecure feeling of Hong Kong citizens towards Chinese government led to the Mass Migration Wave before “Handover” (the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from United Kingdom to China). Whereas it might be seen as an opportunity of spreading Cantonese culture to Canada, United States, and where those Hong Kong people migrated to, it can’t be more heartbreaking and gloomy to see the imperceptible decay of circulation of Cantonese in the past ten years.

While the circulation of this language at an international level was promoted with the migration of Cantonese speakers, it has become vague at local level, due to the immigration to Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s skilled immigration programs, which welcomes foreign high skilled applicants to apply for residency instead of providing more opportunities for local citizens, combines with the Hong Kong citizenship welfare system, have been acting as the crucial pull effect of immigrants rush into this small place intensely. Reason of why immigration and citizenship is going to tear down circulation, even existence, of Cantonese is that the unwilling of large group of immigrants to learn local language and even urge the local to replace the “non-standard and uneducated dialect” by Mandarin Chinese. As a result, 3 local elementary schools started implementing “teaching Chinese with Mandarin” system few years ago which no benefit was seen on the students’ academic but the confusion against all of the Hong Kong Cantonese speaking students. Not only the educational system marginalized this precious culture, but also the decision made by foreign people who prefer learning Mandarin Chinese instead of Cantonese because of the large population of Mandarin speakers and the complexity of learning Cantonese[2].

 Resources:

[1] Quora.com, Stephen Hou’s answer on the question “Should Cantonese be considered as a language or a dialect?” https://www.quora.com/Should-Cantonese-be-considered-as-a-language-or-as-a-dialect

 [2] BrainScape, https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2011/08/mandarin-vs-cantonese/