問我anything with Meng Lelan

[oceancalligraphy]

Hi everyone! Our latest participant for 問我anything is Meng Lelan.

 

Let's start with a couple of questions:

 

What has been the most surprising part about learning Chinese?

 

What do your family members think about your interest in Chinese? Do they take part?

[Meng Lelan]

What has been the most surprising part about learning Chinese?

That I have been learning Chinese this long. I started when I was six years old and my fiftieth birthday is coming up and I still study Chinese, though not as part of formal classes anymore. 

 

What do your family members think about your interest in Chinese? Do they take part?

 

My immediate family members were all baffled and bemused. My now-Ex was never interested in Chinese although this was understandable considering his work and research consumed so much of his time. None of them have ever engaged in any serious study of any foreign language at all. My mother was very uncomfortable with my teaching Chinese to my three sons right from when they were age three. 

[li3wei1]

My mother was very uncomfortable with my teaching Chinese to my three sons right from when they were age three.

 

That's incredibly sad. Was she afraid they would turn into Communists?

[Meng Lelan]

she afraid they would turn into Communists?

 

 

No, I really believe it was because I was born deaf in a time where deaf educators felt that the child had to be exposed to and actively learning the native language (in this case, English) 24/7 and that learning any second language would be detrimental to this process. And in those days, deaf educators had a lot of power to do what they felt was right. So even though my three sons were normal hearing, my mother did not like how I was speaking to them in Chinese much of the time right from age 3. She felt that this would be damaging to their English language acquisition. Well this has turned out to be the opposite. They were perfectly pronouncing words like "fire extinguisher" in English at age 3, and they were extremely mature writers in English at age 12. Fortunately we lived far from her so that we only saw each other a few times a year. Just as well, because I am satisfied with my decision to do what I did, and really, she and I were in such disagreement about language that things were a lot better with 1000 miles in between us, me and my sons here in Texas and she somewhere else with her language acquisition ideas, and she had a lot of them. 

[Shelley]

if your family are not language learners, how did you come to be learning Chinese at the age of 6?

 

I think that even if not at classes, learning Chinese is a life long process, this is one reason I started, I figured i won't get bored or "finish" learning this .

 

Did you learn to speak Chinese or for that matter English or were you discouraged as some deaf people are from speaking at all and rely on sign language? (is there a Chinese sign language?)

 

What are you "non-Chinese" interests?

 

What books do you like?

[Meng Lelan]

if your family are not language learners, how did you come to be learning Chinese at the age of 6?

I was six years old and went with my family every Sunday afternoon to the public library to check out books. One day I saw a children's story about a brother and sister going to China and they learn a few basic Chinese characters. I think I wrote about this in the Why Chinese thread.

 

Did you learn to speak Chinese or for that matter English or were you discouraged as some deaf people are from speaking at all and rely on sign language? (is there a Chinese sign language?). 

I did learn to speak English but not until age 4 or 5. This was when sign language was not standard practice in deaf education. I did not learn sign language until college and that was only because a famous professor of linguistics was teaching the class. Yes, I did learn to speak Chinese but not until my teens when better amplification technology started coming out. Yes, there is a Chinese sign language, and it is totally different from American Sign Language in the signs, grammar, and syntax. 

 

What are you "non-Chinese" interests?

Does kungfu and wushu count? Also I like running and listening to Bach piano music. I do play piano (took piano for ten years in my younger years). Education of the deafblind (especially teaching cane travel to the deafblind, grew up in childhood with a deafblind friend who had Ushers syndrome), French literature in the original French, though not necessarily limited to French literature from France itself, I have enjoyed writers who were Canadian, African, etc. Ironically it was my mother who got me interested. Sometimes she would read me stories in French when I was a child but did not do this regularly because the Deafstapo had a lot of power in those days.............

 

What books do you like?

I rarely read now, but I do like reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the original whenever I have a few minutes, like standing in line at the grocery store or waiting for a meeting to start. 

[Lu]

Can you hear music then? Does your preference of Bach have anything to do with you being deaf (does he use lower tones/heavier rhythm/since he ended up deaf himself does his music reflect that), or is it just a matter of taste and could you hypothetically also have enjoyed Mozart or jazz or the Beatles? And since you're deaf, how come of all possible hobbies you picked making music?

I'm sorry if my questions are insensitive, I'm just really curious and don't know any other deaf people. If I'm out of line, let me know.

[Meng Lelan]

They are all good questions. Don't worry about how anyone ends up feeling :-)

 

My whole family played piano. Some still do. So of course I ended up taking piano, with a piano professor from Germany who totally stressed Bach from the outset, and I have to say I totally fell in love with Bach piano music. The reason being Bach music for the piano can be very simple and complex at the same time and demands utmost care in playing and listening. I do wear hearing aids and I can hear some vowel sounds and some music, but the music has to be solo because if it's in combination with anything else then I don't even know what I am listening to anymore, it sound like a helicopter crash and a kitchen blender all at the same time. 

[edelweis]

how many characters do you know?

how do you find time to study Chinese (you seem pretty busy...)

do you even still need to "study" or just practice?

anyway, what's your typical weekly Chinese-related schedule like?

[Meng Lelan]

Really good questions...have to confess I burst out laughing when you said "you seem pretty busy". There's only one guy I personally know of who is busier than I am and he was my internship supervisor in Louisiana over this summer of 2014.....

I can read approximately 5000 characters (both trad and simp) and write from memory (according to Skritter) about 3500 of them (both trad and simp). 

I get up each morning at 4am to study/practice for about 45 to 50 min before I go running and do some stretches (otherwise I get muscle cramps later in the morning if I don't do that, then it's too late to do anything about it).

I do both study and practice. Usually I will Skritter for ten minutes, read a section of 三國演義 (though I usually end up on Facebook writing comments in Chinese, so much for scholarly pursuits, guess my days of being whippersnapper intellectual are really over), then study one chapter out of any of the textbooks I have here just for practice and review. Usually I like the Practical Audio Visual Chinese texts or I  go back and review one of my DeFrancis readers. 

[Tianjin42]

You have managed to persist with Chinese learning over a very long period. What is the longest you went without studying Chinese ("Study" in a loose sense here)? Also is there a secret to the longevity? I have known many who have attained a decent level but then left it all behind. 

[Meng Lelan]

The longest time I went without studying was nine weeks over this past summer, that was because in the internship I worked like dogs cows and horses, and sweated like swine, 8 hours a day outdoors running around with blind and deafblind clients doing cane travel instruction. I don't have a secret to the longevity, but never felt like formal classes were much help beyond the second year level. Maybe that is the secret, that I avoid formal classes and learn on my own. 

[edelweis]

do you have many Chinese books, or other artefacts? (calligraphy etc)

do you celebrate/decorate your house/do activities with your kids for the Chinese festivals?

do you cook Chinese food?

(I'm wondering just how Chinese-ified your life is after 44 years of interest...)

[Meng Lelan]

do you have many Chinese books, or other artefacts? (calligraphy etc)

Chinese language books - I estimate we have about 180 books here in Chinese only, and about 28 books that are specifically textbooks or dicitonaries. 

I have here about 10 or 12 framed Chinese artwork on the walls. Two or three of them are originals. 

Also about 5 or 6 Chinese martial arts weapons like the staff, broadsword, and spear. Though those are for my use in training, not for decoration. 

do you celebrate/decorate your house/do activities with your kids for the Chinese festivals?

We do for the Chinese New Year but not for other Chinese festivals. 

do you cook Chinese food?

Sometimes I do, especially Chinese vegetables. Interestingly we do not go out to Chinese restaurants here in the US because the boys and I don't feel like Chinese food in the US is the real deal so to speak, although we do know of a couple places in Texas that are the real deal, but they are not here in this city. 

[anonymoose]

What do your children think of having been taught Chinese? Are they enthusiastic? Do you think they will continue with Chinese when they leave home?

[yueni]

Have you travelled to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or any other Chinese-speaking country? If so, what did you (and your sons) enjoy and not enjoy?

[Meng Lelan]

What do your children think of having been taught Chinese? Are they enthusiastic? Do you think they will continue with Chinese when they leave home?

 

 They were cool with it from age 3 on to age 13, then about age 13 they started to get really antsy during Chinese homework time with me after school, like they wanted to get done with it and play games or text their friends or whatever teen thing they wanted to do. Kind of reminded me how my Jewish peers were cool with going to Hebrew School until they had the Bar/Bat Mitvah at age 13, then they were just mentally checked out of Hebrew studies. I don't expect them to continue with Chinese after they leave home for work or college, because the expectation is they have a solid foundation of Chinese when they graduate high school and then they need to start working towards a career by going to college or getting on the job experience through work, which is going to be energy and time consuming. 

[Meng Lelan]

Have you travelled to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or any other Chinese-speaking country? If so, what did you (and your sons) enjoy and not enjoy?

 

Taiwan once, China many many many times. I enjoy seeing my old friends whenever I go. My sons like using Chinese to buy things or read Chinese on the street, like bus stops or museum exhibit signs. We all enjoyed Suzhou and Hangzhou. In fact we enjoy the smaller cities wherever we go. We don't like how drivers drive any way they want to drive. We don't enjoy tour groups and prefer to station ourselves at a nice hotel as a jumping off point and do independent travel.