German lunch. Visual China|Figure
Readers have been asking me a lot lately, when will I start writing again? What to write? Write prose. Chinese or German? Chinese. Don't you want German? You'd better show it to the Germans! Don't you want to read it? We don't speak your native language. Haven't you studied? Yes and no. Really? Don't even know a little bit of German? So, let me start by telling you two or three stories.
I am reminded of a professor at Shantou University who had studied for her PhD in Berlin and wrote her thesis in English. After five years, she could only speak two German words: ein bisschen (a little) – this is how she answers questions asked if she knows German. There was also a young man who had spent three years in Berlin and he had learned an extra German word, so he could say Rindfleisch zum Mitnehmen. During his time in Berlin, he ate beef every day at noon, and when he arrived at the snack bar, he asked for beef that he could take with him. In order to save trouble or money, he walked and ate at the same time. 365 times a year, 1095 times in three years. After his last meal in Germany, will he still eat beef? Will he enjoy dumplings for three years after returning to China? For example, every day at noon in the streets of Beijing, he shouts: Dumplings, take them away!
If I were to learn from both of them, I would only be able to speak two or three Chinese characters in China. Every day at 12 o'clock in the noodle shop, I ask the owner to give me fried noodles, learn the three words "fried noodles", I can live a good life, right? But no longer eat roast duck and no mapo tofu, is this kind of life still ideal? I don't know if anyone has asked me what talking has to do with eating, or maybe the two scholars have not found that in addition to a little beef, Germany also has grilled sausages, smeared with delicious mustard, and their stomachs may be very satisfied. They didn't seem to notice that there were any other words in German than "a little", such as Marx or Engels.
I don't know if these two Chinese are my readers. Maybe they feel that Gu Bin doesn't write prose anymore, and we don't eat anything else or say anything other than "a little beef". Is there logic? Very logical. Please see Mr. Wang from Henan University. The linguist learns five foreign languages a day and enjoys five foreign dishes at noon. For example, after learning five Spanish sentences, he started ordering Paella, Tortilla, Jamón Serrano and other food in a Spanish restaurant. In this way, he had already tasted 1,825 different, foreign dishes in one year. Needless to say, he mastered many foreign languages during this time. He is a good example for us.
What about Gu Bin? He didn't learn many languages and didn't eat 1,825 foreign dishes, but he published many books. Especially during the pandemic, he is writing a new book series, "Ancient Chinese Poets". Li Bai and Cao Zhi are both the subjects of his writing, and writing makes him feel very happy, not to face COVID-19, but to enjoy his spiritual world at home and abroad.
Rest assured, Old Man Gu Bin will not stop writing. If he doesn't write essays, he writes something else, let's say his autobiography. He has just finished his fifth autobiography these days, with a total of more than a thousand pages. Now he began to think about the sixth. Writing is a way of life, and it is possible to create under any circumstances. Even in the coffin, you can continue to meditate, because when you just die, your ears are still open, you can hear what people around you are saying, crying or not crying, happy or unhappy, and finally the person is gone.
Does our existence have anything to do with beef, with language? Or maybe we were walking alone on the streets of Berlin one day, hungry and wanting to eat beef, but we couldn't find our way and had to ask pedestrians how to get there. Everyone knows that first is the language, then the stomach. If you don't have the ability to speak, you can't ask, so you have to get lost. Lost instructions are also "obsessed beef". Without beef, it is likely to go hungry.
Well, let's inquire and ask for directions in German like Confucius. I didn't expect an old lady to answer us in English. We didn't speak English. Ah, like a scholar from Peking, who immediately got angry and complained? Scolding the Berliners, they seem to think that we foreigners will not be good German?
The third story I'm going to tell you is one that really happened on the streets of Berlin. Newspapers in Berlin reported on a female scholar fluent in German, a Chinese who was not happy that someone had responded to her in English, and she not only complained about it, but also added a terrible sentence: this is racism. This kind of statement is heard everywhere in Germany, so we don't necessarily care about it every time, otherwise we must not be sad every day from morning to night?
I moved from Shantou University to Shanghai Wai Chinese University last year. I'm not very familiar with Shanghai, so I go shopping in Hongkou every day. People on the road think it's normal for me to speak Chinese to them. Sometimes, though, they ask me where I'm from, and add something like: As a foreigner, you have good Chinese. Don't ask someone in Germany who seems to be from another country what nationality you are from, and don't sing the praises of his German. He and the people around him were going to accuse me of racism. Why? First, I'm xenophobic – you can't be German, you weren't German-born, you don't belong to us. Second, our native language is too complex for you to learn.
Thus all my innocent, normal curiosity and praise suddenly turned into a big mistake. So, I'm in Shanghai, will someone answer my questions in Chinese in English? Will you ask me if I'm an American? Both. Am I angry? No, because Shanghainese are well-intentioned. They want to know. Understanding is one of the most important ways for us to survive. If you don't understand, how can we be friends?
Of course, I wanted the people of Shanghai to know that they were meeting a European, not from North America! Europeans don't like to be seen as Americans. Americans have looked down on Europeans from the very beginning of their statehood. We need to cooperate, and we should cooperate – Chinese academics want to enjoy beef on the streets of Germany, and everyone knows that the United States is the world's largest producer of beef. In addition, the native language of the United States helped them to study for a PhD in English at a German university. What about German? Two or three words will suffice. Marx will be tolerant, because his tomb is in an English-speaking country!
Gu Bin
Editor-in-charge: Xing Renyan