2002-10-28 - 11:38 p.m.

Just Plain Wrong

And so, I'm leaving for China in 12 days. Gulp!

To try to prepare for my trip I've looked into trying to pick up a little of the Chinese language so that I won't be a total Ugly American while I'm over there. However, how much Chinese am I going to be able to fit in 12 days? Not very much! Good think Lily is pretty fluent.

Rather than splurging on expensive books and tapes, I checked out the local library to see what they had. Since Chinese is full of sounds that American peeps don't usually make I figured that a tape would be the best way to go.

So, I took out the tape they had on speaking Chinese. I knew I was in trouble when I opened up the case and saw "copyright 1975" on the tapes. Uh oh! Sounds of the Seventies!

All the tape consisted of was them saying phrases in English and then repeating them twice in Chinese. Seriously, how much of three hours worth of tape of an utterly foreign language are you going to remember, no matter how often you play it?

Making the tapes totally useless was the fact that there had clearly been some deterioration of the sound quality, making the Chinese parts muddy and indistinct. Well, it was a nice idea.

As it turned out the library also had a video tape on speaking Chinese. Taking that out wasn't so simple - they had to order it from East Bejeezus on interlibrary loan. I was afraid that the tape would arrive too late to do me any good, but it popped up on only a couple of days.

I knew that I was in trouble once again when I caught the date on the outside of the box: Dec. 1987. Hmm. Fifteen years old. Well, it's better than 27 years old, but still a little dated.

While the tape box promised that it used the "revolutionary see, hear, speak method" it basically did the same thing the old audio tape did - it said a phrase in English, then repeated it in Chinese. The video was better than the tape in that 1) there was some organization od the material 2) there were visuals provided: the English words, the phonetic Chinese words and the symbols were all provided as subtitles.

About half the time you're looking at white letters on a black background, but the other half of the time they are "acting out" the Chinese phrases, and let me tell you "acting out" is the right way to put it. The tape is loaded with mid-80s cheesiness to the max! A lot of the acting out is done by young people wearing bathing suits on a beach, and the two guys doing most of the "acting" are a couple of mid-eighties, mop-haired, sexually ambiguous, adolescent boys wearing the tiniest swimsuits imaginable. My eyes were bugging out while I was trying to repeat the Chinese phrases. I felt like I was watching some gay porn! How on earth am I supposed to master the difficult Chinese pronunciation when this kid's family jewels are about to come tumbling out of the "vault." For God's sake, put a bathrobe on!

This is just plain wrong.

Another part of the tape features a buxom and very eighties lass doing a pantomime about the parts of the body. She had on a rather revealing dress, the classic blown-back hair and about a gallon of lip gloss. Good God, is that what the eighties were really like? I was there and I don�t remember that stuff! The actress had this somewhat impatient look on her face, like doing this dumb Chinese tape was making her late to meet her friends at the disco.

Okay, so while I'm in China I will be sticking VERY close to Lily, and pretending that I have laryngitis. Works for me.