The Hollywood Lessons (5)

Sometime during my first year of living in the U.S., I uncovered a goldmine in the audio/video section of the university’s library: a full shelf of videotapes, most of which are classic movies of Hollywood. They were intended for the students who major in Film as the course materials. But anyone with a valid student ID could check out the film and watch it on site.

Are you kidding me—the complete collection going all the way back to Chaplin’s silent films, free of charge, and VCR-equipped seat? Right then and there, I decided that my undeclared, not-for-credit minor would be the Master of Fine Art in Film.

In a short period of time, I had raided the whole shelf, and revisited several of my favorites whenever I felt like it. Rolling her eyes, the librarian must have thought that I probably had never seen a movie in my life before and, all of a sudden, had gone wild, like a poor kid stumble on a cookie jar.

Seeing the classics in original soundtrack—and uncensored—was a fresh experience for me. Despite of their detachment from the contemporary life, the classics were ideal to improve my listening comprehension. Usually, the dialogue exchanges at a slower pace, and the plot is relatively straightforward, thus making it quite easy to follow. Being able to understand the major part of the movie boosted my confidence. And self-confidence was what I needed badly then.

As I’m thinking back of the time when I sat in a corner of the library, wearing a headphone and staring at TV screen, I can still be hearing these voices more than a decade later:

Princess Ann: “I have every faith in it as I have faith in relations between people.”
Joe Bradley: “We believe that your Highness' faith will not be unjustified.”
--Roman Holiday (1953)

Ilsa: “Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake”
Rick: “Here's looking at you, kid.”
--Casablanca (1942)

For old times' sake.

Crazy Asian Mother

When comes to Chinese parents overdriving their kids, an American cliché describes it the best: sky is the limit — not the kids’ potential to achieve, which is no higher than the lowest hanging cloud if their parents aren’t well connected, but the parents’ means to push their kids for achieving, whose golden motto is always “We do this all for YOUR own good in the future.”)

Having been through my fair share of the ordeals while growing up in China, I became indifferent to all horror stories of crazy Asian mother — forcing pre-school kids to a “junior MBA” program being the latest one. What’s so horrifying if every parent does it?

For a cultural sensitive person, crazy Asian mom sounds like racial stereotyping. Unfortunately, for those who are in the receiving end, it’s mostly true. One of them is Amy Tan, the Chinese-American author of several New York Time bestsellers, including Joy Luck Club. She talked about her mother and their hate-love relationship in an interview. Here is an excerpt:

My parents had very high expectations. They expected me to get straight A's from the time I was in kindergarten. I remember, I was in kindergarten and there was a little girl who I didn't think was a very good artist. I thought I did a very careful house, you know, with the chimney, and the windows, and the trees, and she was more of an abstract artist. Hers was very loose, and I didn't think it was very good but they decided to pin hers up in the Principal's office. So that was like getting the "A." My mother wanted to know. Why wasn't my picture in that window?

You don’t have to visualize what a crazy Asian mother looks like. Watch this video clip at YouTube, and you get a quite realistic portrait. The storyline: Erick Liang, impersonating an Asian mother, scolds the son for getting a B+ in an English course. It’s hilarious, and went on to become one of the most watched clips all time in YouTube.

No one has heard about Erick again ever since the video went live. What happens to him? Well, sky is the limit.

How The Rich Are Different? (2)

Being rich means you can afford to throw money at problems you see. Mr. Gertz’s “clientele” saw the brutal competitive world that their brats have to face in the future because of China’s prominent rise.

I’m sure those Chinese super nannies can joggle among diaper-changing, gourmet-cooking, and Mandarin-tutoring with delicacy and humbleness. And the rich kids are capable of mastering Chinese before they are old enough to identify the town of their nanny grew up in a world map.

But what if the dragon is only awakened but not flying high in two decades? After all, 20 years ago many experts warned that Japan would leave America in the dust. The scenario was painted so real that a lot of rich kids were scramble to learn Japanese back then. Some of the pessimistic ones even added Karate class too.

Guess what, the sun didn’t rise. As the result, the only benefit they gained is to order sashimi in Japanese, to an American waitress, at a shushi bar in Palo Alto, California.

Even if the experts are right this time, having a live-in nanny from China may not be enough to solve the problem, particularly, when the rich think alike.

An article in The New York Times (September 21) reports that Chinese rich are paranoid when foreseeing their “little emperor”, commonly called in China, to compete with well-mannered, English-speaking kids in the future. Their solution, no surprise, is to take out checkbook too. Here is an excerpt from the report:

To address that, some of the newly affluent, like Ms. Lei, take their young children for extended stays overseas. London and New York are popular choices, because the children can get a head start on speaking Western-accented English. They seem to be about the competitive world their children have to bear.

The American speaking Mandarin-accented Chinese vs. the Chinese speaking Western-accented English, sounds like a leveled competition, right? “Zuo Meng!” as the Chinese parents would tell Americans. Translation: Go dream; “Fat Chance”, if they speak English directly.

The same article says that the Chinese rich sent their kids—as young as four-year old—to the school that marketing itself as a “junior MBA” program. Judging by its price tag and popularity, I’m willing to believe that little emperors can not only read balance sheet and talk about market-entry strategy before they turn 13, but also do it in a flawless English.

The American rich, pull out your checkbook, and import a live-in Chinese martial art master too. Trust me, you are going to need him more than the Chinese nanny.

And make Sun Tzu’s The Art of War the mandatory reading every morning.

How The Rich Are Different? (1)

As an old saying goes, there are three distinctive types of mankind: man, woman, and the rich.

I once had an incidental TV therapy session with Dr. Phil, and walked away with an unmistaken notion, that men are from Mars, women from Venus; they fight like in Star Wars, alternating to going to the dark side every six months.

The rich, however, are from magazine covers, with cream of the crop off Forbes annually. They differ from Martians and Venusians, as I learned from two recent stories at The New York Times, in that they still worry like a hell, despite all the money they have. But what truly sets them apart is that they worry in a long run—say, a generation ahead—and with a global perspective.

The first report, appeared on September 5, says that the latest novel import from China is not the fake blond Barbie; it’s the real black-haired au pair—call it nanny if you are in my social class. Unlike the toy going to Wal-Mart’s shelf, the expensive Chinese nanny settles in the home of the rich across America. Here is an excerpt from the story:

Driving the need more aggressively is the desire among ambitious parents to ensure their children’s worldliness, as such parents assume that China’s expanding influence will make Mandarin the sophisticates’ language decades hence.

“Our clientele is middle and upper middle class,” said William L. Gertz, chairman of the American Institute for Foreign Study, which oversees Au Pair in America. “They see something really happening, and they don’t want to be left behind.”

I believe Mr. Gertz was misquoted, or he was misleading us about his “clientele”; it’s about right that middle class can afford to buy a dog for their kids, and that upper middle class can afford to hire Mexicans a few hours every other week to clean their kids’ bedrooms.

But only the rich—wincing knowingly when being called “clientele”—can afford the live-in nanny, who is bilingual, college-graduated and cooking school-certified. And they don’t come off the boat with the name like Golden Venture, but the Boeing 747 with a Northwest logo painted at the aircraft’s tail.

Apparently, in the mind of the American rich, the degree from Ivy leagues is not nearly enough to keep their offspring competitive in the global economy; they have to be able to mingle and negotiate with Chinese in Mandarin.

What if they do “see something really happening”, but just not what it is in their mind? Stay tuned.

A Bad Hair Day

Paul, my American colleague, was a genial guy. He was really nice to me. I just started out at an English-speaking corporate world, and felt as secure as a rookie in a big league. To me, his friendliness made a huge difference; he always slowed down when talking to me, and never asked me the question like “Did you actually eat dog in China?”

Still, Paul's talk often confused the hell out of me, mainly because of his fond of slang. On the lucky day, I could infer with no trouble; “Bee, I’m counting on you to get this done, don’t drop the ball.” I didn’t. And I got it without knowing too much of American football.

On the not so lucky day, I had to take a wild guess; “Bee, we really hit a home run in our last project.” He was smiling, so I ventured that “hit a home run” could not possibly mean “shitty work”, one of his frequent terms. Then, there was truly bad day.

One late afternoon, Paul surfaced suddenly in my cubicle and said in a serious tone: “The big cheese is having a bad hair day. He wants to see us one by one; get your ass in his office now.” Then off he went, as quickly as he appeared.

I understood clearly every single word Paul uttered; after all, “big” and “cheese” are a piece of cake comparing to GRE vocabulary. But putting them together registered a blank in my head. So my ass remained where it was.

A half hour later, Paul popped in again. This time he’s not just serious; he was furious: “I told you to see Goldberg in his office, why are you still sitting here?”

My ass almost fell off the chair—Goldberg being our group manager. In a quick flash, I realized that Paul wasn’t referring to the food that no Chinese ever comes to like.

My ass was in Goldberg’s office in no time. I didn’t forget to glance at his hair, combed neatly but looked a bit of cheesy, which wasn’t that bad; his mood was. Leaning on the door, I was bitching about Paul's slang silently, while trying to figure out how to save my ass.

I survived. From that moment on, I swore I would never let anyone throw me a curve ball—sport slang or else—without batting back for an explanation.

A Mexican Who Speaks Hebrew

Armando, a 29-year-old Mexican immigrant, came to the U.S. at age of 17. In the following 12 years of living in California, he learned to speak English well. However, that's not what got him featured in a front-page story in Los Angeles Times; a Mexican who speaks English well isn’t that man-bite-dog newsworthy.

What set him apart from millions of other fellow Mexicans was that he learned to speak Hebrew even better; his commanding of Hebrew was so good that a native Hebrew speaker, after listening to Armando’s talk in recording, thought he was born in Israel.

A Mexican talking Hebrew may sound a bit exotic, but it would hardly trigger a front-page story at a major dailies. Imagine a likely scenario:

Armando studied hard at school during the day while busy of working as a busboy at night; his excellent grades earned him a scholarship to Stanford, at which he fell in love with Hebrew language and majored in Judaic Studies; he also studied in Tel Aviv University as an exchange student and stayed there for a year; in four years he received his bachelor of art degree with honors and went on to work for the United Nations.

A nice piece for Local Section to inspire high school students, if it had happened that way. What really got Armando to the front-page is this: instead of going to school, he had been working at an Israeli restaurant in L.A.; when he wasn’t busboying tables, he listened to other staffs talking in Hebrew; some of them become friendly to him and gradually spoke with him in Hebrew. Overtime, he was able to talk just like one of them.

Dr. Stephen Krashen, the linguistic professor at the University of Southern California, interviewed Armando and wrote this article, analyzing the case and validating his “comprehensible input” theory.

Having read Armando’s story, I couldn’t help but give an advice to those who aspires to master the damn-hard Chinese: walk into a Chinese restaurant—there must be at least one within ten miles of radius of where you live—and ask for a kitchen job. You’ll be paid below the minimum wage, but be rewarded handsomely: you’ll be able to talk to the one fifth of world population with no language barrier in a few years.

Plus, you'll receive an extra bonus—the secret recipe of General Tao’s Chicken.

The Hollywood Lessons (4)

The first and only Latin phrase I’ve ever learned is from a scene of Dead Poets Society.

Shortly after his arriving at a prep school in Vermont, the English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) cries to his students in the class: "Listen, you hear it? Carpe Diem—Seize the day. Boys, make your lives extraordinary."

By the last scene, when the boys go up one by one, each standing on his desk and chanting "O Captain! My Captain!" to Mr. Keating, as he’s walking out the door, I was tear-jerking worse than a 16-year-old girl watching the last a few scenes of the melodrama Titanic.

Boy, what an extraordinary movie!

I was surprised, not to mention embarrassed, by how I reacted to the movie. After all, the student life of the privileged Welton at a beautiful New England setting in 1950s resembles nothing from my life at a Chinese grade school in 1980s.

Yet, something struck me so out of bound that remoteness and time difference seemed to have faded. In several occasions, I thought I was at the campus of Welton, studying, walking, and talking, just like Neil Perry or any other student in the movie. And like everybody else, I was completely captivated in Mr. Keating’s class.

I’ve since seen it several more times, each time tear-jerking still like a little girl. After a while, I started to recognize the symbolic life of Neil and his fellow students: living in a conforming enclave but yeaning for rebel and inspiration. From an iconoclast English teacher, they got their inspiration, despite it led to a tragic ending for one of them.

I’ve never met any teacher in real life like Mr. Keating, so I took him in as my teacher. For anyone who aspires to take on a new journey—learning English is to take on such a journey, seizes two hours from a day, and go see the movie; do not expect to receive the study tips from Mr. Keating, but do expect to be awakened by his inspiration.

As I did. More than once. Carpe Diem!

The Wisdom of Crowds

I read a New Yorker article today—Know It All: Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise? It’s about the birth of Wikipedia and its phenomenal success. According to the article, Wikipedia, launched in 2001, is now in the top 20 most popular website. It has more daily visitors than those of MSNBC.com and the online versions of the Times and the Wall Street Journal combined.

The idea behind Wikipedia is shockingly simply—the wisdom of crowds triumphs over individual’s knowledge, and it was put into practice through the open-source movement in the web space. The result is shocking. Less than five years since its birth, Wikipedia has rivaled Encyclopedia Britannica, the Bible of reference book for over two centuries, in the content accuracy, and surpassed it in the total amount of entries.

Now, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, predicts to put Britannica out of business within five years. Given the rate of Wikipedia’s growth—doubling the number of visitors every four months, he might be even a bit conservative in his prediction.

It’s a revolution.

If it’s succeeding like a wild fire in reference book, why not bring it on to English as the Second Language (ESL) field too? Let both learners and educators pool their wisdom, freely generate the learning materials, and put them out on Internet for free access. The self-created materials may not be able to replace traditional textbooks completely, but judging by the success of Wikipedia, the open-source movement in ESL could accomplish far beyond everyone’s expectation too.

The revolution seems to have already started, as I’ve seen the birth of several podcasting that are dedicated to language learning. The wild fire is coming.

Five-Year Anniversary of 9/11

Nine days after the terrorists attacked America in September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush went to Capitol Hill, and addressed the nation at a joint session of Congress. He delivered a best political speech ever up to that day of his presidency (text and audio).

In the speech, the President identified the terrorist group and its leader— al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden —that were behind the attack, and declared the war against terrorism. He also warned those countries that provide “safe haven” to terrorism (“you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists”).

The tragedy of September 11 had changed America, and it had transformed George W. Bush. In his own words:

“I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.”

May all the victims who died this day five years ago rest in peace.

The Hollywood Lessons (3)

Among all the genres of Hollywood movie, drama and comedy are my favorite; good drama makes me cry, good comedy makes me laugh, and the best of them make me do both.

Besides the emotional ride, I learned a great deal of English from those movies, some of which are far better than any teaching materials I’ve ever seen. And some of the best directors, using camera instead of chalk (or lately Power Point), beat the best English teacher.

With no exception, the great movie tells a great story. But for learning English, an ideal movie always weaves the story into a historical event or a social setting. That background usually offers the crucial cues for understanding the dialogues among main characters.

The best example I can think of is a drama I saw on a date at a Star theater, of which the amazing digital sound impressed—and shocked—me a lot. The movie was a blast!

It’s Forest Gump.

In fact, the movie doesn’t set in one historical event; it spans across several. In two and half hours, it stages the major historical events of each decade in the last half century of America: racial segregation in the South in the 50s, Vietnam War and civil right movement in the 60s, anti-war movement, Watergate, and even ping-pong diplomacy in the 70s, and booming stock market and AIDS emergence in the 80s.

Better yet, three presidents—Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—and two celebrities—Elvis Presley and John Lennon—show up in real, thanking for digital imaging technique.

The best of all, Forrest Gump, played brilliantly by Tom Hank, sits in the chair at a bus stop, narrates the whole story in a slow, lovely southern accent, while watching a floating feather. His voiceover helps the smooth transition from one event to another—a great help too to understand the story.

I became instantly fond of Gump’s several memorable lines, including this most famous one: "My mama always said, life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get".

Because the movie tells a fascinating tale about love and loyalty, I thus remembered this line the best:

After hearing Jenny rejects his marriage proposal, Forrest says sadly but in a calm voice to her: "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is."

Turned out, it’s also a perfect movie to see on a date.

The Hollywood Lessons (2)

Beggars can’t be choosers. Beggar I was. So I wasn’t picky about genres of the Hollywood movies I saw; action or animation, drama or documentary, war or western, I swallowed them all.

Each genre has its own gems. For the purpose of learning English, some genres beat the other. Start with the ones that are not so good for learning.

War: I’ve seen Patton at least five times, each time blood boiling; a great movie to understand what hero really means (hint: not a celebrity who sells million copies of records); a good movie to learn profane language—bastard and son-of-bitches. (That’s classic; for modern version, I had to go to Pulp Fiction.)

Add a few military terms, that’s pretty much all I could pick up from war movies. Even Saving Private Ryan didn’t save me much.

Science Fiction: The first one I saw was E.T. It’s barely useful before Elliot met alien—he still talked to his brother and sister the mundane stuff I could relate to. After their encounter, however, I was bewildered as much as the creature trapped in Earth.

After E.T., it went straight downhill, all the way to Star Wars and its sequels; I couldn’t make sense of any words out of Yoda’s ugly mouth, or R2-D2’s, let alone learn any practical English to apply in the non-fiction life.

Musical: The Sound of Music is my all-time favorite—fantastic story, fabulous Alps scene. But each time Maria, the Captain and his seven children would have real conversations, they began to sing. I ended up with learning more songs—not those by Sister Abbess—than words.

I fared even worse in Singin’ in The Rain. No way could I dance like Gene Kelly, nor did I learn much English; besides dancing and singing, he didn’t talk that much.

Western: I love to watch cowboy, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, riding on a horse, and gun slinging in a cool manner. The problem is, again, they seldom talk. Or they let gun do most of the talking.

In Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood has grins in his face much more often than the words out of his mouth. His performance was unforgettable; but just forget about any idea of learning English from it.

Action: Need to say no more; action speaks itself—car chasing, helicopter hovering, rocket firing, and, the latest trend, kung fu fighting. As thrilling as it is, that leaves little room for the meaningful dialogues. But it can be perfect genre to learn basic conversation. For instance,

Q: “What is your name?”
A: “Bond. James Bond.”

More non-English speakers, I bet, have learned English Conversation 101 from the agent 007 than from their English teachers.

The Hollywood Lessons (1)

Unlike watching TV, seeing Hollywood movies, especially viewing some of my favorites repeatedly, helped a great deal in improving my listening comprehension and spoken English. My self-scheduled and fun classes with American movies dated back to my sophomore year in college.

One day, a roommate triumphantly dropped a bomb: he secured a copy of videotape that has a pirated American movie with some “goodies” in it. To six restless young men, all packed in a one-room dormitory and living in a temple-like campus, hearing both “Hollywood” and “Goodies” in one sentence was as to the hungry wolves seeing a piece of lamb’s flesh on the ground. It spun us into an immediate action.

With a pack of Marlboro and a promise of his concurrent viewing, we bribed a senior, the Party member, who had the key to the only classroom equipped with a VCR in our department. We sneaked into the room one by one in a great care, hoping not to alert others, and tried hard to suppress our excitement.

Behind the closed curtains, amid the heavy smokes, I had experienced my first authentic viewing of a Hollywood movie—original soundtrack in English, no subtitles, and, thank God, no funny voiceover in Chinese—in its entirety.

It was Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese.

After the sunlight resurfaced and the smoke was cleared, my roommates were utterly disappointed; the “goodies”, as it turned out, were no more than an underage hooker’s mini skirt. But I was in a content mood, despite that I couldn’t tell exactly what pleased me.

Truth to be told, I could hardly understand the dialogues in the movie, although I picked up some clues from Jodie Foster’s revealing outfit and Robert DeNiro’s weird actions. Maybe, just watching real Americans talking back and forth the first time amazed me.

Since then, I would seize every opportunity to lay my hands on Hollywood movies. It's not always an easy task, since the authority deemed most American movies the “spiritual pollution” in the 80s, and had a strong rein of the materials. But by then, the iron curtain had many cracks, and the western "pollution" somehow often found its way to trickle in.

Gradually, the magic of storytelling, along with the make-believe scenes, did the trick to my ears: even the long and complicated dialogues became easier to understand. Many times during the viewing, I loved to mimic the dialogues as if I was acting along. Here is one of my favorites (audio):

“Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind.” --Gordon Gekko, Wall Street

This is Michael Douglas at his best. And mimicking after a great actor like Douglas, as I found out, is a great way to develop a sense of rhythm and flow. And it's a tremendous fun.

Peter Hessler: Teaching English In China

Before becoming a writer for New Yorker, Peter Hessler taught English in China in 1996 for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. He was 26 years old then.

Most foreign teachers, or Waijiao in Chinese, chose to stay in one of the major cities, and often taught in a top university. But Hessler went to a local teacher college at Fuling, Sichuan, a backward small town along the Yangtze River in the southwestern China.

In 2001, he published his first book titled River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, a fascinating memoir about his stint in Fuling Teacher College, recounting his unique experience of living in a small town as one of the only two foreigners (along with another Peace Corps volunteer), and of teaching English to a group of students, who mostly came from peasant families.

This year, he wrote another book titled Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present. In a great story telling, he weaves several common Chinese’s colorful lives, in different times and places, into one tale, including one of his students in Fuling after he graduated.

Listen to his own words about the books in this Google Video.