問我anything with Lu

[Yadang]

We're continuing our 問我anything series with Lu. A member that's been here since 2004, with 5,183 posts and counting. Remember that Lu can choose not to answer any of the questions posted.

A few questions to get us started:

1. You mentioned in Why Chinese:

 

 

All in all, pretty much everything I have dreamed of in life has come true because I learned Chinese.

 

That really caught my eye - can you give some examples?

 

 

2. I think I've seen you post that now your back home (Holland?), but that you work as a translator. How long did it take you to get to the level where you started translating things? What kinds of things to you generally translate? What are your favorite things to translate?

3. How/why did you hear about and get into Chinese-Forums?

4. What other languages do you speak, and to what degree of fluency?

[roddy]

Lu, you've had the relatively rare experience of living in both Taipei and Beijing. What were the highlights of both cities for you, and how would you combine them into one superior metropolis, perhaps to be called Beipei. 

Continued thanks to Yadang!

[Lu]

What were the highlights of both cities for you, and how would you combine them into one superior metropolis, perhaps to be called Beipei.

Ooh trick question. I have usually managed to avoid comparing cities.

Let's see. Taipei: nice people, nice weather, nice food, democracy, lots of (mostly crappy) free media, nature, clean air... It's a good place to live, basically.

Beijing: it's happening and growing, you can feel the Chinese dream around you there. Yes people live in basement boxes, but they do it because they see a way up. Taipei is more arrived (complacent), Beijing is filled with people who want to Do Stuff and Build Something (sometimes literally: lots of foreign architect there). Also, so much more is going on in Beijing (and China), which makes it harder to grasp but also more interesting.

So the most basic combining would be to take Taipei and add the growth and entrepreneurial spirit, and some of the stuff that is happening. I'd leave all traditional buildings of both (in separate parts of the city). Both cities could contribute one signature 高楼大厦, and the others would have to go. Of course all the cool people I've met in either or both places would live in Beipei. And I'd place this whole city somewhere in eastern Germany/western Poland, or perhaps in Southern France, but either way just an overnight trainride away from Leiden.

[Lu]

What other languages do you speak, and to what degree of fluency?

- Dutch (native).

- English, my resume says 'near-native', I leave the actual level up to your judgment. I know I sometimes write things here that are not entirely correct, I can do a bit better when I have to.

- Mandarin, my resume says 'fluent', here on the forums I'd say 'fairly good'.

- German, good passive knowledge, speaking is very rusty and writing I haven't tried in years.

- French, I can make conversation as long as the other person is very patient. Last time I used it was on the train to Poland, with a Polish lady who lived in France. Crappy French was all we had in common, but we managed to communicate.

- Taiwanese, learned for a year, forgot most of it, but it was fun to learn, it gave me an appreciation for 方言, and it made me realise that seven tones is not more difficult than four.

 

How/why did you hear about and get into Chinese-Forums?

I think it was a friend in Beijing who told me about zhongwen.com, and zhongwen.com apparently used to have a forum, but when I got there it was closed and just had a link to Chinese-forums.com.

I'll get to your other two questions later or tomorrow, need to do a little more work now...

[Shelley]

What keeps you occupied in your "spare time"?

 

What do you like to read?

 

What music do you like?

 

Side note: I found Chinese forums through zhongwen.com too.

[Kobo-Daishi]

What's the Chinese situation like in Holland?

 

Do you have a sizeable Chinese population? And where are they likely to be from?

 

In America, we've ethnic Chinese from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and all over SE Asia. Even from South Korea. And the richest guy in Los Angeles is an ethnic Chinese from South Africa of all places.

 

I remember talking with an ethnic Chinese girl from Indonesia and she said some of her relatives immigrated to the Netherlands. Indonesia being a former Dutch colony.

 

Recently the Chinese population in Los Angeles has exploded. How is it where you are?

 

Any Chinatowns?

 

Kobo.

[Lu]

1. You mentioned in Why Chinese:

All in all, pretty much everything I have dreamed of in life has come true because I learned Chinese.

That really caught my eye - can you give some examples?

Various things. I used to want to be part of a stage production: be backstage, be part of the show. I used to want to be secretly famous. I wanted to make subtitles (actually at one point I wanted to become the person who translates for voice dubbing of movies). I wanted to translate a book.

And because I know Chinese (and most people don't), I got backstage. I ran the subtitles for stage shows, I interpreted for singers (nobody famous, but still) and directors, I was even an extra in a tv series back at BLCU. I've translated the news, been part of government stuff, been the interpreter sitting behind the flower pot at high-level meetings. I've made subtitles, and I've translated a book. I haven't translated for voice dubbing yet, so perhaps I still have something left to wish for.

Also, I got a whole new life. I'm a fully-functional regular Dutch person, but I'm also someone who enjoys Chinese books, movies, music, who likes hotpot and KTV, who hangs out with people my parents can't talk with, who 'gets' a whole different culture (of course I don't even come close to fully 'getting' China, but I understand enough to appreciate it), who can live in a completely different country and have a life there. Not sure if I'm explaining this part well, but this is something else I'm happy about.

 

2. I think I've seen you post that now your back home (Holland?), but that you work as a translator. How long did it take you to get to the level where you started translating things? What kinds of things to you generally translate? What are your favorite things to translate?

I started studying Chinese in 2000, and in 2005 to my surprise I was asked to do a big translation (subtitles). In 2006 I translated my first literary piece (an except from a novel). I think I had tried some Chinese translation before that, but never very consistently. I'd been translating things from English years before that (also not very consistently), so I had some practice thinking about how to approach things.

These days I mostly translate literature, but I'm happy to translate more practical things as well.

My favourite thing to translate is wordplay and puns. Yes it's hard, but it's also fun to play with words and try to make it work in a completely different language.

More answers to come in my next break.

[Angelina]

- How much time do you think it will take until you speak near-native Mandarin? 

 

- What was the most difficult problem you had to face when learning Mandarin? How did you manage to overcome it?

 

- Favorite piece of writing? Fiction, non-fiction, even blogs, 都可以.

[Kenny同志]

I've got some questions for you, Lu.

 

1. How have your experiences been with mainlanders, HKers, and Taiwanese?

 

2. I read somewhere here that you dated a Chinese guy before (forgive me if I was wrong), so what qualities in him appealed to you?

 

3. Do you read classical Chinese? How would you rate your current classical Chinese level?

 

4. Who is your favourite Chinese writer? Why?

[Lu]

What keeps you occupied in your "spare time"?

I like to read and I watch too much Netflix. I also like to spend time with friends. And I like moderate exercise, although it's usually hard to actually get myself out of the door for it.

What do you like to read?

Basically anything. I'm the kind of person who'll read the ingredients list of the peanut butter if I don't have a book or newspaper at breakfast. I like novels, both old and new; historical fiction (Hilary Mantel, Philippa Gregory, recently); science fiction; Chinese literature; other literature; but also non-fiction, newspapers and current affairs magazines.

What music do you like?

I don't have a very well-defined taste. I like Chinese rock, some Chinese pop (Zhou Jielun, A-mei), 60s-70s-80s music (Beatles, Bowie, Blondie, Meat Loaf [anyone judging me yet?]), but also some miscellaneous music like Boudewijn de Groot, Sleater-Kinney, Charles Aznavour, Rammstein...

[abcdefg]

Quote

#7 -- Also, I got a whole new life. I'm a fully-functional regular Dutch person, but I'm also someone who enjoys Chinese books, movies, music, who likes hotpot and KTV, who hangs out with people my parents can't talk with, who 'gets' a whole different culture (of course I don't even come close to fully 'getting' China, but I understand enough to appreciate it), who can live in a completely different country and have a life there.

 

I really like the way you put that. It's how I feel about having one foot in Kunming and one in the US. Fortunate enough to get a "double dip" of rewarding life experience. Having two good lives instead of just one.

[yueni]

- Would you ever think of moving towards interpreting (for Chinese-Dutch and/or English) ever?

- Do you primarily focus on literary translation, and do you also handle technical translation?

- How do you keep your Chinese level up when back in Leiden?

[Lu]

What's the Chinese situation like in Holland? Do you have a sizeable Chinese population? And where are they likely to be from?

I haven't done any research on this, so this is just what I happen to know. There is a small but still significant Chinese community in the Netherlands. They are mostly from:

- China (Wenzhou and Guangdong);

- Hong Kong;

- Indonesia. Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony. These Chinese often don't even speak Chinese (or Bahasa Indonesia), just Dutch;

- Surinam. Surinam also used to be a Dutch colony. After slavery was abolished, Indonesians and Chinese were imported to do the labour that the slaves used to do, often for hardly more pay.

The largest Chinese communities are in Rotterdam and Den Haag, both have Chinatowns. But Chinese are actually much more spead-out than many other minorities. What many of them did was first work in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, save enough money to open their own, then bring over wife and child from China to help run said restaurant. Since opening all restaurants in the same place won't work, they spread all over the country. Pretty much every town in Holland has a Chinese restaurant.

(All this is painting it with a very broad brush of course.)

Recently the Chinese population in Los Angeles has exploded. How is it where you are?

A lot of Mainland Chinese have arrived here in recent years. Often they come to study here, after graduation many try finding a job here so they can stay. I live in a university city, so it's pretty noticable here, but I don't think it's the same in all cities.

[Lu]

- How much time do you think it will take until you speak near-native Mandarin?

I'd say two-three years in Taipei might do it. But since I don't have any plans to leave at the moment, I don't know if I'll ever speak near-native Mandarin. Chinese people think I'm Chinese when they talk to me on the phone, I'll settle for that, for the time being.

- What was the most difficult problem you had to face when learning Mandarin? How did you manage to overcome it?

I don't think I ever ran into a really difficult problem. Perhaps in my second year at uni, when the 生词 piled up faster than I was studying them, and even when I did study I just forget everything again the next day. I eventually sat down and just 背‘d, and barely passed the exam. I'd like to think I have since learned all those words elsewhere, but probably not (although I have learned others).

- Favorite piece of writing? Fiction, non-fiction, even blogs, 都可以.

Favourite books: A town like Alice, by Nevil Shute (great in so many ways); Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (horrible main character, great writing style); Life and loves of a she-devil, by Fay Weldon (fun story, great style); and a few others that I can't think of right now.

[Silent]

 

 

The largest Chinese communities are in Rotterdam and Den Haag, both have Chinatowns.

I have no hard data either but I would have said Amsterdam & The Hague. Both have China towns. I'm not aware of a China town in Rotterdam, but then I barely know Rotterdam (I dislike it). Maybe worth to check out. To my best knowledge Amsterdam has the only(?) Chinese temple of the Netherlands.

[Lu]

4. Who is your favourite Chinese writer? Why?

西西. I read a number of her short stories and I really like her humanity and her subtle sense of humour.

3. Do you read classical Chinese? How would you rate your current classical Chinese level?

I can read it, but not well. If I encounter a few lines of Classical Chinese, I need to slow down a bit and then I usually understand alright, but I wouldn't read a whole book in classical Chinese. I know what many of the particles do and I get how the language works, so I can puzzle it out, but that's about it.

2. I read somewhere here that you dated a Chinese guy before (forgive me if I was wrong), so what qualities in him appealed to you?

Generally, two things appeal me in Chinese men: one, I am really interested in things Chinese and I like speaking Chinese. I like being able to share this interest, and Chinese men usually know a thing or two about China. With a Chinese man, I can share my 'Chinese life'. Two, I find Asian men physically attractive. Not that I find every single Asian man hot and every single non-Asian man non-hot, it's just a preference. This inevitably sounds superficial and objectifying, I'm sorry about that.

And in addition the individual men that I dated of course had their individual qualities, which was why I dated them specifically and not the half a billion other Chinese men.

I'll leave your last (first) question for later.

[Lu]

I have no hard data either but I would have said Amsterdam & The Hague. Both have China towns. I'm not aware of a China town in Rotterdam, but then I barely know Rotterdam (I dislike it). Maybe worth to check out. To my best knowledge Amsterdam has the only(?) Chinese temple of the Netherlands.

You're right, Amsterdam also has a Chinatown (with a temple). The Rotterdam Chinatown is when you walk out of the station, past the trams and everything, and then turn right. I don't know what the street is called, but it has a lot of Chinese supermarkets and restaurants. There are also a few other Chinese restaurants frequented by Chinese patrons nearby (太湖 and the place near the cinema).

[Kenny同志]

Two, I find Asian men physically attractive. 

 

 

This is interesting to know! : )

 

 

 

[Geiko]

Did you use a Chinese name while in China and Taiwan? If so, which one and how did you choose it?

[Meng Lelan]

With a Chinese man, I can share my 'Chinese life'.

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing that thought, thought I was the only one here that felt this way about Chinese men. With the non-Chinese, they don't understand the "Chinese life", you have to live it to understand. 

 

Now my question: when you came back home from abroad, what questions did your family and friends ask about what your "Chinese life" was like?