Learning Mandarin Journey and finding my roots

I write a story of a Chinese banana ( one who thinks as a white person although my skin is physically yellow) who is finding my roots through a Mandarin learning journey. My father named me 陈智华 meaning the wisdom of the Chinese. Sadly, for much of my life, I barely knew Mandarin so I had no such wisdom. From childhood, I struggled to learn Mandarin and the struggle proved too difficult so I gave up trying to learn Mandarin. I believe my story reflects the story of many banana Chinese.

Fast forward to 31st August - 10th September 2023: I went on China on the Silk Route journey 丝绸之路 with friends who were bilingual and extremely competent in both Mandarin and English. That journey with such gifted friends ignited my interest to re-learn Mandarin. What sparked my interest was for example the term 东南西北 dong nan xi bei refers to the 4 directions in Mandarin beginning from the East to South to West to North in a clockwise fashion which is very different from the western concept of north south east west.The Chinese concept of direction clockwise from the East is however typically Jewish and Biblical as in the Old Testament. During the days of Jews in the desert under Moses, they broke camp and set off beginning from the East in a cockwise direction.

My travel companions helped me understand for the first time ever, that the geographical areas in China were demarcated by the two great rivers – the Yellow river often referred to as He and the Yangtze Kiang often referred to as Kiang. So the province Hebei 河北means 'north of the river'; the Yellow River in the North China Plain. Our Silk Road journey started off from Urumqi in the north west, down to Dabancheng, Turpan and took us through the Hexi 河西 corridor west of the Yellow river, traveling through the towns of Dunhuang in western Gansu, Jiayuguan ( the western frontier of the Great Wall of China) , Zhangye in Ganzhou , Wuwei and Lanzhou in the South East.

Urumqi has pretty mountains views

Jiayuguan is named after Jiayu Pass, the largest and most intact pass and is the western frontier of the Great Wall of China.So my first encounter on the Great Wall of China was with this western frontier.

Henan 河南 refers to the area south of the Yellow River with cities like Luoyang and Kaifeng. I had visited Luoyang and Kaifeng years ago. Kaifeng 开封 literally means open and seal. Here a thriving Jewish community once lived. It is also where the famous judge with the crescent moon on his face 包公; Bāo Gōng; 'Lord Bao' resided and administered justice. Hedong, however refers to east of another river the Hai river and houses Tianjin.

While passing through Dabancheng 达坂城 , a a town with many wind turbines, Mr. Beh sang a melody which I recognized as a much loved Chinese song from my childhood days.However I sang the Cantonese version which meant “Elephants went to dance 大笨象会跳舞.” The play of words was that Elephants in Cantonese sounded like the town’s name DabanCheng. The cute song mentioned watermelons and indeed this area was famous for its large and sweet watermelons. We also passed by a town called Hami which meant honey dew melon, I suddenly realized watermelons were called west melon 西瓜 xi gua because it originated from the west ( outside China beyond the western borders) and pumpkin was called south melon 南瓜 nan gua.

We also visited Turpan (吐鲁番 the grape capital of the world. It has a very dry and hot weather which is wonderful to dry the grape clusters to become raisins. Turpan is also famous because of its Flaming Mountains 火焰山 which are barren,eroded red sandstones hills giving the mountains the appearance of being flaming. This town is a famous city in the Chinese story “ Journey to the West.” Turpan is the site of the story of the Monkey God who uses the magic fan and fans it 47 times and puts out the fire. The air temperature here was 48C while the rock temperature recorded was 54 C. It is interesting that multiples of the word for fire /flame huo 火 conveys meanings close to fire for example 2 fires炎 yán means inflamed while 3 fires焱 yàn means blazing flames

Post the Silk Route, I have started reading and typing Mandarin. I have enjoyed reading my grand daughter Emma's kindergarten readers and progressed beyond that to songs related to places i have visited such as Dabancheng and Xinjiang. I am beginning to journey towards the Mandarin roots of my namesake. This year in 2024, I have 6 trips to China. I have just returned home from my 3rd trip a few days ago. The subsequent blogposts will feature these trips. There is great joy in this amazing journey