The Asian Pacific American Heritage

A Companion to Literature and Arts

George J. Leonard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135580179
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Popular Culture in Art

Meeting the challenge of teaching multiculturalism
Students-and their teachers-encountering literature and arts from unfamiliar cultures will welcome the special help this book provides. Instructors who are unfamiliar with Asian Pacific cultures are now being asked to explain a reference to the Year of the Rat, Obon Season, or to interpret a haiku. When Amy Tan refers to the Moon Lady or the Kitchen God, what does she mean? Is Confucianism actually a religion? This book answers these and many other questions, for students, teachers, and the librarians to whom they turn for help. Provides sound information on in-demand topics
The Companion presents lengthy articles-written specifically for this book-on the topics that unlock the work of a number of contemporary Asian Pacific American writers and artists, for example: Asian naming systems, the "model minority" discourse, Chinese diaspora, Filipino American values, the Confucian family and its tensions, Japanese internment, Mao's Great Cultural Revolution, the Korean alphabet, food and ethnic identity, religious traditions, Fengshui and Chinese medicine, Filipino folk religion, Hmong needlework, and reading Asian characters in English, just to name a few. Covers major contemporary writers
The articles are coupled with in-depth studies of the authors most likely to be part of the multicultural curriculum during the next decade, among them Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Amy Tan, Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, Jessica Hagedorn, Lawson Fusao Inada, Garret Hongo, David Henry Hwang, Kim Ronyoung, and Cathy Song. Expert contributors
This volume was created under the supervision of distinguished Advisory Editors from the Asian Pacific American community. The contributors, a Who's Who of Asian Pacific American humanistic scholarship, are frequently the founders of their disciplines, and most are from the ethnic group being written about. Helps students understand arts and literature
Multicultural courses are generally taught by exposing students to literature or arts, with reference to their political, sociological, and historical contexts. This book is designed to help students reading novels, watching films, and confronting artworks with information needs quite different from those of social scientists and historians.

Part I

Fundamentals

Chapter 1

Reading Asian Characters in English

Why “Chou” and “Zhou” are the same Word, and they are Both Pronounced “Joe”: The Perils of Reading Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Characters Transliterated into English; with Notes on Vietnamese and Thai

GEORGE J. LEONARD

One of the most respected English professors in the world once remarked confidently to an audience that he had become more multicultural, and had recently been reading Qing Dynasty poetry. He pronounced it, “Kwing.” Presumably he thought the Qing dynasty and the Ch’ing dynasty were two different dynasties. They are not, and they are both pronounced, simply, “Ching.” Why the bizarre spellings then? Spellings so unexpected they confuse even great scholars? Students will not get far if they think Qing and Ch’ing are different eras. In this essay I address myself to the professor who will have to deal, as soon as books are assigned, with this pedagogical emergency. I will discuss Chinese, then Japanese and Korean romanizations—the literature of the three most populous groups of Asian Americans with transliterated Old Country languages.

The colonial heritage makes it unnecessary to devote similar attention to the Filipino or Vietnamese. Colonialism led the Philippines to use a romanization worked out by the Spanish; and led Vietnam to use a romanization (called quoc ngu) worked out by a French missionary, Alexander de Rhodes, in 1651, and enforced by the French when they closed the China-oriented civil service schools earlier in this century. Vietnam is the only country in Asia using romanized letters. Thailand’s situation will be more understandable when we know Korea’s.

Chinese

Not only “Ch’ing” and “Qing,” but “Zhou” and “Chou” are the same dynasty as well, and the latter two are both pronounced like the English name “Joe.” As American students move from book to book during an introductory course, they become confused, as Zhou in one book changes to Chou in another, and all the philosophers, titles of books, and names of artists shift under their eyes. If only for that reason, when studying Chinese topics, the professor must start the class by identifying which system of “romanization” he or she will use—and insist the class follow it. He or she should also insist, when the reading is assigned, on the whole class using one translation only—if only to avoid orthographic confusion.

The problem: there currently is no good romanization of Chinese—a method of spelling out Chinese sounds into our alphabet. The older, still most widely used version, the Wade-Giles romanization, is so bad it is comic. Its defenders argue, at best, that it was conceived back when Asian studies was the province of specialists and experts, who had the time to learn Wade and Giles fine distinctions. Others, less charitable, actually have hinted that Wade and Giles fine not unhappy about how convoluted their romanization was, for it meant that only professional Chinese scholars like themselves would ever pronounce the Chinese sounds correctly.

For instance, the most important virtue for Confucius is spelled, in Wade-Giles, “jen.” American readers pronounce it, naturally, like the first syllable of Jennifer. How do you think that “j” is supposed to be pronounced? Were they thinking of “j” in German, pronounced like “y”? No. As in Spanish, like “h”? No luck. Wade-Giles used a “j” as their symbol for the “r” sound at the beginning of words like “rip.” The Confucian term is pronounced “ren.”

Watch how the damage unfolds. Wade and Giles have used up the letter “j” to mean “r.” How will they spell the name of the Taoist philosophic classic, which is pronounced Dao de Jing? They have used up the “j”. So for the “j” sound they use “ch.”

Why? I have no idea. They have to spell Dao de Jing as “Tao te Ching.” They also, you’ll notice, chose for some reason to spell the “d” sound with a “t.” Generations of Americans have called the Dao the “Tao” (and soybean cake, dofu, “tofu.”)

To recap, having used up “j” on the “r” sound, they then—for the “j” sound—used up “ch.” So be it. But they’re only painting themselves further into the corner. Having used up “ch” how can they spell the dynasty whose name starts with the “ch” sound, the Ching dynasty? Their amazing solution: when they print “ch” with an apostrophe in front of it, just say it the way you normally would. So the Ching dynasty they write Ch’ing.

Everyone, naturally, sees that strange apostrophe, thinks the Chinese must pause for a second in the middle of the word, and says “Ch…ing,” two separate sounds. But all the apostrophe means is, “this ‘Ch’ you shouldn’t say as ‘j’ but the way you usually say ‘ch.’” If you must resort to an apostrophe, would it not have made more sense to add the odd apostrophe when you are not supposed to say it the way you normally would? Why should the odd spelling symbolize the normal pronunciation?

Alas, the name of the country was China, and the language, Chinese. According to their logic, Wade and Giles should now ask us to spell those two words “Ch’ina” and “Ch’inese.” At this point Wade and Giles threw in the towel and said, “But go on spelling China and Chinese the way they have always been spelled, even though it violates our system.” Chaos. (Or, ch’aos?)

The proof that Wade-Giles has been a catastrophe is that many authors have felt they had the right, even the duty, to make up a simpler system of their own. Then, in the 1950s, the Communists developed a new romanization called Hanyu Pinyin (or “pinyin” for short) which avoids many of the Wade-Giles problems and is increasingly used throughout the West.

Figure 1–1: The character for the Tao (also transliterated “Dao”). Rubbing from Yuan Dynasty century stone tablet text of Tao te Ching (also transliterated “Dao de Jing”). Courtesy of George J. Leonard

Pinyin is better, and is becoming standard in newer books. Ren is, mercifully, ren, not “jen.” But there are still symbols that Americans find difficult: Q like “ch” in “cheese”; X like “sh” in “sheep”; C like “ts” in “cats”; Zh like “dg” in “edge.”

That is how the Ch’ing dynasty became the Qing dynasty and befuddled the famous professor. That is why Chou in an old book is Zhou in the newer ones, and it is still pronounced Joe. (Even closer than a “j” would be the harsh grinding sound made at the start of the name George.)

All these romanizations, from Wade-Giles to pinyin, only capture the way one of the eight main Chinese languages pronounces these words: Putonghua, the language of the North, of Beijing, of the Emperor’s city, and his ruling class—the language we call “Mandarin.” It is more accurate to say that Chinese is the name of a language family, like the Romance language family. Cantonese is as far from Mandarin as Spanish is from French. A 1955 People’s Republic of China (PRC) government conference estimated that 71.5 percent of Chinese spoke Mandarin, while the second most common fangyan, “regional speech,” accounted for only 8.5 percent and behind that came Cantonese with only 5 percent. Pinyin does not represent the sounds of any language but Mandarin. (Among American Chinese, however, Mandarin is not the most common. Until recently, 95 percent of American Chinese came from the six counties around the southern seaport of Canton, or Guangdong, and the language there was primarily Guangdonghua, which we call Cantonese. Toishanese was spoken frequently nearby, as well, and is in the United States as a consequence.)

Everyone in China has to study Mandarin in school, and all now learn pinyin as well as Chinese characters. Mao decided some central language, some lingua franca was needed, and decreed it would be Mandarin, the language of the Northern majority and of the capital.

To further complicate matters, Chinese dialects within the languages are further apart than dialects within English. It is only as far from Beijing to Shanghai as from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but the difference in their Mandarin is about as wide as the difference between the English spoken in California and in Scotland. I’ve watched Shanghaiese listen to a Beijingese, slowly repeat what they’d heard, mulling over the sounds, then suddenly exclaim “Ai-ya!” and understand.

Worst of all, the Chinese languages (or “regionalects,” to use a more precise term) are tonal languages, and the same sound, said four different ways, means four things. Two different tones, two different words: the difference between Oh? and Oh! Pinyin tries to cope with the tones by using a series of accent marks but American books often omit them as just too much to handle. That means, however, that you’ll read of Confucius’ love for li, courtesy/ritual, and a few pages later of his opponent’s (the Law and Order School’s) belief in li, force. Confucius’ li was said like a skeptical “li?” and his opponents’ li was said like an emphatic “li!” The two tones make two different words— indeed, two opposing philosophies!

To avoid conflicting romanizations, the professor, if books are assigned, should insist the class all work from one translation. There’s another reason. Chinese translations can legitimately differ from each other much more widely than two translations from, say, French into English, legitimately can.

Here are two translations from the Tao te Ching, Chapter 6:

The valley spirit never dies;

It is the woman, primal mother.

Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth.
(Feng and English)

The Valley Spirit never dies.

It is named the Mysterious Female.

And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female

Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang.

(Author Waley)

Is the valley spirit “primal mother” or Mysterious Female? There is a difference! In the first translation, her gateway “is,” present tense, right now, the root of heaven and earth. But in the second, the Tao seems to be talk ing about a cosmic even...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I. Fundamentals
• Part II. The Family and the Self
• Part III. Roots, Traditions, and Asian Pacific Life: The Old Country and its Cultural Legacy
• Part IV. Asian Pacific Culture: Diaspora
• Part V. Literature
• Part VI. The Arts
• Appendix A. Asian Pacific American Chronology and Statistics
• Appendix B. A Cultural Lexicon for Asian Pacific Studies
• Contributors
• Index