Needham or not...

Dongguan had been almost relentlessly warm for the past few weeks but, since Saturday, we have suffered something of a change of fortune with a veritable deluge of rain hitting us accompanied by temperataures not far above freezing. Today I am sitting as deeply into Cochan Cafe as I can manage but, unfortunately, the local habit of leaving the main doors open to encourage customers means that the interior is, to put it mildly, chilly. At least this is one of the few cafes in Dongguan that actually does enforce the law of smoking, so one doesn’t have to deal with that particular unpleasantness as well. Obeying laws seems to be quite optional here in China, if the obeyance thereof is likely to cost the owner of the business a few customers then it is very unlikely to be enforced. In the case of smoking, the authorities made quite a song and dance about their new regulations last year, proclaiming to all and sundry how they wanted to promote healthier lifestyle habits here, but as ever here, presentation is one thing, enforcement quite another.
My mind has been somewhat occupied of late by the ‘Needham Question’, something that was brought to my attention a few weeks back by a friend of mine in Kanchanaburi. Joseph Needham, originally a biochemist, became both a sinologist and also something of a sinophile. His initial interest in China was sparked after embarking on an affair with a young Chinese scientist in Cambridge in the late 30s. She made him aware of some of the many remarkable discoveries and inventions of Chinese science up to the 18th century. China’s culture had been one of, if not the leading culture for several centuries. As Needham illustrated in his opus magnus on the subject many (the massive and unfinsihed 25 volume ‘Science and Civilisation in China’), many developments in science and mathematics had their genesis in China. Needham certainly had a point and he was by no means backwards in coming forward to make that point, writing and travelling endlessly in pursuit of his calling. Many other scholars felt that although there was much validity to what he said, he also developed the tendency to credit almost all major developments to China (much to the approval of his lover, no doubt). Basically, he over-egged it.
The Needham Problem essentially addresses the question of why this influence stopped and the culture essentially ossified (at least as far as scientific development was concerned) to the point where the younger but more energised cultures of Europe both overtook China and eventually left it far behind.
Many answers have been posited, some more credible than others. The stultifying effect of Confuscianism for example, wherein social stability is prized about all else. The nature of the Chinese state which laid great emphasis on continuity and had little need for innovation. The exam system for bureaucrats which held rote learning in high esteem but, again, did not particularly value original work. The remnants of the latter can still be seen in the Chinese education system of today. It is very good at turning out individuals who pass exams, but unfortunately not quite as good at creating pupils who actually understand their subjects. In regards to the latter, it is not an uncommon experience to come across people with degrees in English in China, who yet seem almost incapable of even the simplest of discussions using that language.

Another, somewhat more imaginative answer, is that regarding the development of glass in Europe. The theory runs that because the Europeans loved wine they developed glass to a much higher degree which eventually lead on to the development of optics, scientific instruments and, last but not least, spectacles. This latter innovation thus enabled a greatly increased creative lifespan for the European intellectual as opposed to their Chinese counterpart whose culture, favouring tea over wine, had merely developed porcelain. An interesting theory...

Interestingly, and rather oddly, after consulting 20 odd sites on the internet addressing this question, none of them seem to have posited the possibility of what would seem a very obvious contributing factor. The industrial revolution that started in the UK and spread throughout Europe created the need for a better educated workforce, at least to a basic level. To make this possible, a certain democratization of education was required in order to have sufficient people capable of working within the new paradigm. This increasing access to education created a much wider pool of potential scientists, mathematicians and engineers that had hitherto been the case.
This same process would not have been possible to the same extent in China due to one very simple but very fundamental factor: the cumbersome nature of the Chinese writing system. Mandarin Chinese is often described as a very difficult language to learn, perhaps even the most difficult. Personally, I think that spoken Chinese is no more challenging than any number of other languages, despite the difficulties connected to the use of tones. The grammatical structures within the language are of themselves far simpler than French, English or German. Many outsiders successfully manage to learn to speak the language but few, even after many years of study, get anywhere near close to being able to read, let alone write, in Mandarin.

Even Western academics who have studied the language for a decade will still have difficulties reading even the most basic novel or newspaper article in Chinese. There is no shame in this as the Chinese people themselves suffer under a similar yoke. Though the Chinese government claim a literacy rate of around 95% (interestingly similar to Western European countries and the US) this is only achieved by setting a standard that is so low as to be bordering on the absurd. Recognition of characters for example, is considered enough of a qualification even if the ability to recreate these characters is completely lacking. I have met several seemingly bright people here who are completely unable to read official documents and have to rely on friends to interpret for them.
Now, interestingly, if the results of IQ testing is to be believed, the average Chinese person is a tad more intelligent than his Western counterpart. Yet real literacy rates here in China are stubbornly low. I conducted some interesting experiments (highly unscientific, of course) myself of late just to see how difficult the written system was even for educated Chinese people. I worked with a couple of undergraduates, giving them a list of reasonably common words. Their immediate reaction was to pick up their mobile phones and enter the pinyin! When told that this was not allowed they looked just a tad flummoxed and, somewhat abashed, had to admit that they could not write the words from memory. One of the words used was ‘sneeze’. Now imagine in the West having people educated to undergraduate level who struggle with reproducing such a simple word; it would be simply unbelievable unless that person was unlucky enough to be severely dyslexic.
Another aspect of this historically is that in the times we are referring to the Chinese script was actually several orders of magnitude more difficult than it is today. Most of the scholars time was taken up by their attempts to simply master enough words to pass various administrative exams.
So, my contention is that the problem for China in regards to the Needham Paradox (it has many names!) was not so much in the culture or the underlying capabilities of the populace but simply due to the almost impossible task of democratizing education when the pupils are faced with such a gargantuan task as simply learning the written system in the first place.
Several years ago I took a trip to Russia. It was a relatively late booking so I had barely two and a half weeks to get a little Russian under my belt before I left. It took me roughly 36 hours to learn the phonetics of the cyrillic script and with it the ability to understand simple signs. More recently, a friend and I also decided to learn the Greek alphabet just for the hell of it. This process took a couple of days. Now, compare that to getting even a basic understanding of the Chinese written system...years, or even decades are required to reach a similar level.

This has proven to be quite a long piece and I am completing it in C Store, a cafe a few hundred metres from Cochan. As I look to my right I see a sign written in Chinese script, symbolically and in English. It says: no smoking. Beneath it, a young man of about twenty years of age, puffs away happily...

Not so easy peasy...

          This week's 'Letter from China' comes from the simple but comfortable confines of Pappa Gourmet, a tiny café cum tea bar in one of the slightly more salubrious side streets of Chang An. The place is only about ten feet wide but nearly makes up for it by having a mezzanine floor. I use the word 'nearly' advisedly, as those of us of slightly more generous height are challenged to do anything other than stoop on the upper floor. Still, it is comfortable, at least once one has levered one's long-legged frame into position.

          Many of the cafés and shops in this area follow the modern trend of naming their shops using the alphabet commonly employed in English. Most times, the premises bear two names, the Chinese and the English, but many dispense with the Chinese altogether and just focus on the more fashionable Anglo-Saxon. This trend has been noticed by the powers that be (and they are considerable powers...) in China and reacted to. Much like the French and their infamous 'Academie  Francaise', there is a feeling that the traditional culture, and the language in particular, is under threat from the modern preponderance of English in the world's of commerce and entertainment.

          For my part, the adoption of more and more English cannot come too soon. For the second time, before the start of this latest venture to South China, I dedicated myself, quite earnestly and with a fair degree of determination, to the study of Mandarin, both spoken and written. It seems though, that for the second time this most complex of linguistic systems has defeated me utterly. After some eight weeks of dedicated practice, averaging about an hour and a half a day, and six weeks of actual exposure to China and the spoken language, I feel I have barely scratched the surface of a scratch on the surface of the language.

          I can manage, at a push, the very basics such as politeness (to a point), asking for items in shops and enquiring after the price but beyond such bargain basement Chinese, I am stumped. Even such simplicities as asking directions, something that would come in handy in these bustling and constantly confusing metropolises, are quite beyond me. I may be able to ask the question but am utterly unable to comprehend the stream of apparently disconnected syllables that is returned to me. My only recourse in such circumstances is to follow the directions of the respondent's hands and nod, murmuring the odd 'hao' (good) and 'haode' (fine) and trying not to look too challenged.

          This is, of course, hugely frustrating. The frustration was so great in fact that I began to doubt my own ability to learn and assimilate. I am no polyglot but can get by in German and have a little French. In the past though, when I have spent some time in a new country, I usually find that I can pick up the basics of what is needed to get by, at least to some extent, within a relatively short time, even if this entails learning a new alphabet as was the case in Thailand and Russia.

          To test my own apparently dwindling abilities I decided to look into another language to see if it would prove as difficult. I chose Spanish as it is likely to come in handy for future flaneurial visits to Spain and South America. I listened to some recordings from the redoubtable Michel Thomas (a fascinating character whose biography is well worth looking up in its own right – he packed an awful lot of living into his 91 years) and found that far from being unresponsive that I was actually picking up the language like a talented teenager. In three days I seem to have learnt the equivalent of two months of Chinese, perhaps more.

          So what is it that is so very difficult about Chinese that it intimidates even the most accomplished of polyglots? I say this having just read about the famous Italian cardinal, Joseph Mezzofanti, who was reported to be able to speak sixty languages fluently. Despite his previous acumen, it was rumoured that he had a nervous breakdown when faced with Mandarin. This event not only thwarted further progress in Chinese but led to him temporarily forgetting many of his other languages.

          The first problem with Mandarin is that it is a tonal language. This implies that the meaning of words is changed by the tone attached to them. As an example we can use the seemingly simple two-letter syllable 'ma'. This can mean a piece of hemp, a horse, to scold someone, a mother or can be used at the end of a sentence to indicate a question is being asked, depending on the tone it is uttered in. This multiplicity of meaning applies to every syllable that Chinese uses. Often, to the European ear, simply picking up the fact that the tone has changed in the first place is something of an achievement – to then add meaning to that is bordering on a minor miracle.

          The actual number of sounds employed by Mandarin is relatively few but this only adds to the confusion. The same syllable can be used multiple times even with the same tone and yet mean something completely different. The syllable 'shi' for example has a grand total of some 32 meanings, depending on tone and context. That is roughly 31 too many for this nomadic flaneur...

          I could say a lot more in regards to the challenges of the spoken language but, unbelievably, that is the easy part. When it comes to the written, Mandarin is saddled with a writing system that is both ancient and unbelievably cumbersome. The learner of English has to accumulate 26 letters which, for the most part, equate fairly consistently with sound. In Russian the task that faces the would be learner is 33 letters and for the Greek a mere 24. To learn even the most basic Chinese reading skills one would have to accumulate at least 2,000 symbols. Even then, it is thought that it would still not be enough to read even basic newspaper articles and nowhere near enough for any kind of literature. There are sinologists who have studied the language for ten years and still cannot read even a simple novel in Mandarin.

          The classic comeback to this observation is that the symbols are made up of only about 200 radicals (or basic building blocks). Again, this is only partly true. There are many words that have no radicals whatsoever. Those that do have them are combined in many strange ways and, just to make matters worse, the radicals often also change form when used in combination - squished, squashed, bent or just completely different!

          Combinations of radicals can be added to the left or the right, above or below, inside or outside the main symbol with no guiding principles whatsoever to predict their behaviour. Some add a degree of phonetic clue but most don't. Some add a degree of semantic (meaning) significance but again, most don't. The whole system, to put it mildly, is a complete mess. So much so that to use the word 'system' seems unjustified in the case of Mandarin.

          Finally, if one has stayed the course and actually manages to recognise the symbols, just to make things interesting they are spaced evenly with no indication if the word involved is made up by one, two or even three of these collections of symbols. In English, we simply use a space to indicate the end of one word and the start of another. In Chinese, one has to work out which of the possible combinations is intended as the spacing itself gives no clue. Oh, nearly forgot, just to add insult to injury, Chinese is sometimes written left to right and sometimes top to bottom...

          Back in the cosy confines of Papa Gourmet, I stare uncomprehendingly at the menu which, after several weeks of trying, is just as opaque to me as on the first day. One could, with sufficient dedication, application and time master this language to the extent that one could 'get by'  (about 25 years should do it) but... is it worth that much effort for such meagre returns? Unless there is a pressing necessity to do so for business or personal reasons, I would suggest that one's time might be more gainfully employed doing... almost anything other than learning Mandarin!

          Apparently, the Chinese Premier Xi Jingping himself believes that rather than the Chinese learning English, the rest of the World should now be learning Chinese. In response to this notion, I think I should utilise a commonly used phrase from Spanglish...

           No Way, José!

Just to show that sometimes the confusion goes both ways....