Beijing Sounds — 北京的声儿

On the V in Beijing Dialect and a new translation of River Snow

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You probably remember hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time when he sang, “Scuze me, while I kiss this guy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Princess and Mrs. Beijing Sounds sent text as soon as the wheels touched ground at PEK last night. By 10:30, they’d entered the Beijing Sounds studios in Shàngdì (上地 in northwest Beijing) and managed to include your editor (who they’d left holed up in Minnesota) in most of the evening rituals: the book-reading, the talk about instant noodles for dinner — pretty much like home.

No, separation isn’t what it used to be. How quick you forget the days of shouted greetings over dollar-a-minute phone calls. You can hardly even recall anymore what it’s like to wait for mail.

All the same, today you still have to disconnect, eventually . And then you listen to the refrigerator hum, uninterrupted. You start feeling sorry for yourself and dig up whatever annoying sound clip you can find.

一个老头上厕所
yīgè lǎotóur shàng cèsuǒ
An old man goes to the bathroom

一摸兜儿，没带纸
yī mō dōur, méi dài zhǐ
feels his pocket — didn’t bring paper

擦完屁股一手屎
cāwán pìgu yī shǒu shǐ
after wiping his bottom, one hand of poop*

“Yeah,” you think, “that’s me — the hand of poop.”

C’mon! Pull out of it already. Get yourself together. What do you need? A beer? No, some bon-bons then, maybe? Still not right? Well what, then?! Oh sure, of course — I mean, who wouldn’t need to prop themselves up by scouring every last corner of the internet for some sign that you’re cool? Sure, here you go, critical acclaim: your very own refrigerator, fully decorated.

–

* Maybe someone can do better with that translation? Inelegant, to say the least.

[Update 8/1/08: Yes, indeed there was a better translation -- yet another sound clip I found in which PBS (princess beijing sounds, age 5 at the time) translates the work herself. The existence of the recording only further documents my continued and inexplicable fascination with child culture, especially of the potty-humor variety.

]

More on the “sounds” front: a Beijing dialect vocalization.

Learning what animals say in languages other than your native one is always jolting. Consider, if you will, the utter silliness of Mandarin-speakers thinking dogs should say “wàng wàng” when everyone knows they say “woof woof”.

After a few illogical discussions of that sort, you eventually acknowledge that animal sounds are just convention and try to shrug off your prejudices. But it’s disconcerting to realize there’s a whole class of sounds that you think of as natural, almost innate, that are actually quite conventionalized and culturally specific.

Here’s one from a category I hadn’t thought of: car movement. In the US, the police car of the average seven-year-old almost certainly says “woooo, wooo” while it goes “zoom zoom” or something of the sort. But check out this Beijing police car, zooming in the vernacular: Read the rest of this entry »

I figured it’d be cheap of Beijing Sounds to record the one sound that’s deafening the city tonight, so here’s one you probably haven’t heard this new year’s eve, unless, maybe, you have grade school children attending a Beijing elementary.Kid culture has always fascinated me — how stuff gets made up and passed on through generations of children without reaching up into the adult realm. In my childhood this extended to all sorts of arts, and so most kids knew, for example, …

• the commonly known rules for playing marbles for keeps
• the technique for making various patterns with a circle of string and your two hands
• no end of bawdy doggerel, e.g. a taunting one I only half-remember:

… [forgot first line]
I see Johnny’s underwear
Might be blue, might be white
Might be full of dynamite

Beijinger ankle-biters are no different. Here’s a G-rated one belted out gleefully by our 6 and 8-yr-old informants. Happy new year!

2008, 火山爆发。我去救人，变成烤鸭。
èr líng líng bā, huǒshān bàofā, wǒ qù jiù rénr, biànchéng kǎoyā
2008, a volcano erupts, I go to save someone, become a roast duck