Blogs
To Be A Kid Again...
Looking at the world with new eyesI noticed, before even flipping to the first chapter of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, that many of the editorial reviews describe it, in one way or another, as being funny, in large part due to its "childish" quality. Obviously the writing style in the beginning is very deliberately childish because Z is just starting to learn English and thus makes the same grammatical errors and asks the same questions about our (very weird, nuanced, idiomatic) language that a child would. But I think Guo is also trying to convey with her writing's childishness that moving to a new place renders you a child again in itself, just by dint of the fact that you really have to start from scratch and build a life again, one that can function in this new place amidst these new people and can be analyzed with this new language. It makes me wonder if that is actually one of the draws of travel; I wonder if some people travel because they want a way to go back to this early stage of life where everything is new and which could never be returned to ordinarily, at home. Traveling kind of gives you a clean slate and, if you can overcome the obstacles like language barriers and culture shocks, it is even more rewarding because you can approach the clean slate with experienced eyes - something children don't have. Being a foreigner who doesn't know the culture or the language not only affords you anonymity, but also an excuse to discover things at your own pace, without the pressures of society at home to be mature and reserved and constantly knowledgeable and accountable. You, as an adult, can look at something with awe and wonder and the worst that could happen would be for a local to call you a typical tourist. You can make a few gaffs, you can ask a policeman "where I seeing the fogs?" and it isn't chalked up to stupidity but to a sort of charming "childishness". I imagine that would feel pretty freeing.
Grow Up Kid.
That’s a really cool perspective I never really thought of before. I guess “childishness” is a pretty clever cover. And the “reward” of “approach[ing] the clean slate with experienced eyes” that you discuss is really shown in this work. Like we talked about in class, Z, although she talks like a child, really isn’t one at all. Her maturity, and its darkness, are still there underlying the work and its themes. At the same time though, it is a coming of age novel, and her innocence is challenged, I would argue, at a faster pace because of the cultural differences. In other words, I don’t think Z would have grown up half as fast if she had stayed in China, because the sexual predominance in Hackney, like the birthday gifts and peep shows were a (liberating?) culture shock for her. And although shocking, it forced her to grow up to be a different, independent woman, a woman that would have never materialized had she not been new and “childish” to the language and society. All in all, I think that the childlike theme, and how its played with in a foreign sense is really neat in the book, and it does, as you say, show how travel and tourism can bring the kid out in us, and at times, force us to grow up.