Primary Sources 1A.09—Little White Rabbit Races 小白兔賽跑

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Primary Sources."

One year ago on Round and Square (20 May 2011)—North Dakota in the Middle
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center  

[a] Race? RF

Over the course of the next year or so, Round and Square will take readers step-by-step through a very particular kind of primary source—the elementary school readers used in the mid-1980s in the Republic of China educational system. Every schoolchild on the island of Taiwan read these texts back then, and they are the foundation for understanding matters of education, acculturation, language acquisition, and translation. They were also the source of a very large chunk of my early anthropological and historical education. This is not a "language learning" series. It is meant to be an inquiry into the territory where studies of history, language, and culture meet.

I encourage readers of Round and Square to follow these posts whether or not they read Chinese. It is clear enough where I begin speaking to language learners (it starts in the "translation notes," but it is worth hanging on through there, even if you have never seen a Chinese character in your life). The section called "language notes" at the end is geared to people who have learned a little Chinese. Everything else, with the exception of the actual Chinese text, can be understood by anyone who takes the time to think about what an entire education from the ground up might be like. How many of us have thought about that element of culture since we were twelve years old? Only those terrific teachers who keep the society of learners moving along. The introduction to this series explains these matters thoroughly, and will be posted soon. In the meantime, take a look at how first-graders (for that is where we begin) started to read their world in Taiwan a generation ago. This is "textbooks from history," and there is much to learn. Let's get to work.

First we had a little girl beckon a songbird. Next a little boy urged his dog to play with him and chase the ball. Now an omniscient narrator tells of animal competition in the shadows of human life and conduct. The stakes have been raised.

You might recognize the story. It did not originate in China, of course, but it is not hard to see its relevance to every time and every place. In fact, it could be argued that every social group has some version of the tortoise and the hare story. The narrative arc might well have begun when Grog, the swiftest and strongest specimen in the Paleolithic ranks, took a nap in a nearby bog while his quasi-mutant kinsman—let's call him Klog—pursued the hairy mastodon to its end, leading throngs of cave dwellers to feast for weeks, and fire their imaginations for a kind of pachydermal flesh that might someday be warm and easy to chew.

That kind of story.

[b] Fast? RF

9—Little White Rabbit Races
Little rabbit, little rabbit

You say you run fastest of all

Racing against all-comers

You ran halfway and then stopped

Everyone has caught and passed you

Your heart is certainly heavy

Don't be sad, don't be sad

Next time you race, don't stop

You certainly still are the fastest of all

一   下   不   你   人   你   去   你   小   九
定   回   要   的   家   跑   跟   說   白
還   比   難   心   就   了   人   你   兔   小
是   賽   過   裡   趕   一   家   跑          白 
你                一   過   半   比   得   小   兔
最   不   不   定   了   停   賽   最   白   賽
快   要   要   很   你   下           快   兔   跑
      停    難   難          來
      下    過   過
      來

＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿

還    要    很    定    心    停    半    跑    賽    兔    白    九

                                               難     過     趕     就     最

Text in Simplified Chinese (简体字)*

九  小白兔比赛
小白兔   小白兔
你说你跑得最快
去跟人家比赛
你跑了一半停下来
人家就赶过了你
你的心里一定很难过
不要难过   不要难过
下回比赛   不要停下来
一定还是你最快

*A simplified text is unthinkable in an ROC worldview. I don't "work" for them, though, and am including it for two reasons. First, an almost disturbingly large number of my students these days can't read traditional characters. This is problematic, but I acknowledge (grudgingly) the reality. Second, it should be an eye-opener for students on either side of the "simplified/traditional" divide. Just look. Finally, if you want to read anything written before 1950, you need to learn traditional forms. Get over it. It's not political. It's literature...and politics and history. If you can only read simplified forms, you can read what (Mao) wrote, but not what he read (unless it has been edited and adapted). Think about it.

[c] Envisioning grandeur RF

History and Culture Notes

There's not much to see here in terms of history and culture, at least not in terms of originality. That fact is a little bit deceptive, though. The theme of this text, while hardly unknown to American elementary school textbooks, is one that weaves a powerful narrative thread in K-6 education in Taiwan (c. 1985). We have animals, we have a narrative voice from on high (or at least afar), and we have a message about the relationship between innate ability and perseverance.

Indeed, the American reader might be a little bit surprised by the text. I don't think that I am misinterpreting the matter when I say that most American schoolchildren are trained to see the tortoise victory as a kind of Protestant-ethic-meets-the-spirit-of-competition triumph. It's like North Carolina State in 1983 or Villanova in 1985...or the U.S. Olympic hockey team in 1980, right? The turtle wins and we all get goosebumps, right?

Right?

Um, not exactly. If that's what you saw, heavy cultural assumptions might be tipping the sofa of your imagination. Our little lagomorphic friend knows he is fast; he doesn't apply himself. He loses. He is sad. So far, so goal-oriented. I find the ending quite fascinating in terms of cultural teaching. "Next time you race, don't stop; you certainly still are the fastest." Hmmm. You're the best, but you need to work hard. Is that exactly how you remember it, Americans? How about readers in Round and Square's other ninety-eight countries? What do we make of the message?

[d] Quick RF

And what about our friendly little ectotherm who drags his sorry plastron (and carapace) along the path—weary, perhaps, but imbued with herpetological profluence? Is s/he just a little annoyance for the truly talented—a minor foil in the big plans of bunny-boy (-girl)? 

What about the turtle, for Testudines' sake? 

Think about that as we proceed. We have 267 texts to go before we graduate from sixth grade, and there are dozens of bunnies and turtles ahead of us. If you think this is kid's stuff (whatever that means), you are badly mistaken.

It's culture (and history, c. 1985). We ignore it at our peril.

Translation Notes

So why do I call the sleepy anti-hero of the story a "little white rabbit" in the title, but just "rabbit" from then on? If you read yesterday's post about little doggies, you will see a parallel. In this case, "small" and "white" are relatively weak adjectival modifiers. I chose to telegraph those ideas in the title, but anyone who has read even a little Chinese knows that 小白兔 pretty much conveys...rabbit. John Updike certainly would understand, and might have given this the title "Rabbit, Race." 

[e] Torrid RF

Think about 去跟人家比賽. We have the ubiquitous 去(來) at the beginning, but how should this be rendered in English? Just think about it. I have made a choice, but this is one of those little sentences that have a cluster of possibilities. 

We might also consider how best to translate the line 你的心裡一定很難過. As any student of Chinese philosophy knows, 心 can convey a complex combination of thought and emotion. It is sometimes translated as "heart-mind," and that concept was never articulated as powerfully as did Wang Yangming in the early sixteenth century. Our first graders don't know that yet (c. 1985), but I wanted to convey just a smidgen of the larger context for 心裡. Whether the English phrase "heavy heart" is the right choice is open to debate, but it beats (it seems to me) the more literal "in your heart you are certainly sad" by a long shot.

And, finally, we come to "sad." The Chinese characters 難過 are not dead-ringer synonyms for the English "sad" any more than the German Schadenfreude "means" simply "gloating." In fact, a literal translation of 難過 might be rendered "difficult to surpass" or, a little more colloquially, "hard to get over." There are (to my mind) echoes here of exilic response, and I think that this is a key to the entire text. Let's not forget, though, that sometimes (as can be seen later in the text) "sad" just works best.

[f] Profluent RF

Language Notes

The notes are pretty straightforward today. First, pay attention, as always, to the use of the adverbial 得. It is a basic construction in all Chinese writing, of course, but it is especially prevalent in the alliterative culture of children's literature. The reason I keep focusing on something you learned in first year Chinese is that, while basic, textbooks do not tend to show the wondered richness of its uses in quite the way we will see in books geared toward little learners rediscovering their own culture after five years in the trenches of the spoken word. Check out the introduction if that sentence seemed to come from out of left field.

Next, consider the sentence 你跑了一半停下來. When trying to say the same sentence, non-native speakers have a tendency to add something that conveys "and" after 一半. I remember puzzled looks on faces when I would throw in something like 和 in a desperate attempt to create the phrasal linkage demanded by my still English-dominated thinking (c. 1985). When it comes to translation, though, there are few ways in English to convey the meaning without some kind of linkage. I have chosen "and," although it would certainly be acceptable to put in a dash, a semi-colon, or another feature. This is not the least bit problematic in terms of understanding, but ask yourself (if you are in your first few years of Chinese study) how "natural" it is for you to say or write the phrase exactly as it appears above. I struggled with this for a while (c. 1985), but maybe it's just me.

Finally, we have the two-character combination 趕過. Is it a "word," such as "overtake" or a two-word combination that needs to be teased out in English? It depends, of course. Still, my classical Chinese instincts tell me that "catch and surpass" needs to be said here. The reason this discussion is in the "language notes" is because it is worth thinking about words that have 過 in them. How much do the ideas embedded in this character need to be teased out, like the proverbial snake in a basket? 

Think about it or I'll be pretty 難過.

[g] 跑了一半停下來 RF