Primary Sources 1A.03—Who Gets Up Early? 誰起得早

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Primary Sources."
One year ago on Round and Square (26 April 2011). Evan Connell's novel, Mr. Bridge (the ending).
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center 

[a] Early 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. 

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 (the section called "Language Notes" at the end). 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. 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.

Getting up early won't go away. We are into our third primary school text (out of 276 over six grades), and the focus on nuclear family relations and individual gumption just won't quit. Everyone is Ben Franklin...except this is (the Republic of) China...in 1985. 

And everyone gets up early. Period.

As we head into our first "review" period (there is a review and a significant test after every three language texts), it is worth considering the social, familial, and gendered implications of the lines we have read thus far. They are weighted toward the women of the family, and only three figures...figure...so far. The only challenge is that daddy is reading the paper and mommy is sweeping the courtyard. Put on your seat belts. This is going to be a bumpy gender ride through sixth grade.

3—Who Gets Up Early?

Who gets up early? Mother gets up early.
Mama gets up early and sweeps the courtyard.
Who gets up early? Father gets up early.
Daddy gets up early and reads the newspaper.
Who gets up early? I get up early.
I get up early and go to school.

三     誰起得早

誰起得早？媽媽起得早。

媽媽早起忙打掃。

誰起得早？ 爸爸起得早。

爸爸早起看書報。

誰起得早？ 我起得早。

我早起上學校。

三     起     得     媽     忙     打     爸     上

                         掃     看     書     報     學     校 

Text in Simplified Chinese (简体字)*

三 谁起得早 

谁起得早？ 妈妈起得早。妈妈早起忙打扫。

谁起得早？ 爸爸起得早。爸爸早起看书报。

谁起得早？ 我起得早。我早起上学校。  
 *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 a travesty, 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. Think about it.

History and Culture Notes

I find it impossible to miss the dominance of the young woman (it is not exactly clear if she is elder sister or little sister from the context, but there will be four of them soon enough). Indeed, if you follow the rhetorical flow of the readers, it is as though "elder sister" begins the process and everyone else follows from there. Just watch, but never forget the gender implications of everything you read from here on in. Just watch.

[b] Waking RF

It is not worth belaboring at this point, but it is easy to see how powerful the "early-to-rise" rhetoric is in these formative texts. They would all be the first things formally memorized by students, and never underestimate how important such matters can be in developing the psyche of a young citizen.

Translation Notes

You will see that I found the opportunity to mix formality (in English) with familial informality. There is no way (in English) to render precisely the cultural pattern of formal (hierarchical) deference and family closeness. I have done my best by contrasting "father" and "daddy," as well as "mother" and "mommy." It is not perfect, but it gives a sense of the complexity of these matters (which cannot really be rendered adequately in English).

The "grammatical" translation issues are not formidable here. In fact, they all surround the nouns at the end of the "couplets." Mother (mama) beats the broom (打掃). I say that she sweeps the courtyard, and I make that decision based on the picture and the context of other elementary school texts which will follow. Father reads the newspaper (書報). I really want to say "morning paper," (as I do in the notes, below), but I held back and did not interpret whether daddy is reading last night's late-edition or the very-early edition of today (in 1985, both were readily available). 

The last "couplet" is easy. I go to school. The only thing challenging the reader is the cadence. The flow is just a bit "off" from mom's and dad's lines, and that is because it has only one character, while 媽媽 and 爸爸 have two. I still wonder why they didn't "even it out" a little bit. This would not be difficult. Maybe it is because we are reading and not chanting here. I don't know. I find it mildly jarring.

[c] Up RF

Language Notes

It is striking that the first-grade (first-semester) readers stress the adverbial use of 得 from the very start of primary education. This is not something to dismiss. There are three major uses of "de," and two of them (得, 的) have been introduced in the very beginning days of reading education. In these first three texts, it has focused on ...起得 (早/晚). The latter character (rising late) is only potential in a grammatical sense. It would never appear in the affirmative early-to-rise cadences of primary school texts, of course (but that is a cultural matter). Confucius, on the other hand, addresses this very issue. We're only in first-grade, though. That is a long way away.

The three couplets (so to speak) have exactly the same grammatical constructions. They begin with "who rises early?" and then answer those questions. First it is "mother," who rises early and sweeps the (grounds). Then it is "father," who rises early and reads the morning paper. Finally, I get up...and go to school. 

The primary contrast is between 起得早 and 早起. This is not particularly hard to see, but I find it striking that the text seems determined to ram it into the consciousness of the little first grader who would be reading this. Mother, father, et moi all (都) 早起...and 起得早.

One last word on new vocabulary. Now that we're a few days into our primary educations (in 1985), we can see the pattern that is developing for the little tykes. They learn to recognize about a dozen characters and are responsible for replicating about two-thirds of them. Recognition comes first...and then memorization (and testing). Never forget the testing.

Testing. 1-2-3 (grade)...testing.

[d] No time RF

Primary Sources 1A.02—Good Morning, Mother 媽媽早

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Primary Sources."
One year ago on Round and Square (24 April 2011)—Durkheim & Mauss Primitive Classification
Click here to access Round and Square's "Primary Sources" Resource Center  

[a] Morning in Taiwan 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. 

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 (the section called "Language Notes" at the end). 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. 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.

The second written text in a child's Republic of China education (in 1985) is brief and seemingly simple. It has the echoes of the first reading, which students would have studied (and been tested on) a few days before. It plays a little with grammatical "reversals," in which a construction is turned on its head to remind the student of the many ways things can be said...or written. And then it ends with a grammatical rock'em-sock'em punch. Who can compare to her? The English words are simple, but it will take the college students of Chinese in North America and Europe at least a year to get comfortable with the five characters at the end of the text.  
Now that's culture (and language). 

2—Good Morning, Mother

Good morning, mother. You are the best.
My wonderful mother always gets up early.
Good morning, mother. You are the best，
My wonderful mother—no one can compare.

二     媽媽早

媽媽早。媽媽你真好。
我的好媽媽， 天天起得早。
媽媽早。媽媽你真好。
我的好媽媽， 誰也比不了。 

二     你    好     我     的     比     不     了

                                  媽     真     誰 

Text in Simplified Chinese (简体字)*

二 妈妈早

妈妈早。妈妈你真好。 我的好妈妈，天天起得早。

妈妈早。 妈妈你真好。 我的好妈妈， 谁也比不了。 
 *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 a travesty, 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. Think about it.

[b] 你真好 RF

History and Culture Notes
Never forget that these books are intended to grow a certain kind of young Republic of China citizen. The fact that the nuclear family dominates in these early texts is unmistakable. While it could be argued that this reflects the experiential world of the children at this age (without doubt), there is clearly an ideological component, as well. The rhetorical tone has something Americans might recognize as a "Dick and Jane" heterosexual nuclear family unit quality to it, and it weaves its way through all six grades of the elementary school readers (and far beyond, I should note).

The mother-daughter relationship bears mentioning here. The text is brief, but note the family and gender dynamics of the early texts in these first-grade (first semester) readers. There is a fairly conscious balance, even though gender roles (note that the mother has a wash rag in her hands) do not push the interpretive limits very far.

Translation Notes
As for language-and-culture, let's take the obvious translation issue (this is relevant whether or not you know Chinese). The characters 媽媽 are read "mama." I have translated them as "mother." This was not a difficult decision for me. I interpret the phrasing as personal and familial, but have regarded the tone of the text as formal. I could have written "mama" in English, but it didn't seem to fit the picture or the rhetorical setting for these first few texts. There is room for interpretation here, as there is with translations of 好. I have rendered those as "best" and "wonderful," depending on the situation. I am open to the variations, but these "felt right" for me after living with these texts, in a manner of speaking, for a quarter century.

[c] The cultural (m)other RF

Language Notes
We start with the most basic of grammatical patterns. It is hard to beat "媽媽早" for simplicity. Even the next sentence (媽媽你真好) is fairly basic, but it at least has a modifier thrown in—Mama...you are really great. If this were a slower course, it might read 媽媽早，媽媽好. O.k., or not...

It gets a little bit more complicated from there, but never forget that every schoolchild knows all of this already, since she learned to speak, usually at home, in her first five years. Note the way in which the textbook writers use variations on 好. Now we have 我的好媽媽—my wonderful mother. After that, we echo the first text, which speaks to the virtues of getting up early. So mother gets up early every day (天天起得早). The beginning of the last couplet (as it were) repeats the possessive use of  in a family relationship (我的好媽媽)...before the blockbuster.

Yup, we end with "My ethereal mother, who could compare to likes of thee?" Sort of. The last five characters are worth pondering, especially if you are a little fuzzy on some of the more idiomatic constructions in Mandarin Chinese (which, at least in my day, were not covered very deeply by the first- and second-year textbooks). 誰也比不了 is a phrase you had better learn if you plan to live in Chinese. It is everywhere—like katakana in Japan. The only "easy" issue for the beginner is the first character, 誰 ("who"). Most non-native speakers do not automatically think to include 也 (also). The phrase 比不了 just needs to be memorized. Period. If you don't, it will haunt you to the end of your language-studying days. It is a slippery little fish, so don't assume that one translation will hold in all cases. We'll hook 'em as we see 'em in this series, but pay attention.

What could compare to that? Nothing compares to that.

[d] 誰也比不了 RF

Asian Miscellany (17)—Family Life in Heian Japan

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Asian Miscellany.

[a] Naginatakaboto RF

My last few posts in "Asian Miscellany" have been driven by deadline—and many of them will follow in the coming weeks and months, since I have signed contracts to deliver a whole passel of encyclopedic material to various publishers before a self-imposed deadline of January 30th. As I explained in the introduction, this series of posts allows me to try out a few ideas that I plan eventually to include in various encyclopedias or on-line sites that have asked for my input. They are not the same as the pieces that will eventually be published, but constitute more of a "long draft," meant to work through a few ideas as I work on brief essays that often mandate strict "word counts" of 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 words. 

For the next dozen or so posts, I have been asked to write about Heian Japan (794-1185). It is one of the most fascinating periods in world history, so I trust that the topics will "connect" for readers of the first ten "Asian Miscellany" posts (almost all of the topics—children, family, urban/rural—are the same). They work well for people interested in a brief introduction to Heian Japan or for people interested in comparative issues. Although an introduction to the Heian period in Japan would require its own introduction, I trust that a reading of these "Heian Japan posts (11-20 in Asian Miscellany) will encourage a few of you to read a bit of the literature of the period.

Click here for other posts in the Heian Japan mini-series:
City-Country    Children         Food-Drink      Entertainment               Sports-Games
Education        Family Life     Work-Labor     Language-Literature     Housing-Shelter

Family Life in Heian Japan

[b] Moderno-traditional RF

The earliest Japanese family organizations were said to be matrilineal (reckoned by descent through the mother), although such matters are almost impossible to decipher today. By Heian times—and many centuries before—all kinship reckoning took place along patrilineal lines. The father’s genealogy was the dominant one in deciding marriage and all of its related social goals. The “nuclear” family that most Westerners today regard as “normal” was anything but that in Heian Japan. It was common for at least three generations at a time to be living under one roof (children, parents, and grandparents). It was not particularly unusual to find a fourth or sometimes, far more rarely, a fifth generation all living together. Dating back to a distant ideal originating in China, the five-generation family (often called a “round” family) was the ultimate ideal, even though lifespans rarely made such a thing possible a thousand years ago.
 
Rural Life
In rural Japan, whether in Heian times or in later periods, it is impossible to view family life except through the lens of agricultural work. The rhythms of the seasons and the fields dominated all aspects of family life, from child rearing to daily lessons. During the all-important planting season in spring, women from rural villages would arrange the seedlings (often with the help of daughters and sons too small to do other work) and then begin the aching process that has dominated rural life in Japan for many centuries—planting each seedling between the wet, muddy ridges of the ride fields. These fields are evoked even in the earliest Japanese sources, and the spring planting was one of the two overwhelmingly significant points in the year when all members of the community—everyone except the very youngest and very oldest—would band together to start the natural cycle of the rice crop. 

During the summers, women and men separated for much of their work, with men tending the fields and women engaged in household chores. In the autumn, whole families would unite—one with another—to complete the harvest. Only those physically incapable of labor would be exempt. After the work was completed, the winter months were spent (quite unlike those of summer, while crops were in the fields) with whole families and villages back together, enjoying the one stretch of time during the year—from what we might call “November” until “March”—together. 

[c] Fujiwara Family RF

The very few documents we have that speak to family life in rural Japan in this early period highlight this part of the year as the most significant for family interaction and village get-togethers. Today’s urban dwellers, not to mention those even in Heian Japan, often forget the fundamental importance of the agricultural calendar in the shaping of family life. It does not take a very great leap of imagination to see that there are many parallels even today to family life on the farm. 

Urban Life 
The life of urban families in Heian times bore several resemblances to those in rural areas—most notably that there were times of the year and even the day in which families would disperse and others when they would spend significant time together. The stark variations required by an agricultural life, however, were muted by the rhythms of the daily and “weekly” work cycle. A shopkeeper in Heian Kyō, for example, would not require enormous help in spring and autumn, as would the rural farmer. More likely, the family demands would be for help in the store during busy times of the day, or during the occasional times of the year (nearing festivals, for example) when the demands for services were greatest. Indeed, the pressures of the calendar for urban and rural families differed markedly. The life of rural families was geared more toward the natural patterns of the seasons, while urban families were guided powerfully by the ritual and festive demands of the social and cultural calendar. 

Although even rural families were divided by income level, the aristocratic families in the provinces were usually quite starkly set off from villages, which had relative equality of wealth or poverty. Urban centers, however, often saw vast differences between families even on the same block of houses. Variation could be profound, and this shaped the way that families interacted both internally and externally. 

Aristocratic Families

[d] Heian Shrine today RF

Although they are not even close to being “representative” of Japanese society in Heian times, most of the literature that has passed through the ages from Heian Japan deals with the rarefied airs of elite society. The pictures that emerge of family life are decidedly different from those we can reproduce of life on the farm many hundreds of kilometers away from the capital. The stories center on a nuclear cluster of parents and children, but a rich array of grandparents and kinfolk figure in the stories as well. With regard to rural family life in Heian Japan, we have very few documents. On the other hand, the family life of the wealthiest fraction of society is the focus of many hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of writing. One small glimpse of it can be seen in the Sarashina Diary, written in the eleventh century by a daughter of a court official. It is quoted here to show the enormity of difference between family life “in the fields” and in a situation where a “family” is forced to negotiate the world of the imperial court.

1037: In the tenth month we changed our abode to the capital. Mother had become a nun and although she lived in the same house, shut herself up in a separate chamber. Father treated me as an independent woman rather than as his child. I felt helpless to see him shunning all society and living hidden in the shade…My old-fashioned parents thought the court life would be very unpleasant, and wanted me to pass my time at home, but others said: “People nowadays go out as ladies-in-waiting at the court, and then fortunate opportunities for marriage are naturally numerous; why not try it?[1]

It is scarcely imaginable that a farm family could have a mother retired to the inner quarters of the house to live the life of a nun and the father engaged in quiet contemplation. Clearly, Heian society—at least at the level of the court and the people who lived near it—provided a level of abstraction that was different in kind from the rural life of the provinces or the economic life of urban shopkeepers. Although the family of the Sarashina Diary’s author is hardly “typical,” it speaks to the powers and temptations of urban, aristocratic life in Heian Japan.

Click here for other posts in the Heian Japan mini-series:
City-Country    Children         Food-Drink      Entertainment               Sports-Games
Education        Family Life     Work-Labor     Language-Literature     Housing-Shelter

[e] Family (in-) fighting RF

---

[1]Keene, Donald, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1955), 156.

Bibliography

Donald Keene. Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1955.