Beijing Sounds — 北京的声儿

[Sound files are all at the bottom of the post]

Wallowing is a vile, unworthy habit. You inevitably get sucked into it from time to time. But too often and you become, as GB Shaw put it,

a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy

It’s a choice you make every day. Whatcha gonna do: wallow, or create something? Your social environment strongly influences the decision. Conversations about life tend to go in one direction or the other, but not stay in the middle, whether you’re talking with your coworker, or your brother, or your barber, classmate, spouse, childhood friend… You end up on one side or the other of the continental divide, either wallowing in self-pity and loathing, or fired up to create something, do something, fight entropy.

But what pushes you one way or the other when you’re on the ridge?

A grad school friend from Shanghai visited a few weeks ago. With no great interest in the customary old-friend activity, drinking our livers green, we set out on a walk in the 19th century tradition, where the point of the walk is conversation. It has its advantages. It beats the tavern by not setting you on a collision course with truism and sentimentality — Discussion Under the Influence. It beats the tea house by not putting the two of you face-to-face across a table to have an Important Conversation, the surest spontaneity-killer known to man. In walking there’s no pressure. The lulls get filled in with the jostle at the crosswalks, the whiff of yángròuchuànr (羊肉串儿 lamb kebabs), the picking up of feet over the uneven spots in the sidewalk, the realization that there’s a freakin’ Hooters in Sānlǐtúnr (三里屯).

But where does the conversation go? Wallowing, or forging?

We balanced the two for better than an hour as we headed east and south, big city block by big city block, for no discernible reason. I’ve just turned 38; he’s been there for six months. What perspective can you have when you’re 38? You’re too old to be young and too young to be old. Your career is exceptional among mediocrities and mediocre among the exceptional. You’re fit among the flaccid and scrawny among the strong; a misfit among MBAs but a Suit among bohemians. At 38 it’s easy to dwell on what you’ve become, in society’s categories, as opposed to what you thought you’d become in your 20s, and easy to slide from there down into the valley of wallowing.

But somehow, the old man with the birds kept us from going there.

You can’t miss the birds and their half-dozen trainers as you walk past a large gate where the sidewalk widens into a gathering area next to Workers Stadium (工人体育场, gōngrén tǐyùchǎng). The yellow bills are a shock of color; the trainers’ calls seem to sound-cancel the inescapable noise of the city. The swirling color of the birds, swooping in, out, up and through three dimensions, the soothing of the trainers’ voices as they click and coo at their companions creates a surreal oasis in the gray clamor of early winter Beijing. Dizzy from the spectacle, it takes a full double-take moment to realize the birds aren’t just boomeranging out from and back to their trainers. They’re catching tiny balls thrown into the air.

A frequent cure for wallowing is to be humbled, and we couldn’t help but be humbled by the old man, who had just taken a new bird from its bicycle perch. He seemed eager to show his birds’ capabilities but unsure of what to say, perhaps especially in the presence of a laowai and non-aficionado. But my friend (the one asking most of the questions in the recordings) has a Zen beginner-like earnest sense of discovery and so the old man answered our dumb-reporter-like questions (below). To see the sparkle on his face as he talked about the birds, and to think of his dedication to the task, bicycling to and from his training spot, expanded our vision beyond the narrow confines of age 38, at least for a minute. We didn’t need to make up stories about who he was or what he might have aspired to as a young man in the ’50s, of what he might have experienced in the ’60s or ’70s, of the difficulty of retirement in the present era. Just to see that kind of passion and devotion, for that interlude in our walk, was enough to inspire us to discard, for a day, any bitterness towards circumstance and self and revive the diligence in ourselves so as not to feel unworthy of the old man’s conversation.

Catching the ball(s!)

Notice the TWO balls in the bird’s mouth in the pic at the top of the post.

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Trainer: Tā shì diāo zhèige. Xiān diāo yīge, ránhòu zài diāo yīge.
它是叼这个. 先叼一个, 然后再叼一个.
It catches this ball. First it catches one, then it catches another.

Diāo zhèi dà gèr de shíhòu huílai.
叼这大个儿的时候回来.
It returns when it catches this big one.

Diāo zhèi xiǎo gèr bù huílai.
叼这小个儿不回来.
When it catches this small one it doesn’t come back.

Diāo dà ger de shíhòu cái huílai hái huílai.
叼大个儿的时候才回来
It returns only after catching the big one.

Friend: Nà zuǐlǐ diāode xiǎode háinéng zhǎngkāi zài diāo dàde?
那嘴里叼的小的还能张开再叼大的?
So after it catches the small one it can still open its mouth and catch the big one?

Trainer: Duì
对
Right

Kind of bird

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Friend: zhèi zhǒng — shìbushì zhǐshì zhèizhǒng niǎo — háiyǒu biéde niǎo [unclear]
这种–是不是只是这种鸟–还有别的鸟
This kind — is it only this kind of bird — are there other birds

Trainer: hǎo duō zhǒng dōu néng wánr
好多种都能玩儿
Lots of kinds of birds can play this

jiǎn chēng jiù shì là zuǐ
简称就是蜡嘴
The abbreviated name is là zuǐ
(là zuǐ lit. means “candle beak” — not sure what this is in English).

Friend: ā jiǎn chēng là zuǐ, jiǎn chēng là zuǐ.
啊, 简称蜡嘴, 简称蜡嘴
Oh, the abbreviated name is là zuǐ, the abbreviated name is là zuǐ.

Nà zhèige niǎor zhèr duō dà le nǐ zhèige niǎo
那,这个鸟儿多大了你这个鸟
Say, this bird — how old is this bird of yours?

Trainer: zhè dōu yī nián duō
这都一年多
These are all more than a year old.

Training

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Friend: Tā jiù shì [unclear] wánr ne tā zhīdào wánr
它就是—玩儿呢, 它知道玩儿.
It’s really — playing. It knows about playing.

Trainer: Duì. Zhèi yě shì xùnliàn chūlái de.
对. 这也是训练出来的.
Right. This is also from training.

yě shēng de niǎor tā bùdǒng. [unclear] děi xùn liàn.
野生的鸟儿它不懂. —得训练
A wild bird, he doesn’t understand. — needs to be trained.

Wǒmen mǎide yíhòu, jiù shì yī bù yī bù [unclear] xùnliàn.
我们买得以后, 就是一步一步—训练.
After we buy them, it’s just step-by-step — training.

[unclear] kāishǐ chū yě wài dìle tā yě búhuì, shénme yě búhuì.
—开始出野外地了它也不会, 什么也不会.
When it first comes out of the wild, it can’t catch, can’t do anything.

Training time

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Me: nà yào — yào duō cháng shíjiān jiāo tāmen zuò zhèizhǒng…
那要–要多长时间较他们做这种…
So how long — how long does it take to teach them to do this kind of…

Trainer: bànge yuè, èrshí ? tiān. xuéde kuài.
半个月, 二十来天. 学得快! [Thanks, John, for the help with the 来 here]
Half a month, 20 some days. They learn fast!

Laowai misunderstands

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Me: bāge yuè, jiāo tā, ránhòu tā…
八个月, 较它, 然后它
Eight months to teach it, and then it…

Trainer: duì, bànge yuè
对,半个月
Right, half a month

Observation: Lots of foreigners get frustrated when they swear they’re pronouncing things right and their Mandarin is still not understood. I’ve had the experience myself. But this example shows almost the opposite case. The old man either doesn’t hear or (I’d like to think) discretely ignores my misapprehension. I thought he said 8 months (bāge yuè) to train a bird. But if you listen to the previous clip, it was clearly half a month (bànge yuè).

And finally, let the bird speak for itself

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