English is no easy task to be: dead or Alive study?

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In 1983, Zhang Danhong stand spoilt for choice and the question: purely in the ivory tower, or out in the reality? She knew what she wanted. However, in China the parents have something to say about that.

Zhang Danhong in the Brauhaus Sion in Cologne

Imagine the following: you are applying to study in the field of chemistry and have already completed all of the forms. But your mother thinks in silence: chemistry is stupid, to much poison that my child brings to his life is in danger. Mathematics is much better – no risk to body and soul. So the woman mommy to change your election, without notice to you. And you will not be amazed to get one day admission for a math degree.

What would you do in this case? With her mother a break? Drag them to court for forgery? Even if you credit her for what she has done for you and not to resort to these extreme means, is programmed to the home of a Tsunami. Your relationship will not recover.

In China, the Situation is completely different. There is also 18 years old, no adult is allowed to write ill, and a far-reaching decision is expected. And parents enjoy a very different status than here. The years that you have more on the hump, make you in the eyes of the children experienced and wise. And basically, it is assumed that you only want the Best for their children, and therefore, any decision in the cases. So young Chinese people insist that the parents really think about the content of the study choice and a say. To make matters worse, the Chinese have only a single shot. You can not begin to study medicine, in the second Semester to determine that they fall at the sight of blood faint and then but prefer to Jura. This is a shot needs to sit.

Like many of Kafka are among us?

It is already hard, a 18-Year-old the from idea, which prepared him well for a lifetime of enjoyment. The wrong choice can plunge into the deepest unhappiness. As in the case of Franz Kafka: The work for a insurance hell was for him. To help with such a disaster of unimaginable creativity – just like in Kafka. But Depression is not the state in which parents, their children like to see.

Sure the correct tray selected?

So is discussed here as over there between the young adult and the parent, considered and often decided jointly. In China, almost always together. Although it is not common that the parents change the Decided arbitrarily. But sometimes, the mind flashes to the caring parent until the last moment. As in the case of a Chinese friend of mine, the “English” as the first study had indicated. His mother held the last of the form in Hand, thought in this study would have to deal with their son most of the time with poets and writers that have blessed the Temporal. Why not a specialized study in which he has to do with Living? So, she has highlighted “English” and “Chinese for foreigners” written into it.

Good, my country man has studied the subject and was, in retrospect, his mother, in German eyes, unheard-of insolence grateful because he was able to teach with the acquired knowledge of German managers, who were to be his sponsors.

Vibrant poetry dead Poets

Without knowing this mother, also tried my mom with the same Argument, me from my pursuit, to study German language and literature with a focus on German literature. “Goethe, Heine and Schiller have all died a long time ago. Do You want to dedicate Your whole life to the dead? Besides, You’ll never be as good as a German literary scholar.” With the last sentence you had, possibly even law.

Heinrich Heine: the king of irony, but also of tender love poems

As I had looked forward to but after five years of a foreign language school to finally read Goethe’s “Faust” in the Original, and Heinrich Heine to get to! The colleague of my father had lent me the whole Kästner-cassettes, has me pulling taught the first Heine poem, I immediately learned by heart: “Softly through my mind, lovely chiming. Blade, little spring song. Sounding out into the Distance. Kling, up to the house, where the flowers sprout. If You look at a Rose, tell me, I’ll greet you.” How I loved these lines! This melody, the lightness and the delicate be in love. I wanted to read a lot more of him. It was not only the Dead, with which I would grapple: Günter Grass or Anna Seghers – alive it can’t be true! Your new works I analyze in the same way as a German literary scholar.

Wink of fate

My father-in-law. What should he say? He actually had a heart for the dead Poets? How many times he had recited for me Pushkin’s verses? It was in the geopolitical framework that he could do with his study of Russian literature professionally, nothing. As I know him, he was torn between sympathy for my Plan, and the Belief that the reason for the proposal of my mother, to apply to the University for economy and foreign trade. The incredible opportunities that went with the opening policy, made this University in the year 1983 for the young Chinese to be one of the most sought-after study addresses at all.

A family conflict, the special class was brewing, but dissolved easier than I thought: After a thorough Search one day my father came up with the message home that, at this University only, all four years of high-school graduates with English as a foreign language will be included. I would still have to wait a year. A year in the queue but is not provided for in the Chinese education system.

“It’s called fate,” I said to my mother with a wink. Now I enjoyed the anticipation of all the dead and living authors!

Zhang Danhong was born in Beijing and lives since 30 years in Germany. In the series “English is not a bed of roses” she writes once a week about your first contacts with the German language and their Integration in Germany.