The euphoria to be in the English class, is evaporated in the case of Zhang Danhong quickly. You are desperate to the Handicap that most Chinese have in Learning the German language.
The author Zhang Danhong in front of the Brauhaus Sion in Cologne
The Beijing foreign language school is located in the Western Haidian district, a short distance from three well-known elite universities – Beijing University, Qinghua University and the people University. No wonder that in the 1980s, in this area, the first incubator for technology companies in the capital has emerged, a kind of Silicon Valley of China.
The science and technology centre Zhongguancun today – it all started in the beginning of the 1980s
To was my the start of School there, in 1978, felt the entrepreneurial spirit and today’s formative capitalism. Diplomat was in the middle Kingdom as one of the most sought-after professions. And my boarding school, in turn, is referred to as the diplomats forge par excellence. This is more than justified, after all, the school is subordinate to the Ministry of foreign Affairs. The resulting privileges are not to strive to be a Chinese proverb, such as lice overlooked on a bald head. For the few hundred students, the school campus is landscaped with an area of over 70,000 square metres of generous. The school has a sports hall, a sport that helped make space with a 400-Meter running track and even a swimming pool, which was filled with water, but it is a breeding ground for all sorts of Vegetation and insects and offered us during the Anti-fly campaign in a comfortable lead over the other schools. Because we did not have to leave the school grounds in order to eliminate tons of flies. Not to forget our canteen, the dining, the majority of my country had to plan with safety people green with envy.
Tomatoes in summer, Chinese cabbage in the Winter
I had no idea how much my parents had to restrict so that I nurtured me could devote German language. The food money for me (around 30 Yuan per month, which is currently equivalent to about four euros) represented just over one-third of the joint income of my parents. The second third went to the canteen of the University where my brother studied mechanical engineering. The Rest had to be enough for rent, electricity, as well as the other living for my parents and my grandma on the maternal side. Later, my mother told me that she went all those years to walk to work because she couldn’t afford to buy a monthly ticket for public transport. Meat bought, you only, when I came home on the weekends. Otherwise, they were in the summer with tomato and in the Winter, with Chinese cabbage.
Radish – then, as now, a popular and inexpensive vegetables in China
From all these worldly cares, I had no idea. Doggedly I fought with the German pronunciation. Up to now I had thought that I was born for this exotic language. But of because! This rolling “R” didn’t want me to succeed. We Chinese need our mother to flutter language, neither the large nor the small tongue. So actually, this is an innate ability that brings every Baby in Germany or Russia, so, of course, is stunted, with us, Chinese over the millennia. In the case of Russian, I spent a year at the elementary school, you can pretend to be rolling with the big tongue, somehow, by rubbing the tongue on the palate, short and dynamic. With the small tongue, it is the Cheating difficult, actually quite impossible. Then a “L is just an “R” -“. The Chinese can laugh at themselves, by spreading jokes like “Two plus two are alike”. But with self-irony, the frustration of the English is learners is low.
A word that we had at the beginning of learning that brought us all to Despair. It was the Name of the largest and most important country in the German Federal Republic of Germany has spoken. Several versions were on offer: Bummslepublik Germany, Bundeslepobulike Germany, the Federal film award established to test Republic of Germany, length, etc. The most Talented in the class brought in the best case, a “Federal film award Republic of Germany”.
Practice for the flutter-tongue
What to do? Our English teacher, who studied in Leipzig and a proper debate had been trained, gave us the tip, in the morning when brushing your teeth, gargle with the water. “At some point you can the ‘R’ rolls, you will see,” she said encouragingly. The next day I started in the morning and in the evening. With water in my mouth, I could pronounce the “R” more than perfect, but once the water was gone, it went back to “L”. We had a big Laundry room in the middle of the hallway, where dozens of girls made for you tomorrow. At the beginning I had waited with the Gurgelei, until I was alone. However, with the days of the failure, the weight of the frustration is heavier than the feeling of shame. I muttered in a full Laundry room and an extensive “RRRRRRRR” with rinse water until my breath ran out. I forgot all the girls around me.
A month later, as I already thought to switch to the Japanese class, it worked the tongue all at once with the Flap and without water in the mouth! I couldn’t stop with the “RRRRRRRRR”. The other thought that I was completely turned off by. But this interested me not. I was the happiest girl in the world.
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.