When I came to China this time, I didn't expect to be teaching English, I didn't expect to be learning Chinese, and I really didn't expect to be singing in a talent show.
Normally, I am not the kind of person who looks forward to being onstage and performing in front of strangers. But in China, nothing is normal. Last time Deb and I were here we learned that whenever we had an audience, everything we did was great. When we told stories, people listened attentively; when we told jokes, they laughed; when we sang a song, they applauded madly. How different could a talent show be?
My path to stardom began when one of my teachers decided that teaching a song would be a good way for us to learn Chinese. This is a common belief among teachers; Deb and I have also used songs to help our students learn English. Students here generally like to sing, so it's not hard to get them to go along. It sounds like a win-win situation, except that I can tell you, after having been taught a song in Chinese, it doesn't work.
Teacher Yang chose a song called "Bu Bu Gao." The first educational problem was that none of us had any idea what the title meant. So she told us - literally it's "step step high" or, more figuratively, "make progress towards your goal." This is not a bad sentiment, and I liked the revolution-of-the-proletariat sound of it.
Then she wrote down a whole blackboard full of lyrics. If deciphering the title was a challenge, what do you make of "Speak get to not, according to do get to."? (Allowing for the differences between Chinese and English grammar and taking idioms into account, this translates into "Actions speak louder than words.")
So now we had a song we didn't understand, and a tune we'd never heard. Luckily, our teacher is a good singer, and listening to her, the song didn't sound half bad. Hearing us was another story. I think we all knew we sounded pitiful. Teacher Yang instructed us to go home and practice.
I don't know about you, but hearing a song once, in a foreign language, and then trying to practice singing it at home, is essentially impossible. So, I did what students everywhere do; I ignored my homework assignment and hoped that the teacher would forget about it too.
For a few weeks she did. But once she remembered, we all had to sing at the end of every class. Our class is not very big. Besides me, there is one student from Laos, and four from Vietnam. Counting the teacher, that's seven people. When we sang, we somehow managed to do it in seven different keys, with no fortuitous harmonies.
Teacher Yang was undaunted. Despite the cacophony, she had us sing our song again and again. The lyrics still made no sense to me but at least the melody began to stick in my head. And I have to admit, it is a rousing anthem. One thing that Communists have a knack for is writing songs that get the blood pumping. There are songs from the Mao era that people still sing because they sound so great. People are willing to overlook the disastrous Great Leap Forward and the resulting famine that killed millions if the tune is good.
What was most discouraging for me was that my teenaged classmates had the lyrics down pat. I was stumbling along reading phonetically transcribed words, and they were enthusiastically singing by heart. To keep my self respect, I definitely needed to practice. I resolved to find the melody on the internet so I could practice at home.
Don't bother looking for "Bu Bu Gao" on your favorite file swapping network; I've tried. The best I could come up with was a classical Cantonese instrumental with an entirely different tune. But there are non-English pirates on the net too, and I was sure that with the help of some Chinese friends, I could find this song.
When I started asking around, I gained an unexpected perspective on the difficulty I faced. While "Bu Bu Gao" may rival "L'Internationale" for inspiring chest-thumping pride, the song is really a commercial for a DVD manufacturer! No wonder no one was pirating this song online; I might just as well look for "See the USA, in your Chevrolet" or "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should."
As a matter of principle, I really wanted to get more of the lyrics translated now. Teacher Yang was more than willing to help; she finds the song quite moving. As it turns out, there are no egregious corporate plugs, or boasts about a 96 kHz sampling rate. Most of the song follows along the lines of "I struggle all the time towards my goal but I still feel afflicted" and "Justice exists in the world. Since I labored I will be rewarded." Teacher Yang asked, "How do you say? The meaning of the song is so..." Maudlin? Cliched? Overwrought? Instead I just told her "You can say it is very meaningful."
Somewhere along the line, the motive for singing morphed from learning Chinese to winning a talent show. At that point, Teacher Yang began to evaluate our voices more seriously. The song has four lines in each verse, so Teacher Yang eliminated the two students with the worst pronunciation (remarkably, that did not include me.) That gave each of us one line to sing. We all sang together for the chorus and the climax, when we shouted "BU BU GAO!!!!" But one of the students, by Teacher Yang's reckoning, didn't sing with enough pizzaz.
After repeatedly, and futilely, requesting him to sing more dynamically (believe me, none of us is Caruso), she resorted to insults. "You sing like a girl!" "Look at you!" she shouted, as she mimicked his posture, standing knock-kneed and coyly dipping her head. "A man sings like this --" she stood tall and threw out her chest. He was duly humiliated, sat down, and never sang another word. What's not PC in the People's Republic of Cambridge is apparently still acceptable in the mother country.
The remaining proud men are practicing the song several times a week now. When we don't have enough classroom time we meet late in the afternoon in Teacher Yang's apartment. She has a karaoke VCD version of the song and a kick-ass sound system. She cranks it up to 11 and we wail away. Deb can hear our singing up through two flight of concrete floors and walls.
Teacher Yang may never have heard of Barry Gordy, but when it comes to managing our stage act, she could give Motown a run for the money. She tells us what to wear, and how to move. She shows us when to swing out our arms and how far to throw them. I now know the preferred method for holding a microphone. (Grab the ball in your hand, bring it close to your mouth, tip the tail end up about 30 degrees.) We may not be the Four Tops or the Temptations, but we're no funky white boys either!
This exercise hasn't helped my Chinese at all. I still don't understand half of what I'm singing, and the half that I do understand, I understand only because Teacher Yang translated the words for me. But on New Years Eve, I'll be standing before an audience of maybe 3000 people. This being China, the students will almost certainly *not* be drunk. I don't know if that will help or hurt me; at least they won't be throwing bottles. It's not exactly Woodstock, but it probably won't be Altamont either.
From what I've seen at previous talent shows, there's a good chance that I'll be wearing makeup. Male students, as well as female, add a little rouge on the cheeks, plus lipstick and eyeliner to bring out their features onstage. I think my manhood can withstand that. For all the other humiliation I stand to face, this will be the least of it. In fact, I'm thinking about going for the "Kiss" look. So, should I be Paul Stanley or Ace Frehley?
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