cce blog

two things from class

our text for conversation class today was about marriage and family, beginning by mentioning chinese scholar 錢鐘書's analogy for marriage (圍城). i have to remember to read that guy in translation sometime.

anyhow, so the text was talking about different kinds of couples, and then uses the term 丁克族 and i have no idea what they're talking about. what does ding ke mean? "oh, it's a borrowed term from english," my teacher explains, "it means a couple who makes a lot of money but doesn't have any kids." i still don't understand. another english-speaking classmate of mine suddenly gets it. "oh, you mean DINKies!"

perhaps i was too young and missed out on this acronym, but i'd heard of yuppies, yummies, tweenies, and even chuppies (chinese yuppies, an HK term), but i didn't know what a dinkie was. but i wasn't really upset that i hadn't heard of the term as much as i was surprised that it had even been translated into CHINESE before i'd heard of it. oy.

okay, here's the second thing. so there are several married women in my class. most of them (and i don't want to generalize, but ...) are japanese and korean housewives whose husbands work in hong kong, and to pass the time they take mandarin classes. this makes for an interesting classroom dynamic -- i recently listened to one japanese housewife give a long presentation on her favorite hobby, flower arranging: all about the master teacher she receives instruction from, her old teacher in japan, all the different kinds of flowers you can use, which are her favorites, which are best for what seasons, etc.

so anyhow we're talking about marriage, and someone says that "communication is the most important thing" and our teacher agrees, and they talk a bit. then the japanese housewife speaks up, and says that communication may be important, but in japan they have something called 默契 (moqi). my dictionary said it was a "tacit understanding" or "unspoken agreement" or something. she went on, saying that the typical japanese wife is expected to "just know" what her husband wants without him telling her -- specifically, she said "for example, what he wants for dinner, you just know without talking about it."

"how do you know?" i asked. "you just know, from knowing his customs, and his character, and ..." she went on, and as far as i could tell, it doesn't seem like the husband has to talk much at all; the wife silently takes care of everything for him without fuss. one of the younger college-age japanese students didn't know what "moqi" was, but then the housewife said it in japanese and she instantly recognized it, nodding. aaack!! crazy!!

Posted by cce at March 12, 2003 07:02 AM | TrackBack