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(continued) I also wish I could have lived in China, or had the initiative to live in Taiwan
when I was younger. But let’s just
say I’m the product of a language school in the conventional way. I learned by going into the basement of
graduate school where a devoted and tenacious teacher introduced me to
basic Chinese classes. I had a
wonderful teacher, but completely of the normal kind in terms of regular
university hierarchy. So there was nothing special about the
route, but I just wish it had been longer and more complex.
I moved too early for my own good into trying
to learn classical Chinese. I should
have probably spent another year with basic conversational Chinese. But I was in a hurry and I wanted to read
Qing documents.
It’s a cliché, but it’s much easier
to read bureaucratic Chinese, for instance difangzhi (地方誌, local gazetteers).
These are much more straightforward than really elegant classical
Chinese or literary topics.
When I read Zhand Dai (張岱), I realize what the difference
is between mine and a really large Ming vocabulary. These scholars of the late Ming had an
immense amount of knowledge, even though they didn’t seem able to pass the
exam—that’s because the exams have their particular nature. That there exist myriad kinds of
scholarship is something that interests me in Chinese history as well.
One can happily spend a lifetime trying to get a bit better at
Chinese without getting beyond a certain level, but it’s totally
absorbing. You do need a terrific
memory [audience laughs sympathetically].
Japan
has been so useful for me. When I
was stuck endlessly with Zhang Dai,
Murahashi, that famous Japanese
dictionary of classical Chinese was kind of a standby for our family. It was an early investment in us, and we
still have our Murahashi standing
there twenty volumes strong. It has
something like 75,000 variant characters or more, all glossed and arranged
by the Japanese syllabary. So you’ve
got another hurdle there to go ka ki
ku ke ko, trying to get it straight.
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