Confucius and Common Speech

David Howell

David Howell is an American student studying Chinese at the University of Sydney who aspires to become a diplomat and a help to facilitate communication and understanding between China and the West.

David is on the Board of the School of Languages and Cultures as the Student Representative for the Department of Chinese Studies and he is the Vice-President of the Sydney University Politics Society–a non- partisan society supported by the Discipline of Government & International Relations. David is completing a Bachelor of International Studies with a planned joint Honours in Government & International Relations and Chinese Studies (2009).

Nevertheless, I love the challenge. Putonghua has some of the richest history of any language, and its characters have a striking beauty and incredible etymology. One of the most profound aspects of the language hit me when I was recently studying Confucius’ The Analects or Lun Yu《论语》. I was reading through a section in Book II where Confucius was deliberating on knowledge. He explained that true knowledge is to know the extent of one’s own ignorance or, to take Arthur Waley’s verbatim translation, “When you know a thing, to recognize that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to recognize that you do not know it. That is knowledge.” The thing that struck me as being profound wasn’t the brilliance of this concept, nor was it that Confucius expressed this complex idea in a concise and exquisite collection of thirteen characters:

知之為知之
不知為不知
是知也

Nor was it that the English verbatim translation needs twice as many words to convey the meaning. Instead, what struck me as profound was the fact that I was reading the original. It is difficult to think of any other language that allows its speakers to read and understand something written two and a half millennia ago. Reading Confucius displays the continuity and power of the Chinese language and culture. The Chinese script has an indifference to phonetic change which has allowed it to evolve without the haste of the Germanic languages. So I can sit down as a humble Western student and read a classical text that dates back before the Common Era (BCE). No wonder my Chinese friends have that glimmer of pride in their eyes when they talk about the rise of China. With a language like that, it isn’t hard to see how one could see China’s rise as simply the restoration of its place in the world, the restoration of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ （zhongguo, 中国）.

I began learning Chinese in high school under the tutelage of an Australian-born Chinese teacher who learnt Chinese at the Beijing Language and Culture University during the tumultuous years of 1988-89. Not only was he cool in the eyes of the students because he could surf, but he had a passion for the language that he instilled in all of us.

At that stage, however, I spoke Chinese with a harsh American accent and western overtones that leveled the language of its beauty and undermined its poetry with slow and unusual word-emphasis. But I could read, write and examine well. So I graduated with Chinese as one of my top subjects. A school tour to China and two trips to the mainland in my gap-year pushed me beyond the ‘no-return’ point and imprinted in me the importance of learning the language of the next superpower. Since then, Chinese has become one of my majors at university and a large part of my goal to become a bilingual diplomat. I no longer suffer the pains of a western-style Chinese accent and I am frequently encouraged to continue to work hard to move from a lay-person fluency up to the lofty heights of diplomatic and academic fluency.

But it isn’t all work all the time. Sometimes it is fun just knowing Chinese. I have had some humorous experiences where people assumed that because I was ‘white’ I couldn’t speak the language. For instance, when two international students walked into a crowded library study room, pointed to the two empty chairs beside me, and said in Chinese, “let’s sit there, he won’t be able to understand us…” I was delighted to respond in Chinese that they most certainly could sit there “...but I could, in fact, understand them.” Alternatively, there was one instance where I caused quite a commotion by wearing a shirt which had written on it: 白人看不懂 (bairen kan bu dong or ‘white people can’t read this’). When one stranger pointed out the irony to his friend and started laughing at the “poor silly westerner who didn’t realize what he was wearing” he was promptly shocked, silenced and then deeply apologetic when I asked him in Chinese what he was laughing at.

While I shoot for the stars and strive to achieve my aspirations of becoming a diplomat and a bridge of communication between China and West, the Confucius Institute at the University of Sydney will be marching ahead and setting the example. These institutes are designed to educate on the profound and wonderful aspects of the Chinese language and culture. They are made to teach people the things that have taken me years to discover. Each institute will be a bridge between China and the West, and for that reason I can’t think of any of institution or academic centre that has as much significance in this new century.