Hua ren hua yu?

My father and I were listening to a Chinese infotainment radio station on the road 1 morning, when the presenters started discussing the political coup in Thailand.

"Why do these people jostle for power?" My father asked rhetorically, "Those people who assume positions of power suffer so such pressure that their hair grow white."

I said rhetorically because he didn't expect a response from me, who's usually comatose in the morning and can muster, at best, a weak "uh huh".

I was silent for awhile, thinking of how best to respond, and sprouted a Chinese saying I heard just the previous night, while watching a Chinese documentary about the Yangtze River: ren2 wang3 gao1 chu4 pa2, shui3 wang3 di1 chu4 liu2 (humans will always aspire to climb to higher ground, just as water would always flow towards lower terrain).

I think he was surprised; he said: "Isn't the Chinese language meaningful? It's so descriptive."

I was pleased--it's not often that he thinks well of my Chinese language proficiency. And it felt good too, because he was right, Chinese proverbs and sayings can often hit home better than English.

I guess my perspective about my langugage usage had undergone a slight change recently, after a job interview with the Sin8apore branch of a UK publishing company. Their job application form, which I was supposed to fill out just before the interview, asked for my colour. I felt more than a jolt of irritation. I find the term offensive, and besides, they had already asked for my race and nationality. All of a sudden, I begin to understand how members of ethnic minority groups feel, when their colour gets in the way of their daily life. It really wasn't a good way to get acquainted with the company. I put in a dash.

Before the job interview, I was quite confident that I would develop a long-term career in editing. Just as the accountants crunch numbers, I like to crunch words. I like to work with words and pore over pages and pages of words. But editors in Singapore, as the instructor of the editing course I attend recently put it, get the short shrift because editing skills are not appreciated here, unlike, say, in the UK. But so what even if I shift base to overseas, I thought, how am I supposed to compete with the natives of English language?

That point was reinforced during the interview, when the interviewers explained the job scope (which was not editing per se, but more of soliciting book ideas from academics and making recommendations to the UK headquarters, ie. commissioning) and say that actual editing is done in US and UK but not Asia, even for books that are written by Asians. Commissioning is actually considered a higher rung on the editorial ladder than editing of content, but the latter is what I want to continue doing and which I hope I can still get to do in future.

The cognitive dissonance (the only handy term I ever learned in undergrad social psychology) I experienced was quite discomforting. English is the language that I base my career on, that I (mostly) think in and write in, and yet it is not a language that I own. So I could venture out of Sin8apore and possibly be considered 2nd-rate, or stay in Sin8apore and be underpaid. What a thought.

And that's why I'm thinking about picking up Chinese reading and writing again, just to touch base with the language I was born into. My first step was buying a Chinese (kiddo) storybook about 2 weekends ago, thought I haven't gathered the courage to pick it up and start reading yet. I tried the Chinese newspaper My Paper today though, and I must say it takes some getting used to. Is it me, or do Chinese writings have this undertow of moral righteousness in between the lines? It's almost like listening to a sermon. I don't think I'll be able to become a Chinese editor, but gee, I don't mind switching to translation as a career and oh, work for the UN aka The Interpreter! Erm, but I'm talking nonsense now. So, back to work.