{"id":47,"date":"2015-03-13T23:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-14T06:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/?p=47"},"modified":"2015-03-14T01:07:19","modified_gmt":"2015-03-14T08:07:19","slug":"transgressioncantosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/2015\/03\/13\/transgressioncantosphere\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening for an Intelligible Cantosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

A found street sign pointing west for \u201cHistoric Chinatown\u201d welcomes visitors into Centre A.<\/p>\n

Acting as a backdrop for shadow projections of Chinese characters, the English sign tells the story of a dying, if not already dead, Chinatown. Meanwhile, the characters \u8d8a and \u7cb5 flash interchangeably beside the character \u754c, together forming the two phrases in the exhibit’s name, \u8d8a\u754c (transgression) and \u7cb5\u754c (cantosphere). Not exactly neon lights, this flashing Chinese sign suggests activity, a sense of liveliness, even if not all visitors can understand its meaning.<\/p>\n

\"is7op\"<\/a>

Click on the image to see gif of flashing Chinese characters.<\/p><\/div>\n

Centre A, located in Vancouver\u2019s Chinatown, is currently showcasing the work of Hong Kong Exile, who created \u8d8a\u754c<\/em>\/<\/em>\u7cb5<\/em>\u754c<\/em> (transgression\/cantosphere)<\/em> in collaboration with linguist Zoe Lam and artist Howie Tsui.\u00a0Cantosphere is Lam\u2019s neologism, articulating a culturally distinct and linguistically vibrant\u00a0Cantonese-speaking diaspora across Guangdong province, Hong Kong, and here in Chinatown. The motivation for the exhibit is to create a space for resisting Mandarinization\u00a0in these three regions.<\/p>\n

The most prominent\u00a0display in the exhibit, a\u00a0pun generator booming in the back, rotates proverbs to the sound of mah-jong tiles shuffling across a game table.\u00a0Language is likened to a game, requiring coordinated effort to remember, perform, and master its rules.<\/p>\n

Such is the community play that visitors can partake in at the mah-jong table, stationed at the front of the exhibit. Seated here, participants are\u00a0invited to listen to an audio loop of Zoe Lam gently grilling Howie Tsui\u2014a heritage speaker of Cantonese\u2014on correct pronunciations of lexical tones.<\/p>\n

\"image2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like Howie’s Cantonese, the mah-jong table is sufficient but incomplete. In the first place, four players are needed for mah-jong to work. The table is also\u00a0missing a cloth overlaying the wooden table, as well as four drawers in which gambling money can be stored. Without the cloth, tiles might fail to glide smoothly\u00a0across the wooden table. Without drawers, the game is\u00a0stripped of its high stakes and relevance to people’s economic lives. While these missing details are not necessarily essential to the game, the recording playing from the headphones at the\u00a0table re-iterates the importance of getting details right.<\/p>\n

At one point in the recording, Howie remarks to Zoe, “That’s about as -ng<\/em> as I can get!”<\/p>\n

“It’s intelligible,” assures Zoe.<\/p>\n

The vulnerability in this exchange relieved me of initial doubts I had about the exhibit.<\/p>\n

Having lost approximately two vernacular dialects\u00a0to Mandarinization, and\u00a0being\u00a0a heritage Mandarin speaker in the\u00a0Anglo-Canada context, I can’t help associating\u00a0any rigorous process of correcting pronunciation with linguistic imperialism.\u00a0Sing-song pronunciation exercises used to teach me English ‘as a Second Language’ in elementary school have\u00a0stigmatized traces of ‘Chinese’ in my speech. Getting details right, in my\u00a0case, came at a cost.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0asserting cultural legitimacy, does\u00a0insisting on correct pronunciation of lexical tones simultaneously\u00a0police how cantosphere should sound like? Does this process\u00a0leave behind\u00a0Toisan and other village dialects spoken by the first overseas Chinese in Chinatown?<\/p>\n

Neither the table nor recording are, however, pedantic. Participants aren’t\u00a0required to know Cantonese or the rules of mah-jong to find the set-up intelligible. Compared to\u00a0the clanking sounds and protest chants coming from the pun generator, the mah-jong table provides\u00a0a\u00a0much quieter auditory sphere for resisting\u00a0cultural loss. In order to fully take in Howie’s show of humility and Zoe’s patient response,\u00a0listeners\u00a0must tune out louder parts of the exhibit\u2014a challenge emblematic of cantosphere’s survival under restrictive language policies in Guangdong.\u00a0\u8d8a\u754c<\/em>\/<\/em>\u7cb5<\/em>\u754c<\/em>\u00a0‘s acknowledgement of\u00a0this intimate emotional register therefore also highlights\u00a0everyday acts of\u00a0sitting, speaking, and playing as vital to\u00a0cultural resistance and survival for Chinatown’s cantosphere. These acts, by seniors and youth alike, insist that neither Chinatown nor Cantonese are going away.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cCurrent Exhibition.\u201d Centre A. n.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A found street sign pointing west for \u201cHistoric Chinatown\u201d welcomes visitors into Centre A. Acting as a backdrop for shadow projections of Chinese characters, the English sign tells the story of a dying, if not already dead, Chinatown. Meanwhile, the characters \u8d8a and \u7cb5 flash interchangeably beside the character \u754c, together forming the two phrases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4921,"featured_media":330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4921"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":437,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/engl464k\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}