野草園
野草的樂趣就是瘋長。而且，雜草叢生的地方才是最自然、最接近本質、最能觸摸到心跳的地方。
這兩天整理資料，偶然發現女兒九歲時寫的一篇關於學習中文的一點體會。我沒做任何改動，先把它貼出來。等有空，我會專門就此話題寫點如何教孩子學習中文的一些親身體會，多少也會提到她的轉變。至少，現在她在中文考試前的一切複習，都是由自己獨立完成的。
The battle of reading Chinese
(06/12/2005)
I thought it would never end. They were days of absolute horror. I wasn’t good at Chinese, not at all. I struggled over simple words (hard ones too!) and pounded the table in frustration when I got them wrong. I just wasn’t interested in stuff like that, I mean, why learn another language when you can speak English? Whenever I did badly on my studies, I made sure to feel pitiful for myself and look that way too, so Dad would soften up. I only studied when I was forced to and when I did, things like, ‘if I have to spend one more minute, I’ll just die!’ and ‘stupid language. Whoever invented it is an idiot.’ would run through my head.
I watched my friends play under the sprinkler in their bathing suits and play ball and hopscotch and tag while I had to stay inside with a fat book of stupid words that made no sense and had more than one meaning and meant complete gibberish to me.
In Chinese class, I hid books behind my studying book and read that while the teacher droned on, pretending that we were interested. Sometimes I heard tiny beeps from the Gameboy when the boys had forgotten to turn the sound off.
When I went to China, I watched in awe as people had conversations in Chinese, speaking it as though it was English. On TV, I watched Americans speak Chinese and thought that they must have used some sort of language/technology or something so when they spoke English it sounded like Chinese. I hated Chinese, pure and simple.
It should have been easy enough, my mother, father, grandfather all speaking Chinese and even my little brother dropping Chinese words into his conversations. Chinese words went out one ear and then out the other and when I did remember something I couldn’t understand it. I thought it was like a race, a race where my parents and grandparents and even my brother crawling ahead, leaving me in the dust. I felt bitter and hard but with a little goodness inside, like an opal inside a rock and no one could break me open. But you know what the worst part was? No one understood how I felt.
One day, a perfectly ordinary day, the kind of day you expect nothing good or exciting will happen, my parents took me to Chinatown. It was so usual, my brother chased pigeons and my mother bought cakes, cakes with lemon frosting and shavings of coconut and cakes with thick chocolate icing with strawberries. I wandered into stores, watching old men make toys from chopsticks and clay. My father read books in the local bookstore and bought us books, in Chinese. My grandfather just wandered around, taking everything in and occasionally buying some fruit and vegetables for snacks on the way home.
Suddenly, my father dragged my away from the jewelry store and my brother away from the pigeons and shoved us into the musty bookstore. It had brittle, dirty CD’s glued on the walls and ceiling and rows of fat books with long, boring titles and had pictures of nerdy/boring looking people on them. My father said, "You may choose one book." I walked around the bookstore, watching my brother happily pick up a book about trucks and begin looking at the pictures. I milled around and finally spotted an interesting and somewhat familiar cover. I walked over. The moment, though I didn’t know it, was here! I picked up the book, and studied the picture. A boy with jet-black hair and green eyes with a lightning scar and a bird with red and gold plumage stared up at me. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets! My excitement did not last long as I thumbed through the pages and saw little characters scattered about them, with nonsense meaning. Chinese. I called to my father and showed him the book. My father bought it for me and explained that I would just have to read one page a day, and I needn’t bother with words I didn’t know. I just needed to know the meaning.
At the beginning, I felt so skeptical about reading it but I curled up and began flipping the pages and reading it. I flipped through the pages listlessly. Suddenly a couple of words caught my eye. "That’s Hedwig!" I would say in delight or, "That’s Ron! And Gilderoy Lockhart!" I soon took pleasure in reading such a book, even though it was in Chinese. I read carefully, every once in a while smiling with pleasure. The smile lingered on my face and I thought, ‘Hey, I’m not half bad! I’m pretty good!" I would usually read some pages after school and almost always read a couple of pages at night before bedtime.
Now I prided on the fact that I was beginning to read Chinese novels. My parents didn‘t need to remind me to do my reading or yell in exasperation as I was caught watching TV or listening to my Walkman when I was supposed to be studying. I didn’t need to cry with frustration as I yet again forgot another word.
I felt like I was the turtle who kept on going. I crawled and broke through the red ribbon, the finish line. I had finally, finally, won the battle.
