Connecting In and out of Hong Kong

Although we host an array of desktop computers at home, I have done no air travel with a laptop at my fingertips. Imagine my delight when I found wireless access and laptop work areas equipped with electrical outlets scattered around terminals at the Atlanta, Boston, New York, and Hong Kong airports (okay, call me behind-the-times). Hilda purchased U.S. airport wireless access for a nominal fee, but in the Hong Kong airport, wireless access is free, so I download all my email and let Calliope use the laptop.

As I jet around these airports, the beauty of internet telephony really hits me. I am traveling with my "home phone" and it will work anywhere in the world where I have a computer and broadband access. My home phone currently runs over the internet - a very small, lightweight, practically empty box with a USB connection. I plug it into a computer with either a headset or an actual telephone connected and, voila, my telephone is ready for use. The service costs $20/year. And that's anywhere in the world to anyone in the U.S. or Canada !!

But here we are in the Hong Kong airport considering whom to call back in the United States, and it won't cost us an extra penny. Although I am travel-weary, the novelty of such connectivty cuts through my jetlag fog and I get set up to call Tom. Thankfully, Calliope realizes that there is a twelve hour time difference and it's 3am at home. No phone calls, thank you very much. Maybe it's time for a short nap.

I do realize that there are many other methods to make that phone call. Pay-phones, cell phones, pre-paid phone cards, skype and skype phones, and many other VOIP possibilities. I have used most of these services and I can say first hand that they all have their advantages. But what I am excited about is that given the escalating ubiquity of WiFi, it is now quite easy to bring my exact home phone solution with me around the world, at an exhorbitantly low cost.

As I pull myself out from under the various technical details, I ponder that here in China, I can easily make a phone call halfway around the world using public wireless resources, but I must determine whether water from the tap is safe to drink or must be treated. Modernization arrives at its own pace, in fits and starts. Does it provide a glimpse into the societal priorities of its target audience? Or perhaps of its purveyors? More on that later, I'm sure.

A Pocket Chinese/English Dictionary

Before leaving the U.S., I picked out a handy, dandy pocket Chinese/English dictionary. With tens of thousands of words, helpful travel phrases, a description of Chinese grammar, and other tidbits, I figured I was set. My complacency was put to rest, the first time I looked up a word I wanted to translate.

I already knew that I would not be able to read the Chinese characters. Although they were a major unifying force for the various Chinese languages that use them, they are useless from a phonetic perspective. However, I was under the misguided notion that I would know what to do with the pinyin transliteration. Although pinyin is similar, there is not a true correspondence to English pronunciation. This is partially because Chinese sounds are just plain different than English sounds. But, unfortunately, it is also because pinyin uses many of the letters differently, especially the vowels. And it turns out there is another twist. Mandarin is a tonal language with four tones. That means any given syllable can be said four different ways and convey different meanings. And to top it all off, even with pinyin+tones, there are many, many homonyms in Chinese. For some reason, this last point does not trouble me at the moment. Possibly because I don’t know any of them yet.

Interestingly, my new handy, dandy pocket dictionary provided no pronunciation guide for pinyin. As with most items of interest, when I went online, I found any number of guides to pinyin pronunciation for English speakers. And they were not all the same. There are enough variations in English pronunciation, when you consider just the United States, never mind England, the Caribbean, India, or the rest of the world. Some guides took a standardized linguistic approach. But there still seemed to be some discrepancies.

The oddest discrepancy of the bunch has to do with the tones. Evidently it is very important that I use the tones, even exaggerate the tones, because otherwise, the Chinese don’t understand most English-speakers learning Mandarin. However, Chinese speakers of Mandarin can get away with not using the tones and still be understood. Is that some form of language racism? Or is it just “that’s not fair” whining from those of us who can’t hear the subtle differences in pronunciation?