{"id":2017,"date":"2025-02-24T16:45:49","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T00:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2025-08-25T13:26:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T20:26:36","slug":"all-things-chinese-literature-with-deltas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/2025\/02\/24\/all-things-chinese-literature-with-deltas\/","title":{"rendered":"All things Chinese literature with Deltas!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today we’re checking in with Chinese tutor Deltas, a native speaker from Tianjin, China! Deltas has been tutoring me in Chinese this year, and I can say from personal experience that he is very knowledgeable, even when I throw a weird grammar question at him. We chatted about Tianjin dumplings, Zhang Ailing, and traditional Chinese roof tiles!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leilani: First, could you tell me a little bit about your background? How long have you been speaking Chinese and what do you do at Reed?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deltas: I\u2019m an international student from Tianjin (\u5929\u6d25), China. I\u2019ve been speaking Chinese since I was born, it\u2019s my native language. I study Math-Stats at Reed. I used to study literature, but I kind of found it wasn\u2019t my thing. Too much English reading. So I switched to Math-Stats, and math is pretty fun, completely different taste. And I also do Chinese drop-in tutoring and individual tutoring. I also play for the Frisbee team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

L: What is your hometown Tianjin like?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: My hometown is famous for steamed buns. There\u2019s a very famous restaurant called Goubuli (\u72d7\u4e0d\u7406), which means \u201cthe dog does not even care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L: So what has your experience been as a Chinese tutor?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: It\u2019s pretty fun. I get a lot of moments that I panic a little bit, that I feel so small in front of this language. And often my tutees ask me a lot of questions that\u2019s like \u201cI\u2019ve never thought of this\u201d kind of questions, so I feel surprised. And then, personally, I do a lot of writing in Chinese. So tutoring brings me completely different aspects to understand the language. Especially about grammar and how and why this language is composed this way. Because as a native speaker, you don\u2019t think in that way, \u201cwhy is this sentence structured like this?\u201d So, it\u2019s interesting to me. It\u2019s a lot of new perspectives, and I think it\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L: I guess you already touched on it, but do you think as a native speaker, do you learn new things about the language by being a tutor when you answer questions? I imagine things just come naturally to you, and then you don\u2019t think about it. Then a tutee asks you a question, and you\u2019re just like, \u201cI didn\u2019t think about that before.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: Yeah, I definitely learn new things. It\u2019s like things come to me naturally because I\u2019m a native speaker, but when the question comes, this natural, reactive behavior becomes a process that I have to think about. Then I have to think about why I speak in this manner. It\u2019s a completely different perspective from writing in Chinese or speaking day-to-day. It\u2019s really different. I learned a lot of stuff. For example, my tutee\u2014I think maybe it was you?\u2014asked me about the ba (\u628a) question\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L: Probably!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: And then I talked to my Chinese friends about the question. I never realized that \u628a in this grammar context is described in the way that the textbook describes. Because it has the T-stroke radical. I always thought it as a verb, and then, uh, OK, maybe it\u2019s not. It\u2019s just pretty new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L: What are some resources or recommendations for tutees to learn Chinese?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: Ooh, good question. First of all, talk to your professors. I think they\u2019re wonderful. I\u2019ve taken Chinese courses at Reed, the professors are extremely knowledgeable. You ask them any question, they can answer. Because I\u2019ve been taking literature classes, I had class with a Korean professor, Hyong. At first I was pretty surprised about how he can understand Chinese literature that deep. And then it\u2019s actually even deep beyond my imagination. And of course, I\u2019ve taken courses with other professors who themselves are Chinese, and they\u2019re extremely rich about literature, language, whatever questions you have. And then resources, wow. Drop-in tutoring and individual tutoring are definitely resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L: What\u2019s your favorite type of Chinese media? So like books, movies, music, things like that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: I would say books. Yeah, I don\u2019t watch movies that often. Chinese music is so-so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L: Do you have a favorite book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: The one that pops up in my mind is a book by M\u00e1rquez after he wrote 100 Years of Solitude<\/em>. It\u2019s Love in the Time of Cholera<\/em>. That one is really good, but it\u2019s not Chinese. I don\u2019t know what my favorite Chinese book would be, so I\u2019ll just say something I\u2019ve read recently. I don\u2019t know the English name, but if you translate it directly it\u2019s \u201cthe submarine during the night.\u201d It\u2019s by a very young Chinese author. It\u2019s pretty cool. He writes in a style that really looks like Borges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labbie Note: <\/strong>The book is The Submarine at Night<\/em> (\u591c\u665a\u7684\u6f5c\u6c34\u8247) by Chen Chuncheng!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: Also I like a lot of Chinese writers that are born around 1900, for example Zhang Ailing, she\u2019s pretty cool. She wrote her main novels in her 20s. Really<\/em> cool author. She\u2019s very well-trained in traditional Chinese. And especially she read Dream of the Red Chamber<\/em>, which is considered to be the masterpiece of Chinese ancient literature. I feel like if she continued writing, she would be one of the greatest authors in Chinese history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L: Last question, what\u2019s your favorite word or expression in Chinese?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D: I would say li\u00fali (\u7409\u7483). It\u2019s used to describe the rooftop. There\u2019s a word called li\u00fal\u00edw\u01ce (\u7409\u7483\u74e6), which means the rooftop bricks made of li\u00fali. So li\u00fali is like a texture that is transparent and luminous. I really like the sound and the pronunciation of the character, it invokes a lot of good imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An example of li\u00fal\u00edw\u01ce.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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

Today we’re checking in with Chinese tutor Deltas, a native speaker from Tianjin, China! Deltas has been tutoring me in Chinese this year, and I can say from personal experience that he is very knowledgeable, even when I throw a weird grammar question at him. We chatted about Tianjin dumplings, Zhang Ailing, and traditional Chinese … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “All things Chinese literature with Deltas!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-levels","category-chinese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2017"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2022,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017\/revisions\/2022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/langlabbies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}