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Dietrologia is the art of finding dark, ulterior motives behind the most obvious decisions.
Thus if the last discussion was about "saving face" and the ulterior passive aggressive motivations, causing people to act in mind boggling, to the westerner, ways. I'd thought I'd go into the dark histories behind some of our most cherished songs, how they get washed to reflect the current culture, and then the dark moral of the story seems to get lost.
We're teaching people here English songs, the most ironic thing is that one of the songs we are teaching them I didn't even think was an English song to begin with, and I can't remember the middle line.
feres jaques, feres jaques
dormes vous, dormes vous
morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing
ding ding dong, ding ding dong
Of course the students in the class had heard this song, and were laughing because the meaning was slightly different. Two students sang it for me in putonghua and were kind enough to give me the pinyin as follows:
Lian shi lao hu, Lian shi lao hu
pao de kuai, pao de kuai
yi zhi me you er do, yi zhi me you wei ba
zhen qi guai, zhen qi guai.
Roughly translated it means,
two tigers,
running along,
one without ears, one without tail,
what a strange sight.
Initially I thought it had meant they were mating, which would have made it even more embarrassing for us. But I was corrected. Anyhow, I'm wondering how a song about waking up a little child somehow comes to China, with it's pentatonic scale, and winds up as a song about to strange looking tigers. My guess is that it started out as a political satire or commentary about strange looking foreigners running around China. And somehow as the students of Hudson Taylor spread out across China, and they started to teach this song these lyrics stuck.
For our class we're teaching them "little red riding hood." The purpose is to help them with their English and get them speaking and hearing each other speak.
However. I remembered the story being a lot more violent, with the wolf eating the grandmother so she dies, none of the swallowing her whole and the hunter cutting her out of his stomach. I'm trying to remember the moral of the story. But I figure it's a Christian allegory, designed to inspire fear and repentance so people would lead virtuous lives.
The basket of goodies is the word which we've been commanded to bring to the lost. Grandmother is the lost soul which we are commanded to save. There is a great urgency, in our journey. We must go immediately, and not stray from the path. However the wolf lies within the woods. He can easily distract us from our goal. We are deceived by the wolf, and we are led to believe our lies. Yet even in our darkest hour, when we are in the jaws of the wolf, there is a good hunter who has the power to vanquish wolf and save us.
Thursday, October 02, 2003