I'm off to China in about a month to study Chinese at Beijing Normal University through the Princeton in Beijing program. Many thanks to Light for funding me! Here is the rest of my first-ever blog post ...
About a week ago, my mom shows me a Chinese music video in hopes of inspiring me to become a famous Chinese pop star (one of the many career paths she has chosen for me)... I'm thinking to myself, "Gosh, this sounds great, but it would sound even better if I could understand the Chinese lyrics." Reading my mind as she always does, she proceeds to translate the lyrics for me. (Note: Chinese songs are always difficult to understand because the 4 tones are not distinguishable when singing).
The song is called Tong Hua or "Fairy Tale," but the song does not have the typical fairy tale ending by any means. The girlfriend in the music video has a serious medical condition, and thus does not believe that their relationship can end happily ever after. The boyfriend sings about wanting to become the guy in the fairytale, and having that happy ending. Unfortunately, the gf dies in the end. Happy? No. Beautiful? Yes.
Here are a couple links to the videos:
Video with English translation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbcHJPwB9Eo
Music Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0TUMSYTG4g
Anyways, a few days ago I'm at a karaoke place with a group of friends. We get a private room for the 8 of us, and we proceed to belt out song after song for three hours. On my third turn singing, I don't know what song to sing (this is after having sung some t. swift and bieber), so I have a friend pick for me. She decides that we should sing a Chinese song (she's fluent in Chinese). Well guess what song she picks? You guessed it. Tong hua.
As the lyrics popped up on the screen, I realized that I knew the majority of them. Starting out it took a while to process the characters and sing at the same time, but by the time the chorus came around for the third time, I could sing the entire refrain (with a little help from my friend)! OMG! With my level 2 heritage Chinese, I could read/sing/understand about 90% of one of the most famous songs in China. Wow, I have come a long way since September.
I hope to have several more OMG moments throughout my summer in Beijing. Till next time.
Dumpling count: 0
