It’s fun to compare my two languages: Chinese I was born into, and English I learned artificially when I was a 
teenager from my native Chinese teachers.
I found that English tends to be more straight forward and more efficient than Chinese. For example, Chinese has various ways for the simple little English one-word everyday greeting “Hi/Hello”:
“Have you eaten?”
“Where are you going?”
“Going out shopping?”
Boy, aren’t we Chinese nosy people! … always into each other’s business …
Sometimes, however, the English efficiency and brevity oversimplifies. For example, the word “old.”
I found that the English word “old” is a lazy word. It lacks precision and lumps along both people and material things into the same waste basket, like marking down on a bottle of fine, aged wine and carting it off into the 99⊄ store.
People have feelings, passion and compassion, pride and dignity, while material things don’t. And a long-lived life mostly accumulates years of valuable experiences of practical and useful skills and wisdom, which can’t be said about old rags, old worn-out shoes and clothes, or second-hand cars.
Through my Chinese eyes I see that America’s overzealous adoration for youth and beauty that comes with it, no matter how superficial, shallow the mind and brain is.
And toddler girls are dressed up as provocative adult women to compete for beauty queens, while mature women often times “dolled down” like young girls. Not to mention gazillion-million dollars of “age-defying” products that take the markets by storm.
No one can hold their youth and beauty forever. Dying young, like the beautiful Princess Diana, is the only way to preserve your forever-young image. But apparently, nobody likes the deal.
And it’s most disheartening to see the valuable wisdom, knowledge and professional achievements that comes with age are discounted and apologized for.
“Don’t say you’ve got 30 years of classroom teaching experiences. It makes you sound old!” a woman once advised me loudly at one of my writers’ critique groups. And she was elderly herself.
No, I’m not ashamed of my three fulfilling decades of teaching earning heartwarming respect from thousands of my students in both China & America. It’s on the contrary, I’m very proud of it.
In terms of the concept of “old,” Chinese language makes more sense (* notice: this is only from the language and cultural point of views, nothing to do China’s wretched Communist dictatorship government, which I count my daily blessings that I have escaped from) — the five-thousand-year-old culture has long raised its white flag with peace that aging is part of human natural living:
For the English word “old,” there are two distinguished Chinese ways to say it:
“Jiu 舊” is used for materials; and “Lao 老” is used for people, meant to show respect, compliment and reverence.
“Teacher” in Chinese is lao shi 老師, or xiao sheng 先生, meaning “old master” or, “born before you” — One cannot be good enough to teach without long-life-related experiences.
And, “student” in Chinese is xue sheng 學生, meaning “the one who learns something new and refrshing.”
I think it’s a privilege to experience a longer life, achieve a great accomplishment and climb that last, hardest and most wonderful slopes in our life. Isn’t that part of our human civilization? After all, what young saplings bear seeds and fruits but the majestically seasoned?
Leave a Reply