Buridan’s Sneeze
September 14th 2019
THIS INDECISON’S BUGGING ME
I had a decision to make.
I stood motionless.
Equidistant from two potential options.
For six months, I remained.
Motionless.
Thinking.
Pondering.
Wasting away the time.
What will I do?
Let me think about it.
Freedom to choose.
What is better for me?
Volley the bucket down the road.
When it came to the decision, I stayed motionless flicking my eyes from side to side, like a spectator focused on the celluloid-white ball in a hotly contested ping-pong rally.
Pick-pock-pick.
In thinking, in pondering, in truth, I did nothing.
BURIDAN’S ASS
Jean Buridan, a French philosopher of the 14th century gave his name to a paradox — a hypothetical situation in which a person is paralysed as presented with two equally attractive and attainable alternatives and therefore loses freedom of choice.
Procrastination — it is part of the human condition.
This paradox is commonly known as ‘Buridan’s Ass’.
Buridan himself did not use a donkey in his example but throughout the centuries this has become the visual representation of his philosophical conundrum of free will.
Visualise a donkey that is as thirsty as it is hungry. It stands the same distance from, on one side, a bale of hay and on the other side, a bucket of water. The paradox assumes that the donkey will go to whichever is closer. But because the donkey is equidistant from both the hay and the water, the poor beast of burden cannot possibly make a rational decision between the two. And consequently dies a tragic death — from starvation and thirst.
In On the Heavens, written around 350BC, Aristotle put forward a similar situation:
“A man, being just as hungry as thirsty, and placed between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death.”
I feel Aristotle might be a bit miffed that it is not his ‘Ass’ that we are all talking about over two millennia later.
But whether the donkey is Aristotelean of Buridanian, over the past six months, this paradox has applied directly to me.
I am that Ass. I had made no decision. No sustenance for the loiterer.
Here in Hong Kong, should I study Cantonese or Mandarin?
CHEW CANTONESE CHAFF OR SLUG FROM THE PAIL OF MANDARIN
I have lived for six months in Hong Kong and I regrettably have learnt very little of the language.
Cantonese is spoken in the cites and provinces surround the Pearl River Delta: Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong. Guangdong’s major city Guangzhou, or Canton, is where the language gets its name. Whereas once you cross the border into Mainland China, or ferry across to Taiwan, Mandarin — an amalgamation of northern dialects — is the language spoken.
It is in the interest of Beijing to have a unified language throughout China.
Centralisation of language means a centralisation of power at the core.
The concern is that Cantonese will eventually diminish. Cantonese people fear this is inevitable due to several reasons: in the city of Guangzhou there has been a rapid influx of non-Cantonese migrant workers; the changing of television stations from Cantonese to Mandarin; the declining popularity of films and television dramas from Hong Kong; the fact Mandarin is seen as more useful in commerce and in the workplace and finally, a change in tastes regarding education — parents want their children learning Mandarin in school.
In 2012, government headquarters in Hong Kong were besieged for ten days by protestors. They were showing their disgust in response to the potential implementation of national education — this would make Mandarin mandatory in schools. The Chief Executive CY Leung withdrew the Act and schools would not be required to teach Mandarin. Protestors saw this as an attempt by the mainland to indoctrinate the youth, to diminish Cantonese language and culture. Even now the debate is ongoing, an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post from March this year has the headline and sub-headline:
HOW HONG KONG COULD BENEFIT FROM PATRIOTIC EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS:
Patriotic education can teach young Hong Kongers about the Mainland, Chinese traditions and opportunities in the Greater Bay Area.
It is true that there are benefits of learning more about the Mainland, its history and traditions. As 2047 approaches — Hong Kong will cease to be a ‘Special Administrative Region’ of China, but becomes fully part of it — we will see the end of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. Hong Kong will join the Chinese political system. As this deadline approaches, although it is not official Party policy, it will be in the interest of Beijing to implement stronger policies towards the widespread use of Mandarin in Cantonese areas.
UNIFORMITÉ
Throughout history, policies of linguistic uniformity have been used by the ruling elite to focus power at the centre, to enable the ruler to influence its people easier and more efficiently.
In both France and Ireland language has been used as a tool to unite, much to the detriment of peripheral, ‘lesser’ cultures. Either in the process to make a nation more cohesive or make colonisation more complete.
In the late 18th century the same methods were instilled in the crucible of revolt and upheaval in Revolutionary France. During the Revolution, Abbé Gregoire — a Catholic priest, Bishop and revolutionary — realised the importance of linguistic uniformity in order to create the idea of a shared community and nation, two pillars of French revolutionary thought. A reform of language, the standardisation of vernaculars and the extinction of the local ‘patois’ would lead to the centralisation of language. Adding oil to allow for a better functioning political and social machine. To create a nation. Gregoire argued “that the future of the nation rested on the ability of all citizens to participate in the business of state”, in 1794 he famously claimed that 6 million French citizens spoke no French.As Benedict Anderson points out in ‘Imagined Communities:
“The new middle-class intelligentsia of nationalism had to invite the masses into history; and the invitation-card had to be written in a language they understood.”
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité only worked as a slogan if all could chant it loud in unison; in the same tongue. As Eugen Weber points out this was all part of the process ‘to make Frenchmen’. A collective identity based on myth, language and shared history — only then would a nation be created. In eradicating the ‘Patois’, Parisian French became the official language of France, rendering the France linguistically tighter and focusing the power at the centre.
The same can be said of Irish language and the British colonial attitude towards it in the 19thCentury. In their colonisation of Ireland, British colonial policy made a distinct effort to neuter the Irish language, culture and collective identity.
English was made mandatory of schools, place names translated and changed and later, in the despair and defeat and the emigration of swathes during and after The Great Famine, people leaving saw English as the more practical language to have in your repertoire.
A change in tastes.
Brian Friel’s ‘Translations’ takes place in rural Donegal in 1833 during the British Government’s Ordnance Survey of Ireland which saw the Irish place names translated into English.
In the play, Hugh is a schoolteacher at a hedge school, he lectures in Irish avoiding passionately the incoming Anglicisation. He often quotes Latin and Greek, ancient languages whose usage has faded throughout the centuries. He realises the threat a standardisation of language would have on Irish cultural identity as a whole:
“…that it is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language”
History needs to be written in a language everyone understands — or else, the risk is that it will be forgotten. One of Hugh’s students, Maire, deems herself a realist compared to the other Irish around her — desperate and hopelessly romantic for a culture and language that is resigned to the past. She believes the sooner they all learn English the better.
For the coloniser, linguistic control meant a more solid rule from the centre. When the question of convenience comes to the fore, the more convenient of the two options became the chosen one. It is the battle between practicality and identity, between the future and the past. Later in the play, Hugh, the hedge-school teacher, realises he must speak English in order to reclaim his own identity through the language of the coloniser.
Culture as negotiation. He must speak the language that is more widely spoken and practical or else risk being left behind. Despite his conformity, Hugh understands one must never leave behind their own identity or else all will be lost in time:
“We must never cease in renewing those images; because once we do, we fossilize.”
As I am an Irishman, teaching English as a foreign language to local children, I cannot help but ponder on language and the importance it plays in the development of a society.
Like Revolutionary France eradicating the ‘Patois’ to make the power greater at the core and the British attempted eradication of the Irish language, the same thing is happening in present day South China. Parents see Mandarin as the more practical language for the future, for their children’s prospects.
Like the Celtic Revival — Lady Gregory, WB Yeats, The Abbey Theatre — of the early 19th century, the Cantonese people must continue to observe and preserve their own unique collective identity. As the Irish saying goes ‘Tir gan teanga, tir gan anam’ — A country without a language is a country without a soul. It is the responsibility of the people to continue teaching their language, to make it interesting for their children, for if you wait too long — it can be much too late.
The impact of linguistic uniformity on my own native Ireland, the master/slave complex of colonialism and the disappearance of a culture and language — the desperate attempts to claw it all back — all added to the quandary, to me, standing there motionless waiting feverishly for sustenance.
So, between Cantonese and Mandarin, would it make sense to choose the practical?
Mandarin has 1.3 billion speakers, and Cantonese, (just) 60 million. Mandarin is supposedly easier due to lesser amount of tones. Looking at those two facts, Mandarin being spoken by more people and easier to grasp would deem it a simple answer. It is certainly the more practical.
If I choose Mandarin, is it the equivalent of going down to Connemara, the Gaeltacht, in search of English Lessons or going into Burger King for a Big Mac and six chicken McNuggets or requesting an Italian pour cream into his carbonara.
The ass’ hooves are nervously trampling on egg shells, but not taking a first step.
But would this mean I was taking the side of the coloniser, the eradicator, the Man?
But here is me, in Hong Kong. Shop local. Do as they do.
Whose side am I on?
What can I say in Mandarin?
1. Hello.
你好(nǐhǎo)
2. Thank you.
谢谢(xièxiè)
3. Xiaolongbao
小龙宝 (xiǎolóng bǎo)
The word for quaint parcels of pork and broth or soup dumplings. They originated in Shanghai. Within a wheat flour wrap lies a small bolus of perfectly portioned gelatinous minced pork. When steamed, the innards of the parcel ooze a fragrant juice that remains sealed within the diaphanous walls of the wrinkled envelope. Directly prior to consumption, it is dipped into a shallow dish of maroon vinegar soaked ginger filings. The morsels often scald the mouth and chin of a hurried glutton.
What can I say in Cantonese?
1. Hello.
你好(néih hóu)
2. Thank you.
唔該(m̀hgòi)
3. Pineapple.
菠蘿(bōluó)
In the opening half of Wong Kar-wai’s film ‘Chungking Express, a character called He Qiwu is dumped by his girlfriend on April 1. He decides he won’t move on until May 1. His ex-girlfriend enjoyed pineapples. Obsessively, he only buys tins of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1. Later he confronts a woman in a blonde wig in the Bottoms Up Club — which as James Bond aficionados will know also featured in The Man With The Golden Gun — and as a pick-up line he says: “Excuse me, miss, do you like pineapple?”
4. Gweilo
鬼佬(gwáilóu)
Meaning ‘ghostly man’, a slang word used in Hong Kong for Westerners. I was called it on a street corner by a woman pushing a trolley brimming with yesterday’s cabbage. Also name of a local Hong Kong beer.
5. Moustache.
鬍鬚 (wùsoū)
I have grown a moustache over the summer. I often ask my students what they think. Overall consensus is that they are revolted by it, some even offering to swipe it off, there and then. In one lesson I pinched the peripheral bristles and asked, seeing an opportunity to teach them a new word, ‘What do you call this?’ Silence ensued and then a girl said in a cutting, brazen tone ‘Disgusting.’ Confidence was down, rock-bottom, and I mulled over shaving it later that evening. The last class of that day, I was teaching two twins, 5 years old. They kept chanting at me
‘wùsoū wùsoū wùsoū!’
while pointing at my upper lip. I didn’t know what they meant. I presumed it meant ‘Ugly’, ‘Horrid’ or perhaps ‘Completely unacceptable’.
After the class I asked their parents and after I mucked up the tones a bit, they realised the two girls were chanting ‘moustache — moustache — moustache!’ I needed confirmation, I needed endorsement, I asked the twins,
‘Do you like wùsoū?’
‘YES, I like.’ They screamed in unison.
I joined them boisterously in one final ‘wùsoū wùsoū wùsoū!’ as they chanted and fist pumped out the door. A single compliment (or two) in a deep, dark oil-black swirling ocean of mockery and insults, is all I need to preserve the wùsoū.
6. Sneeze.
打乞嗤 (dáa hāt cí)
Dáa hāt cí is onomateopaeic, the equivalent of ‘achoo’.
STERNUTATION — THE ACT OF SNEEZING
A sneeze is a violent reflex and contraction of the body which propels air out of the lungs and through the nasal passageways at over 400 miles an hour. An unimpeded sneeze sends two to five thousand bacteria-filled droplets into the air. The medical name for sneezing is sternutation. A sneeze releases endorphins and for some, not all, it can be a pleasurable experience — a moment of release.
There is a age-old saying in China that a sneezer can tell if someone is talking behind their back, and the number of their sneezes can determine the content of this conversation! A far more complex version of picking Dandelion heads and saying “he loves me , he loves me not.”
Here goes with the sneeze scoring system:
· One sneeze — the person is saying good things about the sneezer
· Two sneezes — the person is saying bad things about the sneezer
· Three sneezes — the person is in love with the sneezer
· Over three sneezes — the person has caught a head cold
The only thing worse than being sneezed about, is not being sneezed about.
Teaching students in a classroom. It happened. In a moment. A miniscule moment that made all the difference. Split, slow motion. Like the isolated faded frames of the 1894 short, black and white, silent film ‘Fred Ott’s Sneeze’ or ‘Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze’.
I turned on my seat, fast. In the spin, I opened my mouth wide to announce ‘Good Morning’ to my only student. First of the day. She let out a goose-honk of a sneeze directly into my face, into my wide open mouth. 400 miles per hour. Two to Five thousand bacteria filled droplets.
Into the air.
Into my face.
Into my mouth, my eyes, my bloodstream.
A mask was found and the pupil’s lower face was covered.
But it was all too late. When one is sick here, as well as in most of East Asia, it is custom to wear a mask when you are sick. Cover the mouth and nose. I remember seeing tourists in Dublin doing it and thinking they didn’t want any illness off of us or that they were just disgusted by the peaty air or the curious twang of hops from the plumes of Guinness.
But no, it is for the sake of others. Confucian principles and an overall holistic philosophy in China, as well as in the East in general — yin and yang — the parts of something are only explainable by reference to the whole. Coexistence with others working together in a Collectivist society. In the West, Ancient Greco-Roman philosophy set a bedrock of Individualism in Western ideology. That explains why westerners initially judge mask-wearing tourists as rude, afraid of our germs — how dare they!
The truth is in the whole, as Hegel said. But the real truth was that a mask-less nose had sprayed bacteria into my unprotected face.
Fred Ott snorts a sprinkle of snuff to initiate his sneeze. 5 seconds long as he snorts and contorts and cranes his neck back in response to the irritant.
However, this student — this irritant- was not sneezing for the hell of it or that her nose was irritated by some foreign intrusion in the nostril — a speck of dust, stray pollen, grains of black pepper — but she was ill and I felt the wrath of her wayward bacteria.
This felt longer than seconds, it felt minutes as deep down I knew that all the green-urine-rendering soluble Vitamin C tablets of the world could not change my future.
Too late.
All in a miniscule moment.
The morning after that particular sneeze, I sneezed four times in a row.
No one was thinking of me.
No one was saying anything good about me.
No one was saying anything bad about me.
No one was in love with me.
I was merely, pathetically, sick.
Nose, eyes, throat. All fucked. With time, those symptoms came and went. Vitamin C, honey drinks, a viscous-black bottle of Chinese cough syrup eradicated all of those symptoms.
However, only one symptom remained.
Lingered for days after.
It was the ears. They were completely blocked and there was absolutely nothing I could do to remove the obstacles.
Scoured for help. All the tips, all the old wives’ tales all the backyard remedies were tried:
Swallowing automatically works to open the Eustachian tubes. Connects inner ear and nasopharynx.
No.
Chewing gum or sucking on hard sweets.
No.
Yawning automatically open the Eustachian tubes — if you cannot yawn, just do a pretend yawn.
No.
‘Valsalva Maneuver’ — Pinch nostrils tight with fingers. Cheeks flaccid. Blow out nostrils. Pressure in the back of the nose — may help open the Eustachian tube.
No.
‘Toynbee Maneuver’ — Pinch your nostrils closed with your fingers while swallowing.
No.
Holding a warm washcloth against the ear can eliminate congestion.
No.
Nasal decongestants.
No.
The final tip was to wait.
A call for patience.
Let the ears unblock of their own accord.
Succumb to the Hammer, the Anvil, the Stirrup. Let the gatekeepers call the shots.
Maybe climb a tall peak or go on a curly-wirly-twirly roller coaster or go up and down a lift a few times.
No!
Is this what is it like from now on?
This is the way my world ends
This is the way my world ends
This is the way my world ends
Not with a bang but with a sneeze.
I am the stuffed man.
Is this my existence?
A set of ear drums like a sponge soaked in custard?
Something has got to give!
Something needs to happen!
A prayer to the nasal gods — make it stop!
O great Sense — swing forth the canals of Eustachia!
THIS INDECISON’S BLOCKING ME
Well-blocked, I had taken a step in a direction. I found myself filling out a form for lessons. The blockage either side of my face had irritated me so much that something had to be crossed off the list.
Clear one thing, other things may clear.
I signed up to Cantonese lessons.
As an Irishman, I feel solidarity with the Cantonese — a post-colonial ideology of the underdog. I realise the importance of not letting an identity fossilize into the past. Cantonese surrounds me, I refuse to be the man pouring cream into an Italian man’s carbonara. In the current political climate in Hong Kong, withHong Kongers fighting for democratic rights, why would I side with Goliath, when David is swinging his sling down the road.
I was also told that Cantonese has travelled well around the world — in Chinatowns throughout the globe. It is widely spoken due to the fact Hong Kong was open and people travelled freely while China isolated itself throughout the majority of the 20th century.
Cantonese is a tonal language — six tones require the speaker to move their mouth in wayward directions, utilising the tongue, the roof of the mouth and lips.
Movements I have never performed in my life.
I was moving my gob in ways I had never done before, I was uttering guttural tones that I didn’t know could be uttered, I was loosening the jowl and tightening the jaw in such obscure and alien ways and that was when something happened.
Something marvellous.
A moment of intense release, a climactic pop.
And suddenly in a single moment, as rapid as a single sneeze, a euphoric eruption. Air rushed in and out.
A canal, cleared.
Catharsis.
The congestion was over, it was all over.
The nasal and auditory passages had eased, pressure returned to normal.
I was not dying of thirst or starvation — but the effect of the indecision was literally making my brain expand between my ears, threatening to explode.
The curse of my quandary had given me this bacteria-filled sneeze as a kick up the arse, a catalyst in my decision-making. I was no longer motionless.
I had taken a step — no longer was I donkey with a dilemma— I chewed on the Cantonese chaff — and that has made all the difference.
O great Sense!
O auditory Ossicles!
Free at last,
Free at last,
Thank god almighty -
We are free at last.
With unblocked ears, life can return to normal. Free at last.