The Customer Is Always Wrong

I should say a word or two about why I am learning Chinese and what the point of the project is I guess. Well in a nutshell I want to understand a bit better my relationship to national and cultural identities. Most of the time when I see people say “British is this …” I get a bit creeped out. I have read the citizenship tests people take and I think I might well fail them. It is like a British culture pub quiz and I never was good at trivial pursuit. Anyway, when I was in China last year I had the experience of realising that I was British after all, for all my complaints and reservations about the culture, it is mine and my reservations are indeed a part of it. I also realised that the Chinese people I was with defined me in a quite specific way, I was assigned a status that was not entirely of my choosing and which sometimes had more to do with them than with me, or so it felt. So, within this meeting something happened that was quite multi-levelled telling more than one story at the same time. As I usually make work that is open in meaning, this seemed quite a good place to begin.

These last few days I have continued with my lessons and had the sinking feeling of not progressing. There is an initial rush of euphoria in managing to say something and even understand something said to you. That rubs off and you are either go on through the darkness or let it slip. I let it slip last time I tried to learn Chinese back in 1996. This time I am persevering with my two or three lessons a week. There is nothing like the knowledge of a very sudden relocation there to give that added incentive.

I learnt today how my performance project is translated into Chinese. Well actually I now have two options. The first is the most direct translation of “The Customer Is Always Wrong” which is something like CUSTOMER ALWAYS IS MISTAKEN. The ‘better’ version I learnt is something like DON’T LET THE CUSTOMER LEAD YOUR DIRECTION. Which to choose? What sort of background knowledge do I need to have in order to make that decision? WEll I would need a considerably greater understanding of the connotations of each than I have. Failing that, I have to try to give my translator some of my artistic context so that they can then make the choice for me. That is not so easy either, as it happens, as they are not from the arts sphere.

Good news! The funding is now confirmed so things shift a gear and the next phase begins.

the Chinese learning is progressing slowly: I can ask for directions, though whether I’d understand the answer is an open point. A funny thing was pointed out to me. Chinese works from the general to the specific whereas English often works in the opposite direction. Even with postal addresses, you start with the country, get onto the province and city, close in on the district and street and narrow down to the building, room and person at the end.