Indian customs

If you thought this post was something about 'traditional Indian customs and practices', stop reading here. It's about my latest experience going through Indian customs at Delhi Airport.

Before I left Singapore, Mum had suggested I take with me some bakkwa, sweetened dried meat (usually pork) from the famous Bee Cheng Hiang franchise in Singapore. They're nicely packaged and would make nice gifts, given that most people I'm staying with are also huge pork eaters.

I didn't think India had any issues with meat imports. Then I saw the customs form. Through the sleepy haze of catching a 2am flight out of Changi Airport, I read at the bottom: Are you carrying any meat / meat products / dairy products ...

Years of travelling to Australia made my hand circle 'Yes' right away. I mean, it's all packaged. I'll show it to them, they'll just wave me through. I'm pretty sure they'd even wave this stuff through in Australia as long as you declare it. Nothing to worry about.

So I went to sleep. I was exhausted. When I woke a few hours later, my mind wandered back to the customs form, a nagging thought at the back of my mind. But it's India.

When I finally got through the immigration queue at Delhi Airport, I noticed that nothing special was written on the little customs slip I had. In Australia, the immigration officer generally asks you what you're declaring and makes a note on the form.

I picked up my luggage and started heading to the Green Channel. A rather bored looking man was going up to every second traveller asking them to put their bags through the X-ray machine next to him. Great. Before he could ask me to put my bags through the machine, I asked him instead where to go to declare things.

- What do you have?
- Some meat. Do I have to declare it?
- If you want to.
- So I don't have to declare it?
- It is better if you declare it.

He pointed me in the direction of three even more bored looking officers sitting on couches behind some empty counters with names like 'Currency Declaration' and 'Goods Declaration'. They didn't bother to get up when they saw me approach. I stood behind a counter and yelled at one of them that I had something to declare, feeling quite ridiculous as I waved the bag of bakkwa in the air.

- What do you have?
- Some meat!
- No meat allowed!
- But it's packaged!
- No meat allowed!
- So what am I supposed to do? Throw it away?

He then waved his hand in some general direction. I turned around but couldn't locate a bin that looked like it was designated for throwing away declared items. When I turned back, I saw the guy was still on the couch and had gone back to his conversation with the other two guys.

I walked towards to the Green Channel. The first guy I had spoken to was busy getting people to put their luggage through the X-ray machine. Just keep going. I headed straight for the door. There were two blank-faced guys there collecting customs slips.

I considered for a moment whipping out a pen and changing my answer to 'No'. Looking at the faces of the two men, I decided to take a gamble. The bag of 'illegal' goods still dangling from my arm, I walked towards the one on the left and thrust the customs slip in his hand..

He took the little piece of paper without so much as a glance. I kept walking. Freedom!

As I walked out, I couldn't help but feel a little glad that $80 worth of bakkwa didn't end up in a bin. I also realised that I would have felt a little guilty if I had just said 'No' on the form and walked out the door. I guess I'm so used to being truthful (or at least semi-truthful) whenever I clear customs in Australia. I usually have trouble lying straight to someone's face.

But it's India.

RIP: Bhupen Hazarika

Today, the news programmes in India are all about one person: Bhupen Hazarika ভূপেন হাজৰিকা. Now, I know a number of people who read this blog are from / based in India, and I must ask your forgiveness for not knowing who he was before today, but something tells me that I'm going to be hearing a lot about him in the coming days.

This great Assamese singer passed away in Mumbai this afternoon. He sang in a number of Indian languages and was beloved all over India and in Bangladesh, but he has a special place in people's hearts here in his homeland of Assam. I'm told that he even sang in Karbi when he used to visit Karbi Anglong.

I was told that he received a doctorate in communication from Columbia University. According to Wikipedia, his thesis was titled "Proposals for Preparing India's Basic Education to Use Audio-Visual Techniques in Adult Education". From the stories I've been told, it seems that he was an advocate for tolerance and equality.

One story in particular, was about how in 1983, when there was massive violence in Assam against illegal immigrants (mainly from Bangladesh) [read more here], Bhupen Hazarika walked across the state from West to East, visiting villages and performing to people wherever he went. He sang a song about the Assamese not being a poor people that he'd written 10 years earlier and said that he had nothing new to tell people, because he'd already said what he wanted to say 10 years before.

I'm not sure how accurate the story was, but it's clear that most people here have been touched by him. I'm pretty sure over the next few days there will be a period of state-wide (if not nation-wide) mourning for him.

The Assamese song 'Buku hum hum kore'


The Hindi version 'Dil hum hum kare'

Where are you from?

That last post reminded me of the oddest and most annoying conversation I've ever had about my origins. It was with a German guy who I met while I was living in Lyon, France. The conversation was in English and went something like this :

- Where are you from?
- Singapore, but I live in Australia.
- No, where are you from originally?
- I was born in Singapore.
- Yes, but where are your parents from?
- They were born in Singapore.
- What about your grandparents?
- My grandmothers are from SE Asia, but my grandfathers were from China.
- Oh, so you're from China!

There was sure no fooling this guy...

I come from a land down under

One of the first things I learn to say in a foreign language is how to say, "I'm from..." or "I come from...", mainly because one of the first things people ask me is where I'm from. It's also a reasonable useful phrase for any language learner.

However, I find the phrase tricky to learn for 2 reasons. The first one is probably more specific to the geographically displaced person that I am. I usually say "I come from Singapore but live in Australia", even if my friends in Nepal and India will typically introduce me as their friend from Australia. It just seems less troublesome when I'm travelling in Asia and Europe, especially since I don't look like what many people expect an Australian to look like i.e. white, nor do I sound particularly Australian (although I did meet an American lady who insisted I had an Australian accent, which I found rather puzzling).

But discounting any potential geographic confusion of one's origins, the phrase is potentially problematic if you're asking for a literal translation in another language. I've found a few times that when I ask people how to say "I come from...", they often give me a sentence that is better translated as 'I am coming from...' or 'I have come from...', which tells the hearer the last place I visited, as opposed to my country / land of origin.

I suspect it's translating the verb 'come' that throws my tutors off - they're trying to convey the meaning of motion, when the English doesn't actually convey this.

Using the verb venir 'to come' works fine in French, although it's possible to just use the verb 'to be' and a preposition:
Je viens de Singapour 'I come from Singapore.'
Je suis de Singapour. 'I am from Singapore.'

But in Russian, what I'd say is:
Я из Сингапура ya iz Singapur-a 'I am from Singapore.' (lit. 'I from Singapore' with a preposition and no verb meaning 'to be')
I can't even think of a verb corresponding to 'come' that would be appropriate here. If I did use one here, I'd feel like I was talking about recently arriving from Singapore.

Similarly, in (Lower) Assamese I was first taught:
[would love to put the Assamese text here at some point]
Moy Singapur-pora ahisu.
(forgive the transliteration, this was based on my own transcriptions, and I have a LOT of trouble with the back vowels)

And in Sumi:
Niye Singapur lono ighi va.

However, both literally mean, 'I have come from Singapore.' (or to match the word order, 'I Singapore from have come'). The form of the verb 'to come' ahisu in (Lower) Assamese and the use of va with the verb ighi 'to come' in Sumi are used in sentences that one would typically translate as being in the perfect aspect in English. I suspect that both sentences suggest that I have recently arrived from Singapore, which is not the intended meaning.

Rather, in order to convey the meaning of origin, it might be necessary in languages to say something like 'I am Singaporean.' In Chinese, I would probably say:
我是新加坡人。
wo shi xinjiapo ren
(where 人 ren means 'person'.)

In Sumi, the equivalent of this would be:
Niye Singapur-mi.
with the suffix -mi meaning 'person' and no verb meaning 'to be'.

Alternatively, what I've learn to say in Nepali, is:
मेरो देश सिंगापुर हो, तर म ऑस्ट्रेलियामा बास्छु।
mero des Singaapur ho, tara ma Australiya-maa baaschhu
which literally means 'My country (des) is Singapore, but I live in Australia.'

Similarly, in Assamese, I can say:
mor dex Singapore, kintu moi bortoman Australiat thaku
'My country is Singapore, but nowadays I live in Australia.'

Of course, this often assumes that your country of origin is the same as your current nationality, which is not always the case. However, things are never that simple - some people I know who read this blog certainly have more complicated geographical origins!

I'd therefore be interested to hear of other ways to introduce where you come from in these and other languages. I'd also be interested to know why people choose to introduce themselves in this particular way.

Eventually, I suppose I will start introducing myself as being 'Australian'. Although I'm more likely to give a nod to Bruce Woodley and Dobe Newton and say, "I am Australian", instead of "I come from a land down under."

Tea vs Chai, the Tekka Centre and my last name (II)

In yesterday's post I talked about the correspondence between Hokkien 't' and Mandarin 'zh' (a retroflex sound produced with the tongue slightly further back than the sound represented by 'ch' in 'chunk' and without the puff of air). Both sounds are descended from an earlier 'tr' cluster in Early Middle Chinese, as reconstructed by historical linguists.

What does this have to do with the word for 'tea'?

People who know Hindi, may laugh surreptitiously when they hear people order a 'chai tea', since चय chay means 'tea' in Hindi, so the order is basically for a 'tea tea'. In English though, 'chai tea' is perfectly acceptable because the word 'chai' has been borrowed to designate what one would call मसाला चय masaalaa chai 'spiced tea' in India.

The Hindi word for tea is चय chay is much closer to the Mandarin cha (the 'ch' sound here is pronounced like the retoflex 'zh', the only difference is that it is accompanied by a puff of air). Other Indo-Aryan languages like Nepali have चिया chiyā. Within Indo-European, we also have Russian чай chay. The Japanese also use cha. In contrast, English has tea, French thé and Malay teh. Hebrew too uses תה te (I was taught that תה נענע te nana is '(spear)mint tea' in Hebrew). These languages all have a word for 'tea' that's closer to the Hokkien / Minnan word te (tone not given).

The reason for this difference is that languages like English borrowed (whether directly or indirectly) the word from one of the Minnan dialects / languages, while languages like Russian and Hindi borrowed the word from other Chinese languages like Mandarin or Cantonese. The Wikipedia article explains this in greater detail and gives more examples from other languages.

Etymologically though, Mandarin cha and Hokkien te share the same origin. Pulleyblank (1991) gives the reconstructed forms draɨ /drɛ (Early Middle Chinese) and trɦa: (Late Middle Chinese). Again, we see the correspondence between the Mandarin retroflex sounds (written in pinyin as 'zh' and 'ch') and Minnan 't',

So voilà, it took me two posts to do it, but there you have it - the common thread linking my last name, the name of the Tekka Centre and the name of one of the most consumed beverages on the planet.

[This post was inspired by 3 separate conversations I've had in the last month about each of these topics. Tomorrow I'm off to the great tea-growing state of Assam in NE India. The word in Assamese চাহ (transliterated as chah) is clearly related to the non-Minnan form of the word, but is now pronounced 'sah' in Assamese. Something for me to get used to saying again!]

Tea vs Chai, the Tekka Centre and my last name (I)

This post is about three things: (1) the name of a very popular beverage that the vast majority of readers would be familiar with; (2) the name of a building complex near Little India that most Singaporeans would be familiar with; and (3) my family name, which only my friends would be familiar with (but which is actually a pretty common Chinese name around the world).

And yes, there's a linguistic point to all of this.

Let's start with what's least familiar: my last name, which happens to be Teo (I pronounce it as [t^hjo]). It is a Hokkine / Minnan name that has its origins in southern China. While it may not look familiar to most people outside SE Asia, it's actually etymologically related to one of the most common Chinese surnames around the world. The Chinese character used to write it is 张 (simplified) or 張 (traditional). The standard Mandarin equivalent is transliterated as Zhang in pinyin and pronounced as /tʂaŋ/ (tone not given) - it's like saying 'chunk', but (a) you don't have a final 'k' sound and (b) when you pronounce 'ch' sound, your tongue curls back a bit (this is what is called a 'retroflex' sound) and you shouldn't have a strong puff of air. The Cantonese equivalents I believe are transliterated as Cheung, Cheong or Chong, depending on the transliteration system.

Most of you will probably have started to recognise these names and probably even know people with one of these names. But you've also probably noticed that while the Mandarin and Cantonese forms look quite similar, the Minnan name Teo doesn't look (or sound) anything like the others. So how is it related?

Before I get to that point, let's look at the name of a famous building complex located in Little India, Singapore: the Tekka Centre. (I was just there a week ago with a friend from Australia.)

The Wikipedia article gives the original (Hokkien) name of the market as Tek Kia Kha, meaning 'foot of the small bamboos' which was eventually shortened to Tekka. For those who can read Chinese, you'll notice on the right the Chinese characters 竹 'bamboo' and 脚 'leg / foot'. The standard Mandarin reading of 竹 is zhu in pinyin and pronounced /tʂu/, while in Hokkien 竹 is transliterated as tek and pronounced something like /tɛk/.

Now I remember going on a school trip to Little India in the 1990s and being utterly confused because the centre had been renamed the 'Zhujiao Centre' to match the Mandarin reading of 竹脚. In reality, almost everyone still referred to it as the 'Tekka Market'. The building has since been renamed the 'Tekka Centre' to avoid confusion (which Wikipedia tells me happened in 2000).

The point was, I could see no resemblance between Mandarin zhu and Hokkien tek. Since then, I've also learnt a lot more about historical sound changes, and noticed other examples of Mandarin 'zh' (a retroflex sound) corresponding to Hokkien 't', like with my last name. Simply put, they are both said to have descended from a sequence of 't' and 'r' early in the history of Chinese. In the Minnan languages / dialects, including Hokkien, the 'r' sound was lost, while in other varieties, including standard Mandarin, the combination of 'tr' became a retroflex sound, as represented in pinyin by the letters zh. Pulleyblank (1991) reconstructs the pronunciation of 竹 as truwk in Early Middle Chinese and triwk in Late Middle Chinese. Guillaume Jacques here also gives 'tr' as an initial in Early Middle Chinese, with the pronunciation of 张 reconstructed as 'trjang'. We still see the 'tr' combination in the Vietnamese surname Trương / Truong. (Vietnamese is not Sinitic, but it was heavily influenced by it for centuries.)

Of course, this only explains how the first sounds in Teo and tek in Hokkien correspond to Zhang and zhu in Mandarin. To explain the rest would require more than a humble blog post.

So what does this have to do with all the tea in China (and all the chai in India)? Check out tomorrow's post.

Feature phones

Most people would now be familiar with the term smartphone, and have at least some idea as to what a smartphone is. Yesterday, my friend R. taught me a new term (for an old thing): feature phone.

Unlike most people I know, I don't own an iPhone or an Android phone (something that surprises my friends I appear to always be on Facebook and Twitter). When I'm in Melbourne, I still use a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic from back in 2009. I don't think it's the best example of a smartphone - but it has pretty advanced computing ability and allows me to connect to internet (via a wifi connection) and use Bluetooth.

However, on my last trip to Nepal and India, I was hesitant to take the phone with me for a number of reasons. One, the battery life is poor - I'd have to recharge it at least once every two days and given that electricity isn't always guaranteed, I'd find myself without a usable phone for longer than I'd like. Two, it's not particularly durable and I'd worry about dropping it and breaking it in a remote area with no hope of getting it fixed. Three, it was locked to a particular network in Australia, and while I could have got it unlocked, it didn't seem the effort given the first two reasons.

So, instead I brought my old Nokia 3100 (really really classic old school Nokia), which my friend told me was a feature phone: basically, any mobile phone that isn't a smartphone. People in the industry might have more sophisticated ways of distinguishing the two, although the Wikipedia article suggests that there isn't an official definition for either smartphone or feature phone. In any case, I don't think there'd be any case to suggest my Nokia 3100 was a smartphone.

I got this phone back in 2004 and since then, it's followed me around the world twice. I took it with me when I went on exchange to Russia and France and then when I was teaching English in Xinjiang. It was great last year in Nepal and India because it was everything my other phone wasn't: The battery lasts a few days before I have to charge it. I've dropped it a few times, but it still kept going. And I can put it just about any SIM card I like. Basically, everything I want in a phone when I'm out in a remote area doing fieldwork. I don't know how long more it'll last, but I intend to use till it finally goes the way of all phones.

Ironically, the last time I was in Nagaland, I noticed quite a few people actually did have the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. A friend of mine even used his to play music - something I had never considered doing on the phone, despite the name of the model - while we driving from Zunheboto to Kohima. Sadly, before we even got halfway there, the battery had died.