Takeaway Chinese, where you can take some Chinese away and experience progress day by day.
Takeaway Chinese, we will promise you a difference.
你好,欢迎收听随行汉语。 Welcome to Takeaway Chinese.
I'm Niu Honglin with Steve Hatherly in our studio in Beijing.
Welcome to the show and welcome to the show, Steve.
Thank you very much and hello to our audience too.
Yes, very happy that we are able to select different topics from the splendid culture here in China, because there are just so many things that we can talk about.
And one thing in particular is that I find very interesting because recently I have watched a short video of people talking about studying and taking examination and their generation being very competitive because they are in the culture of growing up learning things among your peers and winning different kind of competitions and taking death.
I don't know if it's a Chinese thing or an East Asian thing or a human thing.
I think it's a human thing.
Right, right.
You kind of want to quote unquote win in different ways and feel good about it.
Some people are more competitive than others.
I know a major complaint in the West is that now they feel like things have gotten a little bit soft where they prefer to just give out participation trophies for things as opposed to defining the winners of something not in every case.
But um yeah, i've seen some internet posts saying why have we gotten so soft about this?
I was gonna ask you a question.
Let me just state something and you tell me if i'm wrong.
You are an extremely competitive person.
I am, but I pick my fight smartly, in the sense that I choose the profession I enjoy.
I do the things that I do well.
And I choose the job or the industry where I know I can grow faster.
So I'm only winning because I'm not always winning.
But when I'm winning, I'm only winning because I feel found out what are my strengths, what are my talents.
And I think that's the key.
That's the reason we have different professions in the society.
Yes, we need different professions to make, to build the society together, to make contributions to the world.
But at the same time, it also offers us opportunities to, you know, enjoy the feeling of winning.
How did you discover your talent?
You try different things.
What is something you weren't good at?
Oh, sports.
Oh, you tried that?
I'm still really bad at sports.
And for some reason, I think my balance is also a bit off.
All right.
No, I asked that question because I think for a lot of people They can get into their adult years and still not find the answer to that.
You know it sounds so simple to say as advice for young people when you're thinking about your future profession.
Oh, well, just do what you love.
Find what you're good at.
And the answer to that is.
Well, I don't know what I'm good at.
I don't know what I love.
And I think for a lot of people, they might go through their entire career looking for things, not knowing what they're actually really really good at, or or or what they really love doing.
That's true.
But I think the perk of this day and age, the advantage, is that there are so many, so many different professions.
So you can figure out the things or the aspect that you're interested in.
For example, I'm bad at sports.
But for some people, they are quick.
They are flexible.
Mm-hmm.
What is something that you are specifically good at?
What is the zhuanye that you are going to choose in the future?
So it's easier in this day and age.
Sometimes learning what you don't love can lead you to what you do.
Yes.
Yes.
The dots can connect.
Sometimes I worked for a company after I graduated from university in Nova Scotia, where I'm from.
And part of that job was sales.
And I was required to sell things.
And I remember having a meeting with my boss and he said well, the sales are down so much percent this month.
We need to bring those back up.
And he said, what kind of sales tactics do you use?
And I said, and remember, I was 22 years old.
I said well OK, first I ask them if they want this, and if they say no well, that's good enough for me.
And he said, that's not the definition of sales.
And I realized this is not for me.
I don't want to pester somebody.
I don't want to persuade somebody into buying something they don't need or they don't want.
But how did you end up finding something you do want to do and good at?
So I left that position and moved to Korea to teach English.
And that gave me the taste of performing.
Ah.
Because there's a performative aspect to teaching, right?
You're in standing in front of a group of people.
And then I realized I liked that a little bit.
Then I got the opportunity to do broadcasting and I was still teaching, and I was teaching at a university.
And finally, I taught at a university with a group of real professors.
And I realized at that time oh, I love the performing aspect of being a university teacher and interacting with the students.
And I feel a reward when they've learned something, but I'm not as good as they are when it comes to the profession itself of being a full-time, well-rounded professor of university level classes, and i realized i think i need to make a change.
So i did.
I tried broadcasting full-time and that was a serious gamble for me because there was no guarantee of success or security, But it worked out.
It worked out really, really well.
And that story shows us that, yes, for everybody, there are things you are good at.
There are things that you are better than most people.
And there are things that you're really, really, really good at.
That is why in Chinese we say 术业有专攻。 术 is kind of like the way of doing things.
It emphasizes on the technical part, the skills.
业 is 行, 业 is profession or industries, different industries.
有 is have or there are.
术业有。 专攻。
Zhuan is zhuanmen, specialized or specifically.
And gong is the effort you put in kind of like the effort you put in.
So together it's talking about for different professions there are different skills and you can be good at different things or you can be good at a specific thing.
Perfect.
And that is relatively longer Chinese idiom can help you remember the shorter one, 专业.
专业 is profession.
Yeah, there are so many different professions nowadays in China.
But in ancient days.
I wonder about this for quite a long time before I figured out the real situation that is in today's China.
In today's world there are so many different professions, and we can talk a little bit about the new professions a bit later.
But it's not like this overnight, right?
You don't really have 10000 different professions today, but yesterday you only have 10, like a blacksmith or a bread maker.
It's an evolving process.
You're right.
The professions of any particular society at any particular time in history would be reflective of what was happening in society at the time.
What are needed demands.
Yes.
The demands and what was necessary.
And that is why I'm asking you this question.
Do you know anything about China's imperial examination, Ke Ju?
Ke Ju is imperial examination in ancient China.
Ancient Chinese imperial examinations.
So that would be like the historical civil servants exam?
Yes.
Of sorts?
Of sorts.
Well, I assume robots and AI were not a thing then.
So I'm thinking it would be a lot of like scholarly related things like reciting ancient or older...
Classics?
Yeah, I wouldn't even know what existed before.
In ancient China, what did they call history?
Did they also call it ancient China?
Yeah, they say jing shi zi.
So 经 is talking about the classic, but it's more like philosophical classic, discussing how the world should be veiled.
The problems in the world should be solved.
Reciting like the teachings of those who came.
Of different schools of thought.
Yeah, right.
And shi is the li shi, the history part.
You also need to learn about the history.
And zi and ji both refer to other aspects of literature or of the books that went through so many things that finally got preserved in ancient history.
But I wondered.
The reason I'm asking about your impression about imperial examination was because, For me, I always thought that yes, they learn about these things the ancient day, civil servants or civil servants to be.
They wanted to recite all these classics.
They wanted to know what is the mainstream concept or understanding of the world, so that they know how to help.
Maybe the emperor rule the country.
And then one day I suddenly realized that's true yes, but once you are a government official for a province or at that time, maybe it's a state, maybe it's just a township You need to talk to, you need to deal with, you need to sort things out for common people.
And they have different professions and you need to understand them as well.
If you don't understand them, you do not know how to help them solve problems.
Politics never changes.
And also there are other endeavors and other buildings of these townships, of these little villages.
You need to know how to build roads.
You need to know how to improve the transportation.
Construction.
Think about the building of the palaces and stuff.
Yeah, you need to know enough so the workers do not trick you that easily.
So I was wondering huh, if China, the imperial examination, only had this one sort of direction, or quote unquote, one profession, then how come these civil servants in ancient days would know how to rule the country?
Yep, that's a fair question.
But they did.
They figured it out.
And that was because no, it was never only one direction of selecting when it comes to the selecting of talent.
We know about the imperial examination and maybe you even know about the Jin Shi Zi Ji part, that is, the classics and the history.
They do learn about that.
But Besides that, there were other professions in ancient China as well.
Oh, I'm curious to know what these were.
Yeah, for example, there were 明法科.
明法科.
科 is talking about a, I think it's kind of like a major or a direction.
And 法 refers to 法律.
Yes.
So for those students who think they're really good at law, they can be a law student in ancient China and they learn about the law used in that dynasty.
Oh, yes.
By the way, for different dynasties there were different, definitely different majors in different situations.
But for this Ming Fa, it's like you can take the examinations and the major questions you would encounter would be what are some of the major important laws?
And you would even be given a case and you need to figure out what are the articles you need to use to rule.
And I think that's quite interesting.
It's also related to what we were talking about before, about learning about the teachings of the past.
I guess modern day lawyers, it's the same definition.
Yeah, figuring out the laws, understanding what they are, so that you can use them in your own career.
Yes, and there's also 明算科.
You see the 明 part is like understanding.
明白, 清楚明白, that would be understand, clearly understanding something.
And 科 we talked about, it's the major.
So 算 here is the key word.
算 is mathematics related.
So if you're learning or you're really good at math In ancient China, you would also have a position or you would also have a direction to go.
That is, you learn about the mathematics and you answer these questions and you ended up finding a job in local government or even the central government, requiring you to know math, how to be an accountant, how to be someone who is working out the budget for the government.
Because guess what?
In ancient China, they also need to do that.
So, yes.
And besides that, one thing that got my attention was 名字.
Zì is character or word.
And that is talking about those who are learning different types of calligraphy and art related things.
Because for a country, even it's in ancient days for a country to thrive, you need art, you need culture.
You need to be able to preserve the previous treasure and also develop something that's special for your time.
Sorry to interrupt.
I'm thinking that that type of job would have been highly respected as well in ancient China.
Yes, in the government and everywhere.
So I figured huh, it's not that in modern day China, all of a sudden, we have all these different professions.
It has been like this for a really long time.
It's just in these days we have more professions, and And they are in a more scientific manner.
Yeah.
And that, if you think about it, it makes sense because, even though technology has advanced, for example, when cars were invented well, all of a sudden the position of mechanic changed.
Shows up.
Human beings have advanced the tech and the way that we live our lives, but yet we are still human beings at the core, which means a lot of the jobs that were done way back when, during the Ming Dynasty and before, would still exist today.
There are still artists. who contribute to different types of projects.
There are still accountants that work for the government.
There are still civil servants who had taken the civil servant exam to do the types of jobs to represent the people.
So we have an expression in English, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Oh, that's a good saying.
I think, a very major distinction between ancient days not even ancient China, but also, I think, ancient world, Europe as well Greek maybe was that the education system focused mainly on the kind of professions that require you to read a lot, study a lot.
But nowadays there are vocational professions and there are technique-related and science-related professions more.
So that is another distinction.
So the thing is now, when we have a much more comprehensive education system, when we have primary school, middle school and then all the way to university, things are getting much, much more systematic and easy to follow.
So here in China.
Now we have three major categories of majors universities and 92 professional classes and 883 specific majors.
So when we talk about the 13 different categories, we're talking about, for example psychology economics Law education literature history, these ones.
So if you pick not so many three to five different majors, you want to learn how to say in Chinese.
Let me have the opportunity to share that knowledge with you.
All right, let's start with my major, English Literature.
English literature would first fall into literature.
So it's 文学.
文学.
And of course you have... 英文文学.
英语文学.
英语 is English.
语言 is language.
文学 is literature.
So 英语语言.
Exactly 英语原文学, but the major, or the so-called major category would be 文学 literature, because you can have 汉语原文学, that's the Chinese literature, or any other ones that you want.
Okay, let's go with a major that might be popular these days, AI.
I'm trying to, what are the majors related?
I think AI related major would fall into mainly these two characters.
Well, let's do this.
Artificial intelligence.
人工智能 So 人工 is artificial.
Okay.
And 智能 is intelligence.
And the reason I find this one also interesting is that I feel like falls into the category of 理学 and 工学.
So 工学 would be engineering.
Li Xue is like science major.
So science and technology are always combined, which is why we have a lot of interdisciplinary kind of majors nowadays.
Yeah.
So you can be someone who's learning about language, but you're also using AI to help you analyze that language or develop that language, or finding a way to connect that language with a culture that is from a completely different background and compare those two cultures.
So now the interdisciplinary kind of majors are also very, very popular.
What about this one?
This is for the thinkers.
Philosophy.
Philosophy would be 哲学.
哲学.
Yes.
This one is always kind of ideal, in the sense that when you're choosing this major, when you choose to be a philosopher, you're hardly thinking about the practical side of being into a profession.
Yeah, sure.
It's like being a poetry major.
Yes, almost always because you have a genuine love for it.
This is more me.
I learned from a young age that I don't really enjoy numbers.
And my brain doesn't process them that well.
So math was always kind of an unenjoyable struggle for me.
I didn't like math class.
I didn't like going to math class.
I didn't get excited when the newest calculator came out and all the math people in the class were like wow.
Check out this Commodore 64.
That's not the name of it.
Do you remember that thing?
What was the name of that thing?
You know what I'm talking about, right?
That giant thing.
I remember all the kids in the class that were great at math were like, wow, this is amazing.
And I was like, I have no idea how to use this.
Commodore 64 was a video game, by the way.
Which tells you a lot.
But yeah, the subjects like philosophy have always kind of spoken to me a little bit more.
You know, thinking about the meaning of life, why we're here, what is the point of our existence, who are we as humans?
Looking at human relationships and how we get along with each other,
That's always been more of an interest for me.
Yeah, but for many people they say mathematics is the answer to all the ultimate questions of the university, which is why I want to share mathematics, 数学.
In Chinese, 数 refers to also numbers.
So 学 is a 学科, is a study.
The study of numbers.
Yeah.
So 数学 would fall into, I think, 理学, the study of science or the category of science.
Were you good at math in school?
Not really.
Yeah.
Not enough.
Usually people who do our types of jobs did not excel in mathematics.
Maybe that's not fair to say, but I feel like it's kind of true.
Yeah.
And when it comes to numbers or the study of numbers, not only science majors would depend on mathematics.
Yeah.
For example, you have 经济学.
For 经济学, math is also highly important.
经济学 is economics.
经济学.
经济学.
So 经济 is economic, and 经济学 is the study of economy.
I did.
I was an economics major in school.
Oh, really?
Yeah, isn't that funny?
You didn't have to know a lot about math.
Oh, I did.
You were just not good at it?
Well, see, economics is very theoretical.
And yeah, when you are an economics major, you need to study accounting.
And accounting is something that I couldn't grasp.
But I could very strongly grasp... macro and microeconomics because it's a lot of theory.
If this thing happens, then that thing will happen.
If A happens, then B will happen.
It's logical.
It's rational.
It's logical and rational in a sense.
Yeah.
The theory.
Oh, gosh.
You remember.
Have you ever heard the name Adam Smith?
Yes.
Yeah.
So that economist.
Right.
And he talked about the theory of you know, if you put more workers in a factory, eventually they're going to decline in their production line.
Demand and everything.
Too many cooks in the kitchen, right?
Yeah, those types of things I was able to grasp.
But when it came to pure numbers, accounting, nope.
I remember in the first day of accounting class my professor said to all of us to get an A plus in this class, all you need to do is understand the difference between a debit and a credit.
And I'm still not sure I understand the difference between a debit and a credit.
I was so confident.
I was like, well, that sounds easy enough.
There's only one thing to learn in this class.
And then it got progressively harder after that.
And with the society continue to develop, we see the needs of more and more, more specific majors.
They can be very quote unquote accurate in the sense that they study a very specific matter, and it can be very useful to the society.
Yes.
And here in China we also have kind of a really dynamic adjustment when it comes to different majors.
For example, you know about China's five-year plan kind of structure, right?
So every five years, we would have a plan for the development of the coming five years.
And that...
Five-year plan, excuse me, applies to many different things in society, many different aspects of society, many different industries.
Yes, different goals, different projections and different blueprint.
And for China's 14th five-year plan period, which is 2021 to 2025.
Actually over 30 of majors were adjusted.
Some of them were reduced.
Some of them were changed.
And some of them got added into different universities, different programs and some new professions, some new majors were added into different university programs.
So I think that reflects a broader or major trend of how we see different majors.
That is, there's no fixed major trend.
Well, there are certain measures that are always there, but you can still expect a certain kind of adjustment because, at the end of the day, except those who really, really just love study something, it all comes down to what do we need in the society?
Yeah.
Do you think this is off topic?
Do you think 18 or 19 years old, Which is the year that you go to university in China, right?
Same Canada, same America.
Do you think that's too young?
I think it's too young.
I think students are tasked with choosing their career path at a stage of life when they're not necessarily ready to choose their career path.
But now- That's a philosophical question.
I think I understand what you're asking, but my feeling is that you don't really have to figure it out at the moment.
You're choosing your major.
For example, if you're someone who chose embodied intelligence, 巨神智能 as your major, you are studying robotics, you are studying engineering. you are studying a bit of AI, you definitely would study a little math.
And after graduation, if you do not want to do any of those, you can still try a different major by basically entering an internship position in any company that would accept you.
So yes, on one hand, people say choosing your major, choosing your profession is very, very important.
But on the other side, a lot of people also I think it's 40 or something even higher than that of people say they're doing currently, their profession or their job is not directly related to their.
That's so common.
Right.
And that is OK.
And it's not just OK.
It's almost expected.
Yeah.
But one thing in today's world is that we underestimate the kids nowadays, because for us one, we are choosing our majors.
We have a booklet.
Right. to rely on, getting the information, knowing where those graduates from that major ended up.
But for today's young kids, from when they're very, very young, they learn about different majors and different professions on social media.
When they're choosing their majors, they have AI to help them.
They ask AI these questions and AI would tell them where the major would lead them to.
And I think yes, you still are facing a lot of different choices, but you also have unlimited information that you can access.
Yeah.
I mean if you're a young person of high school age listening to this today and you're thinking I don't know what I'm going to do with my life.
Well, neither did I.
And neither did the generation that came before us and the generation that came before them and the generation that will come after you will also feel exactly the same.
It's just part of life in that particular time.
It's the stage where you're just trying to figure stuff out.
Yes.
So, after listening to today's episode of Takeaway Chinese, I would love to know what is your favorite major so far and what might be the profession that you already know you will end up in or not or maybe something you're just genuinely interested about.
So let us know the answers in the comment area and perhaps we can help you figure out how to say those majors in Chinese.
That's the least we can do.
Exactly.
And that brings us to the end of today's Takeaway Chinese.
Thank you so much for listening.
感谢收听,我们下次再见。 Thanks, and see you next time.
Thank you.
