CONTINUATION OF REV. WENDELIN DUNKER, C.M. LIFE EXPERIENCES WHILE STATIONED IN CHINA
I found that there were a lot of things that I really should have did but didn’t. It seems like I took the bit in my mouth and went right on from the beginning and right on to the end without out stopping.
After reading it over there are many little side roads that I could have explained.   A little more details that I could have given that would have given a much better picture.
Now that I have finished with the whole thing I am going back and add some little explanations to make it more clearer.
One of the first and probably more sensible questions that I asked you about China they say, “Could you speak Chinese?” Well, you better speak Chinese because you are in China, and the Chinese speak Chinese they don’t speak English. So, you have to learn Chinese. Well, so the next question is, “How did you learn Chinese? Did you know Chinese when you went over there?” We didn’t know a word of Chinese we went over there. We learned it after we got there.
Well wouldn’t it have been a lot more sensible if you had learned Chinese before you went there and you wouldn’t have wasted so much time? Well, you are going to use time after you got there no matter how you learned it, but Chinese is a little bit different than other languages. If you went to some other country, it might be possible to go to a school and learn the language before you went there. But Chinese is so different; it’s not spoken the same way everywhere. It’s not spoken in the North as it is in the South and even there are a lot of dialects. You could go to school and yes it would help you but it wouldn’t answer the questions.
Now when we went to China we didn’t know a word and the way we learned it was shortly after we got settled., they hired a teacher, and we had a teacher that came to us every day. We had a book, a Chinese book that was made for this purpose. There were Chinese characters on one side of the page and English on the other. The side with that the Chinese characters were pronounced there beside it and on the other side what that Chinese character meant. And In this way we gradually learned to pick it up. It was slow, yes, but I guess, all things considered it was the best way to learn Chinese.
The reason why I say that it was the best way to learn Chinese is as I said previously, Chinese is spoken differently. It’s not spoken everywhere
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the same way and so the teacher would have the character there for some Chinese word and the pronunciation was there written out in phonetics, but it wasn’t always for locally and he would tell us how to pronounce it. So, when we would see that Chinese character there and the pronunciation of it he would tell us how to say it and to pronounce it and we would repeat it after him. And if we would have to repeat it after him more than once maybe until we got the right pronunciation of it. And we also saw what that character meant.
In each lesson there would be more than 15-20 new words every day. We would learn every one of those new words and then at the end there were sentences using all these characters, how they were there, how they were used in sentences. And in this way we would how the character or the word, how it was pronounced and the meaning and to put into sentences. In this way we gradually picked it up. I say gradually, because it was a slow process. Any language was a slow process but especially Chinese. And it’s memory, you have to have a good memory to speak Chinese.
That’s one of the things that the Chinese have. They have astonishing memories. We just can’t imagine how much, how well they remember things. And so, they would remember these words and keep them in mind and it would be a lot easier for them. Of course, I’ll speak more later on about memories but they had terrific memories and so that was one of the main things about Chinese, we had to use our memories. Chinese doesn’t have a great thing about grammar or something, it’s more memory. Memory is you see a Chinese character and remember how it’s pronounced, what it means and so fourth and then how it’s used. So you got to use your memory.
Chinese is hard for outsiders but for Chinese I don’t think it should be so difficult because they have terrific memories. They remember things. Now, the way we learn Chinese is have these lessons every day and learn new characters and how to use them and pronunciation and so fourth and how to put them into sentences. The teacher would be there all the time giving us the proper pronunciation of this special Chinese word, the pronunciation of it and it’s meaning. So, that’s one of the main ways of learning any language. But particularly Chinese, learn by using. If you learn how to use it, then it would become second nature to you.
Now one of the big helps to learn Chinese, in China especially, is there is a lot of kids around. Oh, there are a lot of people around everyplace, but there are a lot of kids around. You can’t go anywhere without drawing a lot of kids. they are curious and so fourth. If you are around a lot of kids, well, they speak. You won’t understand what they say, no, but they will understand
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you and if you want to know something you ask them. You ask them well, what is this and how do you say this and they tell you and you repeat it. And if you don’t say it properly they will tell you. That’s what the advantage is about kids. Adults would know the same thing and they would be better but they are kind of hesitant about correcting you. They don’t know if they should correct you but the kids don’t mind. You make a mistake and they will tell you. You try to repeat it after they say it and if you make a mistake they will tell you and you come back and repeat it again.
They are great teachers by the kids and we would like to have so many kids around. Usually there’s a school around. Go around the kids and they will come around you, you will draw kids and say a few words and they will repeat It after you and tell you about it and that’s a great way of learning Chinese.
The Chinese is written in characters, like picture writing. Originally, if you go back to the beginning the Chinese language was picture writing. They drew pictures, you might say. You would see pictures of the old Aborigines, and so fourth, and in the old days they would write in caves and so fourth, they would draw pictures. That’s what the Chinese got started. They started with pictures and the Chinese characters are pictures and since they are pictures. And I said, they are pictures, and so there’s not much grammar there, mostly characters.
The Chinese are characters and because they are characters they are individual. That’s why it takes so many words and memory is so important you have to connect them. If your memory is better you know how to speak them and no fourth. Like I say, it’s not much grammar and furthermore it’s not too important but it is important. Not only do they have different pronunciation but they have different tones. Now, as I said in the beginning that Chinese is spoke differently from one place to another. For example in the North of China the language is spoke one way the South is different. The characters are the name but the pronunciation they give them is different. Even the Northern language and the Southern language are at various places, they are dialects It will be the same character, but it’s pronounced a different way. So, that it takes it one of the difficulties about remembering Chinese, learning Chinese is the tones and the way that they are pronounced whether it’s northern or south. But, as you keep on trying you gradually pick up. You pick up a word here and a word there. You won’t get a whole sentence maybe right away, but you will say, “Oh, here’s a word that I remember. I remember what he said. If you remember some word that is spoken that you remember having learned it and you know what
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it means well, then you listen and try to figure out how it is. So, studying Chinese is more a practice of memory.
It’s rather odd in schools, the Chinese schools, they have two types of schools over there. Originally before the Republic of China they just had ordinary schools. They learned the classics and so fourth. They learned the classics. They memorized classics. But modern ones, like we have, they study reading, and writing and arithmetic, and so fourth, like that but the old schools are just memory. But even with the modern schools they stress memory. It’s strange, if you go hear a Chinese school, they are memorizing some topic or some subject. The teacher will be sitting up in front and the kids will be sitting down at their desks and everybody is talking. Not only talking but it’s almost yelling, yelling but, but it’s speaking real loud not.., just a small yell you might say, they are reading something and pronouncing it, and the teacher is sitting up there listening to them.
You might have 20 kids in the room and everyone is sitting there, talking and studying their lessons in different languages and not of the same thing but different things. And some kid may make a mistake and the teacher raps on the table or something and all the kids stop and he points out, he points out to that one kid, “Hey, that word that you pronounced, that’s the wrong pronunciation. That’s not the way that word is pronounced.” Then after he’s pronounced it tell him how to correctly go on speaking it and go on studying it again. After awhile someone again, he stops them again. ‘Hey, that word, you skipped something there, that’s not there.” You might say how can he sit there at the desk and the kids are down there with their lessons shouting at the top of their voices and he hears and can pick one voice out and tell him he made a mistake. Well, it is something similar to an orchestra director, you might have an instrument in a band. You might have five violins, and a cello and coronets, and different instruments and they are all playing at one time. And if the director, there while they are practicing is listening to them if one of them makes a bad note, well, he stops them right away. If that coronet played a wrong note well he’s going to mess everything all up so they stop that and start over. again. All so they are playing the same notes in the same way. He is able to hear that and can hear while the violins and the drums and the cellos and everything else are playing he can hear if the coronet makes a wrong note and that’s something like the Chinese teacher is. He can hear the one of the boys or girls make a mistake he can pick it out right away while the others are saying different words he can pick it out clearly. And that’s the way they learn
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things and they learn this memories and they learn by repeating them one time after another.
In the Chinese book that we had that we use there’s a way that we can learn to write these characters. They were printed there for us to write them and there was a way for us to write them. We did not have time enough to stop and learn to write very well. Oh, we practiced it a little bit, but it takes a lot of practice to write these characters properly. Oh, we might try to write them but they are crude like a little kid in school when they are in the second or third grade. They will print letters or something like that or write letters, but they are very crude, they are not very legible. You might be able to read them but they are not written very well. So does the Chinese we might in learning the lesson we might try to write the characters but you need a lot of practice to write them properly you can’t do that all at once.
So most of the time, because it took so much more time, we did not try to learn the writing at the same time because it took more time.
I said that the Chinese is spoken differently in different areas of the country. They have what they call a Mandarin language. That was a special type, not in the special that in the sense that it was the same no matter whether north or south. But even though it was Mandarin it was pronounced differently. The north had a more “guttural” sound to it, the south had a more “nasal” sound to it. The Mandarin that we learned might be the same one.. .it’s pronounced differently and it’s good to know that. To know the Mandarin because we know that it’s the same no matter where you are but gradually you learn the different Pronunciations. And they also have dialects over there. In certain areas they might pronounce words one way and other persons may pronounce another way.
Usually there are small variations, but a true dialect sometimes gets so different you can’t understand it. For example, Cantonese, that’s in the southern part of China. When I left I went through Canton and I heard them speak, spoke the Chinese so differently that I didn’t understand a word that they said. It was just because it was a dialect and you have to be a native to learn that dialect.
Mandarin, though, is something that is a universal language and It’s pronounced the same except that the northern has one sound to it and the south might be different. Another thing, too, in China, I don’t know now because I‘ve been away for so long. But when I was over there that was 30-40 years ago but education was not universal. In the cities they had schools and kids were supposed to go, they did not have to go, but they were supposed to go. And in the cities a good many of them would go but it was not 100% by any means.
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They didn’t look upon it important that girls went either but in cities girls went too and they learned. But the trouble was that these schools that they had over there they went to school for the beginning and they started learning and they made a good start maybe but after they got up to 12 or 13 years old they had to go to work. They were so poor over there they had to go to work. They couldn’t afford to spend a long time in schools and in to education. And so, many of the kids started out, boys and girls, they started out and they learned characters and to write characters and so fourth but after two or three years they quit school and they forgot all about it. It didn’t mean a great deal to them. So, education was not universal.
In the cities, I said, it was more, but in the country, maybe in big country town there would be a school there. But, it wasn’t too strict, they didn’t have a strict schedule. If the teacher had something to do, maybe he’d go and do something else that day and they’d have a holiday. But even if they didn’t do that they weren’t too strict about going to school. In the country oven more than the city the kids didn’t go they had to go to work. There was lot more work to be done in the country than in the city so the kids might go when they were five or six years old, when they were too little to do anything. But after a year or two they had work to do and they quit school and it didn’t really mean a great deal to them.
The fact that the Chinese was so difficult to learn was that there wore so many in China that did not know how to read or write. I don’t know the number, but certainly it was a very high number, particularly among the girls. There was a much higher percentage among the boys than there was among the girls. They figured that it was no use for the girls to learn anything because in the first place they knew that they weren’t going to stay very long, they weren’t going to school too long and it wasn’t worth very much and secondly, even the boys, they went to school for awhile but it didn’t mean too much.
And so, because of the fact that the Chinese can’t read or write, it’s no disgrace. In America it might be a disgrace if a person can’t read or write, can’t even sign his own name. That’s sort of a disgrace but it wasn’t in China because there were so many of them it didn’t mean very much. It was no disgrace that you couldn’t read or write. So, therefore, since so many of the Chinese couldn’t read or write we didn’t have much time to learn to write. We priests didn’t learn to write the Chinese. But, I say that was the fact that many of the Chinese couldn’t read or write either.
And if you say they can’t read or write, how do they get along? Well, the fact that a person, can’t read or write doesn’t mean that the person
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is dumb, they are going to be taking advantage of or so fourth. They have terrific memories and they remember things where we couldn’t remember. So the fact that a person can’t read or write that’s no disgrace. If a person who couldn’t read or write got a letter from somebody, well he knew somebody around there the place could read or write so he would take the letter to that person, have him read it for him, tell him what it meant. Then if he wanted it answered he’d have this person write a letter in his name, then he would send it or give it away. So, it was no disgrace not to be able to read or write and because of this and because of the lack of time not too many of the priests had time to learn how to do this. It took a lot of time to learn how to do this and we didn’t have the time. So a good many of the priests could speak, but they could not read or write.
If you needed something to read or write you could always have someone to do it for you. Now a great thing is China was, that everybody over there had what they called a “boy”, well actually, it’s a servant. Every priest over there had a “boy”, he had his own private servant. And most of these boys, they weren’t scholars, but they could read and write, most of them, and they could help you in this respect. The fact that they called them “boys”, well, to us now in our age that sounds kind of “high-faluting and so fourth”, but that was the great institution in China, every priest had a “boy”.
And sometimes he was their teacher for the Chinese and other times he just helped them out and so fourth. If you went anyplace, for example, most of the time the boy went with you, and if there was somebody or something that you didn’t understand, well, the boy would be there. He’d understand what was being said and he knew about how much you knew and he could tell you and he could tell you what they were saying. There was so many Chinese it was always possible to get a “boy”. The would just fight to be your boy Not that you gave an exorbitant salary or anything like that but well they got a little pay for it and it was a job for them. There was so many Chinese that it was no trouble hiring anybody.
They talk about here in America the unemployment rate, I believe that here in America they talk about the unemployment rate of 7% or something like that unemployed. But in China you can’t figure that out and they’re so confused that nobody would ever be able to do so. But, I betcha that if the same principles were used in China as used here to figure out the unemployed rate and employed rate I bet in China you’d have 30-40% of the people unemployed.
There’s no problem of hiring somebody, and that institution was there, I don’t know who started it, but it was there in our time of everybody

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of having a “boy”. It was a great help, not only help, but it wasn’t too expensive because the wages were sufficient for them. But it wasn’t too extraordinary to pay a boy. And no matter where you went, almost, he would go with you, especially to meet Chinese. If you went down town to buy something, well the boy would go along with you. And he’d interpret for you and if someone said something that you couldn’t understand, well he’d tell you, he’d interpret for you. And if you went on the missions, he went along with you, too.
If you tried picking a servant or something and you weren’t sure about something you’d talk it over with him. You would tell him what you were saying and if it was incorrect he’d tell you what you were saying.
There isn’t any such a thing as writing Chinese or what is called phonetically. In other words that is “writing the sound”. That is what we used to do sometimes, particularly in the beginning. You would write a sound. To learn Chinese and I would say it takes at a year at least to get where you can be pretty half-way fluent. Well, you wouldn’t be fluent, but half-way able to get along. But there will be lots that you won’t understand, but after a year of studying and using it you get to where you can understand certain things that are said, understand most of the things that are said.. Maybe not everything but you can understand most of it. You can get/be more at ease.
After a year we could get where maybe we could preach a sermon. Properly you should write out a sermon beforehand, but since we could not write, what I used to do, and a lot others used to do was write out phonetically. We know what we wanted to say but we would write the sounds down on a piece of paper phonetically, then we would read these, for example to your boy. And you would say, “Read a sentence.”, and ask if he understood. He’d tell you and if he didn’t he’d tell you something was wrong or what you should have said. So since a lot of the work of the Chinese was going out into the missions he, your “boy”, would go with you. He was your go-between and if you wrote a sermon, in the beginning we would write sermon, and you would read it over to him and if it was correct he’d tell you and if it was incorrect he would tell you what to say in it and you would correct your sermons in this way and the you would be understood by the people.
As I said it takes about a year at least to be able to get along with the Chinese. You won’t know everything, but I mean you’ll be getting along. You’ll understand, if you meet people you can talk with them a little bit. And If  they ask you a question you can understand a good deal of it and maybe give an answer. But it takes about a year. That’s just a start.
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After about a year you will be getting where you’ll be familiar with the language and get along with it. Of course you can never quit studying anytime but for the first couple of years you have to keep on studying and keep on learning. But after a year you could get along where you could get by a little bit. But you still would run along on a lot of things that you couldn’t understand and there the boy would come along and help you.
As I said if you wanted to go down to the store to buy something your boy would go along with you. He would talk with the storekeeper and so fourth about the quality of the article. And the things that they have in China, also is that you can’t buy anything unless you haggle about it. In other words there is no set price. That’s a universal custom. They haggle over the question of the prices and so fourth.
If you go to the store to buy something. well, they will deliberately set the price high. Higher than they know that you are going to pay for it. They know that you won’t pay for it. Then they’ll tell you, just as an example, there’s something there, it’s going to cost five dollars. And you go there, and you like it, and you ask how much it is. There’s no price marked on it. But the storekeeper knows if he gets five dollars for it he’ll be happy. So when you ask how much it is, he’ll say it’s ten dollars and oh, ‘then you’ll say ten dollars, who’s going to pay that, that’s silly, I won’t pay you. So the storekeeper will say if you won’t pay ten dollars for it how much will you pay? And you have to decide, well you might give five dollars but you are not going to tell him that. He’ll say ten, so you’ll say, “Oh, I’ll give you two dollars for it.” And, the guy says, “Ho, ho, two dollars, I’ll be losing money on that.” And so, you go back and fourth.
The storekeeper says it’s more than that, it’s worth ten dollars. But since you are a good friend of mine I’ll reduce my price for it. Where he said ten dollars for it you give me eight. I’ll give it to you are a friend of mine. So the buyer says since you reduced the price of it a little bit, but it still is too high. I said that I’d give you two dollars for it but maybe after’ looking at it I’ll give you four dollars. So the storekeeper says I can’t I can’t give you that I’ll lose money on it. And so he says give me five dollars for it, no, he’ll say give me six dollars for it. And you say no, that’s too high I’ll give you five. Well, then they come down to it and say I’ll give it to you for five.
Well, that’s the way they do everything. They haggle for everything. I guess one of the reasons is that they are so poor that don’t have the money but it’s just the custom that you haggle over it.
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In Shanghai. they have stores for the foreigners that at least in our time. They have fixed prices, at least pretty much fixed prices there. But that was just in the big stores and they were dealing with foreigners, they weren’t dealing with Chinese. Chinese they haggle. So when you went to the store to buy something the boy went along and he did the haggling for you.
If you’d try to haggle with them you’d lose out every time. So your boy talked for you and arrived at a price for it and we’d pay for it and bought It.
Most of the work in China was missions. They were country missions and why they were missions was the transportation problems in China were so por. The people can’t travel. The men travel a little bit but the women can’t travel. So, you went out to the country to make “missions”. Most of people had missions out in the country. They might not be too far, only five or six or ten miles. maybe even twenty or fifty, too. So much of the time was in making missions and you boy went with you to make the missions.
And, before you went make the mission you got everything ready just to make the mission. How long were you going to stay there? Maybe if you were only going to make on mission you stayed only a few days. But you might have a number of missions in that area so you would make them at one time. You would go to one place depending on the size. If it would be a big place, depending on the Catholics there, you might stay four or five days. If it was smaller only two or three days depending on the number of Christians that were there. And, after this mission you went over to another, you made a round sometimes in this way. Well, your boy went along with you all the time on these missions. Be good to him and he got everything ready. You need your clothes, and your mass things, usually there were no mass. vestments, and so fourth. In the country, sometimes in the big places, you might have missions out in the country that might have a school ‘at one time or before at one time and there you might have left some vestments or altar stores and wine. But most of the time you don’t even have them, you got to take them along with you.
When you went out to make a mission you put everything you needed for that day or if you were going to stay a week or ten days or twenty days you’d take that along with your clothes and vestments and wine and chalice and so fourth. You wouldn’t take the food cause that you ate at the mission, but everything else you took along with you.
And when you went to make a mission, a carrier came in and collected all the articles that you needed for your stay there and put them in a weatherproof basket and he would take them out to the mission this way. But your boy
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