Learning languages gives you all sorts of insights into unfamiliar ways of life.

My Chinese studies, for example, brought me into contact with China's live-streaming phenomenon. Whether they're playing games, selling things, teaching things, or eating things (yes, there are people who live-stream themselves eating, and presumably, there are people who watch them...), or whether they're singing-and-dancing-while-looking-cute-and-pretty -- live-streamers attract audiences of tens of millions every day.

Generally, Eileen's site has a heap of interesting stuff about Chinese society, nicely subtitled for newbies like me, but also without subs if you're already good at Chinese. Check out this one, for example, on Chinese beauty standards...

Then there's good old Duolingo. It comes in for a lot of flak (and its latest idea of docking "hearts" when you make mistakes is seriously annoying). But at the end of the day, it's free, fun, and habit-forming. The other day I got to the "net slang" unit in the Chinese course.

From this I learned about the Meitu app, which allows you to enhance your selfies to make yourself look more beautiful (by whose standards I'm not sure). Sample Duolingo sentence: "Her eyes are so big. Did she use the Meitu app?"

And I learned about the adorable "zan" character used for "liking" something on the internet (it's the one at the end of the Chinese sentence below). Its original meaning is to patronize, support, or praise, so it's definitely a character that has moved with the times...



And I met the "jiong" character (the one bottom right in the picture at the top)...



This ancient character, which first showed up on oracle bones about three millennia ago, and originally meant "bright", has now become highly popular among the Chinese Internet community as an emoji meaning sad, frustrated, helpless, or disappointed.

Finally, we had to put this sentence together in Chinese: "He is an otaku [zhainan], he only loves to stay home and play computer games."

He is a -- what?

Otaku (originally a Japanese word) is often equated with "geek" or "nerd", but on its home turf its meaning has shifted over time, and is rich in ambiguities and nuances.


Osaka, 2015

Nakamori Akio popularized it in 1983 to describe the anime and manga fans attending events that celebrated their fictional universes. His evocation of their apparent lack of interest in their personal appearance is distinctly uncomplimentary, harsh even. But as has been the case with many pejorative labels, the labelled took the sting out of the term by co-opting it for their own use.

The negative connotations gained further traction in the late 1980s, however, when a particularly nasty series of murders turned out to have been committed by a person the press described as an "otaku". (Disregarding the multiple factors at play in the case, journalists homed in on the killer's fascination with anime and manga, and concluded that he couldn't adequately distinguish between fact and fiction.)

For many, otaku became synonymous with hikikomori. Yet this is inaccurate. Fan communities are actually highly connected, drawing on all kinds of modes of communication to share their information and experience.





For this author, being an otaku equates to "possession": "Otaku take ownership of their beloved series by examining every detail. Then they take it a step beyond by creating costumes, fan fiction, music videos, figures, art, and even new series based on their favorite universes."

It is this creativity that takes them beyond the level of mere "fan": "Otaku are contributors and participants... My simplistic image of otaku as hardcore fans missed the mark. I didn't know creativity built the unique foundation of otaku-dom." The preparation for this role is built into Japanese culture, the author contends, agreeing with Lawrence Lessig that "while American culture teaches children to buy a product and enjoy it as is, Japanese culture encourages children to create with their products." This involves a potentially three-stage process that starts with actively exploring a complex universe, moves on to broadening that universe or imagining an alternative, and finally -- for some -- enables them to go pro. "Unlike otaku, Western fans tend to worship the official narrative... Few fans embrace the unofficial [elements] which are brushed off as counterfeit, lesser quality, or illegal... Though this is slowly changing, there still seems to be a preference for the 'legitimate' over the 'counterfeit'. But in Japan... otaku respected the unofficial, the non-canon, and the independent from the very start."

Over the years, the culture associated with this passionate group has driven a lucrative industry that now spans the globe. Perhaps for this reason, the Japanese government has also got in on the act, attempting to promote otaku culture as a form of international soft power...

Given its ambiguity in its country of origin, it is not surprising that the definition and connotations of otaku are not firmly settled in English either.

Such a fascinating story. All from that little screen in a language game...





The beauty of today's cell phones is that you can use them not only for language apps but as video-cameras, a feature recently highlighted in Jacky Yeap's Sometime Sometime, another entry in the Malaysian Film Festival.


Yeap was born in Taiping, so the rest of the photos in this post come from our trips there in 2012 and 2018

It's a story of transitions. Elaine is transitioning away from singleness (she is either divorced or separated, and meets her former husband at a family dinner only once a year). First she experiments with a relationship, and then seeks greater independence by buying a car. The 16-year-old son, Zi Kien, is transitioning from one level of school to whatever comes next ("only three options", says mum's new boyfriend, sententiously: "more school, college, or a job"). Zi Kien seems irresolute about many things (whether to get a part-time job, whether to be a vegetarian...), but he is devoted to his film-making, a hobby that he would like to turn into a career, and he has a likeable female friend, Xue-Ting, whose sensible, down-to-earth presence you feel must be a useful influence.

What Zi Kien doesn't appreciate, however, certainly at the beginning, is the new man in his mum's life. Initially, he reverts to the strategies of younger children to make sure he is not relegated to the sidelines. But as Elaine comes to realize that her new relationship is not quite what she wants, she simultaneously becomes aware that Zi Kien is growing up. She teaches him to drive -- and to smoke (but without inhaling...).







I enjoyed Sometime Sometime. It's gentle, quietly humorous, and evocative. Our former home, KL, came back to us powerfully: the building sites, the big drains, the traffic, the scooter parks, the neon... The call to prayer drifts in through the open kitchen window, as it always, reassuringly, did.

I didn't realize until reading up on the movie afterwards that Zi Kien is played by the film-maker. Which is pretty amazing, as Yeap is 28, and his subject is 16, and looks young for his age.





Yeap lost his mother at the age of five, and is unapologetically conscious of a need to fill that gap. Elaine is played by Tan Chui Mui, Yeap's film-maker boss and mentor, whom he sees as a sort of substitute mother: "I wanted to capture this feeling as soon as possible, because I knew it would disappear growing older or maybe something would happen to shatter this mother-son fantasy relationship since we are not 'real' mother and son."

Just as Zi Kien starts making films on his cell phone, so did Yeap. I wonder whether Yeap also had to deal with unsolicited and inept advice from older folks: "Interview more people." "Use sombre music." "Use funny music." Etc.

Other facts of note: Yeap studied film-making at the University of Malaysia Sarawak; and the movie had a budget of MYR 200,000, which is really not that much money... As he says: "Making films in Malaysia is hard."