Keeping a Cow

When I was studying Chinese in northeast China in the early 1990s, one of my classmates got frustrated that the language we were getting from our textbooks wasn’t particularly useful to our everyday life. Keep in mind that, at the time, there were only a handful of Chinese language textbooks available, and they had been written in the 1970s and 1980s. We learned how to say things like “production brigade,” “comrade,” “ration coupons,” and “commune.” 

A classmate, tiring of these outdated topics and accompanying vocabulary, set out to write something for her classmates that would be more useful. This resulted in a textbook called A Year in the Life of an English Teacher. She compiled a list of situations that a foreign teacher might find him or herself in during the course of the year. Working with a language helper, she constructed dialogs and vocabulary lists. Topics included things like shopping in the market, ordering in a restaurant, buying train and/or plane tickets, going to the hospital, shopping for computer parts in Zhongguancun, and renewing a residence permit.

A few years ago, a friend of mine, while researching for a book about a missionary to China in the 1920s, stumbled upon a digitized version of a Chinese language textbook used by foreign missionaries working in Sichuan Province in the 1920s. It was titled, Chinese Lessons for First Year Students in West China, by Omar L. Kilborn.

A glance through the table of contents reveals some of the important situations that language learners needed to navigate in the 1920s.

And last, but not least…

Lesson 32: Keeping a Cow

Note: This is an adaptation of a post that first appeared on Joann Pittman’s personal blog Outside-In on August 28, 2014.