View of China
One discovery leads to another. I’m interested in the linguist Ross Perlin’s work. He writes: ‘At the current unprecedented rate of language shift, a significant portion of the world’s cultural and linguistic diversity will disappear over the next century.’ As codirector of the Endangered Language Alliance, he documents languages at risk and supports linguistic diversity. Reviewing his recent book Language City in the New York Times, Deirdre Mask praises it as ‘a gorgeous new narrative of New York’. She throws in this aside: ‘I invite you, too, to binge-watch Perlin’s fascinating YouTube dispatches from China.’ The invitation was irresistible. That is, I haven’t binged, but have watched one now and again. In a series of ten-minute features filmed by his fiancée some 15 years ago, edited by a couple of mates, Perlin takes us on a journey to visit synagogues in Shanghai, shamans in the uplands, old people walking pet birds before settling down to mah-jong, roadside cooks. He converses fluently with natives in Chinese dialects while presenting a humane, witty, philanthropic account for his viewers – in Yiddish. This series is a phenomenon, heart-warming and enlightening. Take a look at A New York Jew in China.
