I used the first strategy to create my sound work. I thought through the motivation and meaning of this assignment before I began to look for historical texts. Trying to personalize this sound work, I thought of myself as an international student who study abroad in the United States, and English is my second language. Also, listening is an important part to learn a new language. So I decided to make a sound work about the process and progression of myself and people around me learning English.

Then, I found an interesting text about Chinese Pidgin English, which is a contact language widely used along the coast of China in the 18^th and 19^th century. It was formed in a very restricted contact situation to fulfill limited communication need between English-speaking traders and their Chinese-speaking servants. Many linguistic features of this pidgin can be considered as contribution from Cantonese. So I recorded a dialogue between a Chinese shoe seller and an English speaker who is trying to buy shoes.

Starting from the earliest English form in China, I traced back my own experience in learning English. Since there are great differences between English and Chinese language system, we use phonetics to study English pronunciation. So for myself, phonetics is my first step to English, and I recorded the sound of reading English phonetics, which is mixed with the sound of Chinese Pidgin English.

Inspired by Pidgin English and my own experience of connecting English pronunciation with Chinese words, even if they have totally different meanings. Then, I found several texts about translation and transcreation between English and Chinese, especially Chinese poetry. The book Yingelishi wanders freely between Chinese and English, leaping over the gap between sound and meaning. So the first poem in this sound work is reading a poem in both English and Chinese.  They may sound similar, but the meaning is totally different.

Another obvious difference between these two languages is in the translation. The second poem is the first sentence from an ancient Chinese poetry, however, when it is translated in English, it sounds much longer. At this moment, the female voice reveals the progression of English study from pronunciation, words to translation. The last sound is a speech by a Chinese political figure, Soong Mei-ling, who was First Lady of the Republic of China. She attended a private school in Summit, New Jersey, and she graduated from Wellesley College in 1917. She was the first Chinese and the second woman to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. In 1942, she also conducted a speaking tour of the United States to gain support for China during the Second World War. So I mixed and added her English speech at the end.

My friends think that this sound work is funny, especially the first poem which made them laugh. And some of them said that they had the same experience.

The subject of my sound art project is the development of Chinese immigrants in America. It related to a dish called chop suey. The origin of chop suey could tracy back to the nineteenth century. Railway company thought Chinese could construct the railroad because they built the Great Wall. Then the company signed treaties with the Qing government, which allowed Chinese to get into US legally. 

During that period, they made food by themselves because they couldn’t adapt American diets. Then a famous American Chinese dish called chop suey was invented by one of Chinese immigrant. This dish was cooked for laborers on the Pacific Railroad in California in the mid-1800s. At that time, all the food they had to cook for dinner was an array of leftover odds and ends; they cooked it all together to prevent wasting and then called it chop suey. Here is a recipe of chop suey in early stage. In my sound project, the beginning part is the sound of the mining and constructing the railroad. Then it followed by the sound of making chop suey, including the sound of washing, cutting and cooking. The last part of this project is the sound of train, which symbolizes the success of constructing the Pacific Railroad.

I posted it on social media. Most people cannot recognize the first part sound. As for me, I also never know the sound of the mining and constructing railroad before making this project. They didn’t know the main idea behind this project as well because I posted the sound without any sentences. They were curious about why I posted this sound.

I don’t feel like what I have is enough to post on social media yet but I feel like my interactions with friends surrounding the project mirrored the response I may receive on social media. I approached one friend asking him to be the “Voice of the Patriarchy”. By that, I meant read excerpts from a 19^th century sex-ed book. He appreciated the concept and understood the criticism I was making but had further questions – what other texts was I considering? What did I want to get out of my criticism? This opened up a discussion about our experiences reading the text. We share a lot of the same political beliefs but could imagine a world where someone could read the text without seeing what we thought was glaringly wrong with it. As a result, I decided I wanted his delivery to be as patronizing and condescending as possible.

I received very positive feedback as I was asking friends for their perspectives on beauty. Some said they were looking forward to seeing the final piece. It sparked an interesting conversation  among a few friends and myself about our understanding of beauty. My understanding of the project evolved as I talked about it with friends. It also opened up a discussion about whether I should include male friends.

In terms of authorship, I found that sharing the work with friends influenced the direction I was going to take the work. The public experience of sharing was integral to workshopping and building upon my ideas. For example, I initially planned on interspersing the sex-ed excerpts with recordings of a few friends reading poetry. The conversation that stemmed from recording poetry is what pushed me towards asking friends about their perceptions of beauty.