Three Chinese Acquaintances

My trip to Nanjing and Beijing saw a continuation of the inconsistent, sinusoidal trajectory that my Chinese skills have followed since arriving here.  北京人 (Beijing ren, natives of Beijing) are famously difficult to understand for those used to speaking to people from Shanghai, and I experienced this first hand while there.  Directing taxi drivers proved almost impossible (this is partially because the street names in Beijing are confusingly similar, and Beijing cabbies are known for being ornery). Several times, upon ordering some food or otherwise letting on that I spoke Chinese, people assumed that I could keep up with the native, slurred, r-heavy Beijing accent, which I can't.  So I spent a good portion of several conversations nodding stupidly, until folks either gave up, or my food was mercifully ready.

Looking on the bright side, however, this week away saw me meet and get along with several Chinese people based primarily on my not-so-awful Mandarin speaking skills.  Three people stand out in particular:

As I was waiting for my train from Shanghai to Nanjing, I noticed a middle-aged woman pointing at various parts of my body, and saying color words in English.  She was practicing, checking herself with her two children as she pointed at my shirt and said "black," and pointed at my shorts and said "brown."  After realizing what she was doing, I started helping out by quizzing her on some of the less common colors like orange and grey, helping to explain the difference between the colors using Chinese.  As luck would have it, the woman and her family were sitting directly next to me on the train (N.B. trains in China operate on an assigned-seat basis, so one can't choose his/her seat mate).  I spent the 90 minute trip northwest to Nanjing basically giving her a free English lesson, with her interjecting some helpful Chinese tidbits along the way.  Every 10 minutes or so she'd stop me to tell me how good my Chinese was, which is a very common Chinese thing to do even if your Chinese sucks, but it's still nice to hear.

It turns out that the train gods were smiling on me, because the next day, en route from Nanjing to Beijing, I again struck up a conversation with my neighbor, this time a congenial old man.  Mr. Jin is a filmmaker and teacher, with schools in both Beijing and Shanghai though he spends most of his time in Beijing.  He has traveled substantially through the US (though he speaks no English), and has a daughter who spends about half her time working in Boston.  My conversation with Mr. Jin was far more in depth than with the nice lady the day before, and I'd be lying if I said I understood everything he said.  But I got the gist of it, included in which was the strong advice that I get out of the big cities and travel to Western China, where the "real Chinese life," as he put it, is.  Upon asking him the best way to get to Tibet, he advised me that even though a flight is exponentially more efficient, by taking the train you ascend the mountains gradually, as opposed to all at once on a plane, allowing for a far easier acclimation process to the altitude.  Good advice, I thought.  Mr. Jin and I exchanged business cards, and then text messages (in Chinese) a few days later.  On Friday, his son-in-law, who speaks English, called me to tell me how much Jin enjoyed meeting me.  I'll try to connect with the daughter and her husband in Shanghai at some point soon.

Last but not least, is Mark, the 18 year old college student I met at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing.  We spent a couple of hours together, speaking a combination of English and Chinese (Mark's English is quite good).  He's an excitable, interesting fellow, who says it's his dream to go to Hollywood, and who loves the Dallas Mavericks (the Chinese love the NBA).  Upon parting ways, Mark asked for my phone number, asking if he could text me every now and then to practice his English.  Of course, I said.  He has since texted me at least once every day.  Truth be told, it's getting a little annoying (today he asked me to help him with a paper he's writing), but he certainly means well.

So there you go -- three friends made, that probably wouldn't have been made had I not been able to at least acquit myself marginally well in Mandarin.  Brimming with confidence from last week's successes, I strode into work this morning confident that I'd not only be able to pick up on some of the office chatter, but also converse with people in Chinese.  Alas, today was an off day: two conversations butchered, and very little chatter understood.  Guess I'll just get back on the horse tomorrow.