Some folks have actually voiced interest in coming to visit us next year (*sniff* our unborn child is already more popular than either of us). Plus, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s going to be this big party in Beijing called “The Olympics” that the Chinese government seems to think everyone in the world is going to want to attend (because it’s such a good idea to visit a city of fifteen million people while fifteen million other people are also visiting). So in order to help you, my mother who isn’t even braving the flight my fellow readers reader, I bring you “Super Survival Chinese.” Think of it as Chinese as done by that guy on the Discovery Channel (or is it National Geographic?) who eats two week old zebra carcasses raw while pretending he’s stranded in the middle of the Sahara.
Since the end of the 1980′s, people around the world have come to understand that Chinese people don’t speak English (much like how most Americans don’t speak “foreign”). A lot of people coming to China, find this very intimidating, as most people outside China don’t speak Chinese. Don’t worry. A good portion of Chinese people don’t speak Chinese either. They speak weird variations of Chinese that don’t even sound like Chinese. Think of it as French and Spanish being weird variations of Latin.
Yet the Chinese somehow manage to communicate with each other. “But how?” You ask. Easy: They all share a common writing system.
“But isn’t that common writing system a series of pictograph-based characters that number into the thousands and are all so complex I’ll never have any hope of learning even a handful of them before my trip?” You astutely observe.
Damn it! Err… You, my friend, have a more powerful tool at your disposal than any common writing system. It’s called “Charades” or “Gestures.”
Here’s the idea: let’s say you want to eat a fish. As you haven’t packed your fishing pole with you, you decide to go to your local restaurant, where you suspect by the giant aquarium display in the front, you might be able to find a fish to eat. Upon being seated at the table, you then proceed to say in English, of course, “I’d like some fish.”
Since the server in this scenario happens to live in China where most people don’t speak English (contrary to what MacGyver suggests), they stare at you blankly. At this point, instead of waving your hands wildly like a lunatic and railing on about how China will never become a superpower at this rate (as you’re probably tempted to do, especially if you’re one of the Americans mentioned above who don’t speak “foreign”), you put your hands together in front of you and wiggle them around to look like a fish swimming (think back: you probably used to do something very similar in kindergarten).
Suddenly, the waiter’s eyes light up and they say something you don’t understand but must surely be the word for fish. You nod your head (nodding means the same thing in Chinese that it does in English), and they run off to go tell the waiter about the crazy foreigner at the table. Two minutes go buy, and the waiter returns with a fried sculpturethat may once have been a fish, but is now slathered in the sweetest sauce you will ever eat and only costs three times as much as anything else on the menu.
Get the idea?
Here’s your homework: start playing “Charades” at home. When you think you’re really good, try going to restaurants in your area and order a meal without using any words.
Oh, and if you don’t get tossed out, and actually end up with what you wanted, please let me know. I could use some tips.