Authors: Alan Tien
“Well, I got the better end of that deal. It turns out I love coffee. But your
dad puked all night from holding up his end of the bargain. After that, I figured I owed it to him to go on a real date with him. Well, as they say, it was all history from there on out.”
“Yeah, he’s history
to me,” I said, ending the story.
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The bullies avoided me like the plague. In fact, everyone avoided me like I was defected. I used violence in a pacifist society. It was like having Tourette Syndrome in a British tea party. That was fine by me. I wanted to be alone.
The classes weren’t particularly hard
from a content perspective, since I went to a “Gifted and Talented” magnet school back in the US. I didn’t consider myself that smart; it’s just that everyone else seemed a bit slow. Before I got into the magnet school, I could get a B with my eyes closed. Getting an A just took a tiny bit of studying since the teachers essentially told you what was going to be on the test. However, it was my Chinese mom who drove me to get straight A’s.
I would come home with a test score of 97, being pretty proud of myself. My mom would quickly deflate my bubble and ask sharply, “Where’s the other 3 points?”
I knew the American parents of the other students would have been an ecstatic with a test score of 97, which was already in the A+ range. But I wanted my mom’s approval, so I studied a bit harder. My studiousness paid off, and I got a 100 on my next test. “Mom, mom, look, I got a 100 this time!”
My mom not only popped my bubble, then she stomped on it. “How many other people got a 100?”
What kind of question was that? “Uh, I think 3 or 4.”
“Are there extra points?”
Damn, she knew the system. “Um yeah.”
“So…” She
could be pretty sparse with her words when she wanted to be.
“Yeah, the max was 105. I think a kid might have gotten it. But he’s super smart, and he doesn’t do any sports. All he does is study!”
Wrong line of argument.
My mom threatened to pull me from basketball if I couldn’t get my priorities straight. “Don’t compare yourself to the bottom, or you will become a garbage man.” Human beings didn’t pick up garbage
any more; that’s what robots did. But I could tell my mom was just reciting a line Chinese mom’s have used since the beginning of China’s illustrious history. “Compare yourself to the top so you can be a doctor one day. Or a lawyer if you must. Worst case, an engineer.” I didn’t mention Dad was an engineer. A work-from-home one at that. I had learned the hard way that the best way to win an argument with my mom was to not argue, to tap out of the ring with “mea culpas” while sidling away.
So I pretty much got straight A’s, not really for myself, not to gain my mother’s approval, but to avoid her berating. However, straight A
’s weren’t enough to get into my Gifted and Talented magnet school. I also had to do well on tests. And that was where my magic was. I was awesome at standardized tests. I certainly don’t feel awesome when I am taking the tests. I usually feel like I have failed, that I had guessed on all the hard questions, which were the ones that separated the gifted from the merely smart. But when the test scores come back, I am usually in the 99th percentile. The scores don’t differentiate any more on the last 1%, but I deduced from the guidance counselor’s whispers that I had done very well, surprisingly well, on the statewide high school standardized test. I was the first from our small middle school to go to the state’s G&T magnet school in many years. I now had to ride a bus for an hour each way to attend, but it wasn’t ever really a question whether I would go or not. Education was priority #1, at least for Mom. Dad didn’t get a vote.
But
in my new Chinese school, though the actual material wasn’t that hard, I was constantly being tripped up just when I thought I was figuring things out.
I was shocked at how bad my Chinese was, even though I had been learning it since kindergarten. I had gotten A’s in all my Chinese classes in the US, but it was a whole different story
using it in real life. I could name any object – chair, spoon, book – and put them in a nice sentence. However, anything slightly more complex, like expressing emotions or saying something witty, was beyond me. I’m sure I learned those words or phrases along the way. The words always felt like they were on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t spit them out. I would sometimes remember what I wanted to say 5 minutes later, but by then it was far too late to gain any benefit from the recall.
The Chinese idioms, called
chengyu, were the worst. These are four word phrases from Classical Chinese, little pearls of wisdom, packed with tons of meaning. Kind of like English idioms, such as “a chip on your shoulder,” which are meaningless when directly translated. There are like 5000 of the more “common” chengyu’s, which the Chinese use as a sign of their education, a proxy for intelligence in the Chinese culture. The smart kids in my new school liked to bandy them around to show off.
Here’s an example
of a chengyu (I had to look this one up recently):
司
空
见
惯
(
If you’re old school and can’t read Chinese characters yet, it’s “sī kōng jiàn guan”).
Explanation
(解释
): Long story short
–
司
空
comes from the title of “the Minister of Construction” in ancient China who commented on “sing-song girls” during a feast a
s
见
惯
(“a common sight”).
Translation
(翻译
): To be an everyday occurrence; nothing unusual.
Similar English Expression
(
类似英文成
语
): None that I can think of.
Example
(
例
子
)
:
在中国
，
闯红灯是司空见惯的事
。
Zài Zhōngguó, chuǎnghóngdēng shì
sīkōngjiànguàn
de shì. — In China, people running red lights is a common sight.
Needless to say, most of the
chengyu flew over my head. I didn’t know if they were saying someone’s name (which were all nonsensical to me, not like English’s simple “John” or “Mary”) or dropping a well-placed chengyu, not until the appreciative audience remarked at its appropriateness.
So I went from what my teachers described as
showing “quiet humor” in the US to being a dumb mute in China. I could get the gist of what was being taught, or what the kids were saying around me, but if you asked me to translate verbatim, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I would often look like a deer caught in headlights when someone actually asked me a question. I started all my sentences with “uhhhh.”
The f
unny thing was that I would sprinkle my Chinese with small English words, like “like.” I found conjunctions like “and,” “but,” and “so” sorely missing in Chinese, or somehow I hadn’t learned how to use them correctly, so I would use these tiny bit of English in the middle of my Chinese sentences. Everyone in school was fluent in English – about the same level as my Chinese – so I’m sure it didn’t faze them; nevertheless, I felt very self-conscious every time I dropped in one of these connectors that I didn’t notice in the US but I found I couldn’t live without in China.
Ironically, English class was one of my harder subjects. Even though I was a native speaker, I spoke with an “American” accent and spelled words the “American” way, which was different from Imperial English, or IE. IE borrowed heavily from British English, probably as a minor concession to the Brits for leaving their erstwhile allies, the US, and joining the Chinese hegemony, or more probably
as spite to the US for being the last major country to hold out from joining China’s “protection” until it became inevitable. I had to relearn how to spell by sticking “u’s” in random words, like “colour” and “behaviour.” The English teacher, who was Chinese, was very strict, and did not make any exceptions for American spelling. I was shocked an “F” on my first paper, since the teacher had a policy of automatically failing any paper that had any “basic” spelling and grammatical errors. My paper was returned with precise little red circles all over it, as if it had suffered a bout of smallpox.
Thank god math is a universal language so I was able to function (pun intended), as long as I could translate the instructions clearly. I struggled on all the math terminology in Chinese, which I had not learned in my Chinese class in the US. How do you say “radius,” or “mean,” or “logarithm?” I didn’t know. However, the math teacher was a little gentler with me than my English teacher. She would quietly whisper the English translation for a math problem when I seemed hopelessly stuck.
History class was the most interesting. It was like living in an alternate universe. Things I had learned, and taken for the Truth, were now turned upside down. Instead of us questioning whether China had the right to control Tibet, we debated how evil America was for annexing Texas from the Mexicans. Huh? Wasn’t Texas always part of the US? I guess next we’ll be studying how the Louisiana Purchase wasn’t a valid contract!
Though it wasn’t a class, lunch was the most challenging. My mom had cooked Chinese food when we were in the US, and our
domestic helper now cooked for us at home in China. But the school cafeteria would introduce brand new things that I had never eaten before. Things I didn’t know you could or should eat. Whereas my classmates would “ooh” in delight at some of these supposed delicacies that the school provided as treats, I “ugh’ed” in disgust. Durian fruit? Smelled like something rotting, or in real ripe situations, like crap, literally. And that stink would infiltrate the entire school. They say it tastes good once you get past the smell. I think God put in that smell to warn you off not to taste it! Stinky tofu? China’s answer to French cheese like Camembert. Pig ears. Duck’s tongue. Geoduck clams were so obscene, Freud would have had a field day with those who desired to eat them. And Chinese desserts? That was an oxymoron.
The class I missed the most was gym. In the US, I would
grumble like everyone else that it was gym time, pretending we were too cool to enjoy dodge ball or kick ball. But in China, we didn’t have gym class at all. There weren’t any fields to run around in. The specialized courts for sports like tennis and soccer (sorry, football, keep forgetting) were only available if you were on the team, and you had to be invited to join the team. So if you didn’t want to do any physical exercise, you could easily avoid it. Even if you wanted to, it was difficult. I found my muscles itching to do something. Luckily I came in with basketball skills so I could play with the team.
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After a few more weeks, when it seemed like the wild animal was slightly domesticated, a few of the braver students - who were eccentric enough to want to study English further because of their desire to exile themselves to the US - screwed up the courage to come talk to me. I was very polite to all of them, being acutely aware of the challenges they faced speaking my native tongue, but one person in particular caught my attention.
An elfish girl, with
a jaunty cropped hair cut – very unorthodox, came up behind me and said, “Hello, this is Chang Lin.” Scared the bejesus out of me, but I turned my start into a sneeze.
“Excuse me?” I said
, wiping my nose. It was half a question, half an apology for my faux sneeze.
“Hello, this is Chang Lin,
” she repeated, in the exact same style as she had said it the first time. It’s the standard English opening line that they teach. I don’t know why they use the third person; it sounds so stilted.
“
Uh, hi. Um, this is Austin. Austin Longwhite. Or um, Longwhite Austin.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to use first name then last name because I’m American, or use last name then first name because I’m in China.
“Yes, I know,” she said shyly. I caught a whiff of her, what
?, shampoo? Girls were not allowed to wear makeup or perfume in school. The smell was intoxicating. I almost stumbled backwards from the vertigo. “Are you ok?” she asked in concern.
I recovered and tried to look a bit
more manly. I leaned back on my locker, shooting for a nonchalant look. She gave me a quick appraisal, and I guess I had failed. It took her a lot of nerve to come over and talk to me, and here I was acting like a typical US male jerk, too cool for skool.
“Wait!” She paused
but didn’t turn around. She looked over her shoulder, somewhat chillily. “Umm, are you busy after school?” I boldly went where no teenager boy had gone before. At least not this boy. “I, umm, was thinking, umm, we could, you know, do a language exchange. You know, I teach you English. You teach me Chinese.” I purposely slowed down my speech rate and enunciated clearly. Even so, I couldn’t eradicate the “umm’s” and “you know’s” from my sentence.
She hesitated. I held my breath. Was I too forward? Was I acting like a
barbarian, like Frankenstein scaring off the natives? Should I have asked in a more circular fashion, allowing her to save face and say “yes” even if she meant no? I pushed off the locker and turned up the palms of my hands like a supplicant, trying to convey, “Only if you want…” I wasn’t sure if this gesture translated.