OK. So this is a bit of a random post, but there have been little events dotted around my time in Beijing which have made me laugh or raise an eyebrow. Or sometimes both.
The first has to start with my attempts to have conversations in the street with random people. It must be pretty boring to speak with me, as (due to limited language ability) I’ll always ask about where they live, their job, how their mother and father’s health is (yes, I know, weird), and what they like doing in Beijing. I think I actually had a 3 minute conversation with someone when I was eating Quar (kind of a street food barbeque – although I’m sure I’ve spelt it wrong) about how much I liked Chinese bread (mantou).
But the best has to be when I went into a 7-11 convenience store and the following exchange happened:
“Eh, Niaho, You Yan Ma?”
“Shenme?” (puzzled look on his face) “Dui, wo you”
“OK. Wo yao le”
“Bu – no way!”
You see the problem was that I wanted some cigarettes – but got the intonation wrong and ended up asking the shop assistant if he had “eyes”. (Cigarettes and eyes are both spelt “Yan” but said in a different way) So what I actually said was: “Hello, do you have eyes?” to which the shop keeper replied: “What? – yes I have eyes!” and then I apparently asked for his eyes, to which he said “No way”. Oops.
It was weird, however, when I was in a French restaurant, being served by a Chinese woman. Her English and my Chinese (or lack thereof for both of us) became an impediment. So we both ended up speaking French to each other. Kinda strange consider it was neither of ours mother tongues.
The Chinese are a friendly bunch, and love most people. But not so much with black people. For the sake of data protection, said person’s identity shall remain a secret, but sufficed to say when I was coaching a girl for a national spoken English competition and pretending to be a judge asking her to tell me about the time she spent in the US, the following occurred:
Me: “So, tell me more about the time you spent in New York”.
Student: “I liked New York. But in America there are a lot of black people, and they were scary”.
Me: “Perhaps we shouldn’t say that to the judges.”
Student: “Why, do you think one of the judges will be black?”
Me: “No, but it might be a good idea not to say it anyway”.
Student: “OK.”
Also, when speaking with a friend who organises placements for Chinese Students in US universities, I was told that when Chinese students are asked about their accommodation requirements, their top stipulation is “No black people in the building”. Ouch.
In fairness, the Chinese are usually very tolerant and peaceful. In part it’s because most Chinese people have never seen a black person and most likely read about black on black crime problems in America, and even the UK.
Being white, on the other hand, carries a certain curiosity for Chinese people, especially if you can speak a bit of Chinese. Three occasions illustrate this well.
My friend has been organising this thing called the 12 week challenge. The idea is that you sign up, and with the help of a few free classes, some personal training advice and the fact that you’ve made a commitment, you try and improve your health and body shape as much as is possible in 12 weeks.
So I helped him, as a favour, hand out some flyers in San Li Tun to drum up support for the launch party. I was really the only English speaking white person there. But I could speak a bit of Chinese - “Ni Keyi Kan Kan?” which kind of means look at this. Everyone came to take the flyers off me, because it was a curiosity that I, a white foreigner, would speak Chinese.
The second happened in a supermarket. I was queuing up to pay and a young guy tapped me on the shoulder. I thought, because I had a lot of things and he only had a bottle of water that he wanted to go in front of me. So I ushered him through. But what he actually wanted to say was
“Hi, can I practice my English with you?” In the supermarket queue!
I admired his guts so obliged. Actually we went to McDonald’s (they’re everywhere) later that week where he offered to buy me food and ice cream in return for conversation practice. Stranger things have happened, but he has actually become a friend now – nice guy. (Check out this video of the scary music playing at McDonald’s!!!)
I was also asked to do a voice recording for some brand, because of my apparently posh) British accent.
2 hours, about 800 statements or sentences and £30. Not bad. I tried to speak like the woman announcer on the tube to make me sound more refined than I actually am. But the thing which shocked me most was the money you can make by just having a British or American accent. As this is what most voice recording studios, whether for products, movies or educational materials, want.
Back to the 12 week challenge. I have signed up. I’m not sure I’m going to win the 250,000RMB prize money for the person who has improved the most, but it’s worth a try. To enter, I had to go to the World Health Store (organisers of the challenge) and be weighed, have my body fat, heart rate, and muscle sizes measured in store. So from this semi scientific analysis, I have deduced the following about my body:I have less body fat than I thought, although I’ve lost 7 kilos over the past 2 months (a bad thing as I’m a skinny rake as it is)
 |
| My last cake! |
My waist is very thin, but my hips are very wide, like child-bearing wide. I look like woman!
My biceps are not nearly as big as I thought they were.
Oh well, 12 weeks to go.
Oh, and I played Badminton. And the Chinese are very good at badminton. Whereas I am like an elephant on the court. End of.
No comments:
Post a Comment