How to break a language barrier. keep it simple stupid

Open my eyes. I don’t recognize this room. Stone floors, brick walls, steel bars. Apparently I’ve been imprisoned. My head is throbbing, feels like I went mano y mano with a baton. I think I’m concussed. How did I end up here?

In the days before I had been spending my time by a compact park with Shao Kao(street barbecue) in one hand, sweet tea in the other and several Chinese kids on each leg. They referred to me as ‘Laowai’ meaning something like, “An obvious foreigner.” Together we cut capers on the playground, read stories out of my bible and shared my western candy bars. We soon grew to be veritably fond of each other. The boys would prove to me their strength and display their feats of bravery while the girls proved to me you can turn a consummate dress into a rag almost instantly, particularly when armed with a Kit-Kat and a Snickers bar.

Two police cars pull up to the park. Four policemen approach me and they tell the kids to go home. They are yelling at me in Mandarin of which I understand and speak some, though brokenly. I told him I think we’re speaking a different language. Based on his solemn reaction I suspect the joke didn’t land. Probably the language barrier. They took my bible and told me I can only have it in government sanctioned churches. More yelling, confusion, a sharp pain on the back of my head and then, black.

A sizeable guard with a daunting figure comes up to my cell. The words “David” and “Goliath” come to mind. “How’s prison?” he asked me sardonically. “You call it prison, I call it room and board.” I replied. Again, language barrier. As it turns out, inscrutable jokes does not a cheerful guard make. He just stared at me. I now know full well what the word ‘unnerving’ means. After this went on for what I would describe as ‘too long,’ his countenance began to change. A smile emerged and he chuckled to himself. Clearly he is aware of his effect on people. He produced a key, unlocked the gate, returned my belongings to me and told me I can leave. I told him he still owes me a chuanr(barbecued kebab). He laughed. Finally I broke that barrier!

They beauty of travel is experiencing that which you'd never have expected. If you ask me to tell you about some place in the world that I’ve never been I will most likely be able to give you an apt description of what it is like. However when it comes to places that I have been I always seem to discover something which I hadn’t foreseen and would never have guessed.