When I was here over Chinese New Year on my own, I thought
that that would be the hardest time and when other students came and things got
back into a routine, things would be easier, but that wasn’t the case at
all. Although I was alone a lot over the
New Year, I was never actually lonely.
Once other students started coming back, I started feeling incredibly
lonely, and it was not a nice feeling! There’s
a very big difference between being alone and being lonely, and it seems that
it’s lonelier to be around people with whom communication is almost impossible
than it is just to be alone.
I think I thought it
would be easier to pick up Chinese than it actually is. I have known people move to London unable to
speak English and fairly soon be able to have a conversation, and I thought it
would be the same for me. What I hadn’t
accounted for was that these people were European and therefore there were some
connections between their language and English.
I can’t speak much French, but I can follow a conversation between
French people, and I’m pretty sure if I moved to France I’d be able to pick up
French quite quickly. There are no
connections between Chinese and English so you have no reference points at all,
there’s nothing for your ear to latch onto.
All you hear is a wash of sound with an occasional word that you
understand.
I am still making an effort to learn some Chinese, and I
have a book which I’m slowly working through, but it’s not the best book in the
world; lessons entitled ‘Mr. Green sends a fax’ are neither inspiring nor
particularly relevant to life in Chen Jia Gou!
If someone asks me something simple, and speaks V.E.R.Y. slowly, I can
usually formulate an answer. I can ask
people simple questions, but I usually find it hard to follow the reply, so
I’ll be none the wiser for having asked in the first place. Following a conversation between Chinese
people is impossible. That’s not really
surprising; I had very high level EFL students who found it hard to follow what
native speakers were saying, but it’s very isolating when you’re the only
non-Chinese person around. Like, really
isolating!
You have no idea why everyone’s laughing, although
apparently it’s hilarious. You never
understand what’s going on, which might account for the fact that you often
look lost and bewildered. You might know
that they’re talking about how Westerners eat with knives and forks rather than
the far more sophisticated chopsticks, but you can’t say anything about it
(like how eating pizza with chopsticks just isn’t going to work. I’m not making it up! I saw people trying!). Or, you know you’re the subject of the
conversation, but you have no idea what is being said, and you can’t ask
because you won’t understand the reply. And
in a general sense, you don’t know what the ground rules are. You don’t know how things work or how people
tick.
I’m not a particularly outgoing, chatty person in my own
language, and I find I have to make a huge effort to speak in Chinese. Sometimes it’s easier just to say nothing and
let the conversation float over my head.
Sometimes it feels like Chinese is like a very prickly, thorny communicative
wall between myself and everyone around me.
When I was in Guangzhou I met a very colourful, and rather smelly,
Spanish man who has lived in China for years.
He said it took him five years before he could hold a decent
conversation in Mandarin. An Israeli
girl I met here who has lived in China for two and a half years told me it took
her six months to feel comfortable with basic Mandarin. And she studied Chinese at university! So it’s not something I can expect to learn
quickly, or easily!
Sometimes I feel like I’m making no progress at
all, and at other times I feel like I’ve taken a small step forwards. This week, three things happened which made
me feel a bit happier. One of the
students, I call him Cigarette-Smoking Man, had his girlfriend to stay, and she
brought a jar of pickled chilies with her.
She shared them with everyone and I ate a few. I said that I like spicy food, and decided to
explain by telling her that I used to live in Thailand where the food is very
(insanely!) spicy. That was the most I’d
ever said at dinner time, and I got asked a few questions, which I was able to
answer. And I notice that I can
understand a few words of instructions if I’m learning with a group of other
students. We’re not talking about many
words, but even a sprinkling is helpful!
And finally, Cigarette-Smoking
Man’s lovely girlfriend has just popped in for a chat. She speaks no English at all, but we were
able to communicate for a few minutes.
Alright, not on a deep level, but maybe I know more than I think I
do......