Mr. Wo Wangle

Mandarin lessons are in full swing. Lucas studies nearly an hour each day at school, I study for hours at home, and Brad meets with his instructor at work twice a week.

We are making progress. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

I have a great instructor who works well with my learning style. He appreciates my effort and my sense of humor. His name is Mr. Shu. (For those of you who watch Glee, this cracks me up.) And if you have been reading my blog, you know his name could also possibly be spelled Mr. Xu.

Brad’s instructor is also called Shu—or Xu. (No relation to my Mr. Shu). Mrs. Shu, though, does seem like a relative of Chairman Mao.

Brad has explicitly and horrifyingly described the wasp-thin woman and her classroom methods as if it were a ghost story around the campfire!

Mrs. Shu madly scribbles sentence diagrams on a white board as Brad hastily copies the notes, hoping to finish before she wildly erases the info. She speaks no English. She pantomimes and repeats.

She pantomimes and repeats.

And then the interrogation begins. In machine-gun Chinese, Mrs. Shu yells questions out at Brad, “Ch...zh...x...zh..sh...zh...dj…ma?”

FYI: ma makes any sentence a question.

He admits he can feel the sweat beading on his forehead and slowly dripping down his nose. He is terrified. I see the fear lingering in his eyes hours--even days-- later.

She hammers the same question again and again, “Ch...zh...x...zh..sh...zh...dj…ma?”

He attempts to answer, stammering and stumbling and stuttering. His shirt becomes sweat-stained.

Mrs. Shu pantomimes and repeats.

She pantomimes and repeats.

The torture continues for 90 minutes every Tuesday and every Thursday.

I wonder: If my teacher were Chairman Mao would I make more progress more quickly? Does the fear of death hinder or help language learning?

So I ask Brad to tell me what he has learned.

In total, Brad has covered five useful phrases with Mrs. Shu. (5 phrases in 270 minutes? That doesn’t seem very efficient to me!) And out of the five phases, he can only recall one. He says it.

I laugh.

He writes it down for me.

I laugh again.

Wo Wangle.

Rhymes with Bo Jangle. As in Mr. Bo Jangle.

You have got to be kidding me! That does NOT look Chinese.

Wo wangle!

It certainly does not sound Chinese.

Wo wangle.

Our conversation follows:

Kimberly (incredulous): Wo wangle? Are you sure?

Brad (in P & G executive mode): Yes. Wo wangle.

Kimberly (laughing): What does it mean?

Brad (smiling) : I forget.

Kimberly (incredulous again and slightly mocking): What do you mean, you forget?

Brad (indignant): I forgot!

Kimberly (absolutely disbelieving): Are you sure you forget?

Brad (assertively): Yes, I forgot.

Kimberly (helpfully): It doesn’t look sound Chinese. And it doesn’t look Chinese. What do you think it means?

Brad (forcefully): I forget!

Whatever!

Brad and General Mao have definitely not used his 270 minutes wisely. Really? 270 minutes of sweating and he forgot all 5 phrases?

.................................

Yesterday, Mr. Shu came to my house. I have finally progressed to the past tense!

In Chinese, to make a sentence past, you write it in the present tense, you say exactly what you want, and then, at the end, you put the phrase Le.

Ah....now that looks familiar. Here is Brad's Mr. Wo Wangle!

“So Mr. Shu,” I say, scribbling wo wang le in my notebook. “What does this sentence mean?"

Mr Shu answers, "I forgot."

It's deja vu all over again! This time I ask Mr. Shu, "What do you mean, you forget?"

Mr. Shu patiently explains, "It means I forgot. It is the past tense of forget."

Forgot? Forgot!

I am irate, "You never told me that verb!"

Mr. Shu then makes my day, "You never forget!"

I love China! J

PS: If I have now made you hear that song Mr. Bo Jangles in your head all day, I am sorry! N0w you know what I have been hearing!

Tai Tai

Tai-Tai Tenai

Recently a dear friend (Jackie, I miss you!) asked me what I DO everyday. I then realized I haven’t actually divulged the mundane details of my daily existence.

To answer Jackie’s question, I must tell you my “title” here. That would be tai-tai. Now the Chinese dictionary lists tai-tai as a married woman. True, I am that. But it also translates into “madam.” (Not that kind of madam!) More like, “Yes, Madam, I shall prepare your dinner.” Or, “Yes, Madam, I shall wait in the car while you shop...until I am needed to carry your bags!”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! The agony! From Ms. Tenai, I have become Tenai Tai-tai, a lady who lunches. Say it isn’t so!

It isn’t!

I have not been out to lunch once in the entire month I have lived in Beijing. My housekeeper is perfectly able to prepare my luncheon at home!

While I have been dining in the comfort of my 4,000 square-foot abode, this is how I have been filling the last 30 days. (Today is our one-month anniversary here by the way.)

1. I get Lucas on the school bus at 8 a.m. This sounds easier than it is! Check it out: ISB (Lucas’s school) does not have a Monday through Friday schedule. They have a six-day schedule but a 5-day school week. On the fourth day of every 6, Lucas has library and PE. Can I tell you how many times he has forgotten to return his books or worn his sandals? Can anyone explain this 6-day agenda to me? Why, oh, why, can’t he have library or gym on a set day? I am begging for a day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, any day! Just the same day! Our mornings would go so much more smoothly.

2. I exercise. I have a Scottish friend who is married to a Dane, and she likes to walk. She has managed to lose 10 pounds. Me, none…

Today we walked three miles on Dead-Ayi Road. Yes. This is a road where many ayi-s on bicycles have been killed by cars in the dark. We also did a little trekking through a garbage dump, several construction sites, and then we forded a stream. Yes, all on the outskirts of Beijing.

We are (imagine me speaking with a Scottish accent) “quite keen” on exploration. I may have found someone as crazy as me! Or she is having a good laugh at my expense. Or plotting my murder. It would be remarkably easy to kill me off. All it would take is a shoulder bump into traffic. My body could then be dumped with all the trash at the construction site. The positive? Dead Ayi Road (which is a terribly politically incorrect term) could then be renamed Dead Tai Tai Road... That seems a little better.

When Julie is not available and is busy killing off some other American tai-tai, I ride my bike on the indoor trainer. After exploring my neighborhood by foot, there is no way in hell I will brave Beijing traffic on my own! To make my stationary cycling more challenging, I memorize Chinese vocabulary as I spin..

3. Spinning my wheels…memorizing words…Twice a week I have intense Chinese language class. I have leapt over the Abyss of Incommunicado and landed more or less intact, fingers bleeding slightly and scrambling on my knees for a foothold. This week I managed to put together the entire sentence: “I tomorrow morning at 10 am go to the quickie mart and buy a big bottle of cooking oil.”

I actually said 7/11, not quickie mart. Semantics.

Believe it or not, though, those words are in the right order. But you KNOW I am in a foreign country if I am buying big bottles of cooking oil! (NO wonder Julie has lost weight and I haven’t…) Luckily the quickie marts here do not feel dangerous. I have never, not once, felt like someone was going to pull a gun and shoot me. Beijing bonus!

So Chinese. Wow. Most of the time I feel like I am in a wind tunnel! Everything starts with an sh, ch, ty, j, z, dg, g, or zh sound. Even odder, the letter Q is never paired with a U and it always says CH. And X says SH. Here are some of my favorite words:

Gonggong qi che = Bus.

Chaoshi. = Supermarket.

Changchang = Often.

Chuchai =Business trip

I guess we can put them all together and say: “Brad changchang qu chuchai ye wo bu zuo gonggongqiche zai chaoshi.”

(Say THAT dead times fast, Peter Piper!)

Translation: Brad often goes on a business trip and I do not take a bus to the supermarket.

(Both true statements in fact. Brad is gone nearly once a week and I have the driver take me to the market.)

Look how fluent I have become after only 1000 hours of studying. (The word 1000 can also mean money if you say it like you're angry!)

So I am becoming fluent!

And useful too!

Useful, maybe not. Ma Ayi manages the household and very well, I might add. I do pilates when she does the laundry. I do yoga when she vacuums. Yesterday I tried to make cookies in the oven. It is so tiny that none of my baking sheets fit! Good thing we are vegetarians and don’t need a turkey in November. I also learned that the oven inexplicably turns off when the timer is not in use. (Julie explained that to me this morning.) I was wondering why that last batch never browned…

Clearly my life is not always a piece of cake!

After Ma Ayi’s dinner (almost always delicious and Chinese), I do have to put all the leftovers in Tupperware AND load the dishwasher. Sometimes I even turn the dishwasher on! I normally need a bit of a relax after that strenuous activity.

Other daily demanding activities:

• Practicing piano with Lucas; his wrists are not right!
• Practicing guitar with Lucas; his chords are not clean.
• Practicing PenPal handwriting with Lucas; his printing is not clear.
• Searching for an Olympic swim coach for Lucas
• Searching for a Wimbleton coach for Lucas
• Seaching for a World-cup soccer coach for Lucas; Brad no longer cuts the mustard. Wait! That expression can't be right! Is it? Am I losing my English skills already? What a weird-ass phrase! How did I come up with that?
• Monitoring Ma Ayi's cooking: no more "jelly fish," please.
• Monitoring Ma Ayi's ironing: no more starched underwear or sheets, please.
• Monitoring Ma Ayi's appliance use. That's a whole other blog entry!
• Writing this blog, hoping to become the next David Sedaris
• Writing vocabulary lists, hoping to memorize an entire language
• Writing notes to Lucas's classmates' parents, hoping to arrange playdates and ease his transition.

And sometimes, despite all my hard work, the cookie crumbles...

This week, Lucas’s teacher thought he might need a psychological intervention because he yelled on the playground. Lucas shouted, “I hate school and I hate ISB.” Imagine that. A seven-year-old venting his frustration! In America I thought that was a healthy expression of emotion. Here, however, it is incredibly out-of-control. The teacher wrote, “The other children were shocked!”

He might have even [gasp] stamped his foot!

Shocking, I tell you!

Chocking.

Qocking.

Xocking.

Tyocking.

Jocking.

Dgocking.

Zhocking.

Shocking.

I must go study…

Oh, and go to a meeting at school!

With love,

Kimbeijingerly Ten-Tai-Tai

Food Frenzy

For my Foodie Friends:

Six notable (not potable) menu options!

1. It’s tomato juice. No, it’s apple juice. No. It’s hawthorne juice, one of the most popular juices in China. In a blind taste-test, the neighborhood’s Danish children believe it is strawberry juice. I believe it is the synthetic blood used in HBO’s True Blood series. Think warm and pulpy.

2. Or think cool and slippery. Watch it wiggle. See it jiggle! Ma Ayi, my Chinese Angel, prepared a new dish for dinner: LiangFen. This is cold mung bean jelly. WIkipedia reads, “Liangfen is generally white or off-white in color, translucent, and thick. It is usually made from mung beanstarch… The starch is boiled with water and the resulting sheets are then cut into thick strips.[9]

My first thought when served: Jellyfish is NOT vegetarian. As all real vegetarians will attest: Fish is not a vegetable…

Thus, when I asked if the dish was a vegetable, Ayi said no. When I asked if it was vegetarian, Ayi said yes. But what could it be?

After much hand gesturing and Ipad translating, Liangfen was the answer. Despite the identification, I could not swallow the jellied texture; I expect to see it appear on a reality TV episode in the very near future!

3. World’s most expensive breakfast cereal? Lucas’s all-time favorite! LUCKY CHARMS! With it costing $7 a (small) box; you are lucky if you can afford it. It is not THAT magically delicious.

4. Speaking of magic…What could it possibly be? The package has an illustration of the US, our flag, a marijuana leaf (?) and a long, knobby protuberance. The item was in the “health and fitness” aisle of the local grocery. Your guess is as good as mine! Strong like American bull!?

5. Cool and refreshing. Yep. That’s exactly what I think when I taste blueberry potato chips. And how about those seaweed Pringles? Natural ocean flavor! Mmhh.Ummm.

6. And this is a good one… Let me tell you what the package says: “I am getting hungry just thinking about it. Indiana Chief’s Super Thanksgiving Day Corn. Thanksgiving is a time when I tell you that I love you.”

Hey! I didn’t know Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day merged in Indiana! Do I have any readers out there that can confirm this? And I thought you gave chocolate, not corn croutons! Man. You leave the US for 4 weeks and look what happens….

Frankly my dear...

Where to begin? I am weeks behind in my blogging, and I have so many funny things to describe: the food, the vacuum, my mangling of Mandarin….

My only explanation: I seemed to lose my sense of humor here for awhile. And no one wants to hear a woman with a house slave and a chauffeur bemoan her existence.

Nevertheless my Facebook posting recently read: “Not our best Beijing day...Swim team try-outs were a disaster, the new piano teacher was a dud, and dinner was cold bean jelly. Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett!”

Here are the not-so-humorous highlights.

I was advised that Lucas, who plays piano and guitar, needs fine-motor skill therapy. What? He has been featured as Make Magazine’s wonder-kid of soldering! And that’s a fine motor skill if I ever saw one.

Oh, wait. He doesn’t need fine-motor skill therapy. He just needs to learn how to write with the same system his new school uses.

It’s not print.

It’s not cursive.

It’s PENPAL Penmanship—sort of the Siamese Twin approach to handwriting. Everything is conjoined.

And more importantly, Lucas needs to give a damn. He told me, “I don’t understand why I have to learn how to write like everybody else. They can read my writing how it is.”

I therefore honestly replied to his teacher’s therapy suggestion, “Please do not mistake Lucas’ not giving a damn for lack of skill.”

And then another Gone With the Wind Moment:

Lucas had to unexpectedly audition for his new piano teacher before she would accept him as a student.

The Chinese woman appeared at our house without warning on a Thursday evening. This was less than one week after our piano arrived. Remember, it and all our other belongings were shipped to China in early June. Lucas, who was nursing a wounded psyche after swim try-outs, was having dinner and watching a movie wrapped in a blanket.

He did me proud! He enthusiastically appeared when called and played two songs for her with a positive attitude and bright smile.

She stood at attention beside him, tapping the rhythm with military precision Her final decree: his wrists need to work.

Taking a cue from Rhett Butler (and my son), I responded, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Liberace he ain’t. His piano teacher, she ain’t.

But Lucas ain’t Michael Phelps either! In summary: Lucas went from being a big fish in a small pond to… plankton.

As noted above, swim team try-outs were a disaster. Like the Titanic!

I knew his school’s swim team was competitive, but really! It was evident we were in hot water from the get-go. Surfer Lucas exited the locker room in tie-dye swim trunks with his goggles perched on his head and his long hair electrified. His competition: lean Asians with shaved heads and Speedos.

Uh, oh.

As someone here in Beijing joked “It was like Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High tried out for swimteam.”

Duuuuuuuuuuude.

Witnessing our son’s complete and utter ass-kicking, Brad moaned, “I knew it was going to be bad, but not this bad.”

The humorous (if you are twisted) highlight: Lucas swimming against children his own age who have been training with Olympic coaches. He quickly lagged behind in the churning water of the swim lane, occasionally treading water, scoping out the human torpedoes in bewilderment.

My favorite image when I could bear to uncover my eyes: Lucas doing laps one-handed, holding his kickboard high above his head as he swam.

What exactly was he doing? All of the other children were swimming…Lucas, though, supposedly couldn’t understand the Chinese coach’s English instructions. This was also his excuse when he attempted to do the butterfly while floating on his back. The good news: he did not drown.

Yet he continued to flail…

I finally receive Lucas national test scores from the first grade. The boy who read Harry Potter at age 5 scored in the 30^th percentile in certain areas of the test. I’d like to say he is an idiot savant, but I am afraid he just qualified as an idiot.

And now I realize why he couldn’t understand the coach at swim try-outs; Lucas is a moron!

I breathlessly and desperately shot an email off to his teacher from last year, Mr. Knepp. He assured me, “Kimberly, Deeeep breath..... HE is no good at standardized tests and he was in the preparation stages of moving at the time of testing.”

My breath was still ragged. And then the teacher wrote, “As far as handwriting... bunch of BS. He will be fine.”

Well, Scarlett, Mr. Knepp clearly doesn’t give a damn either.

He’s in good company! And I started breathing again.

And laughing!

Texting in China

Live report from Beijing:

Problem:

I received a Text Message from China Unicom Help, my mobile phone company. It reads:

流量短信提醒默认按周发送,您将在每周一和每月第一天收到短信提醒。您可直接 
回复ATTX更改为按天提醒,或回复QXTX取消短信提醒功能。

Action Taken:

I dialed 10010 Ext. 2, China Unicom's English Help Desk

Response:

Customer Service Representative #332: "How may I assist you?"

Me: "Hi! I keep receiving text messages from you guys in Chinese and I cannot understand them. Can you tell me what they say?"

Representative: "Certainly. Please read me the text message and I will tell you."

Result:

Me: dumb-founded

With love!

Kimbeijingerly