An unexpected Chinese language partner :

I was sitting at the lakefront in Tuanjiehu park, one of the green oasis I frequently find refuge in. The weather was a treat, the weeping willow’s scent in the air and I in for a lengthy brainstorming. I was in the ‘flow’.

But then an elderly man passed by. I noticed him because the rhythm of his step changed, slowed down, broke. I looked up and saw that he was staring. Foreigner! Unusual, yes, but his reaction was unusual as well. Having seen that I saw that he was staring he did not turn around, pretend nothing had happened and walk on. Seemingly working up all his courage he said in Chinese: “Do you speak Chinese?”. Since I answered, he knew that I spoke it, some, and there it was: the smile. He relaxed, opened up and off we went to what turned out to be an almost 2 hour long conversation.

He started off telling me that he was taking English classes with an 88 year old Chinese woman who had emigrated to the US, just to immigrate back to the Middle Kingdom some 22 years later. Unfortunately, as my interlocutor said, she gave up the teaching this year. “Early retirement, you know” he remarked jokingly. But hey, he is still studying, while sitting in the park, mostly alone. His count stands at 1000 out of the 2000 English words considered worthwhile studying by his manual, an English manual for high school kids.

I was impressed. He has been studying English pronunciation with the same diligence as everyone willing to be understood in Chinese needs to study the pronunciation of the latter. He was hungry and foolish; a role model of the young! I asked questions, he answered and the inverse. Here some of the content.

He started studying the language of Shakespeare and Britney Spears 2 years ago because he is determined to be a good host. In 2008, time when China intends to return to the world stage with a big bang and the number of foreign visitors is likely to skyrocket, he wants to be of help for ‘foreign friends’ trying to find their way around the capital of the north, Beijing. His attitude and language skills will make him a wonderful host, I am sure.

He also talked about his youth. One month old he was, when his father saved him from the Japanese artillery that had targeted, among others, his home. 8 years later, meaning in 1945, he was selling tobacco to the same Japanese. He said that ‘Tobacco’ was one of the easiest English words for him to learn, since the Japanese word is, apparently, a transliteration of the English ‘tobacco’, a word he had heard all to frequent from Japanese soldiers on the lookout for a smoke. Does he have resentments about the cruelties committed by Japanese soldiers at that time, which are still largely unacknowledged by Japan? He doesn’t. He has not forgotten, but forgiven and rather than the past it was our talk about the future, including his English language skills, that made his eyes blink. I was impressed, again.

Work? Standards! He was working for the state, helping the latter to make sure that standards were kept. Day in and day out he checked whether the 1kg weights at local shops were indeed 1kg, whether the nailpolishlike Baijiu really contained 40% of alcohol (I picked a random number), and the bottle the 3dl, as stated on its etiquette.

If his attitude, at his age, after a life like his, was standard we would have even more reasons to be excited about the present and thrilled about the future. A great afternoon, and only one of the numerous stories out there. I’ll meet him again. Next week, same time, same place.

language, chinese, language partner, china