When Understanding Each Other Is All About Timing
Friday, October 17th 2008
By Katrina Beikoff*
I was doing did my best, in the nicest possible way, to fob off the agency seeking my daughter’s participation in a children’s clothing catalogue photo shoot on a kindy day.
‘‘Very sorry. Timing just doesn’t work for us,’’ I texted to the agent.
Her response was quite unexpected: ”Who is timing?”
It just goes to show that there are times when even the most benign of conversations between non-Chinese speakers and locals in China throw up plenty of opportunity for misunderstandings.
It’s like so much of the Chinese to English translation seen out and about in Shanghai.
We saw the changes made to English-language Chinese menus across the country in the lead up to the Beijing Olympic Games in August.
No more “Bean Curd Made by a Pock-marked Woman”, “Husband and Wife’s Lung Slice” and “Chicken Without Sexual Life.” Instead they turned into the much less exotic, and not literally translated, ”Spicy Tofu”, “Beef and Ox Tripe in Chili Sauce” and “Steamed Pullet” on restaurant menus.
At Shanghai’s Yuyuan Gardens they add a little extra flavor by mixing the exotic descriptions with typos, which I didn’t notice until I saw the sign describing my enjoyable meal of dumplings as containing ”Lusty Crad Ovaries”.
I’m constantly amused by the writing on T-shirts and other clothing sported by mainly young men and women around town — ”Minnie Mouse is widely known as a Mickey Friend,” ”Not Nothing”, ”Having Fund Some”.
Also those I’ve seen on more mature women ”Thing Hot”, ”How There?” and on babies ”Some grow go,” and ”Cute baby smells.”
With my mobile phone, I was issued with an instruction manual containing helpful information on what to do ”if you think this phone has everyone is bread….” I figured perhaps it should be thrown away immediately, not eaten.
And, thankfully, I have managed not to be ejected from any taxis for being ”mentally diseased” or ”liquor head”.
For Golden Week, we went to Beijing, and everyone seemed to still be in a mood of post-Olympic jubilation and greeted us warmly with ”welcome for coming”.
We loved the capital, but managed to avoid numerous offerings of ”braised dork” at restaurant stops we took between touring the sites.
With two blonde children in tow, getting around proved far more difficult in Beijing than here in Shanghai with what seemed like millions of people descending on the kids to take their photograph, or pick them up and hug them.
We adopted the same rule for pushing the pram through the crowds in Beijing as you do for four-wheel-driving through soft sand: Keep moving. If you stop, you never get out.
The majesty of The Great Wall of China was without doubt the highlight of the trip.
Upon the wall — in the midst of being accosted by swarms of locals who wanted pictures of our children, a Chinese woman pulling my arm to get my attention as she thrust her child at me who was bellowing ‘hello’ to practice his English, my son trying to wend his way through my legs to avoid the cameras going off in his direction, my daughter calling out ”this is the last one!” and she struck a pose for the camera-toting crowds, fetching peanut butter sandwiches from the backpack and trying to snatch a glimpse of the view — my partner asked me to marry him.
It just goes to show that despite whatever else is going on in China — the cacophony, the need to keep an eye on the children, the desire to enjoy the surrounds — there are times when there is no room for misunderstanding.
I said ”yes”.
*Katrina Beikoff is a Shanghai-based writer and mother of two. She writes fortnightly for shanghaimamas.com
View latest in Articles.
