Having almost certainly overcome last week's food poisoning (my brother Sean said I didn't have to come this far to get bad Chinese food...he can get it right in Rome), I am back on my bike,riding up and down the access lanes of the HaiDian district and every now & then while I'm focusing on weaving in & out of the bikes, scooters, vendor carts, taxis, buses, and people who find the perfectly lovely gigantic empty sidewalks dull and feel the need to walk on the wild side by risking their lives walking in traffic, I stop and wonder:
What must these people THINK when they see me coming?
Say you're an old Chinese guy, out for a ride in the early evening, going the "wrong way" along the bike path because your wife forgot to buy the leeks this morning and she's already begun cooking the beef and you live on the same side of the road as the Merry Mart, so you always use that side for going back and forth for your groceries...you've almost arrived at your apartment complex and here is this forty-something white woman with orange hair weaving around all of the scooter-driving daredevils saying "Seriously?!" when they rub against her rear tire.
I don't know what everyone else thinks, but today's old guy got within two feet of me and laughed in my face.
Frankly, it was a little scary...I was hoping it was friendly but the laugh definitely had a tinge of maniacal.
It made me think about communication, hair color, and why "they" don't learn "our" language.
About a month ago my roots were getting pretty obvious so I asked the cute Mandarin teacher in our office, whose hair and nails are always perfect, where she gets her hair done. She told me about her salon and even went there on her lunch break to make an appointment for me. I was very excited as I walked into the upscale shop & was greeted by her very fancy stylist...whose name I cannot remember and could not pronounce correctly when I knew it...and it became obvious in about half a second that he doesn't speak English. Between my friend on the phone, a moderately good English speaking "interpreter"/stylist, and several very interested other patrons, I managed to be seated, draped, and given a book of swatches to choose my color from. I tried to ask them to use the color Dwayne sent with me from Albany....no good. I asked them to simply match the color as best they could...no good. Finally I picked something very close to my usual and said, "this one looks OK."
The "interpreter" said:"Do you like red? Because--it will be red."
"Sure, a little red is OK..."
It looked like my typical brown with a bit of copper to me...
By the time I left the place I had a really great cut...and orange hair. It later occurred to me that the swatches must be what it looks like on black hair...strip the black down to mousy brown, and you get my exact shade of pumpkin.
Sophie(the Mandarin teacher) said:
"I think maybe next time I should go with you."
Just after the maniacal old guy, I was passed on the path by the Merry Mart van, which caused me to utter my usual Merry-Mart-Van curse ("Stupid freakin' Merry Mart Van")...a residual of one day before bicycles, when AJ & I went shopping on the way home from work and, loaded down with huge sacks of groceries, attempted to catch a ride home on the Merry Mart Van which, the signs assure us, is a free shuttle for Merry Mart customers. Upon arriving at the Merry Mart Van holding area, I tried out my Chinese skills on a man leaning on one of the vehicles, asking him if his was the correct shuttle for our apartment complex: "Yicheng Dongyuan ma?"
This guy also laughed. And pointed down the road in the direction of our building. We never did figure out whether it was his attempt to get the lazy Meiguoren (Meiguorens?) to walk the (extremely long)block home, or if the shuttles were done for the day...it was like 9:30..
Anyway all of this (mis) communication has really made me think about people who say "they really need to learn our language".
What if...they're trying to?
Very funny ..... and true!
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