Wuzhou - Daoshu - Taiping - Mensheng - Yangshuo - Guilin - Quanzhou
Last in Translation
The language barrier is set higher in the Middle Kingdom.
In Hong Kong numerous travellers warned us that it stopped being easy once we entered China Proper. You have to communicate on their terms, they said. No one speaks English. In a world where everyone else I meet speaks three or four languages and looks bored with each, the Chinese would, with a few exceptions, be stubbornly, trend-buckingly monolingual--well, at least we'd have that in common.
Unlike me, they hadn't had the luck of being born to the lingua franca. That didn't matter when language wasn't needed.
We were perfectly able to return a smile, wave back and give the thumbs-up. We needed no language to applaud the courage of a four-year-old who waddled towards us in a small town where adults of all ages stared in shock at Dheiu's skin. And later when, after too much staring or just for the fun of it, Dheiu was able to scare other children with a well-deployed, universal 'Boo!'
For anything beyond this--such as a meal, accommodation or the assurance that we weren't hopelessly lost--we needed more than English.
We travelled and we tried. We improved. In the larger cities of Guangxi, where mechanics stripped motorbikes on the footpath next to tapping seamstresses and rumpled old men playing xiangqi (Chinese chess) on undersized furniture, in the dusty smaller towns that were all outskirts, no centre and filled with dogs as skittish as any smart and edible animal should be, we honed our act like a travelling clown troupe.
The opening move was to repeat phrases from our iPod app. With tongues dulled by the granular distinction of English, we attempted rebounding tones and hard, near-inaudible utterances that drove jaws towards necks and sounded like the beginning of ancient curses. Jiû diàn - Hotel? Wô bú huì shuō hàn yü - I can't speak Chinese.
That usually lead to a pause, a nod, and a response written with some of Mandarin's several thousand characters.
From there any pretence of competence quickly evaporated. We were the strange foreigners now, in the middle of China with clumsy mouths, few words and few clues. Still, in addition to our iPod app we had a phrasebook with a small English-to-Mandarin dictionary, a pocketsized book that reduced the complexities of human needs to 32 pages of crisp colour photos, pen, paper and no real commitment to dignity.
So armed, we communicated. Kind of. It wasn't neat. It couldn't be. It was a mashup of of Pictionary, iPod parroting, Charades and dictionary hunting, played with a few phone-a-friend lifelines, poker-faced bluffs and a lot of laughter. We played to growing crowds.
Of course, it didn't always work. Language would be a lot less than it is if it could be circumvented by two idiots with a couple of pleasantries and a picture of a chicken. We hit some brick walls.
There was the day when we thought we'd each ordered a stir-fry with three ingredients only to be brought out three separate plates, plus rice. Forget the weighting of non-verbal cues people love to talk about. Pointing hadn't helped, as it had for the previous meals. Language was the lynchpin. It was a lesson I had a long time to digest: one plate of greens, one plate of onion and one plate of pork.
Still, thanks largely to the generosity and patience of others, we had an average we were happy with. People seemed to get us; we seemed to get them. In simple things, at least. Dheiu was able to graciously refuse a lively businessman’s offer of his daughter’s hand in marriage. We could explain that we were cycling through China on a trip that would take us to Europe and agree that, yes, it’s a long road. Even when situations devolved into complete incomprehensibility both sides were usually smiling.
A more introspective sort might have dwelled on the humility of our situation, found stronger commonality with those he had seen struggling to communicate, or at least mourned the lost opportunities for connecting. Well. This blog has me. Sometimes it did seem too great an effort when the task was minor--i.e., stabbing blindly at a menu--but mostly it was enjoyable, a challenge in the impenetrable.
Though I did start to wonder if I'd still enjoy by Turkmenistan.
Yangshuo
Yangshuo was a contrast.
There was the scenery we started to encounter a few days out: the usual angular, haze-choked triumph of concrete over nature falling away to reveal crooked limestone mountains jumbled against each other like the bottom teeth of some cartoon grin. This, described by backpackers in Hong Kong, had been the reason for our route, but it wasn't the only difference.
And it wasn't just the voltage: to go from the relentlessly unadorned, un-touristed cities and rural towns of our first week to our first tourist destination, a saccharine gauntlet of souvenir shops and expensive restaurants thronged with cap-coded, flag-led domestic tourists.
The biggest difference was the availability of English.
Before Yangshuo, I had eaten until I nearly vomited because I didn't want to offend or embarrass a cook who I couldn't comunicate with; in Yangshou we Western foods in English menus and sat near Chinese students fluent enough to decry to an American her country's 'fascism'.
Yangshuo was a linguistic reprieve after the one week in my life when the language I was born to was rarely enough. Not that everyone spoke English; English in shopfronts or menus was often ornamental, no more a guarantee it would be spoken than any other graphic. Still, we found ourselves reaching for our iPods much less frequently. And we could always speak with the other backpackers.
It was picturesque. It was free of any real hassles. It was the sort of bubble of unreality we take shelter in from time to time but are glad doesn't define our trip.
After a few days we were happy to get back to our bikes, point away from ironic Mao shirts and cheeseburgers, and return to singing for our supper.
The language barrier is set higher in the Middle Kingdom.
In Hong Kong numerous travellers warned us that it stopped being easy once we entered China Proper. You have to communicate on their terms, they said. No one speaks English. In a world where everyone else I meet speaks three or four languages and looks bored with each, the Chinese would, with a few exceptions, be stubbornly, trend-buckingly monolingual--well, at least we'd have that in common.
Unlike me, they hadn't had the luck of being born to the lingua franca. That didn't matter when language wasn't needed.
We were perfectly able to return a smile, wave back and give the thumbs-up. We needed no language to applaud the courage of a four-year-old who waddled towards us in a small town where adults of all ages stared in shock at Dheiu's skin. And later when, after too much staring or just for the fun of it, Dheiu was able to scare other children with a well-deployed, universal 'Boo!'
For anything beyond this--such as a meal, accommodation or the assurance that we weren't hopelessly lost--we needed more than English.
We travelled and we tried. We improved. In the larger cities of Guangxi, where mechanics stripped motorbikes on the footpath next to tapping seamstresses and rumpled old men playing xiangqi (Chinese chess) on undersized furniture, in the dusty smaller towns that were all outskirts, no centre and filled with dogs as skittish as any smart and edible animal should be, we honed our act like a travelling clown troupe.
The opening move was to repeat phrases from our iPod app. With tongues dulled by the granular distinction of English, we attempted rebounding tones and hard, near-inaudible utterances that drove jaws towards necks and sounded like the beginning of ancient curses. Jiû diàn - Hotel? Wô bú huì shuō hàn yü - I can't speak Chinese.
That usually lead to a pause, a nod, and a response written with some of Mandarin's several thousand characters.
From there any pretence of competence quickly evaporated. We were the strange foreigners now, in the middle of China with clumsy mouths, few words and few clues. Still, in addition to our iPod app we had a phrasebook with a small English-to-Mandarin dictionary, a pocketsized book that reduced the complexities of human needs to 32 pages of crisp colour photos, pen, paper and no real commitment to dignity.
So armed, we communicated. Kind of. It wasn't neat. It couldn't be. It was a mashup of of Pictionary, iPod parroting, Charades and dictionary hunting, played with a few phone-a-friend lifelines, poker-faced bluffs and a lot of laughter. We played to growing crowds.
Of course, it didn't always work. Language would be a lot less than it is if it could be circumvented by two idiots with a couple of pleasantries and a picture of a chicken. We hit some brick walls.
There was the day when we thought we'd each ordered a stir-fry with three ingredients only to be brought out three separate plates, plus rice. Forget the weighting of non-verbal cues people love to talk about. Pointing hadn't helped, as it had for the previous meals. Language was the lynchpin. It was a lesson I had a long time to digest: one plate of greens, one plate of onion and one plate of pork.
Still, thanks largely to the generosity and patience of others, we had an average we were happy with. People seemed to get us; we seemed to get them. In simple things, at least. Dheiu was able to graciously refuse a lively businessman’s offer of his daughter’s hand in marriage. We could explain that we were cycling through China on a trip that would take us to Europe and agree that, yes, it’s a long road. Even when situations devolved into complete incomprehensibility both sides were usually smiling.
A more introspective sort might have dwelled on the humility of our situation, found stronger commonality with those he had seen struggling to communicate, or at least mourned the lost opportunities for connecting. Well. This blog has me. Sometimes it did seem too great an effort when the task was minor--i.e., stabbing blindly at a menu--but mostly it was enjoyable, a challenge in the impenetrable.
Though I did start to wonder if I'd still enjoy by Turkmenistan.
Yangshuo
Yangshuo was a contrast.
There was the scenery we started to encounter a few days out: the usual angular, haze-choked triumph of concrete over nature falling away to reveal crooked limestone mountains jumbled against each other like the bottom teeth of some cartoon grin. This, described by backpackers in Hong Kong, had been the reason for our route, but it wasn't the only difference.
And it wasn't just the voltage: to go from the relentlessly unadorned, un-touristed cities and rural towns of our first week to our first tourist destination, a saccharine gauntlet of souvenir shops and expensive restaurants thronged with cap-coded, flag-led domestic tourists.
The biggest difference was the availability of English.
Before Yangshuo, I had eaten until I nearly vomited because I didn't want to offend or embarrass a cook who I couldn't comunicate with; in Yangshou we Western foods in English menus and sat near Chinese students fluent enough to decry to an American her country's 'fascism'.
Yangshuo was a linguistic reprieve after the one week in my life when the language I was born to was rarely enough. Not that everyone spoke English; English in shopfronts or menus was often ornamental, no more a guarantee it would be spoken than any other graphic. Still, we found ourselves reaching for our iPods much less frequently. And we could always speak with the other backpackers.
It was picturesque. It was free of any real hassles. It was the sort of bubble of unreality we take shelter in from time to time but are glad doesn't define our trip.
After a few days we were happy to get back to our bikes, point away from ironic Mao shirts and cheeseburgers, and return to singing for our supper.
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