“How good is your chinese?” is a one of the more typical conversation starters when you meet a new person in China. Because its such a common question, I have developed a standard answer. I always reply, “I speak well within my box, if you get me out of the box, I can’t speak a word.” I find this to be pretty accurate. I equate learning a language, or anything other skill acquisition I guess, to making that box bigger. At a certain point, when one’s language box gets big enough, a new teacher emerges: the taxi-driver.
As any student can tell you, when you get to this point, the taxi-driver becomes a new teacher. They create a perfectly boxed conversational situation, with a limited set of topics and a time limit. Of course, sometimes the driver wont say a word. But more often, questions arise like “What country are you from?” or “Do you like China” “Do you like chinese food?” And as the language box gets bigger, the conversations do too.
Now, I often find myself telling taxi-drivers about Chicago. Due to Yao Ming, basketball is incredibly popular in China, and, due to Michael Jordan, Chicago is a famous city. There’s a bizarre trait amongst the drivers where they all seem to equate fame with size. So when I tell then that Chicago is much smaller than Chengdu, their jaws drop. But its the truth, I tell them, counting the greater Chicago area, the city has about 5 million people. Chengdu has 10.5 million.
Thats 10.5 million people and I know just a handful of them. And my relationships with these people strike a similar comparison with the taxi drivers.
Nearly all my close friends here, like me, come here from far, far away. The topics we discuss cover a much larger area, and the time we spend together is much longer. But ultimately, the relationship between friends here is boxed just like with the taxi-drivers. The only big difference being that the allowed time was enough for to create attachments. So, when the time runs out and the car slows to a stop and its time pay and get out, we often hesitate. We find getting out of the car to be challenging task.
The hardest part of living abroad is the goodbyes. People come and go all the time. Some are here only for a few days, others a month, still others a year. And some of us never leave at all. When I waved goodbye to my parents last September, the number of my friends, acquaintances and enemies dropped straight to zero. 15,000 miles later, I had to start all over again. Since then, I’ve met, befriended, loved and lost a good number of them.
The nature of goodbye is inherent to the life style here, like the weather and smog. It becomes something that each individual has to cope with. Some of us cry, some drink, others cry and drink. Still others don’t sweat it all. They’re here for the very reason that they don’t need to know anybody. These people generally lead entirely boxed lives, its like never going out in the rain for fear of getting wet. And so they never really get anywhere. Granted, the converse is a classic example of sticking ones arm out to just get cut. But thats also just apart of the lesson.
It’s hard to speak Chinese. I got here after two semester of study and no one understood me. I’d ask a simple question and they’d tilt their heads and perk up their ears like a confused dog. The first time I got in cab I told the driver to take me back to my apartment. He didn’t understand a word. For nearly the first month I had to point at a piece of paper with my destination on it to get where I was going. The drivers didn’t understand me, but I’d speak to them with my awful Chinese anyways. They often wouldn’t respond, instead, they’d turn the radio volume up. And then, we’d get to wherever it was that I was going. I’d pay and get out frustrated that I wasn’t understood, not comforted by the fact that I had tried. And then, I go about doing whatever it was that I was doing until it came time to wave down another taxi and try again.
