A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (8 page)

free world
esp. US hist.
non-Communist countries.

free world

You say:

“I feel incredibly lucky to be with you. We’re going to have loads of exciting adventures together. Our first big adventure will be in west Wales. I’ll show you the sea. I’ll teach you to swim because it is shameful that a peasant girl cannot swim. I’ll show you the dolphins in the sea, and the seals with their babies. I want you to experience the beauty of the peace and quiet in a Welsh cottage. I think you will love it there.”

You also say:

“Then I want to take you to Spain and France. I know that you’ll love them. I wish we could live over there for a while.”

Later you say:

“I feel so good about the love that you and I have with each other because it happened so quickly and spontaneously, like a forest fire.”

And you say:

“I just love the way you are.”

Everything good so far, but from one thing—you don’t understand my visa limited situation. I am native Chinese from mainland of China. I am not of
free world
. And I only have student visa for a year here. I not able just leave London English language school and go live somewhere only have trees and sea, although is beautiful. And I can’t travel to Spain and France just to fun—I need show these embassy officer my bank account to apply my Europe visa. And my bank statements is never qualify for them. You a free man of free world. I am not free, like you.

custom
 
 
n.
1.
a long-established activity or action;
2.
usual habit;
3.
regular use of a shop or business.

custom

The café is name greasy spoon, Seven Seas. All windows is foggy from the steam. You order tea as soon as you walk into. Noisy. Babies. Mothers. Couples. Lonely old man. You are opening the newspaper and start drink thick English Breakfast milky tea. And me being quiet.

I want talk to you. But you are reading paper. I have to respect your hobby.

“So where are you from?” I ask handsome waiter in white suit.

“Cyprus.” He smiles.

“Are these chefs also from Cyprus?”

“Yes.”

“So your Cyprus chefs cook English breakfast for English?”

“Yes, we Cypriots cook breakfast for the English because they can’t cook.”

I see from open kitchen that sausages are sizzling on the pan. And mushrooms, and scrambled eggs, they are all waiting for being devoured.

I love these old oily cafés around Hackney. Because you can see the smokes and steams coming out from the coffee machine or kitchen all day long. That means life is being blessed.

In this café, there is a television set above everybody’s head. The TV on but doesn’t have any images, only can hear BBC news speaking scrambly from the white snow screen. It is a little disturbing for me, but it seem everybody in this place enjoy it. Nobody here suggest fix the TV.

Suddenly white-snow-screen changes to green-snow-screen, and the BBC voice continues. A man nearby eating some bacons with the
Daily Mirror
says to the chef:

“That’s an improvement.”

“Yes, Sir,” replies the chef. “Well, at least you don’t have to eat your breakfast, read the paper and watch the TV all at the same time.”

“That’s true.” The man chew his bacons and concentrates on page with picture of half naked blonde smiling.

I want to talk. I can’t help stop talking. I have to stop you reading.

“You know what? I came this café before, sit here whole afternoon,” I say.

“Doing what?” You put down the paper, annoyed.

“I read a porn magazine called
Pet House
for three hours, because I studied English from those stories. Checking the dictionary really took lots of time.”

You are surprised. “I don’t think you should read porn mags in a café. People will be shocked.”

“I don’t care.”

“But you can’t do that. You’ll make other people feel embarrassed.”

“Then why they sell these magazines in every little corner shop? Is also even sold in the big supermarket.”

I believe everything to do with the sexuality is not shameful in West.

The man next to us finishes his bacons, half naked woman photo with huge breasts still being exposed.

“I think I go now buy another porn magazine,” I say, standing up.

“OK, you do whatever you want,” you say shaking head. “This is Hackney after all. People will forgive you for not being
au fait
with the nuances of British customs.”

You dry up your cup of tea.

fart
 
 
vulgar slang n.
emission of gas from the anus–
v.
emit gas from the anus.

fart

Suddenly the man next table reading newspaper with naked-breast-woman made a huge noise.

“What is that noise name?” I ask you.

You cannot understand what I mean. Too much involving in looking house property advertisement on the newspaper.

I try to explain: “How to say a word which represents a kind of noise from the arse?”

“What?”

“You know that. You know it is a wind comes from between two legs.”

“It’s called a fart.”

Fart?

The old man who reads the newspaper stares at us for several seconds, then buries himself into the paper again.

I never hear English person says anything about fart. They must be too shameful to pronounce that sound. There are lots of words we used in China so often, but here people never use it. Even English dictionary say it is a “taboo.”

“
” is
fart
in Chinese. It is the word made up from two parts. 
 is a symbol of a body with tail, and underneath that 
 represent two legs. That means fart, a kind of Chi. If a person have that kind of Chi regularly in his daily life that means he is very healthy. Chi (
), everything to do with Chi is very important to us Chinese. We had so many words related to Chi, like Tai-Chi, or Chi-Gong, or Chi-Chang.

Yes,
fart
, I want remember this word. Is the response means you enjoys a good homely cooking, after big meal. Mans in China loves to use this word everyday.

You are still concentrating on your
Guardian
, something serious about the terrorism. I am talking to nobody. The old man next table sees I am fed up, so says to me:

“I’m off, darling. Do you want my paper?”

He leaves the café but turns his head looking at me again.

I pick the newspaper from his table. There is a headline:

LOST FOR WORDS—THE LANGUAGE OF AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

It is a story about ninety-eight-year-old Chinese woman just died. She is the last speaker of womans-only language: “Nushu.” This four-hundred-year-old secret language being used by Chinese womans to express theys innermost feeling. The paper say because no womans practise that secret codes anymore, it marks that language died after her death.

I want create my own “Nushu.” Maybe this notebook which I use for putting new English vocabularies is a “Nushu.” Then I have my own
privacy
. You know my body, my everyday’s life, but you not know my “Nushu.”

home
 
 
n.
1.
a place where one lives;
2.
an institution for the care of the elderly, orphans, etc.–
adj.
1.
of one’s home, birthplace, or native country;
2.
sport played on one’s own ground.

home

“I am going to go to see a family nearby, do you want to come?” you ask me.

“Family? What kind of family? Not your family?”

“No. They are Bengalis.”

Is not very normal you want see other family. Because you not really like family concept. You say family against community. You say family is a selfish product.

It seems that you like other’s family more than you like your own. In this Bengali family, you know those kids for many years, since you worked as youth worker. In a house, between Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road, old Bengali mother raises ten children. Is big three-floor house with ten little rooms. Five childrens are from same mother, and another five childrens are from another woman but with the same man. The father, a Bengali married man, came to London twenty-five years ago and remarried to this mother in London. He ran some business between England and Bangladesh. Then he died, left one family in London, one family in Bangladesh. But the five Bangladesh-living children want come to London, so they were brought here living with this London mother. These kids are from three to twenty-four. The youngest one was born in 2000. How strange a child born of that year! He only can say “bye-bye” in English. The oldest one just graduated from the Goldsmith College. He studied Politics and he wants become lawyer.

“I not understand how mother can raise ten children without a husband,” I say in little voice. “And she doesn’t have any job either!”

“That’s why I like this family. They just get on with their life without making any fuss. They have a small business making earrings and necklaces from home.”

“And two groups of children from different mother, they don’t fight at all?”

“No. They enjoy sharing life together, not like other families. I wish my family was like this.”

“Do you hate your family?” I ask.

“Well, I don’t like them. They are sad people. I broke away from them many years ago.”

You go into silent.

I can’t imagine what like to break up with my family. Even though my mother very bad temper and make me pain, my life relies on them, and I can’t survive without them.

“Do you want have family with me?” I ask.

“Aren’t we a family now?” you say.

“No, a real family.”

“What is a real family?”

‘“House, husband and wife, then have some children, then cooking dinner together, then travel together…”

“I thought the Chinese were supposed to be Communists.”

You seem like making fun. What you mean?

We look at each other, no more discussion on this.

You say
salaam malai coom
to the old mother. The mother, she is covered in old green Sari. Her skin is deep brown and lots of wrinkles on her face. She never any education and never speak one word English. She always smiles and very little talking. When her children talks in English loudly in TV room and watching BBC she just sit there, peacefully watching, like she understand they say. Bathroom flush doesn’t work and shower doesn’t work. There is not money to fix house. But it seem fine for them. It seem their life is not messy at all. They use cold-water-shower once a week, and they don’t use toilet paper because they always use water to clean then tip bucket down loo.

There are drug dealers doing business outside of their windows, and many drunkens pass by with bottles clunkling every night, but the family not get any harm.

In Chinese, it is the same word “
” ( jia) for “home” and “family” and sometimes including “house.” To us, family is same thing as house, and this house is their only home too. “
,” a roof on top, then some legs and arms inside. When you write this character down, you can feel those legs and arms move around underneath the roof. Home, is a dwelling house for the family to live.

But English, it’s different. In
Roget’s Thesaurus
, “Family” related to:
subdivision, greed, genealogy, parental, posterity, community, nobility
.

It seems like that “family” doesn’t mean a place. Maybe in West people just move round from one house to another house? Always looking for a house, maybe that’s the lifelong job for Westerners.

I keep telling you I need a home. Your face look gloomy, and seem disappointed that you cannot make me happy.

“But I am your home,” you say.

“Yes, but you always move around, and you don’t want live in this house.”

“You’re right. I’m tired of living in the city.” Then you add, “I can’t see myself getting married either.”

“But I like city and like to have marriage. So that mean we can’t have a home together,” I confirm.

“No, I didn’t say that,” you say.

You look distant to me.

Love mean home. Or, home mean love?

The fear of without home. Maybe that why I love you? The simple fear?

I am building the Great Wall around you and me because I am too scared to lose the home. I been living in that big fear since my childhood.

You barely ask my childhood. To you it a blind zone. When I look back my childhood I realise how violence of my emotional world was.

We were peasants. My parents worked in rice fields. They not making shoes until I graduated from high school. After they understood they never earn money from their fields, they sold fields cheaply, and start making small business. I always being beaten up by big girls. In village people show their emotion by hitting and shouting to each other. My father hit me sometimes, also my mother. That was normal.

We were poor. The food was not enough. I was frightened to eat more than my mother expected in every meal. Occasionally there was some fried porks on the table, and it smelled like heaven. But I dared not to reach my chopsticks to the meat, which prepared only for my father. Man needs meat and man is more important than woman, of course. I looked at pork and my heart was squeezed by the desire. I give away anything for could bite one piece fried pork! My mother always watched out on the table. I hated her, but also frightened by her. She would beat my chopsticks if I reached that pork.

My mother had very bad temper. Maybe she hated me because I was an useless girl. She cannot have the second children because we have one child policy. Maybe that’s why she beated me up. For her disappointment. Life to her was unfair too. She was beated up by her mother for marrying my father. She was deprive everything which belonged to her since she married him.

When I grow up from teenage, I couldn’t trust anything and anybody. Maybe I even don’t have concept of “trust” at all. It not existing in my dictionary. First, I couldn’t trust my country. We told that we are proud of thousands of years history but next day we saw beautiful old temples being demolished into ruins. All old things have to be demolished and to be cleaned up. Does that mean our past value nothing anymore?

I need make my own home, a home with my lover. But I don’t know how keep that home, all the time, for rest of my life. I’m scared I will lose that love. The fear is like poison in the every corner in my heart. That what you dislike.

“You should trust me. I’m not going to fall in love with somebody else,” you say.

“But who knows? I can trust you, but I don’t trust when you are seduced by someone,” I say.

“But you have to trust me,” you insist.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you not fall in love with new person. You can trust me, but perhaps I fall in love with the new person. So what is trust really?”

“Well, if we fall in love with a new person, then that’s fine. That’s not something we can control.” You look bit cool.

“What you mean that’s fine? What you mean we can’t control? We can, if we want!” I say, as strong as woman warrior.

So we change subject. We know we can’t go anywhere. Anything else we can talk under one same roof? Apart from the lovely tea, salad, and learning new vocabularies?

“When is your national day?” I ask.

“Why on earth do you want to know that?”

“Not important day for you?”

“Not particularly. We call it St. George’s Day. It is some time in April or May, I can’t remember.”

I don’t know who is St. George. Or maybe he is someone like Chairman Mao. I don’t want bother myself to know all these dead people.

So we are speechless again.

“So, when is your birthday?” you ask me.

“July 23, but that’s not my real birthday. My mother only know my birthday in Chinese moon calendar date and when Western calendar system introduced into our society she forgot.”

“Seriously?” Your face is lighted.

“Yes, we never had birthday cake in our family for ceremony so why you need the date of birth? Only because the official registration,” I say.

“But what about your passport? What date is written on your passport?”

“I wrote any Western date I think of and authority just print it on my passport.” How exciting to you, this subject.

I carry on: “My father doesn’t know his birthday, because his parents died when he was little child. My mother know her birthday is on the fifteenth day of seventh moon, is the day of Hungry Ghost Festival. So all her life is about keeping away from that hungry day.”