My Chinese Tutor

My blog has recently taken a bit of, how should I say, "flack" for not being updated in a while and being too similar to Ow's in content of posts. I will remedy one problem here while further exacerbating the other.

Let me tell you about my experience learning Mandarin. It has been quite different than Ow's especially given that I am white and really have no expectation by others that I will speak even a tiny bit. This luckily gets me lots of praise and smiles when I'm able to utter just the smallest phrases. A few "hen hao's" and "ni hen piao liang" have gotten me very far.

My Chinese instruction has come largely from a tutor that my company has been generous enough to hire for 5 hours a week. Growing up, French was always my least favorite subject and I expected to dislike my Chinese classes but I've actually enjoyed them so far as a nice break in the middle of the day from work - and largely due to my entertaining, and somewhat flirty, tutor. These are the engineers at my table at my office.

I first knew something was up with my tutor when we started to learn how to ask "where did you go." In our questions, sometimes we will role play asking about each other's sisters and brothers even though she has none and I only have sisters. But other times we give real answers to questions, so there is always this strange blurry line when we're not quite sure whether we're being serious.  For example, I asked my tutor where she went on Friday night. She replied "to the gym." Serious? Just helping me with vocabulary? Her response was accompanied with the famous "asian crying eyes" pose:

I believe this was trying to imply that she wished she had someone to go out with on Friday, but I wasn't sure. However, the next tutoring session took things further.

"Where did you go" was somewhere around chapter 3 in our book. I flipped ahead to Chapter 4 and noticed that the words for "friends", "wife/husband", and "boyfriend/girlfriend" were coming up. Oh boy.

This next lesson she said "Time to practice, suppose." and then in Chinese "Where are you from?"

"America." My real answer, obviously.

"Where is your girlfriend from?"

Having none, I said, "My girlfriend is from France."

"Where is your wife from?"

Trying to practice the name of the country that I am in, I said "My wife is from China." Lots of laugher by my tutor.

"Now we switch." She said.

I asked, "Where is your sister from?" knowing she had none. One child policy in China.

"I have no sisters. But suppose, my sister is from China."

"Where is your brother from?"

"My brother is from Germany." Mutual laughter.

"Where is your boyfriend from?" Upon this question, silence. My tutor gets out her pen and starts drawing on a sheet of paper. The drawing appears to be a picture of the planet Saturn. She then proceeds to teach me the word for Saturn in Chinese. Finally, she draws an alien complete with antennas and says that her boyfriend is an alien from Saturn. Then again, this pose (thanks asianposes.com):

It gets worse.

Normally, she writes down words on the fly onto a sheet of paper as we are learning, as if writing on a chalk board. But I came into my following Wednesday lesson with a particular sentence already written on paper. It was the sentence for "My phone number is XXX-XXXX-XXXX." It contained her real phone number. We practiced the usual Q & A routine and strangely didn't reference the usual textbook during this lesson. I thought that was a bit strange so afterwards I looked at the book.

The good news: the book does indeed go over how to ask for someone's phone number in Chapter 11. The bad news: we hadn't yet passed Chapter 5.

And then finally today, things started to get very blatant. Somewhere around Chapter 7 in talking about what to eat and drink I excitedly learned how to say "beef noodles", "niu rou mian", one of my favorite Chinese dishes. I tell her how much I like beef noodles and that's really the only food vocabulary word I need to learn how to say. Laughter. Then, the usual Q & A exchange.

She says, "Time to practice, suppose. What do you eat?"

"I eat beef noodles."

"What does your wife drink?"

"My wife drinks beer." Ha ha ha.

"What does your girlfriend drink?"

"My girlfriend drinks bei jiu." Bei jiu is an extremely strong Chinese liquor. More mutual laughter.

"OK, now we switch."

"What does your sister eat?"

"My sister eats carrots." She replied.

"What does your boyfriend eat?"

She replies, first in English "Oh, you are getting back at me." Then in Chinese, "My boyfriend eats... niu rou mian."