Learn Yu Wen Learn Chinese language and culture.

Studying a foreign language goes beyond learning how to translate your mother tongue. Without studying the foreign language’s origin and their culture, you will never be able to talk like a native. Waitresses have replied to my “谢谢(xiexie)” with an English “No thanks” numerous times here in China. At first I took this as an insult: what do you mean, are you rejecting my thank you? However, I came to realize they were just speaking Chinese with English words and trying to say “不谢(buxie)” which literally means “no thanks” and should be translated into “no problem”.

As plenty of mistakes happen when Chinese people speak in Chinglish, there are also numerous mistakes that us Americans make when speaking Englese (English Chinese). One of the difficult problems that many Americans have is adjusting to the use of titles when addressing people. It is more polite to call your teacher “Teacher” than “Mr. Zhang” in Chinese. A driver or repairman should be called “Master”, a waitress should be called “Waitress” and extended family titles need about a lifetime to get straight.

While learning someone’s name and using it to address someone in America is a sign of respect, it is often viewed in an opposite light here in China. The correct title is much more respectful here. Therefore, family gatherings require spending a long time to “叫人(jiaoren)”or “call people by their titles”. During extended family gatherings, a great deal of time has been spent trying to figure out what I should call each family member. Often times, my entire conversation with a distant relative has exclusively focused on this topic. Therefore, these entire conversations would make little to no sense in English:

“This is your wife’s father’s male cousin on his mother’s side, so you should call him ‘father’s male cousin on his mother’s side’.”

The concept of “foreigners” in China is much different than it is in the USA. “Foreigners” typically refers to White people in China (as well as Korea and Japan from my understanding). While Japanese are called 日本人(ribenren)， Indians are called 印度人(yinduren)，Black people (no matter if they’re Americans or Zimbabweans) are called 黑人(heiren)， White people (no matter if they’re Americans or Russians) are called 外国人(waiguoren=foreigner) or 老外(laowai=foreigner)。

While I believe many aspects of America are more similar to urban China than Russia, most Chinese will ask me if “foreigners” like this or like that. I try to explain that “foreigners” don’t share a collective culture, environment, or set of experiences. However, I doubt that I’ve convinced many Chinese that us basketball-loving, KFC-eating, capitalist-driven Chinese and Americans have more in common than Americans and Russians.

China is a country that is almost entirely made up of one ethnic group (92% Han Chinese), and most people find it difficult to differentiate between different White ethnicities. That coupled with the fact that most White Americans are a mix of many White ethnic backgrounds, causes most Chinese to refer to all White people as one similar group of “foreigners”.

Do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese? Many Americans who consider themselves to be highly educated will ask me this question when I tell them that I can speak Chinese. However, Chinese consider both Mandarin and Cantonese to be the same language. Sure, most people from Beijing can’t speak Cantonese and most people from Guang Zhou can’t speak Mandarin, but both “languages” use han zi.

Han zi is what ties the country together into one Chinese language. Almost every city throughout the country has its own dialect, and Cantonese is officially considered a dialect. Shanghainese, Suzhounese and Nanjingnese are other dialects that are as equally misunderstood by the people of Beijing.

I taught English to adults my first year in China. During this time, most of my students were from Suzhou, but I also had students from Taiwan, Japan, Beijing, and all over China. I picked up a few words in Suzhounese my first year and it amazed me how my out-of-towner students could not understand this “dialect” in the least. I even translated some Suzhounese into Mandarin for one of my students from Beijing one time when a Suzhounese student was yelling, “man ha ku!” into her cell phone. The Beijingnese student asked what that meant and I replied, “hen hao kan.”

Even the grammar is different between these different dialects. While the question marker “吗” is placed at the end of questions in Mandarin, it starts the questions in Suzhounese.

On a trip to Macau, I met a couple of Macaunese of Portuguese decent who were chatting away in Portuguese. At that time, my Spanish was fairly decent and I asked them a question in Spanish. They replied in Portugese, but I was able to understand and we had a lengthy chat together using two different languages. These two languages are much more similar than many of the different Chinese dialects.

After all of that traveling, I needed to settle down a bit. It was time to get an apartment. A local girl from Suzhou named Azalea who had majored in English in college assisted Jake and me in our apartment search.  Although we were barely acquainted, Azalea spent three full days trekking around Suzhou with us in order to help us find an apartment.

I have mentioned that there is a lack of abidance to rules in China, but don’t get that confused with a lack of courtesy. Once you have met someone here in China, they will go way out of their way to assist you in any means possible.

Azalea helped us find a fully furnished two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with a study and large living room on the border of the SND (Suzhou New District) for RMB 2800/month (aprox. $350). It easily trumped my previous place, which was an unfurnished basement apartment in Boston that cost $1200/month. Over a month’s time, I had gone from a financially strapped college kid to a member of the upper-middle class. China was treating me well.

We decided to stay at the Lu Dao hotel in Xi’an, and lo and behold there was a hotel employee at the train station who tried to get us to stay there. That worked out well. In Xi’an we saw the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, and the Terracotta Warriors. The city oozed with history.

All of the historic sights attracted a lot of backpackers, and there were tons of Westerners on the streets of Xi’an. We met some Australians at our hotel, and joined them for a night out. Australians aren’t reserved when it comes to drinking. They helped us order a few bottles that night, and we probably had a few drinks more than we should have. The next morning, I woke up with a headache and Jake woke up without his passport. Our travels were starting to wear us down and we wanted to return to Suzhou.

We knew that there was a 6:45 pm train and decided to rush to the station to get tickets. However, we found that there were no tickets left, and they were all sold out for the next three days. In China, you learn to never say never. We talked to the hotel manager, a guy who called himself Jim Beam, about our predicament, and he assured us that he had some guanxi and could pull some strings. With his aid and an extra RMB 50, we were able to buy sleeper car tickets to Suzhou for the next day.