Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers

So there is about six or seven people all together. Some are your friends. Two of them from my English language school. One is from Japan called Yoko. Yoko has very slim cat eyes, and neat cut fringe covered her forehead like a hat. Her hairs has lots different colours like red and green and blue. She looks like punk, or maybe she is real punk. Another one is from Korea called Kim Yan Zhen. Kim has very pale face, and she looks whiter than any white people. These two are famous in our language school because their English is impossible. Mrs. Margaret say my English even is better than them. I think maybe because when Japanese girl speaks English, people would think she is speaking Japanese. And when Korea girl speaks English, she keeps nod her head and bow her back to show the modest, but without giving anything verbal. But anyhow, they are kind of my comrades, although Korea hates Japanese, and Japanese were not friendly with Chinese. Most important thing, they use very simple words. Yoko sits down and say, “Are we eat?” Kim Yan Zhen looks at the hotpot and asks, “Cook, you?” I like that. I like people speak that way. So we understand each other easily.

It is a meal between East and West, though three Orientals only can speak foreign language to communicate.

It is worship of eating, is the exactly word to describe this.

I make spicy red chilli soup for the hotpot, by putting in gingers, garlic, spring onions, leeks, dried mushroom and chillis to stew the soup. After the soup becomes boiling I put in tofu and lamb. With hotpot, lamb is essential for the soup. It gives the form content. Otherwise hotpot is the interesting form of meaningless. Is a pity that you are vegetarian , and all of your friends are also vegetarians in this room.

While I am cooking the lamb in the pot, you and your friend just look at it, and put the uncooked carrots straight into the mouth. In Chinese, we say the way you cut the meat reflects the way you live. They must be timid people.

Here is the birthday gift from you. Two book. The first is The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde. You say is good book for me to start with, to understand English writing easily. The second one is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. You say it can be read later on, when my English becomes very good.

Then Japanese girl Yoko gives me small little box. It is delicate, like perfume box. On the cover it says:

Waterproof Personal Massager

MADE IN CHINA

What’s this waterproof? Battery? Watch? There is picture on the cover: it is something looks like small cucumber but slightly bended.

Curiously, I open the box. It comes out a smooth plastic thing look exactly like small cucumber. On the bottom there are some buttons: on/off/fast/slow. Is it toothbrush machine? I put into my mouth, but it not fit easily. A massage machine for facial beauty? Or for back and neck aching? Maybe the instruction will tell me.

I unfold the little piece of instruction.

Natural Contours-it’s great to be a woman

Then there is a printed letter:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing your new Natural Contours massager. Natural Contours is a revolutionary approach to personal relaxation: a massager that’s ergonomically designed to fit the contours of a woman’s body. It is our goal to offer you personal products that encompass quality, taste, and style to please today’s woman.

With the move toward greater self-awareness and exploration for women, we hope this product meets with your expectations and opens up a whole new world of personal relaxation for you.

Then there are some sincere advertise on the verse of the page:

Answering the call for quality personal products, Natural Contours delivers unbeatable performance: a stylish massager with a low noise motor that provides stimulating vibration. The elegant, impact-resistant casing is ergonomically designed to complement a woman’s natural shape.

TO OPERATE: SWITCH TO “ON” POSITION

So follow this instruction I switch on the machine. It is beeping. Everybody who eats the hotpot now stops eating and look at me.

You lean to me and whisper in my ear, “It’s a vibrator. You put it in your vagina.”

Holding the vibrate, my hand is shaking badly. I switch it off. It makes me feel horrified.

Everybody in the party laughs.

“I think Asian people have a great sense of humour,” you say.

“No, we don’t,” I clarify.

“Why not? You and Yoko make everybody laugh all the time.”

“No. We Chinese don’t understand humour. We look funny just because the culture difference, and we just being too honest,” I say.

“Yes, when you say things very honest, people think you are funny. But we stupid,” Yoko adds.

“Yes, I agree.” Here comes Korea girl Kim Yan Zhen eventually. She barely speaks, but whenever she speaks she impress everybody. She seriously makes a comment:

“Humour is a Western concept.”

Is super English. I didn’t know Kim’s English improve so much recently.

Your friends look at us three Orientals, like look at three panda escape from bamboo forest.

I watch the vibrate. I want to make a comment as well: “Enjoy sex is a Western concept too.”

“That’s rubbish. Men enjoy the sex everywhere,” says Korea girl Kim Yan Zhen.

Mans look at each other.

“But, I mean, Yoko, did you give her the vibrator as a joke or as a serious gift?” you ask.

“Of course serious,” answer by Yoko. I know Yoko is serious. Oriental people are serious, even young punks.

“Have you never seen a vibrator before?” one of your friends ask me.

“No. How would I?”

“But it’s made in China,” the friend says.

“Doesn’t mean I see it,” I say. “Actually those big international co-op factories run by foreigners. And the managers employ lots cheap labours like peasants, peasants’ wives. And those womans they don’t really know what is this machine for, but they just make it, by putting every piece of spare parts together. It is like they make computers by putting pieces together, but they never ever use computer.”

Why it doesn’t say “Dildo” or “automatic sex for woman” on the box? Maybe because it made in China, not allow to say things so clearly. It might become a big scandal if somebody from his village know his neighbour making plastic cocks everyday in a factory. Or maybe these factories are secretly protected by the government. Because Chinese government say there is no sex industry in China.

Putting more white cabbages into the hotpot, I can’t help thinking about those womans waking up early every morning to make vibrators. I am seeing them leaving behind their unemployed bad-temper husbands and poor children to sit on production lines and make vibrators. And those peasant womans will never use the vibrator in this life. All they want to know is how much they will earn today and how much money they can save for the family.

I put back this plastic cucumber into the box. When I leave it on the oily table, I see the warning from the side of the box: Clean with washcloth and mild soap .

migraine n. a severe headache, often with nausea and visual disturbances.

Another hot day. You left home in the morning with your old white van. I went to school and I had an exam on vocabulary. The exam went OK. I think I gain more English words since I have been lived with you. Mrs. Margaret praises me. She said I a fast learner. She doesn’t know I have been living with an English man every day and night. Soon school will end for summer holidays. My parents not expect there be so many holidays when they paid this school.