Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers

You take out some old maps from your bookshelfs. There is map of Berlin, map of Amsterdam, map of Venice, map of Madrid…You blow the dusts on these maps, and put in my bag.

“Now they are useful again, after all those years sitting on the shelf,” you say.

“But all these places must be changed from the time you went,” I say, thinking of map of Beijing every month being changed.

“It’s not like China,” you say. Then you take a novel called Intimacy , author Hanif Kureishi, and put into my bags too. “This is for you to read on the train.”

You sit down on the chair, having tea, and looking at me packing.

I already feel lonely when I put my shirts into the rocksack. Is that all you want? Want me away from you?

*

Paris is the capital and largest city of France, in the north-central part of the country on the Seine River.

I thought English is a strange language. Now I think French is even more strange. In France, their fish is poisson , their bread is pain and their pancake is crêpe . Pain and poison and crap. That’s what they have every day.

“Du pain?”

The man serves me in a small brasserie nearby Les Halles, with some bread on the little basket.

“Non. Je ne veux pas pain!” I answer. I learn this from French for Beginners by Michael Thomas.

But one minute later, he comes back with a small basket of pain again, asks me:

“Encore un peu de pain?”

“Ça sufficient!” I say, wiping my mouth, stand up.

No more pain in my life.

Only rice makes me happy.

Journey London-Paris was big let down. When I sit on the comfortable chair in the Eurostar, the French-accent-staff announce the whole journey will take two hours and thirty-five minutes. Two and a half hours I will be in the centre of a new country. Europe is so small, I can’t believe it. No wonder that it wants to become a Union. I am so much looking forward to see English Channel. I remember a Chinese man in 2001 who swam cross this Channel to earn national face for Chinese government, but when he reached French seashore he didn’t have visa to arrive. Of course he didn’t have visa, because he almost naked. In China, we all thought that French people don’t understand Heroism. Hero doesn’t need visa. Even a third world hero. Chairman Mao used to swim cross Yang Zi River, biggest river in China, in his very old age. He is of course, a hero.

The train is fast. There are still green fields and white sheeps outside of window. The speaker announce that in five minutes we will be in the tunnel of English Channel. So exciting, I can’t wait. Five minutes later I find we are in the absolutely darkness, deep darkness. I thought the tunnel is made of glass, so it is transparent to be able to see the blue seawater. But there is no difference with London underground. In the long darkness, I wonder if those fishes beside us are blocked by the tunnel and will be confused in the sea. Disappointed, I am finding myself come out from the dark tunnel, and arrive to the French side.

Musée D’Orsay, Paris, a place exhibit lots of work from Impressionists . I-m-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n-i-s-t, and I-m-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n-i-s-m. Longest two words I have ever learned so far. Even longer than c-o-m-m-u-n-i-s-t and c-o-m-m-u-n-i-s-m. There are several paintings from Monet. I stare at these obscure water lilies, obscure gate, and obscure sunrise. The colour and the subject in these paintings are like somebody looking through a dirty window glass. Especially the one about the impression of sunrise, sunrise on the sea. Everything blurred, the wave, the sea, the sun, the cloud are all blurred. Even the colour is blurred too.

Night in a cheap hotel. Forty-five euro including breakfast. The room is so small, like a place for one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs, but the French-style balcony is always better than English one. I sit on the old high-back-chair thinking there must be one thousand dead people used to sit on this chair and spent their hotel time doing strange or boring things. Turn on the desk lamp, I start to write you a letter. But my eyes can’t see anything clearly today; especially I can’t read clearly the trails of my writing. White paper too sharp for eyes, black ink too weak to read. When I look at the dictionary, every word is blurred. The optician in London told me the power of my short eyesight is growing, getting worse. They said I can’t do laser surgery because my corneal are too thin. Will my future is a world of blurness?

I look out of the window. I can see the black clouds at the bottom of the dark sky, and I can see the dim lights in somebody’s house which is not far away from this hotel, and the shadow of trees by the street light. But that’s all, no more details in the street. I remember once you told me about an American eye doctor, who invented Bates Method. He taught those short-eyesight-patients how to use eyes properly . He said keep your vision centered. When you regard an object, only one small part should be seen best. This is because only the centre of the retina has the best vision for detail. Rest of retinal area is less able to pick up fine detail. Does this mean I don’t or can’t use the centre of the retina to see things properly ? That I like Monet, Van Gogh and all these impressionists, see the world blurred too?

I want to see you only at the centre of retina and everything else blurred. What am I doing in this busy Continent when I just want see you?

Amsterdam is the constitutional capital and largest city of the Netherlands in the western part of the country where the Amstel River is joined by a sluice dam.

I only stop in Amsterdam for one day. I am going to Berlin. I don’t know why I don’t feel like to stay. I don’t know anything about Holland, and I even didn’t know Holland , Dutch, the Netherland meaning the same place. Why a country have so many different names? Before I thought these three spread somewhere differently in Europe.

There are only two things I know about Holland: first, the Communist Dutch man Joris Ivens made a film called The 400 Million about Chinese against Japanese invasion; second, all the tulips in China are said from Holland. About Joris Ivens, I saw a film camera been exhibited in the Museum of the Revolution in Beijing. It is the camera he gave to the Communists army at late 1930s. Maybe that’s why Chinese Communists started making films since then.

Amsterdam Central station. A large place. A place for temporary stop and for passing by.

So many people here, but nobody will stay here more than one hour.

From platform 15 to 1, I cannot find a place to sit my bum. No, there is no single chair or bench in this Central Station. The passengers hold their pizza in hand and eat it without a seat. The passengers stand and drink paper-cup coffee without a seat. A man, with a huge suitcase and a big rocksack, talk in mobile phone in a strange language. A language without any similarity with other language I have heard in my whole life. He keeps talking in the phone and his face is sad. He talks in the phone for so long, and it seems like he is being sucked by the telewave and disappeared in the phone-zone. In that dark phone-zone it is no seats either.

The train to Berlin will be departure at 8:15 p.m. Five hours to wait. I decide go for a walk.

Outside station so much water. And houses like doll house. In front of one house I meet a man drinking coffee on doorsteps. I stopped to look at house because I saw some familiar leaf with special fragrant. Lush wisterias climbing on a big tree. I always love this plant. It is so Chinese. It was growing everywhere behind our house in my home town. And it is growing in your English garden as well. I put down my heavy rocksack and try to have a rest.