ATonement: for my Chinese

Chinese lessons have started and for the first time in any foreign language class, I am one of the top three best students (there are only three students). So far we have just been covering the sounds and tones. Once again I find the letter "r" to be my arch nemesis. In early grade school I had to go to speech therapy to practice saying r words. The Spanish "r" was even worse. I have some nightmarish memories of standing in the hallway privately practicing with my professor while my peers laughed at my countless failed attempts to get anywhere close to the noise I was supposed to be making. I almost had a panic attack during the class where we practiced saying the "rr." The "r' noise in Chinese sounds like you’re saying the letter z while having your mouth in the r position, I struggle immensely with it.

The sounds on a whole though are not particularly difficult in comparison to the tones. There is a litany of evidence to suggest that I am tone deaf. In grade school, I was asked to run errands for my teacher Mr. Scroggins during liturgical music time. There are four different tones in Chinese; the language is spoken as if people are singing a song. One word can mean many different things based upon its tones. For example, the flat first tone ma= mother, the rising second tone ma= hemp, the down and then up third tone ma= horse and the straight down sharply fourth tone ma= a bad word. You see the importance of pronouncing the tones correctly. My solution is to move my head with whatever direction the tone is supposed to be moving, it’s also the same way I play Mario Kart. In neither case does it have the desired effect.

Finally, there are Chinese characters, in which case I am a complete goner. Learning Chinese is different than most other languages. Normally, a person first learns how to read and write a language, second to understand the spoken language, then finally to speak it. Here in China it is the opposite order. The 4,000+ Chinese characters are way too hard to start with. Everyone in our area understands Mandarin Chinese, but they speak with a different dialect that cannot be found in any books or Rosetta Stone software program. So that means we have to be the ones who speak. While speaking Spanish you have a little leeway, if you don't know a certain word you have a legitimate shot of throwing an O or an A behind the English word you’re trying to say and it might be correct. In China you do not have such luxury; you either know it or you don't.

One fortunate thing about the Chinese language is that they don't have many words. If they created a Chinese thesaurus, you could probably read it in an afternoon (if you can read Chinese.) Furthermore, it isn't at all intimidating to try to speak in front of a Chinese person, they give you constant positive reinforcement whenever you try. If you say one word in Chinese they become flabbergasted and compare your intelligence to that of Stephen Hawking’s. When you can't say a word, they put half the blame on themselves for not knowing the English word. Most of the Chinese I know is food related. My vocabulary really plateaued once I learned how to say "geng bao ji ding" (diced chicken, onions, and peanuts seared in a wok then served over a bowl of steamed rice). I finally have an answer to the famous question "If you were stuck on an Island and had to eat one thing for the rest of your life..."

 Although Kassy and I cannot string more than two Chinese words together, we feel quite comfortable living here in China. We are able "to get by with a little help from our friends," (and massive assistance by complete strangers that want to help us). People have run across the street before to help us order when we are in a restaurant or have personally escorted us to a place we are trying to get to. It's almost as if Rongchang has enacted a "Good Samaritan Law" that mandates all citizens to aid any foreigner whenever ever they look the least bit bewildered.

Someone asked me,  "So you are living in rural China and don't speak any Chinese, how do you survive?

All I can say is...It takes a village...