Chinglish a la Autumn

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Today I have sore muscles, and I can tell it’s not from walking the steps yesterday. I don’t feel well. Taking it easy is no problem, though. Write, watch Lost, and let Bernie cook for me.


I decide that I will make one last attempt to call Gail. This time I’ve stumbled across the right combination of zeroes and ones in front of the number to make it work.


The first thing Gail asks is where we are. Once she knows we’re in town, she asks if we’re free to come to their home Saturday evening, New Year’s Eve. I tell her we are and she tells me she’ll pick us up Saturday afternoon.

This is a great honor. We did not know these people at all a month ago. New Year is the biggest holiday in China, and it’s a time for families to gather together. Millions of people are getting ready to travel home for the holiday right now. In size and significance, it’s comparable to Christmas. Businesses are closed for the entire week.

As soon as I feel better, I’m going to have to do something about getting a pair of dress pants to wear.

We’ve been trying to get our plane tickets changed so that we have a stopover in Seoul after we leave Dalian rather than try to make a trip there and back in the time we have left. It makes more sense, especially since our flight from Dalian on the 25th leaves at 6 p.m. and arrives at Inchon airport at 8 p.m. but our flight out of Seoul doesn’t leave until 11:00 or so the next morning.

We’ve just found out we can do that for a sizable penalty, and we go ahead.
Now we can plan the rest of our travel. We book flights to Beijing for Monday, returning Wednesday. Aiye will be here with Ollie on Tuesday morning so he’ll have some human contact and water from the shower.

Again we’ll need to make arrangements with Autumn.

I’ve hinted at Autumn’s charming and funny personality before. She always refers to herself as Autumn, as in “Autumn is here,” when she calls us from the parking lot downstairs.

Autumn is married and has an eleven-year-old son. She drives several of the teachers at the Canadian Maple Leaf School back and forth every day, and she gets up at 4:30 every morning to begin driving at 5:30. Her appointment book is full – Bernie’s seen it when we’ve scheduled her before. As she did with us, she drives many tourists to Dandong, into Dalian, and other places.

We gather that she feels she’s carrying most of the load in her household. She tells us men do work, go home, do nothing. Women, on the other hand, work, go home, work in the house, help with homework, cook, and so on.

We asked her about her weekends. “Autumn very busy. Go shopping. Go Ikea.”
She’s pretty and fashionable, funny and affectionate. Shannon is her good friend.

She likes to talk, and we enjoy talking with her. Trouble is, as she says, “Autumn no speak English (she’s taking lessons). Autumn speak only Chinglish.”

We get in the car. Bernie asks her a question. She begins with two words of English and a string of Chinese which she delivers as if Bernie should be soaking up every word. She shares jokes with us, but they’re in Chinese. Sometimes she begins in English, gets quite far along, and then, when she reaches the part of the sentence where meaning is crucial, she slips in a couple of Chinese words.

We get a little worried when making appointments with her because she hasn’t mastered all of the concepts like day before yesterday or day after tomorrow. But she always shows up on time.

Bernie sits in the front seat beside Autumn and they can be funny to watch. He starts a conversation. She replies, doing fine, then says, “you know…” and drops into Chinese.

“No, Autumn, I don’t know. I don’t speak Chinese.”

“Well….(more Chinese).

Bernie rubs his hands all over his head. “Autumn, I thought you wanted to work on your English.”

Autumn laughs. “Autumn no speak English. Autumn getting better. Now Autumn only speak Chinglish.”

Ah, if only we could speak Chinglish.