Before I left for China, I bought a Lonely Planet guide to China from the mid-1990s. The guide said, half seriously and half tongue-in-cheek, that the most commonly heard phrase in China is "mei you", "don't have". As in, "Do you have this in a different size?" "Mei you".
By far, the most commonly heard phrase now is "Wei", the word for "hello" on the phone. Everyone has a cell phone and everywhere you walk you hear "Wei?", "wei?", "WEI!?".
My first official day in China (6-16-2008) started off with Guian Li, my host, introducing me to his colleagues in a formal meeting. Guian worked very hard to organize my trip and wanted to get off to a good start. So, he introduced me with a very detailed PowerPoint presentation. To paraphrase Cher from the song "Dark Lady", he told me more about me than I know myself. He talked about and included a picture that would become a recurring theme in future introductions – my participation in marathons. Marathon is "malasong changpao". Ma-la-song is the word "marathon" phonetically converted to pinyin, the phonetic system of the Chinese language developed in the 1950s. Changpao means "long run". The introduction theme was especially appropriate on day 1 because it was a marathon, in duration and in unexpected challenges. After the introduction, we had lunch. I will not bore you throughout this blog with descriptions of mundane events. That would be like the first time I tied my shoes. Back then I took one string in my left hand and one in my right. Then I looped the left string over the right. Not one time but two. Next, I tucked…. Oh, sorry. Back to the subject of lunch. It seems that two things impress my hosts as much as my knowledge of American education system: my ability to use chopsticks (thanks LKG) and my knowledge of a few Chinese words and phrases.
Xiexie: the first Chinese word I "learned". I pronounced it she-ah she-ah and said it to someone after they provided me with something. But, on the airplane ride from Seattle to Beijing on 6/13/2008, the flight attendants pronounced it hsyeh-hsyeh. Not only that, they said it at the beginning of their announcements as well as the end. It turns out I didn't learn it at all. Would this be a metaphor for my trip? Would everything I learned about China from my brief study and the natural osmosis of the popular press be wrong? Would my assumptions about Chinese teachers, Chinese students, Chinese schools, and, yes, Chinese food, be wrong. Only time will tell. So far, I was wrong about my assumptions of the Chinese customs process. It was very fast easy. Probably my honest face did the trick. The people in the Beijing airport terminal were helpful. The Chinese ban all liquids from carry-on baggage on domestic flights so I was forced to check my carry-on bag, buy all new toiletries or smell bad the whole trip. My worries about having very minimal language skills were unfounded as all announcements on the flight from Beijing to Xi'an were in English and Chinese. (This despite the fact that Chinese outnumbered non-Chinese about 100 to 5 on my flight.) So far, some of my initial assumptions were shown to be false and some true. Just like my knowledge of xiexie. It is still appropriate for me to say "xiexie" to you for reading this post. As long as I pronounce it "hsyeh-hsyeh". And, as long as I tell you it means "thank you".
