A Humbling Education

About a month after I turned 21,cheap Inflatable Castle I experienced a second infancy1). I had enrolled for the summer at Middlebury College’s Chinese School in the U.S. state of Vermont and signed a pledge2) that for nine weeks, on penalty of expulsion3), I would not speak, listen, read or write in English, my native tongue. I couldn’t speak a word of Chinese. When my teacher gave me a card with my new Chinese name, Zhai Shuzhen, I couldn’t pronounce it. I didn’t even know how to say hello.
　　My fellow students—other college kids, an Australian banker, a French diplomat, and two FBI agents4) were just as pitiful. Since we couldn’t introduce ourselves, we befriended one another through mimed expressions of pathos and solidarity.5) It mattered little that we couldn’t relate the details of our lives outside the language school. No one could have much of an identity while babbling6) along with the drills on a tape labeled “Sounds and Tones of Mandarin Chinese.”
　　Soon enough, though, we moved from bleating “ba, da, fa, ma,” to actual speech. By the second week we had all mastered the question, “Ni jia zai nar?” (Where is your home?) Answering with any precision was another story. Our geographic vocabulary was limited to a book of dialogues written by the Chinese School’s director, a professor at the University of Utah. At lunch, while advanced students conversed about adult subjects like sports and movies, we were proud if we could reply: “My home is not in Salt Lake City.”
　　Western students of Mandarin, particularly older ones, often complain of the drudgery7) involved in learning a language so foreign. But that summer, the piles of flash cards and hours of grammar exercises ultimately weren’t as important as the sense of play Mandarin forced us to develop. We couldn’t take ourselves seriously and so eventually, we stopped trying. We acquiesced to8) the bodily tics9) that make new students of tones into involuntary interpretive dancers, waving our arms up and down in patterns our voices couldn’t yet produce. We repeated the same simple phrases over and over. In class, where teachers occasionally granted us a short reprieve10) from our language pledge, we invented inane stories to help us remember the shape of characters. The word yao (to want), which contains the character for “woman” underneath a shape that looks like a hat, became, in the imagination of a Canadian classmate, a girl wearing a lampshade11) on her head “because she wanted to party.” We were all class clowns.
　　About halfway through the course, while driving back to the institute after a hike, I was pulled over for speeding. Back in the school parking lot I ran into12) Teacher Li, a fearsome woman from Taiwan who carried a stick she used to smack the desks of students whose wrong tones made them say “kiss” when they meant “ask.” Why, she now demanded, did I look so sad. “I was driving. Driving fast,” I blurted out, surprised I’d actually used an adverb, “and a man wearing blue clothes gave me a small piece of paper.” “Humph,” she nodded, “Was his name Brian?” Teacher Li, it transpired, also drove fast. That day, I learned the Chinese words for“radar,”“big fine”and “damned Vermont fuzz13),” with proper tones, of course.
　　The following year, I moved to China to continue my studies. As was the case for many of my classmates, even as my language ability improved, my Chinese persona14) remained more youthful than the person I was in English. Little Zhai, as my teachers in Harbin called me, didn’t worry about getting all the words right. She made dumb jokes and wasn’t shy or easily embarrassed. The more boldly I stammered15) through basic conversations, the more people seemed to attach themselves to me as unofficial teachers. In Beijing, a woman once invited me home for dumplings16) when I said “excuse me” after bumping into her on a crowded subway. A Harbin cop17) took me driving in his new Mercedes, and a couple I met in line at a bank included me in their family bowling nights. Each invitation was an opportunity to make mistakes and collect new words: “home cooking,” “special privilege,”“gutter ball.”

　　I now speak Chinese, in life and in work, on a daily basis. The experience continues to be humbling18). A recent reporting trip brought me back to Harbin and I wandered into the dorm where I had lived eight years ago. On the third-floor landing I met the woman in charge of delivering hot water thermoses19) during my days as a student. “Your Chinese has improved,” she said after we’d caught up. I smiled to myself as I started to walk away. “But you can keep studying,” she called after me, “After all, Zhai Shuzhen, you've still very young.”
　　 　A New Supermarket
　　A new supermarket opened near my house. It has an automatic water mister to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain.
　　When you approach the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and experience the scent of fresh hay. When you approach the egg case, you hear hens cluck and cackle, and the air is filled with the pleasing aroma of bacon and eggs frying. The veggie department features the smell of fresh buttered corn. I don’t buy toilet paper there any more. 　
　　Golf Survey
　　My job as a land surveyor took me to a golf course that was expanding from 9 holes to 18 holes.
　　Using a machete to clear thick brush in an area I was mapping, I came upon a golf club(击球棒) that an irate player must have tossed away. It was in good condition, so I picked it up and continued on.
　　When I broke out of the brush onto a putting green, two golfers stared at me in awe. I had a machete(弯刀) in one hand and a golf club in the other, and behind me was a clear-cut swath leading out of the woods. “There,”said one of the golfers, “is a guy who hates to lose his ball!” 　　
　　Teenagers Are Always Hungry
　　The parents in our cycling group were discussing the subject of teenagers and their appetites. Most agreed that teenagers would eat anything, anywhere and at any time. Some were concerned that such appetites always made it hard to judge when you should feed them because they were always grazing.