1.3 billion people can't be wrong

When we first got here and got one of those culture shock lessons, a veteran teacher told me it's better to be a golden retriever than a doberman. Both are big dogs who will, inevitably, run into you and knock something over and break it. But the golden retriever does it while wagging his tail, so everyone rolls their eyes, pats him on the head and gives him a dog treat.

I have not taken this advice to heart. I am working my ass off in Chinese class, and I usually carry around a notebook to write down new words I learn, or study while I'm on the bus. But I usually avoid speaking Chinese in public, because I am terrible at it and I hate being embarrassed or misunderstood. I've convinced a woman at a vegetable stall that I speak better Chinese than Dan because I smile a lot when she talks to me. Plus, I keep a running tally of what the produce costs, and when she tells us the price I watch her hands (they do hand signals for numbers here) so I always figure out her price on the first time. Other than that, and a few restaurants we go to a lot where I'm willing to ask for spoons or rice, I only speak Chinese when I drink beer. I hope that someday I will become fluent in drunken Chinese (I mean, I speak French better when I'm drinking) but if I actually want to improve I should try speaking when I'm sober.

I'm not sure what kind of dog that makes me, but it's definitely not the lovable idiot that is the golden retriever. My friend Luke is much better at communicating through gestures and little bits of Chinese: in the past he's ordered us noodles by pointing at wires and making slurping motions. After this happened I went home and looked up the word for noodles.
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I wrote the first half of this post in a self-loathing moment last week, and then something amazing happened. My Chinese got a lot better! I still don't know that many words, but the sounds have begun making sense to me. In our last Chinese class, our teacher said that Dan and I have made real progress and our tones were the best she'd heard from us so far. I finally learned the name of the bus stop for the school branch I teach at (and it only took like 30 bus trips there!) I've even started picking up a few words on the bus or in the classroom - yesterday I learned that the words for "where" and "there" are practically the same, and that my afternoon TA translates a lot of what I say into Chinese.

I'm also trying much harder to be the golden retriever, to at least attempt to speak Chinese and get better. Because honestly, most people seem happy just to meet me. When we're taking the elevator up to our apartment, people often talk to me and Dan. The conversation is pretty much "Wow, you guys are tall! I am short. You are very beautiful. Where are you from?" but at least it's all in Chinese.

The written language, however, is a totally different story. I read the book "River Town" by Peter Hessler and he described going for runs near his school and reading the same sign every day: "People Something Something Work Something Something Something China." I always think of this because this is how I read every poster. I know maybe twenty characters, including people, China, entrance, exit, and no. There are a few more I know in context: I know the symbols for the bus stops I use regularly, and I can recognize the symbols for month and day when they're, um, written in dates. Okay, so that's not that impressive. But every little bit helps when you're in a country that has at least six different words for bathroom. I usually say "WC."