A great leap forward

Ha. There are so many Chinese sayings to make fun of. Life here is just an endless series of classless puns.

Anyway, what this post is actually about is learning a foreign language. I spent some time in Yunnan recently—which was absolutely gorgeous, by the way, I highly recommended going there—and one day we were stuck in a little Tibetan village with no other laowai in sight. The village was one of those cute little places you see in postcards. Rolling green hills, terraced crops, big square Tibetan houses ...

We were led towards a hut that had a gated yard out the front of it. Immediately on entering the gate, the pungent smell of cattle arse attacked our noses. Suddenly not so picture-perfect. Into the small shack at the back and I realised this is where we were having lunch. 

Feeling a little out of place, and unable to ask anyone in English what the hell is going on, I decided to throw caution to the wind (I suddenly realise what a strange saying that is ...) and try out some of my Chinese. I'm mentally trawling through pages and pages of vocab lists from my textbook.

"这是什么?" What is this? (pointing to the small bowl that is being laid out in front of me)
"是酥油茶." It is suyou tea. Suyou? What is that? Whip out my iPhone dictionary ... ah it's butter tea. Oh, and it tastes like watered down butter. Funny that.

Also I see a hard yak cheese served with sugar, soft bread rolls and yak's milk yoghurt—this is cultural experience at its best.

Ok, so we've established what we're eating. This is going ok! They can understand me, and I can pick up some of the words they're saying. Let's keep going.

"你叫什么名字?" What is your name?
Ok, I didn't really understand the answer to that, probably because you have a Tibetan name that's hard to pronounce.
Let's try ... "你去学校马?" Do you go to school?
"是的" Yes. 
"你 每天去学校马?" Do you go to school every day?
"每天" Every day.
"你今年多大?" How old are you?
"十三." 13. What the? You look about 6! 
"你今年多大?" How old are you? Ooh you cheeky little boy.

So we progress like this for a while. How many brothers and sisters does he have? Is that his older brother? Why is he not at school today? Then he asks:

"你哪国人?" What is your nationality?
"澳大利亚人" Australian. 
Wait a second, I have an idea.
"你要看照片 ... ahhh [I don't know the joining words] 澳大利亚?" Do you want to see photos ... Australia? With a smile.
Oooh that's done it. Now I have a large crowd of Tibetan children pressing in on either sides, eager to see the image being projected from the iPhone.

I show them kangaroos ("袋鼠!" How is it that this 13 year old Tibetan boy knows the mandarin word for kangaroo?), emus (no idea what that one is!), some scenic landscape from near my home. Next I find some pictures of my 妈妈 mother and 爸爸 father  ... now how exactly do I explain the concept of step-parents? "不是我爸爸 ... 是 ... 我妈妈的男朋友" This is not my father ... it is ... my mother's boyfriend! Oh my vocab is failing me, that elicited a bit of shock. 

And this is a picture of 我的男朋友 my boyfriend. "你有几男朋友?" How many boyfriends do you have? What? Did you really just ask me that? "一个!" One! He almost looks disappointed. 

Oh now this has really got them started. Questions are coming from left, right and centre. What's you're name, what's this place, what work do you do? And many that I can't understand. My head is exploding from trying to translate backwards and forwards from this crazy language. Time to redirect their attention.

"你们看, 这是北京" Look, this is Beijing. Attention is glued back to the iPhone.
"我们的中国!" Our China! They suddenly recognise the photos I'm showing them. It's a place they've never been, and they may never go there. It's more than 2000 kilometres away from here. I realise how lucky I really am, to be able to live in a place that is, in their eyes, so magical.

This is one experience I'll never forget, and not only because of the yak butter tea. It's the first time I conversed with someone in China in their own language!