I’ll have a salad with ordinary orange segments, please

Please hold all jokes RE: "my finger."

“Wu liao,” Diane, a colleague of mine, whispered to me as we trudged through our weekly meeting designed for “continued professional development.

“Shen me?” I asked. I knew that “wu” tended to mean five, but had no idea as to what “liao” could mean. I figured that this was also probably a different “wu.”

“It means ‘boring,’” she said. “How will this make us better teachers?”

You were your heart on your sleeve; I wear it on my door.

Wu liao aside, I’ve been amazed both by the speed with which I’ve augmented my Chinese ability and the extent to which my study of the language has influenced my enjoyment of life in Shanghai. Some days, I’d argue it’s the primary reason for my staying here, the uphill battle promised by the endless road of tones, characters and dialect an exhilirating and addictive challenge.

I also feel that learning Chinese, oddly, allows me to better mix with locals without comprising any other parts of my identity. For better or for worse, it seems that a lot of foreigners who come over to China “lose themselves.” This tends to manifest itself mostly in poor hair/fashion choices and a general “letting go” of oneself–superficial modifications that reek of the social isolation and depression that come along with transplanting oneself in a foreign land.

I guess this bar's luck ran out!

Many said foreigners, significantly further into their careers than myself and with incomes to match, come to Shanghai to take advantage of the (comparatively) cheap cost of living, the vital (and sometimes volatile) business market and the endless stream of easy, Asian women, who are attracted to any creature with money and non-slanted eyes. The strangely low standards of these women, I’m convinced, also play into expats tending to abandon their grooming obligations–and allows them to feel connected enough to the culture (quite literally) not to realize they live in a different dimension than the rest of Shanghai.

I looked back at her. “It makes us worse teachers, definitely.”

I should know these simple-ass characters, but don't. Fail!

Despite the fact that Chinese people are perceived around the world as being hardworking, duty-minded individuals, there is a universal redundancy that underlies most weekly meetings–one which cuts through all the bullshit minutia that makes us all seem so different.

My time in Shanghai has been marked by such paradoxes, whether it’s the self-preservation that comes along with assimilation–or the exclusive visitor’s pass afforded to me by spending an obscene amount of time at my workplace, nearly half of it against my will. You see, I’m paid for 25 hours per week of teaching. Additionally, I’m scheduled 20 “office hours” allotted for prepping, planning and surfing the internet. Being that I’m as efficient as I am–and that all but two of my classes are completely written and planned, in detail, for me–I use about two hours per week of this time, for which I’m not technically paid.

Under construction: one of the many businesses to close and re-open several times during the course of my stay here.

I’m trapped in a strange vacuum, surrounded by co-workers which are largely American and students which are bilingual natives. It’s afforded me both the comfort of never having left home and the ability to understand Chinese lifestyle in a way most foreigners don’t seem to bother seeking out.

“I spoke English, of course,” said Spring, a student of mine, as she was telling me about her recent trip to Hong Kong. “If you speak Mandarin, they will know you’re from the mainland and rip you off.”

I was puzzled. “Isn’t Cantonese just a dialect? Don’t you speak it, or at least understand it?”

“No!” she said. “They speak like this.” She kept her mouth closed as she moved her tongue around the inside of her mouth to make different sounds.

“You mean they don’t enunciate?”

“That’s exactly what I mean!”

Eric, another student, chimed in. “But your English is good, so you won’t have to worry about being ripped off.”

“I would hope so, after 25 years,” I said.

“What about in Thailand?” Spring asked. “Do most people speak English there?”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, I mean, enough to conduct business.”

“Same as in Hong Kong,” she said. “They just don’t like Mandarin. And Shanghainese? Forget it.”

The existence of a countless number of dialects–many of which, if I’m honest, are completely different languages–has prevented me from becoming too boastful of my progress in Mandarin, whose pinyin transcription “pu tong hua” actually means “ordinary language.”  In all honesty, Cantonese is the least of my worries: Hong Kong’s long tenure as a British colony purportedly instilled at least basic English in all its citizens. Shanghainese, on the other hand, is another animal.

“It like Chinese, mixed with English, French and many other languages,” she continued. “It has formed over the years because people from so many countries visit Shanghai.

“If you want to make a foreigner’s head explode, ask the to say the number ‘two-hundred and twenty-two’ in Shanghainese.”

I can’t for the life of my remember what she said next. I do remember that my head didn’t explode–and to be honest, her short monologue made me curious about learning Shanghainese, which seems to be a cool hybrid language rather than the gritty street tongue many non-Shanghai Chinese seem to view it as.

Spring’s advice?

What happens when firecrackers meet bananas.

“Worry about Mandarin first,” she said. “It’s more useful.”

After hearing her horror stories about shopping in Hong Kong, coupled with anecdotes from students hailing from all corners of China, most of which speak their own dialects, I doubted the validity of her statement on a practical level. That being said, I do believe my continued dissection of pu tong hua has, at the very least, allowed me to maintain presence in the face of the bullshit everyday life throws my way.

My difficulties in mastering it also serve as a reminder that I am a guest here and should, figuratively anyway, keep my shoes on, in spite of the fact that it’s seen as impolite: it’s China’s custom, not mine.