Day after day, then week after week, my route took me past the same group of young guys who were selling knock-off goods on the sidewalk. "Lady! Lady! You buy my bag! Come look my warehouse! I have Gucci! I have Prada!"
Each time, I dutifully slowed down, engaged for a moment, then declined the offers with a string of "Bu yao. Bu yao. Bu yao." "Don't want. Don't want. Don't want." I figure that some degree of tolerance is the personal duty I owe as a foreign guest in the country. After so many passages, I knew each hawker well enough to tell who had gotten a new haircut. They never seemed to recognize me. I was just another mark.
Finally, one day I had enough. I snapped, and dug for my new vocabulary. "Zuotian, bu yao! Jintian bu yao! Mingtian bu yao!" I shouted back. "Yesterday, don't want! Today, don't want! Tomorrow, don't want!"
They stopped cold, stunned. Then one irrepressible soul quickly recovered, and with a plaintive look whispered earnestly, "Houtian?" meaning "Day after tomorrow?"
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3 comments:
This was a delightful little book about one American's struggles with the Chinese language and living in a place so very different from her home country.
funny, Christine!
Aw, LOL. You always choose the coolest books to read.
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