i saw you, jeff
Last Saturday I had one of my best conversations in french ever.
I was on my way back from Yeejia's place and ran into a friend at Chatelet station. His name is Ismail and he's from Morocco.
The conversation started with him asking me 'ni zhe me yang'. That kind of caught me by surprise because French had never sounded so much like Chinese to me before. It took him a second attempt before I realised he was really asking me 'How was I' in Chinese. I should have guessed it since I knew he had been taking Chinese lessons in school but, when a non-yellow skin speaks Chinese out of the blue to you, it requires extremely good reflexes for one to react immediately. And my mind was clearly not in a very reflexive state that day.
Anyhow, the rest of our conversation then proceeded in French. After all, no matter how zao1 gao1 my French still is, it is at less meilleur than his Chinese, at least for now. I said ' for now' because Ismail will be leaving for Shanghai for 3 months in less than 3 weeks time for his internship and given the expected daily exposure to the most chinese of chinese, I am expecting a chineser Ismail when he returns. Then again, I've been exposed to the most french of french for close to 9 months and I'm not getting any frencher.
On the train back, we talked about what specialisation we have chosen for next year, about him wanting to work in the UN and me being obliged to return to teach, about the jamming session he just had in Paris and about how my french was better than the other 2 singaporeans in school (hope the previous remark passed by sous-silence enough...haha...). And of course, we talked about Chinese.
I asked him what he thought of the Chinese, or of the Chinese culture in general. He thought for a while, then said that he didn't really know what is the Chinese culture. Not that I know too much about it myself, but I told him I was thinking since he took Chinese lessons, his teacher must have talked a bit about the culture. Then he said, 'Yah, we learned a little about the culture, but you see, I don't know how the Chinese think.' At that point of time, I thought I saw jeff in front of me.
He cited an example. There were some Chinese students who came on exchange to our school few months back and when he asked them if they were hungry, they said no. But when he passed them food, they ate happily. So, to Ismail, he couldn't understand why the Chinese students were hungry but still said they were not hungry when asked. This, I explained to him, is the 'bu4 hao3 yi4 si4' nature of Chinese.
Actually, the purpose of this post is really to tell you guys that I have found a jeffry-equivalent in France. And my roommate reminds me of Tat and I have a french friend who can easily passed off as an Angie or Wendy. And I believe that there's an equivalent of everyone of us in another country, somewhere else. Although replicates of Yaohui or Weijie will seriously be harder to find.
I was on my way back from Yeejia's place and ran into a friend at Chatelet station. His name is Ismail and he's from Morocco.
The conversation started with him asking me 'ni zhe me yang'. That kind of caught me by surprise because French had never sounded so much like Chinese to me before. It took him a second attempt before I realised he was really asking me 'How was I' in Chinese. I should have guessed it since I knew he had been taking Chinese lessons in school but, when a non-yellow skin speaks Chinese out of the blue to you, it requires extremely good reflexes for one to react immediately. And my mind was clearly not in a very reflexive state that day.
Anyhow, the rest of our conversation then proceeded in French. After all, no matter how zao1 gao1 my French still is, it is at less meilleur than his Chinese, at least for now. I said ' for now' because Ismail will be leaving for Shanghai for 3 months in less than 3 weeks time for his internship and given the expected daily exposure to the most chinese of chinese, I am expecting a chineser Ismail when he returns. Then again, I've been exposed to the most french of french for close to 9 months and I'm not getting any frencher.
On the train back, we talked about what specialisation we have chosen for next year, about him wanting to work in the UN and me being obliged to return to teach, about the jamming session he just had in Paris and about how my french was better than the other 2 singaporeans in school (hope the previous remark passed by sous-silence enough...haha...). And of course, we talked about Chinese.
I asked him what he thought of the Chinese, or of the Chinese culture in general. He thought for a while, then said that he didn't really know what is the Chinese culture. Not that I know too much about it myself, but I told him I was thinking since he took Chinese lessons, his teacher must have talked a bit about the culture. Then he said, 'Yah, we learned a little about the culture, but you see, I don't know how the Chinese think.' At that point of time, I thought I saw jeff in front of me.
He cited an example. There were some Chinese students who came on exchange to our school few months back and when he asked them if they were hungry, they said no. But when he passed them food, they ate happily. So, to Ismail, he couldn't understand why the Chinese students were hungry but still said they were not hungry when asked. This, I explained to him, is the 'bu4 hao3 yi4 si4' nature of Chinese.
Actually, the purpose of this post is really to tell you guys that I have found a jeffry-equivalent in France. And my roommate reminds me of Tat and I have a french friend who can easily passed off as an Angie or Wendy. And I believe that there's an equivalent of everyone of us in another country, somewhere else. Although replicates of Yaohui or Weijie will seriously be harder to find.
posted by le chye at
5:45 AM
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