Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [28]
No doubt this was partly the result of my incomprehension of the language. In China, if you don’t speak Chinese, and even more important, if you can’t read Chinese, you are essentially helpless. When an elderly man began to speak with me as I wandered through one of Beijing’s hutongs, the rapidly dwindling labyrinths of traditional neighborhoods in Beijing, I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. Perhaps he was encouraging me to have a savory dumpling. It would make me feel harmonious inside. Or perhaps he was expressing some indelicate thought about the barbarian wandering around his neighborhood. You just don’t know, and all you can muster is a shrug and a big dopey grin, causing your counterpart to offer a contemptuous wave because, clearly, you are an imbecile.
It was the same when trying to get myself from point A to point B with a minimum of drama. While Beijing has gone to some lengths to make things easier for the Chinese-impaired, including offering some signs with the street names translated into Roman letters (or pinyin, as the Chinese call the Romanized version of their language), the fact remains that the vast majority of signs offer nothing more than Chinese characters, which makes things just a trifle problematic for those with a predilection for getting lost. I might set forth for what my map confidently informed me was the broad avenue known as Dongzhimenwai Daijie. Invariably, I’d soon find myself wandering around, hopelessly lost, staring at a sign in Chinese that did nothing to alleviate the complete and total befuddlement I felt.
Even Dan, who had lived in China for years now, periodically had difficulty getting himself from one place to another. Aware of how utterly incapable I was, he had taken to escorting me back to my hotel whenever we parted ways. One evening, after he had given directions to the cabdriver, the driver apologized and explained that he was new to the job, had just arrived in Beijing from his village, and could he please repeat the street name.
“Dengshikou Xijie,” Dan repeated.
“Dengshikou Xijie?” said the driver.
“Dui, Dengshikou Xijie.”
They spent a minute going back and forth, repeating the street name, which was apparently the name of a well-known avenue in central Beijing that every cabdriver surely knows.
“Just explain that it’s near the Crowne Plaza,” I offered helpfully.
“I can’t,” Dan said. “I don’t know the character for Crowne Plaza.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you can’t just say Crowne Plaza or Holiday Inn and have the taxi driver take you there?”
“No. You need to say it in Chinese.”
Jesus, I thought. I had no intention of staying in Western hotels during my travels, but I’d hoped to be able to use their brand names as landmarks in the major cities. For the next couple of minutes, Dan sought to explain precisely where it was that we hoped to go, until finally the driver had his ah-ha moment.
Ahhh…Dengshikou Xijie!
“But that’s what you’ve been saying all along,” I pointed out.
“He said that I used the wrong tone and that’s why he didn’t understand.”
This did not bode well for me. Dan had studied Chinese for fifteen years and still tripped over tones. I had studied Chinese for Dummies for a matter of weeks and hadn’t even reached the tone section.
But it was written Chinese that truly had me stymied, and with my level of ignorance menus had become my nemesis. I carried a pocket dictionary, of course, but it was useless as a tool for navigating a menu. Dictionaries are written in pinyin, which is helpful when you’re trying to say something but not when you’re trying to read something. And the Chinese don’t read pinyin. They read Chinese. No method of translation will allow a traveler to look