My Chinese lessons with 'Cupid' teacher
May 14, 2012, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT is Sunday afternoon and I am in a Chinese lesson with my teacher, Meimei. We are the same age and get on very well, mainly because of Meimei's endless patience. Sometimes, when she heroically unpicks the meaning in yet another of my pidgin utterances, I tell her that I feel she is the only person who understands me. I am only partly joking.
Today we are practicing a particularly tedious quirk of Mandarin grammar called the result complement. The first hour is fine but by the second, it starts to feel like hard going.
Fortunately, after two months of classes I have worked out several strategies to distract her.
I casually throw in to our conversation something I have seen on Sina weibo, the social microblog network that almost every Chinese person under the age of 40 is obsessed with.
"Funny you mention that, I'm now following you on weibo," Meimei says.
"Oh really?" I say.
I experience a slight nervous twinge. I am not very good at using weibo and try to stop people from finding me on it where possible. Although microblogging is not in itself a complex art, writing public messages on a Chinese website is hit and miss, given that I can only make out about 5 percent of what's on the screen. Sometimes I accidentally reply to someone instead of following them and although I have yet to do anything truly embarrassing, I am sure that it can only be a matter of time.
I open up weibo on my phone and type in my username.
"Ooh look, a new fan," I say. "Ah yes, that's Bill," Meimei says innocently.
"Who's Bill?" I ask.
"My student. I told him about you," she says.
I have long suspected that there is an undercurrent of flirtation to weibo. Twitter, the English version, is rather more strait-laced, but on weibo, followers are called "fans" and quite a few users regularly post pictures of themselves in vaguely suggestive poses. In a city obsessed with matchmaking, where parents of unmarried children approaching 30 place adverts of their offspring in People's Square, it would not surprise me if weibo was a modern extension of the same tradition. "Brilliant," I think. "A giant virtual dating service for the mainland population."
Meimei abandons the result complements and launches into an enthusiastic description of Bill. I learn that he is from New York and studied Mandarin at university. But after a couple of minutes I realize I am confused. First she said he worked in a technology company, then in a bank.
"I thought you said he was in technology?" I say, puzzled.
"Oh no, that's Chuck. I told him about you too."
"You told two students about me?"
"Yes. Chuck is looking for a girlfriend. I told him that you were my student and that you did not have a boyfriend," Meimei says.
I am briefly speechless in both languages.
"Usually American students are not very clever, but this one is quite quick," she continues. "He is also cute. And he is funny. Many girls like him. But I fear that his heart is not stable. I am worried he may be too much of a bad boy for you."
I begin to wonder what Chuck and Bill make of our teacher moonlighting as Cupid. We return to the result complements. Several minutes go by as I concentrate on forming the perfect grammatical construct.
"Bill is really a nice guy, while Chuck is more of a bad boy. But then again, Chuck is very funny," she says. "Which do you think you will prefer?"
Today we are practicing a particularly tedious quirk of Mandarin grammar called the result complement. The first hour is fine but by the second, it starts to feel like hard going.
Fortunately, after two months of classes I have worked out several strategies to distract her.
I casually throw in to our conversation something I have seen on Sina weibo, the social microblog network that almost every Chinese person under the age of 40 is obsessed with.
"Funny you mention that, I'm now following you on weibo," Meimei says.
"Oh really?" I say.
I experience a slight nervous twinge. I am not very good at using weibo and try to stop people from finding me on it where possible. Although microblogging is not in itself a complex art, writing public messages on a Chinese website is hit and miss, given that I can only make out about 5 percent of what's on the screen. Sometimes I accidentally reply to someone instead of following them and although I have yet to do anything truly embarrassing, I am sure that it can only be a matter of time.
I open up weibo on my phone and type in my username.
"Ooh look, a new fan," I say. "Ah yes, that's Bill," Meimei says innocently.
"Who's Bill?" I ask.
"My student. I told him about you," she says.
I have long suspected that there is an undercurrent of flirtation to weibo. Twitter, the English version, is rather more strait-laced, but on weibo, followers are called "fans" and quite a few users regularly post pictures of themselves in vaguely suggestive poses. In a city obsessed with matchmaking, where parents of unmarried children approaching 30 place adverts of their offspring in People's Square, it would not surprise me if weibo was a modern extension of the same tradition. "Brilliant," I think. "A giant virtual dating service for the mainland population."
Meimei abandons the result complements and launches into an enthusiastic description of Bill. I learn that he is from New York and studied Mandarin at university. But after a couple of minutes I realize I am confused. First she said he worked in a technology company, then in a bank.
"I thought you said he was in technology?" I say, puzzled.
"Oh no, that's Chuck. I told him about you too."
"You told two students about me?"
"Yes. Chuck is looking for a girlfriend. I told him that you were my student and that you did not have a boyfriend," Meimei says.
I am briefly speechless in both languages.
"Usually American students are not very clever, but this one is quite quick," she continues. "He is also cute. And he is funny. Many girls like him. But I fear that his heart is not stable. I am worried he may be too much of a bad boy for you."
I begin to wonder what Chuck and Bill make of our teacher moonlighting as Cupid. We return to the result complements. Several minutes go by as I concentrate on forming the perfect grammatical construct.
"Bill is really a nice guy, while Chuck is more of a bad boy. But then again, Chuck is very funny," she says. "Which do you think you will prefer?"
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