Language Lessons with LanFeng

Written on August 5, 2006

 

JunE was working mornings.  I never saw much of the person covering the six to two shift and, though I liked LanFeng, I couldn’t speak to her, I couldn’t understand her, and I didn’t know what to do with her.  It was frustrating. 

 

All of the others could read the small font in my dictionary, but her vision would not allow for the employ of this method.  We had no way to communicate aside from sign language and, though my antics usually left her smiling, she remained none the wiser as to what I was trying to say. 

 

I was a hopelessly bad mime and LanFeng was far too verbal.  We had begun to grow apart. 

 

I knew that if I didn’t begin talking to her, in Mandarin, I’d lose her.  This was not an assumption based loosely on groundless fears.  This was a fact and it was a fact which bothered me.

 

Two evenings had passed without me opening my mouth.  Five days remained in which to strike up a conversation before the weekly shift change.  I had promised myself to say something, anything before that time arrived and as I sat in one of the Lobby’s over stuffed, oversized armchairs, hands folded over the books in my lap, a random thought occurred to me: “Make sure you can pronounce her name correctly”.

 

Hmmmm….  Could it really be that simple?  Four syllables?  Would voicing them unlock the proper doors?  There was only one way to find out…

 

I popped out of my chair so quickly and with such a determined air, that, not only did she take notice of me immediately, but so did most of the populace in the Lobby. 

 

It didn’t matter to me though.  Not this time.  I was on a mission and, if I didn’t open my mouth now, the temptation to surrender to my shyness might prove too great a strain.  No, I had to do this for my own sanity, if nothing else. 

 

I fixed my gaze on her and approached steadily.  The words were not going to stick in my throat, not this time.  I wasn’t going to permit them to desert me.  I had already come far too close to losing one person I cared about and she was not going become the newest nominee.

 

“Wang LanFeng ma?” I heard myself ask.

 

She sat there staring up at me with a surprised look on her face, but an amused glint in her eyes, as she slowly nodded in recognition of her name.

 

“Now what?” I wondered.  I hadn’t thought that far ahead. 

 

I tried to arrange my features in a manner which said, “That’s it.  That’s the best I can do. Your turn.” and, for the first time, she seemed to understand. 

 

She sat there for quite a long time, eyes narrowed in thought as she studied me, but eventually the books tucked under my arm drew her full attention. 

 

She’d never really bothered with them before.   I suppose she figured that would have been a waste of time.  Her eyes were simply beyond the ability to focus on the tiny print, so why strain herself trying?  However, she was presently staring at them in a state of severe concentration. 

 

Slowly at first, very slowly, as though she were trying to catch a butterfly without the aide of a net, she stretched out her hand towards me.  She paused a moment before wrapping her fingers around my notebook gently working it loose from between my journal and my dictionary. 

 

The book slid out fairly easily and she placed it carefully upon her knees, patting the front cover once or twice as a smile spread across her face. 

 

Then, in a second, much faster maneuver, she plucked the pen from my hands, waved me into a seat, flipped to the first available page and began to write. 

 

For five minutes, I watched her scribble words, one after another in quick succession until, almost as abruptly as she had begun, she spun the book around to face me, pressed the pen into my palm, pointed to the first character and said the word “wo” very slowly and clearly. 

 

Still reeling from the speed in which she had laid down the script, I just sat there wondering what on earth she was expecting me to do.

 

“Kuai yi dianr! Xie. Xie.” She chirped as my brain began to grind painfully back into motion. 

 

“Pinyin” I thought, “Everyone assumes I know pinyin.”  Well, I didn’t.  I understood the concept, yes, but my spelling was atrocious!  However, there was no harm in trying, so one syllable at a time, she’d point to the character, say the word and I would try to write it out. 

 

When the last symbol had been assigned its phonetic counterpart, I looked down at this page full of information which still made no sense to me having every intention of looking up the definitions the moment I returned to my room, but as I began to rise from my chair, LanFeng placed her hand on my shoulder and sat me back down. 

 

I was a bit taken aback by this gesture, but she shook her head knowingly, wagged one of her long fingers at me then tapped the cover of my dictionary. 

 

“This is going to take a while.” I thought as I opened my dictionary, but, in relatively less time than I had expected, I found myself looking at four simple sentences:

 

“I am a Chinese person.  You are an American.  You are also a fast learner.  I like you a lot.”

 

I sat there reading and re-reading the last two statements trying to force my brain to summon a response.  All of the words I needed were right there in front of me though I wasn’t sure how to fit them into the confines of Chinese grammar.

 

My gaze bounced between LanFeng’s hopeful eyes and her hastily written characters, before drawing a breath of, “Well, here goes nothing” and saying shakily, “Wo ye hen xihuan ni.” 

 

I suppose I had expected her to stare at me blankly, wonder what language I was speaking in because it didn’t sound like English, but it certainly wasn’t Chinese, then smile politely and move on with life, but her quick, delighted intake of breath told me the opposite had occurred.  She had understood!  My, “I like you a lot too” had not been cast into the void of poor pronunciation.  I had managed an entire sentence in Mandarin and had been heard!  It felt wonderful!

 

LanFeng leaned forward, wrapped both hands around mine, squeezed them, and then smiled warmly.  She didn’t try to say anything, she didn’t need to, but relatively little time elapsed before she fished the pen and notebook from my possession, beginning the process anew.

 

Wo - I, me

Kuai yi dianr - Hurry up

Xie - write

Wo ye hen xihuan ni - I also like you very much; I like you a lot too