The New Kid at Work

I am two days into my job and really enjoying it! I’ve learned a ton both about Chinese language and managing a small business.

For my first day, Yvonne insisted on walking me to work. She took me a very different route than John did the night before, but we still go there okay. After she had met with him to sign my employment contract, we got started.

I met his office manager, Wiewie, along with one of the language teachers, Yang Renjeng. They sat at one desk while I sat across from John at his workspace.

Let’s talk about Chinese language. Yesterday I read through several guides to get some theoretical knowledge of how the language works. As you probably know, a lot of the sounds in Chinese are very different from English. Here is a link to my boss’s blog detailing some of the differences.

For lunch Wiewie took me out to find a cheap restaurant.

“Where are you from?” she asked me as we walked.

“The US,” I said. She asked which state and I told her. She didn’t recognize the name so I told her I’d show her on a map.

As we walked she pointed out some famous things around the area, including the middle school across the street (which John said is the place everyone with money wants their kids to go.) It is a very Romanesque looking building, surrounded by a big black gate.

“I’m sorry my English is not that good,” she said.

“It’s better than my Chinese,” I said. She laughed.

We crossed the street and went into a restaurant. It was a tiny little room and the number of people in it would have exceeded any American fire marshal limits. The menu was all in Chinese characters so Weiwie ordered for me. While we waited, they brought us a cup of pea soup. It tasted dirty, but had kind of sweet after taste.

The main entrée that Wiewie had chosen for me was a bowl of rice with a variety of sprouts and slimy meats. She used Pleco (a translation app) to look up for me what everything was. One translated to “bacon” the other to “pork chop.” There was also some sort of black fungus (presumably in the truffle family) that they really like to eat here. It all tasted pretty good.

As we ate, she asked me some questions. “It is good for me to practice my English with you,” she said. We covered all the basic vocabulary topics like “Who is in your family?” and “What is the whether like where you live?”

As we walked back to the office, Wiewie asked, “Do you want to see our library?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied. “We will go there. We have one hour for lunch.”

I think she got the word “library” and “book store” mixed up, because the place we went was definitely inside a mall and sold more than just books. There were some very nice things—various ceramics and wooden dishes—and Weiwei told me they would be very traditional gifts for “birthdays and New Year’s.”

 “And what is your hobby?” she asked. That always strikes me a very odd and forward question, but I think people across cultures ask it because the answer is easy vocabulary to understand.

“I like hiking,” I said. “There is a lot of pretty nature where I am from. And I like to travel. I saw a lot of Europe last year and I want to see a lot of other places. What about you?”

“Talking to my friends,” she said. “I think it is very important to have people to talk to . It helps you stay happy.”

It’s funny; I totally agreed with her, but in my American way of thinking, I never considered having friends to be a hobby.

On the way back to the office, she also pointed out a church to me that she thought would be nice to visit when it is open on the weekends.

When we got off work, I walked out with John. “I think you ought to try and have lunch with the girls,” he said. “They eat at some pretty cheap places and I think it’ll be the best way for you to experience the culture.”

“That sounds good to me,” I said.

“And you really should walk as much as you can. You’ll see more and you’ll learn a lot about Shanghai from just roaming the streets.”

That was my plan, and I walked home that night the route he had shown me. It was raining just a little and my umbrella wouldn’t seem to open. It wasn’t the same down pour as Sunday and I certainly wasn’t the only one without an umbrella.

When I got home, Nate made some rice and chicken for dinner. My brain hurt from studying all day, but in an odd way, I felt like I’d learned a lot.

“So I think the maid came today,” Nate said as we ate. My bed was made up—and I certainly hadn’t done that—so I agreed with his assessment. “She took the towels.” That was a bit of problem.

“I actually bought a microfiber towel,” I said.

“I didn’t,” he said, and we laughed.

“Well we need to figure out how to get our washing machine to work,” I pointed out, “so maybe we can call down to the front desk.”

Nate made the call, but the guy on the other line either didn’t understand his Chinese or didn’t understand the problem. I decided to tackle it with a little good ol’ fashion English. Riding down in the elevator, I went to front desk and asked “Is English okay?”

“I speak a little,” the man said.

“Our washer is broken,” I said.

He picked up the phone. “What room?”

I told him the number. “I will have staff come,” he said.

“How long?” I asked, pointing to my watch.

“Now!” he shouted. I thanked him and went upstairs.

Sure enough, a repair man showed up within minutes, he fiddled with the hot water heater and then left saying, “is good.” When we tried it we discovered that it “is not good.” It still made a little alarm sound and flashed “error” on the LED display.

I went back to the front desk. The guy argued with me a little that “my man says it works.”

“It doesn’t,” I said. His little bit of English was actually pretty fluent, but we couldn’t quite communicate on this error message idea.

He finally said, “He will come back.”

When I got to the room, he was already back. Nate showed him the error message and the man took out a phone. He called someone said something to them, and then handed the phone to Nate. Nate thanked them and hung up.

“It was a translator,” Nate said. “He said they will have to send someone to fix it tomorrow.”

For tonight, I took my laundry to Dayana’s room to wash. The elevator ride with my suitcase full of dirty clothes was only made more awkward by the fact I shared the elevator with the repair man.

While my laundry soaked, I Skyped my parents. It was the first time I’d talked to them since arriving and it definitely boosted my energy to catch up. Dayana texted me when my laundry was finished and I hung up with my folks to go get it.

Today at work, I had my first real lesson. The two sounds that trip me up the most (but for different reasons) are “Z” and “E.”

“Z” is difficult because I am so used to saying it the way it is spoken in my name, as in “Zach” or “Zebra.” In Chinese it makes more of a “T” sound (not exactly, but kind of…it’s somewhere between a “T” and “S”…kind of like the end of the word mist…the –IST sound, but not exactly.)

“E” is difficult for me, because I want to say it the way it is in the French word “Café.” Instead, it is more of a flat sound. I think of it as the way the "O" sounds in "love" (although that probably isn't exactly correct either.

We drilled lots of sounds, but I spent a lot of time on those, afraid that if we stopped, I’d forget them. When we finished, I continued to listening to some recordings on repeat.

For lunch, Yang Renjeng and Wiewie both brought their lunch, but they offered to take me somewhere to help me order food. We went to a small buffet so I could just point at things. I did so and got three different meat dishes, which also came with a side of rice. We took it as take away back to the office and ate out on the balcony.

The first meat I tried was brown and slimy. Yang Renjeng explained that it was pig liver. The flavor wasn’t awful (I’ve been told by lots of people that it really is a quintessential Chinese dish) but I can’t say I’m in a rush to eat it again. The second meat was actually tofu. Again, it wasn’t awful, but not something I plan to order again. The final one was pork. Aside from being a little undercooked—which worries me some—it actually tasted okay. The moral of the story, I’m glad there was rice too.

The girls and I talked while we ate.

“Do you know some other language besides English?” Weiwei asked.

“I know a little bit of Spanish,” I said. “I’m not fluent in it, but if I try I can be conversational.”

“How do you say father in Spanish?” Weiwei asked.

“Padre,” I said.

She tried to repeat it, but it came out like “Pad-o.” Madre came out in a similar fashion.

“How do you say ‘I love you,’” She asked.

“Te amo,” I said. “But it literally means, ‘you I love.’”

They laughed. “I think some Chinese grammar is also different like this,” Weiwei said.

They asked me lots of questions about my home town, my family, and how I like China. They also asked which words I knew in Chinese. I told them the few I had memorized and they told me, “They are correct, but they are not really spoken by Chinese people.”

When we finished eating, Weiwei asked if I had pictures of my family. We went back to the office and I logged into Facebook to show them.

“You look like your parents,” Weiwei said.

“I know I do,” I said.

“What is your brother’s name?” Yang Renjeng asked. I had told Weiwei the day before. I told Yang now. Neither of them can pronounce it.

We did some more work in the afternoon, and when we closed, I walked out again with John. “How was lunch?” he asked.

“Yesterday was better,” I admitted and recapped the menu for him.

“Ya I don’t really like pig liver either,” he said. “I normally like tofu but I don’t like the stinky tofu. Have you had it?”

“No,” I said, “but I’ve smelled it.” It smells like sewer gas.

“And there is another kind that is like old tofu, and it stinks too. I don’t like that one either.”

Outside, he reminded me of the massage place next door. “I might go try that out,” I said. Sitting at the desk the last couple of days, my neck was a little tight.

“Tell them I sent you,” he said. “It’ll be fun trying to communicate that to them. But I don’t want to tell you much else. It’ll ruin the fun.”

We laughed and he headed in the opposite direction. As I looked at the prices in the window, I decided to go for it! Getting off work seems like the perfect time to dive deeper into a little bit of culture.