My relationship with the Chinese language is woven into my heart and mind from a thousand experiences spun in love, hate, trauma, and joy.  Mostly, love.

In my mid-twenties, I met and soon became smitten with a tall, handsome graduate student from China. We had been dating about a year when I first heard him speak Mandarin.   The student uprising in Tiananmen Square was underway and we spent our evenings watching the televised coverage.  Then one night, as we watched an ordinary citizen hold his position against an oncoming government tank, my boyfriend left me to answer the phone.  He did not come back to me for hours.  By the time he joined me on the couch in front of the TV, he looked spent and said he couldn't translate what he and his friends said.  I guided his head to rest on my shoulder and we sat silently staring at the TV.  I didn't want his English words which I knew couldn't convey the pain obviously swelling in his heart.  I wanted his unedited, raw Chinese words.  Soon after, I began to ask our Chinese friends to stop translating for me at parties.  

My first attempt at writing Chinese was in a love letter I gave to my husband on our wedding night.  Writing was much harder act than I first imagined.  Chinese is a complicated language and structurally very different than English. I needed help so secretly took a night class in Chinese calligraphy.  Although I learned how to hold a writing brush and put ink on paper with flare, I could not write even one sentence.  Still motivated by love and driven by a stubborn spirit, I spent endless hours in the library using a Chinese dictionary to try and find a way to express my deep love for my new husband.  Apparently, I ended up writing about water and floating birds, but it looked beautiful.   

I first spoke Chinese with my non-English-speaking parents-in-law who moved in and stayed with us for six years. Not surprisingly, my mother-in-law had opinions and liked to share them, usually with a dollop of judgement. Although I understood her, I smiled back feigning ignorance and ask about something more relevent like if she thought the garlic clove was firm.  We got along swimmingly.

Then, my husband and I had an opportunity to move to Beijing.  It was there, living in the northwest part of the city between Peking University and the Summer Palace that I became more fluent in Chinese.  I attended my parent-teacher conferences where I was the only foreign parent listening in Chinese, pretending I could read the Chinese hand-outs.  I developed the ability to argue and barter at the market for fresh vegetables and fair-priced clothing for my kids.  In my final years there, I was fortunate to be one of seventeen foreign residents selected to represent China to the world as a docent in the Forbidden City.  As I was allowed to enter through the restricted East Gate, every shift began and finished with a stroll through the quiet, undisturbed private grounds visitors never see.   I would often pause and look up at the blue sky through the lattice of centuries-old green gingko leaves, imagining the men and women who might have done the same centuries before.  

I left Beijing eight years ago, along with my children.  The man I was smitten with decided to stay.  My love of Chinese is not gone, but I rarely speak it.  The exception is when I visit my ex-father-in-law, Baba, or help him when he needs to go to the doctor or hospital.  Click the button below if you would like to read a true story about my interpreting Baba in surgery.