| A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers |
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| Culture | |
| Wednesday, 16 May 2007 | |
 “Now.Beijing time 12 clock midnight. London time 5 clock afternoon. But I at neither time zone. I on airplane.“ The beginning of Xiaolu Guo’s new book – A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers – is already funny, with deliberately broken English. If you are put off by the language (like some English commentators) then I am sorry, my dear friend, but you have missed the point. It is the February bestseller at the Broadway bookshop – Xiaolu’s neighbourhood bookshop in East London. It has also been nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. It was quite by chance that my English husband found it and he was delighted to present the book to me as a Valentine’s day present. I have always wanted to write something about my life as a newcomer to the UK, as a young girl who never had before left her country before coming to study and live in this foreign country, struggling to learn the local language to express herself and communicate, trying to fight for balance in the turbulence cause by the culture clash, navigating the way through the minefield of a mixed relationship… While my stories are still in conception, Xiaolu, with enormous courage and a sharp comparison for the cause of this clash, has shown us a vivid picture of the confusion, struggle and evolution, with brilliant cross cultural references and examination – the part I most enjoyed. For example, “Heathrow” is “Heathlow”, because Chinese usually can’t differentiate between “L” and “R”; the Big Ben is the “Big Stupid Clock”, because that’s how it is called in Chinese; Fizzy water is “filthy” water, from when she misunderstood what she was asked by a waiter. The book’s narrator, Zhuang Xiaoqiao (called “Z” because people find it difficult to pronounce her name) is a 23 year old Chinese girl sent to the UK to study English. Having never before left her home country and knowing little about English, she felt scared, insecure and lonely. In the extreme loneliness, she met someone who happened to be in the cinema on his own. There the story starts, when they arranged a further date in Kew Gardens. He probably was the first decent male she had met in the UK who had an interest in her, and she was perhaps the most different type of person he had ever known - there they go, out of curiosity, out of the fear of loneliness, they grab each other like people who have found an oasis after travelling for a long time across the desert. The flame is lit by the misunderstanding: ‘“I want to see where you live,” I say. ‘You look in my eyes. ”Be my guest”’ A week later, Zhuang moves into his little house in Hackney and from then, they sleep in his tiny single bed for the whole time the story lasts. This is a love story started by the sheer urge to escape loneliness, which consequently brings her obsession and finally total disappointment and pain. It is no way a happy story, as it seems to me – she’s 23, a naive virgin, innocent, ignorant, sceptic, agnostic, possessive and a meat eater; he’s 44, bisexual, ex-anarchist, an unsuccessful artist, a vegetarian and a “drifter”. I can’t see there was that much in common between them except: he was an excellent English teacher while Zhuang has strong desire to learn the language, as well as the love of cinema, and of making love. Yes, the little Zhuang was never too shy to reveal their strong desire of each other’s bodies, her experience in watching the peep show, looking at porn magazines (in public), and the extravagance of their love making - which is almost the main content of their daily life. I read the story with great interest, and gradually felt disappointed for the stupidity of the girl in her relationship and generally in her life. The main problem for the couple was, they fail to comprehend each other’s perspective, stick too much to their own culture and views, and therefore fail to communicate effectively. Her insecurity leads to her obsession to possess him. “The way I want of love, is like a hard toothbrush try to brush bad teeth, then it ends up bleeding.” His detachment from society and fear of future promise make Zhuang desperate to try in vain to change him. They argue about paying bills, Tibet, privacy, Chinese eating habits, or even her ambition, from their own deeply rooted cultural origins, values and beliefs. This is why I like this book so much – it gives you a vivid example of a mixed couple’s troubles, and where they originate. For example, she observes: “I think the loneliness in this country is something very solid, very heavy… We don’t have much the individuality concept in China. We are collective, and we believe in Collectivism… When I was in Middle school, we have to dance exactly the same pace and the same movement in the music. Maybe that’s why I never feel lonely in China. ”We Chinese are not encouraged to use the word ‘self’ so often….how can you think of ‘self’ most of the time but not about others and the whole society?.. But here, in this rainy old capitalism country, ‘self’ means everything... ’self’ is the original creativity for everything.” She goes on to ask: ”why privacy is so important? In China, every family live together... Privacy make people lonely, privacy make families falling apart.” Although a little too one dimensional, it does show some of the problems of the individualism which has overwhelmed the western world. Zhuang’s journey to Europe is typical but somehow a little obscene– forced to experience independence by her lover, she went on a journey where she encountered a series of misadventures – I couldn’t help but feel angry on her stupidity and feel the shame while seeing an innocent young girl being so lost. I just wish she would have experienced the real enlightenment of independent travel but not sure what she learned from her adventure. There are lots of funny points on the novel, however. For example, she describes her feeling towards the English breakfast by describing it as “a big lunch for construction worker” and as for baked beans: “only problem is, tastes like somebody put beans into mouth but spit out and back into plate.” As a typical Chinese who cannot live without food and more specifically meat, after several days of a vegetarian diet, she rushed to the Chinese restaurant in Hackney with her lover, quickly ordered duck, pork, fried tofu with beef, but received a comment from her lover – “this menu is a zoo.” There are some brilliant points too, especially those showing us a true bloody insight of struggle of this young Chinese girl: “I am sick of speaking English like this…I feel as if I am being tied up, as if I am living in a prison... I have become so small, so tiny, while the English culture surrounding me becomes enormous. It swallows me, and it rapes me. I am dominated by it… I wish I could just go back to my own language now.” After all, I have to say, Zhuang is extremely brave, and I appreciate her national pride through out the whole book. Perhaps being a little more open minded in appreciating different cultures would have done her good, especially in terms of her relationship. It’s an excellent book – as the Guardian critic Scarlett Tomas puts it: it allows the British readers “all to consider ourselves from other perspectives: to question the commonplaces of our culture and language and, perhaps most interestingly, to allow ourselves to be satirised by the unassimilated.” See Xiaolu’s personal website: http://www.guoxiaolu.com/ |
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