Chinglish of the Week

A description at once apt and awkward

In America, this ad's caption could well be the motto for an anti-drinking and driving campaign. In China, it is the slogan for a bubble-tea store.

Sanmen: The Little Power Plant That Could, Part 2

Continued from The Fisherman…

The Exchange

When I got back to shore, I decided to hike toward a temple-looking structure near one of the

The American Restaurant

The American Restaurant's inventive decor

The store

Michael and I playing Beer Pong at The American Restaurant...we won.

villages. As I walked along the concrete path that villagers use to travel between towns, I passed a small, bamboo -sided restaurant called “The American Restaurant” that a local Chinese family operates. The family opened the joint to attract the power plant’s expat employees and their families. Apparently, Michael’s friend Evan, who used to work for Shaw, advised the family on making the place attractive to expats, which means that in addition to serving American-ish food, the restaurant has a T.V., dart board, materials enough to play a rough game of beer pong, and a small store that sells must-have American imports, like Jiff peanut butter, Jolly Green Giant canned corn, and Betty Crocker pancake mix.

The people who run The American Restaurant are very friendly and their English is quite good. The wall opposite the bar is plastered with photographs of restaurant staff posing with expat patrons, many of who have been working for Shaw or Westinghouse at the Sanmen site for  years.

The "road"

I continued down the road through a village of dingy, tiled buildings, each appearing on the verge of collapse. But the villagers were happy and lively. The women chatted to one another while they swept off their front stoops. The men laughed and smoked in the streets. The villagers lived in a sort of disjointed poverty: They had dogs with pretty collars, flourishing vegetable gardens, and electric scooters. But the towns also had garbage piles everywhere, bedraggled and sickly-looking ducks and chickens, and air thick with the fetor of human waste. I walked through the place quickly, smiling at the curious villagers who stared back at me.

The lovely green rose chafer

From there, I walked down a garbage-strewn hillside to a small beach where mudskippers flipped and flopped in the surf, and continued southward toward another village. I stood for a bit on a small patch of sandy beach to watch the fishermen scoot about in the mud on their sea sleds and then walked up a set of stairs to the second village. Unlike the previous one, this town one was quiet and empty.

At this point I was burning up because I had forgotten to put on sunscreen and stupidly didn’t bring along a hat. Looking around, I spotted an elderly couple resting in the shade of a large tree near the end of town. I waked over to them, hoping they could give me directions back to the main. I said, “Nihao” to the woman, who seemed far more interested in me than her husband. He grunted at my approach and continued to gaze at the fishermen in the bay below. I doubt the woman spoke Mandarin (most of China’s rural residents only speak a local dialect, of which there are hundreds) but she was chatty nonetheless.

The woman was a classic figure:  She wore a black housedress printed with small white dots and was bent over a wooden cane. Her sun-spotted skin was tan and leathery, and a woven, wide-brimmed sun hat trimmed with faded yellow ribbon was pulled over her silver hair, which she had tied back into a loose bun.

The old trading woman

She motioned to the sun and then to my arms. Then she grabbed her own arms and rubbed them. She pointed to the sun again and then she reached over and pinched the skin on my upper arm. She kept saying what sounded like, “Toma, toma!” With gestures, I tried to elicit from her whether there was a road from this town to the temple on the hill. She pointed toward the base of the hill and nodded but then moved closer to me, closed her fingers into a fist and held it in the air, as if she were grasping an imaginary umbrella. I finally understood that she was saying it was too hot and bright for me to be wandering around without sun protection. Pinching my skin was her way of saying I was burning up.

I nodded, pointed to the sun and fanned my face. She smiled and nodded back. Then, quite unexpectedly, she grabbed my right hand and lifted it close to her face. With her fingers, she began to examine the silver ring I was wearing on my middle finger. She seemed quite taken with it so I removed the ring and placed it in her wrinkled hands. She turned it over and over in the sun, entranced by its silver shimmering, and then showed the ring to her husband, who looked down at it, uttered a grunt of semi-interest and returned his gaze to the bustling bay.

The ring was pretty but not expensive, a sterling chevron-shaped job that I had purchased from Overtock.com to replace one I had lost. So I reached over and folded the old woman’s hands around

My new hat

the ring, put both of my hands up, palms out, to try to say, “it’s yours, keep it.” She didn’t understand at first and gave it back. I placed it in her hands once more and said, “for you.” She understood and smiled, revealing a few missing teeth. She turned to her husband excitedly to show him and he grunted a few times in response. She then put the ring on her left hand pinky finger, removed her straw sunhat and gave it to me. “Is this for me?” I asked, gesturing to the hat and then myself. She nodded so I put that hat on and she helped me adjust the strap. What a relief! The hat completely shaded my face and shoulders. I was very grateful.

The old woman then led me to a small path hidden in the brushy foliage. It appeared to wind up the hillside and after a few minutes of walking, my new hat and I were back on the main road and very near the temple.

I spotted a few of these butterflies on pieces of...well...poop actually. They seemed to be feeding on the excrement. What a fabulous contrast!

The temple turned out to be a terraced cemetery. Twelve or so cement terraces stretched lengthwise across the hill, and a steep, tree-lined staircase cut them up the middle. I don’t think anyone is

The cemetery stairs

actually buried here, as the dead in China are generally cremated. Besides, the markers looked more like memorials than gravestones, and the base of the staircase was littered with Cigarette butts and old lighters, junk food wrappers and an old shoe, which gave me the impression that this place was not especially sacred. So I walked to the top where the view was best and I could see the whole bay at once. I called Michael when I got to the top and

View from the Cemetery

told him about the fisherman I met that morning, the exchange I made with the village woman, the cemetery, and all the bugs I had seen along the way. He laughed and said it sounded like a great adventure. Yes, I thought, fingering the sunhat, it had been quite a day.