This doesn’t happen often anymore, although at one time it was a daily occurrence. I’m teaching and the phone rings. I check the number: Work? Kid? Embassy? Nope. But hey, it could be important... It’s a number I don’t know, but it’s not blocked, so I answer. A voice I don’t recognize screams at me joyfully and rapidly for about a minute, then pauses, then asks, “Hao ma?” I stand stunned under the blitzkrieg of sound and tones and blink. The voice repeats, “Hao ma?” (“OK?”) and I stammer, in Chinese, “Please say that again, more slowly.” The caller sighs, then launches into the verbal assault again, no slower, just a LOT louder. Assuming it’s not a robot call, or a telemarketer, or the delivery guy, it could be a far more deadly reason: someone wants to be your friend, and cannot quite fathom why you, a teacher, do not want to chat in Chinese in the middle of the lesson you’re giving.
If it IS a delivery guy, I can only pray that it’s not one of those situations where I was messaged a secret code that I have to give to the delivery person before he can release a package. This is in theory a great idea, but in practice, those codes often come when I absolutely cannot stop working in order to check messages. They may come unannounced and unexpected, which is great if you’re talking inheritances and bonuses, but not so great if it’s a package delivery or very important papers that your landlord needs you to sign to prove where you live.
In the latest case, it was my dog groomer: she did a superb job on the Peke’s coat, but cut a pair of fat pants on the terrier that look like something you’d choose for a plump niece you secretly hated. I don’t feel I owe anyone friendship because they performed a service for me, particularly one which I paid handsomely for, although I owe them courtesy and kindness because that’s just the right thing to do. My refusal to make “new friends” via the telephone is not snobbery, it’s just that both my time and language ability in Chinese are so very limited. I have a very full time job, volunteer for an organization, graduate school, and I live in the butt cheek of Beijing where it’s a 45-minute taxi ride just to get cheese. Do I really have time to have people come over where I slowly and painfully make conversation about “This is the pen of my aunt” and “ABC, 123?” No. I don’t even have time for a cocktail now and again with good friends – just to manage a dinner party, I have to give up my volunteer work this weekend and I’m only ordering pizza at that.
I dread speaking on the phone in Chinese: I can’t get those non-verbal clues that are really more than half of the conversation, and my pronunciation overall is not exactly that of a Beijing native. I have to speak loudly, as my phone is not in great shape, and this means anything I say has an automatic audience. I hate the crowd that gathers and listens in, jostling for position as The Foreigner says rapidly and badly, “Hears without understanding. Please say again.” I think most non-native speakers dread this experience, having to have a spontaneous conversation in public sprung without warning and with highly critical witnesses who will absolutely judge you for every wrong tone or odd collocation. Honestly, it’s hell, and it happens far too often for my taste.
As I had never met the dog groomer in person, as she deals with my cleaner, I can only surmise that her desire to speak with me was motivated out of a kind of curiosity: was I really the badly spoken fool my cleaner tells her I am? Oh, honey, yes. Yes, I am. And those stories she tells you about me are 100 percent true, although spun a bit darkly to my everlasting detriment. Just don’t ask me to say anything coherent in Chinese on the telephone when I should be teaching my students, or worse, call me on a school night after 9 pm. Should that happen, you will find out exactly how much slang I picked up from Uncle Zhang, a 20-year veteran of the taxi trade, and I guarantee you it will not be pretty, although shockingly well-pronounced.
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