I lived in China for three years, and while I was there, I learned a boatload of lessons about life and being flexible. There’s nothing like being taken from all that is familiar and safe and comfortable and being thrown into a culture that you have no experience with for stretching you and making you grow!
I enjoyed living in China for the most part, but I must admit that there were rocky times. The first year was the hardest, or perhaps had the highest concentration of new hard things that cropped up unexpectedly. The most mundane task could become unattainable given the language barrier, and I had plenty of chances for miscommunication.
One of my most memorable early adventures in China happened while I was grocery shopping. Now, we all know that body language is important, and that certain hand signals are not appropriate. I’d asked about this before I went to China, and felt like I had a good grasp of what not to do. But I ran into a different difficulty with hand signs. See, I’d gone to Germany before, and while I was there I learned that Germans start counting with the thumb. If you hold up your thumb it means one, your index finger means two, and so on. Naïvely I assumed that that was how one counted in different countries. However, the Chinese have hand signals for the numbers one through ten.
My favorite one is six – I still use it unconsciously sometimes, and people wonder why I’m telling them to hang loose. Speaking of body language… Anyway! I was going to the grocery store for the first time by myself – a real milestone, when you don’t speak the language – and wanted to buy meat. In China, when you buy beef or other large animal meats, you have to speak to a butcher and ask for how much you want, and they cut it off the carcass they have hanging up behind the counter. I’d asked one of my friends how to say, “I want two pounds of beef,” and she told me to say, “Wo yao liang jin niu rou.” So far so good. Filled with anxiety yet determined, I approached the counter.
The butcher looked at me, unimpressed. He looked me up and down, and frowned, waiting. As usual, I had gathered a few gawkers on my way through the store, and they watched excitedly to see what would be forthcoming. Clearing my throat, I smiled as I said my single Chinese phrase: “Wo yao liang jin niu rou.” And to reinforce what I said, I held up two fingers. Unfortunately, this is the gesture I made:
The butcher frowned more deeply, and leaned forward. “Ba jin?” (Eight pounds?) he said in a deep voice, imitating my gesture. I smiled, confused, and replied, “Liang jin.” (Two pounds.) Once again I gestured. He said more confidently, “Ba jin?” (Eight pounds?) and started to pick up a huge hunk of meat. “No!” I said, panicked. “Er jin!, Yi, er!” (Two pounds! One, two!) I counted on my fingers, showing him. “Ah!” he said disdainfully, then rattled off a string of incomprehensible Chinese to the delighted onlookers, who laughed en masse. I made off with my meat, flushed and stressed, but with several valuable lessons: I was going to make mistakes, but embarrassment wouldn’t kill me; you can communicate across a language barrier if both parties are really trying; and you should always take the time to learn body language.
So, that’s the gesture for eight in China.