Xinjiang Fun, Catherine's Chinese Fun, Bizarre Dream Fun: Part II
CATHERINE USES CHINESE
So Catherine, as some of you may know, is one of my classmates here in Beijing (checkout my myspace for a link to hers). She is also American, but unlike me she lives in an apartment rather than with a host family, so her opportunities to use Chinese are more limited. As such, she admittedly only has a couple of expressions and conversational topics that she is totally comfortable using. One of these is the bargaining language set, which she uses with vigor at the Silk Street Clothing Market ("The Silk Market"), which is the Beijing tourist-focused market in which aggressive chinese knockoff booths attempt to rip-off visiting tourists with fake LV, etc. You can get fake anything here, and the staff are the kinds and queens of the "i'll give you a good price" routine. Here is Catherine in action:
Store Girl: You want these shoes? I give you a good price.
Catherine: I like these shoes. How much?
SG: These are very good ones. 1000 kuai
C: I'll give you 75 kuai
SG: What? You are joking! These are my high quality shoes!
C: 75 kuai
SG: No really, what's your real price? Your no-joke price?
C: 75 kuai
SG: No really. How about 750 kuai
C: Ni juede wo shi erbaiwu? ("Do you think I am an idiot?" using the expression "erbaiwu" which means 250, which everyone in beijing uses to mean idiot but assumes that the foreigners don't know what it means, meanwhile its the first thing we learn when we get here)
SG: 500 kuai, thats my last price
C: (says nothing, just leaves...she makes it about 5 paces outside of the stall)
SG: Wait! 250!
C: 75
SG: 125
C: 75
SG 75
And Catherine wins. My other friend Carino once got "1000 kuai" shoes for 25 kuai because she literally didn't want them!
Anyway, this is all beside the point. The real story is this: Catherine went to the silk market to get a suit made at one of the tailors on the top floor. I would attempt to retell the tailor story but I simply can't do it justice. The punchline is that the suck sucked. But my favorite part of that longer story is this:
While waiting for her friend to get her measurements done, Catherine used her (at that time) meager assortment of Chinese expressions to make small talk with the other shopgirl. Topics probably included:
1) The weather
Then the conversation died, and Catherine, feeling uncomfortable, dipped into reserve and used the only remaining chinese expression she knew:
Catherine: Wo you le ("I'm pregnant")
Let's me clear, Catherine was definitely not pregnant. However, he also remembered the expression for married, and so when they asked in follow-up if she was married, she replied with a firm "No". This sent the shop girls into a frenzy! I still can't believe that she would tell these strangers falsely that she was pregnant JUST TO KEEP UP THE CONVERSATION!!!
Imagine if I did sometime similar and in the midstof a lul on conversation with my tailor said something like:
Dan: Wo yo lao dutze ("I have dysentery")
Would hilarity ensue? Clearly in Catherine's case her clever conversational ploy worked, because she has always had a conversational topic with the silk market tailors ever since.
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