A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (11 page)

humour
 
 
n.
1.
an ability to say or perceive things that are amusing;
2.
an amusing quality in a situation, film, etc.;
3.
a state of mind, mood;
4.
old-fashioned
fluid in the body–
v.
to be kind and indulgent.

humour

Yesterday at home we celebrate my birthday. I turn to 24. OK I don’t know when is my real birthday, but passport birthday can be great excuse to have a big Chinese meal.

It is the year of goat. My animal sign is goat too. It is my second twelth year after the year of my birth, which means I am having my most important year in my life, because it is a year I meet my destiny. My mother will say that.

We are having a hotpot birthday party. You say you never eat hotpot meal before. You say it is interesting to see people sitting around a big table and cook food from a steaming pot in the middle.

So there is about six or seven people all together. Some are your friends. Two of them from my English language school. One is from Japan called Yoko. Yoko has very slim cat eyes, and neat cut fringe covered her forehead like a hat. Her hairs has lots different colours like red and green and blue. She looks like punk, or maybe she is real punk. Another one is from Korea called Kim Yan Zhen. Kim has very pale face, and she looks whiter than any white people. These two are famous in our language school because their English is impossible. Mrs. Margaret say my English even is better than them. I think maybe because when Japanese girl speaks English, people would think she is speaking Japanese. And when Korea girl speaks English, she keeps nod her head and bow her back to show the modest, but without giving anything verbal. But anyhow, they are kind of my comrades, although Korea hates Japanese, and Japanese were not friendly with Chinese. Most important thing, they use very simple words. Yoko sits down and say, “Are we eat?” Kim Yan Zhen looks at the hotpot and asks, “Cook, you?” I like that. I like people speak that way. So we understand each other easily.

It is a meal between East and West, though three Orientals only can speak foreign language to communicate.

It is
worship
of eating, is the exactly word to describe this.

I make spicy red chilli soup for the hotpot, by putting in gingers, garlic, spring onions, leeks, dried mushroom and chillis to stew the soup. After the soup becomes boiling I put in tofu and lamb. With hotpot, lamb is essential for the soup. It gives the form content. Otherwise hotpot is the interesting form of meaningless. Is a pity that you are
vegetarian
, and all of your friends are also
vegetarians
in this room.

While I am cooking the lamb in the pot, you and your friend just look at it, and put the uncooked carrots straight into the mouth. In Chinese, we say the way you cut the meat reflects the way you live. They must be timid people.

Here is the birthday gift from you. Two book. The first is
The Happy Prince and Other Tales
by Oscar Wilde. You say is good book for me to start with, to understand English writing easily. The second one is
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf. You say it can be read later on, when my English becomes very good.

Then Japanese girl Yoko gives me small little box. It is delicate, like perfume box. On the cover it says:

Waterproof Personal Massager

MADE IN CHINA

What’s this waterproof? Battery? Watch? There is picture on the cover: it is something looks like small cucumber but slightly bended.

Curiously, I open the box. It comes out a smooth plastic thing look exactly like small cucumber. On the bottom there are some buttons: on/off/fast/slow. Is it toothbrush machine? I put into my mouth, but it not fit easily. A massage machine for facial beauty? Or for back and neck aching? Maybe the instruction will tell me.

I unfold the little piece of instruction.

Natural Contours—it’s great to be a woman

Then there is a printed letter:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing your new Natural Contours massager. Natural Contours is a revolutionary approach to personal relaxation: a massager that’s ergonomically designed to fit the contours of a woman’s body. It is our goal to offer you personal products that encompass quality, taste, and style to please today’s woman.

With the move toward greater self-awareness and exploration for women, we hope this product meets with your expectations and opens up a whole new world of personal relaxation for you.

Then there are some sincere advertise on the verse of the page:

Answering the call for quality personal products, Natural Contours delivers unbeatable performance: a stylish massager with a low noise motor that provides stimulating vibration. The elegant, impact-resistant casing is ergonomically designed to complement a woman’s natural shape.

TO OPERATE: SWITCH TO “ON” POSITION

So follow this instruction I switch on the machine. It is beeping. Everybody who eats the hotpot now stops eating and look at me.

You lean to me and whisper in my ear, “It’s a vibrator. You put it in your vagina.”

Holding the vibrate, my hand is shaking badly. I switch it off. It makes me feel horrified.

Everybody in the party laughs.

“I think Asian people have a great sense of humour,” you say.

“No, we don’t,” I clarify.

“Why not? You and Yoko make everybody laugh all the time.”

“No. We Chinese don’t understand humour. We look funny just because the culture difference, and we just being too honest,” I say.

“Yes, when you say things very honest, people think you are funny. But we stupid,” Yoko adds.

“Yes, I agree.” Here comes Korea girl Kim Yan Zhen eventually. She barely speaks, but whenever she speaks she impress everybody. She seriously makes a comment:

“Humour is a Western concept.”

Is super English. I didn’t know Kim’s English improve so much recently.

Your friends look at us three Orientals, like look at three panda escape from bamboo forest.

I watch the vibrate. I want to make a comment as well: “Enjoy sex is a Western concept too.”

“That’s rubbish. Men enjoy the sex everywhere,” says Korea girl Kim Yan Zhen.

Mans look at each other.

“But, I mean, Yoko, did you give her the vibrator as a joke or as a serious gift?” you ask.

“Of course serious,” answer by Yoko. I know Yoko is serious. Oriental people are serious, even young punks.

“Have you never seen a vibrator before?” one of your friends ask me.

“No. How would I?”

“But it’s made in China,” the friend says.

“Doesn’t mean I see it,” I say. “Actually those big international co-op factories run by foreigners. And the managers employ lots cheap labours like peasants, peasants’ wives. And those womans they don’t really know what is this machine for, but they just make it, by putting every piece of spare parts together. It is like they make computers by putting pieces together, but they never ever use computer.”

Why it doesn’t say “Dildo” or “automatic sex for woman” on the box? Maybe because it made in China, not allow to say things so clearly. It might become a big scandal if somebody from his village know his neighbour making plastic cocks everyday in a factory. Or maybe these factories are secretly protected by the government. Because Chinese government say there is no sex industry in China.

Putting more white cabbages into the hotpot, I can’t help thinking about those womans waking up early every morning to make vibrators. I am seeing them leaving behind their unemployed bad-temper husbands and poor children to sit on production lines and make vibrators. And those peasant womans will never use the vibrator in this life. All they want to know is how much they will earn today and how much money they can save for the family.

I put back this plastic cucumber into the box. When I leave it on the oily table, I see the warning from the side of the box:
Clean with washcloth and mild soap
.

migraine
 
 
n.
a severe headache, often with nausea and visual disturbances.

migraine

Another hot day. You left home in the morning with your old white van. I went to school and I had an exam on vocabulary. The exam went OK. I think I gain more English words since I have been lived with you. Mrs. Margaret praises me. She said I a fast learner. She doesn’t know I have been living with an English man every day and night. Soon school will end for summer holidays. My parents not expect there be so many holidays when they paid this school.

I come back home in the evening and switch on BBC Radio 4. I know my listening comprehension still bad. I hear
Six O’clock News
, then
The Party Line: comedy about a frustrated MP
. I don’t understand English comedy.

I am waiting for you to be back.

You come back home almost ten. You hug me with a cold wind. You look so frail. You look painful. You say you got two parking tickets today, one is forty pounds, another one is sixty pounds. You say you were fighting with the traffic policeman who is a black. You say why black people they are so kind and friendly in Africa, but are so rude as long as they live in London. You say London is a place sucks. You say London is the place making everybody aggressive.

You say you got strong headache again, and your whole body aches as well.

I make you some tea. Your favourite peppermint tea. (On the tea bag it says: produce of Egypt. I thought English people they produce their own tea.) I poured the boiled water into the pot. It is an old teapot in brown colour. It is ugly. You say you used this teapot for almost ten years. Ten years, you never break it. Is unbelievabal.

You drink the tea and you stare at the steam from cup.

I give you a painkiller pill. You take it. But you look worse. You move your body to the bathroom. You throw yourself up.

It is unbearable. I hear your pains, through the closed bathroom. It feels like you are throwing up all the dirts from your body, all the dirts from the sick world.

The running tap is being switched off. You come out from the bathroom, with a pale face.

“I never had headaches before I came to London. My body was so healthy when I lived in the country with my goats, and I was just planting potatoes. Since I moved here I’m struggling all the time. My body is in misery. That’s why I hate London. Not only London, all big cities. Big cities are like huge international airports. You can’t have one moment of peace here, and you can’t find love and keep it.”

But what about the love between you and me? It happen in the big city, a very big city, London, a very international place, like airport. Can you keep that love? Can we keep it? I ask myself, in my heart, touching your hair. There is something shaking inside me.

Now you lie down on the bed, your body is hidden in quilt. Your quilt is so heavy, and the texture feels very rough. Not right for this hot weathers. It must be with you for many many years, and it must be from somebody else—you never buy beddings. When I saw your quilt and sheets the first time, I just know you lived long time on your own without a woman. A house has a woman will definitely have a soft and cosy beddings.

Feeling your body is shivering in pain, I can’t leave you there. I take off my clothes, and I lie beside you.

“Will you have sex with me?” you ask me, with a weak voice.

“Why? Do you want?” I am very surprised.

“Hmm.”

Your hand still presses your head where is the pain from.

“If I come it helps me forget about the pain and fall asleep,” you say.

“But what if nobody beside you or you don’t have a lover when you are very ill?” I am shocked.

“Then I would do it with my hand. Like I did before you came into my life.”

I don’t know what to say anymore.

Touching gently your little bird, I move my fingers. I can feel your pain directly. Your pains is like electric current transfer into my finger, then my palm, then my body, then my head. I become shivering with my anticipation, for that I want cure your pain.

You face look relieved, but your breath becoming much heavier. Your little bird gets harder in my fist. I don’t feel sexy at all; all I wish is to stop you suffering.

“Are you ready to come?” I am holding you.

“Yes…” you say, enduring the great pain of climax.

Your body is shaking. Then the sperm comes. My hand is completely wet. It jets, again and again. The milk. It must be bitter milk when a person is suffering. It is the milk of love, my love to you, but it is also the milk of pain, your pain in your life.

Your breath calms down. You are leaving your pain.

We lie still, without moving even for one centimetre. We are just like your still statue. The sperm on my palm is drying. You fall into sleep. I can feel every single pulse on your wrist. I can feel every single beat from your heart. I breathe in your breath. I inhale your exhale. It is being so long that we lie here like two statues. I look at your face, for so long. I even can see your death. The shape of your death.