Sichuan and Steel

       It was a blistering day. The minute I stepped out of the air-conditioned car, sweat began to pound down my face and back, just like the beating of the waves of culture shock on my mind. The ride from my host family’s house to the restaurant where we were to eat was just peachy-keen: we nearly got hit only once by a bus and I saw my life flash before my eyes for just thirty seconds. Today, lunch sounded just as promising: more Chinese food, um, um good! I had only eaten the last twelve meals straight in the same Chinese restaurant preciously to which I had only eaten Chinese food twice in my entire life. Hand gestures and pictures by my host mother and sister, supplemented my non-existent, Chinese to explain each dish to me. Man, did my mother look funny squawking, while pecking with her feet at the floor of the restaurant – it took me awhile to figure out that the dish she was gesturing wildly at, contained none other than, chicken feet. These same gestures were less productive in explaining the pig’s ears and cow’s hearts that were also on the table. Since I, uh, don’t really eat these fine delicacies, I ended up eating rice for lunch. This was the beginning of a month straight of dog kidneys and the charades that accompanied each meal.

       Armed with my accomplished charade skills and whole lot of Pepto-Bismol, I set off to spend a week in Sichuan with my host family, for the national week holiday. My flamboyant charades were not well received by the other vacationers, and I was forced to actually use my paltry Chinese one basics. Big mistake, I never should have opened my mouth: every word I spoke was mispronounced and it seemed as though I had to repeat the tone song every ten minutes for my diligent host family: "Mā, má, mă, mà." The other vacationers too, made sure that I pronounced every tone correctly and repeated it ten times, even if it took me twenty minutes. This progressed into their desire to try to get me to say Chinese tongue twisters such as "si shi si, shi si shi shi si." (to varying tones of which I can not recall.) Can we say "tones of steel?" Yep, tones of steel.

       To diverge, who ever said that a dog is a man’s best friend? I most whole-heartedly disagree. I firmly believe that Pepto-Bismol is man’s best friend – its even useful when you eat dog. Believe it or not, I didn’t chew a single Pepto-Bismol in Sichuan, the spice capital of the world, even after eating hot pot. Let’s try this again: "stomach of steel" – hot pot and 25 meals straight of Chinese food. It seemed that my stomach was not the only thing that got a workout over break, my vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, it seemed, improved ten-fold over break.

       Coming into the fishbowl on Tuesday morning, I ran into Mr. Bissell, looking unusually Bissell-like, his eyes stern and face set in deep thought. "Oh shit," I thought. "What had I done? I survived vacation; I didn’t get sick on anyone; no possible charades that I could think of. What else could it be?" On the contrary, Mr. Bissell told me, he thought, "I had made a significant improvement over vacation." I am still finding out what improvement means. If it means that I have tones and a stomach of steel, than I’ve made amazing progress, but I still think I have a long way to go.