A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
by Xiaolu Guo | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0099520796 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0099520796 Global Overview for this book
2 journalers for this copy...
This book was a treasure. I had never heard of it. I picked it up 15th of March in Helsinki in Kirjasto 10 which is a library right next to the Railway Station. The book is written in "bad English" which improves towards the end because the story-teller is twenty-three-year-old Chinese Zhuang who is studying English in London. She falls in love with a man she meets in the movie theatre and moves in with him. The book says a lot about cultural misunderstandings and about culture shock and learning a new language and culture. It was funny and touching to read. I had trouble liking the man Z. fell in love with. Some quotes:
"How I finding important places including Buckingham Palace, or Big Stupid Clock? I looking everywhere but not seeing big posters of David Beckham, Spicy Girls or President Margaret Thatcher. In China we hanging them everywhere. English person not respect their heroes or what?"
"English words made only from twenty-six characters? Are English a bit lazy or what? We have fifty thousand characters in Chinese."
"I confusing again when I look at 'whipped cream' on little blackboard. What is that mean? How people whip the cream? I see a poster somewhere near Chinatown. On poster naked woman only wears leather boots and leather pants, and she whipping naked man kneeling down under legs. So a English chef also whipping in kitchen?"
"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. --- "Humour is a Western concept."
"The day I arrived to West, I suddenly realised I am Chinese. As long as one has black eyes and black hair, obsessed by rice, and cannot swallow any Western food, and cannot pronounce the difference between 'r' and 'l', and request people without using please - then he or she is a typical Chinese: an ill-legal immigrant, badly treat Tibetans and Taiwanese, good on food but put MSG to poison people, eat dog's meat and drink snakes' guts."
"In France, their fish is poisson, their bread is pain and their pancake is crêpe. Pain and poison and crap. That's what they have every day."
"Our Chinese invented paper so your Shakespeare can write two thousand years later. Our Chinese invented gunpowder for you English and American to bomb Iraq. And our Chinese invented compass for you English to sail and colonise the Asian and Africa."
"How I finding important places including Buckingham Palace, or Big Stupid Clock? I looking everywhere but not seeing big posters of David Beckham, Spicy Girls or President Margaret Thatcher. In China we hanging them everywhere. English person not respect their heroes or what?"
"English words made only from twenty-six characters? Are English a bit lazy or what? We have fifty thousand characters in Chinese."
"I confusing again when I look at 'whipped cream' on little blackboard. What is that mean? How people whip the cream? I see a poster somewhere near Chinatown. On poster naked woman only wears leather boots and leather pants, and she whipping naked man kneeling down under legs. So a English chef also whipping in kitchen?"
"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. --- "Humour is a Western concept."
"The day I arrived to West, I suddenly realised I am Chinese. As long as one has black eyes and black hair, obsessed by rice, and cannot swallow any Western food, and cannot pronounce the difference between 'r' and 'l', and request people without using please - then he or she is a typical Chinese: an ill-legal immigrant, badly treat Tibetans and Taiwanese, good on food but put MSG to poison people, eat dog's meat and drink snakes' guts."
"In France, their fish is poisson, their bread is pain and their pancake is crêpe. Pain and poison and crap. That's what they have every day."
"Our Chinese invented paper so your Shakespeare can write two thousand years later. Our Chinese invented gunpowder for you English and American to bomb Iraq. And our Chinese invented compass for you English to sail and colonise the Asian and Africa."
Available in our bc-meeting tonight. Enjoy the book, who ever gets it!
Didn't find a new reader yet.
Still looking for a new reader. If nobody in our monthly meet-up catches this one, I might still take it home and maybe offer it via forum or wild release it somewhere.
Tämä kirja tuntuu mukavalta näin ennen lukemista ja pidän muutenkin kiinaisista kertovista tai kiinalaisten kirjoittamista kirjoista.
