A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

by Xiaolu Guo

  cabbage n. a vegetable with a large head of green leaves.

  slug n. 1. a land snail with no shell; 2. a bullet; 3. a mouthful of an alcoholic drink.

  chinese cabbage + english slug

  Hardly days is absolutely sunny, sunny until sun falling to the west. Sky in England always look suspicious, untrustful, like today’s. You see me sad but don’t understand why.

  Standing in the garden, you ask me: “Do you want to have your own little plants in this garden? I think it should be a woman’s garden as well.”

  “Yes. I want. I want plant Chinese cabbages, some water lily, some plum tree, and maybe some bamboos, and maybe some Chinese chives as well…”

  I immediately image picture of tradition Chinese garden.

  “No, honey, it’s too small for so many Chinese plants.”

  Then, Sunday, we went to Columbia Road Flower Market. It my favourite market. We brought the small little sprouts of Chinese cabbage at home. Eight little sprouts all together.

  We plant all these little things. Digging the soil, and putting every single sprout into the hole. You are fast than me. So you finished planting five, and I only putting third one in the little hole.

  We watering Chinese cabbage sprouts every morning, loyal and faithful, like every morning we never forgetting brushing our teeth. Seeing tiny sprouts come out, my heart feel happy. Is our love. We plant it.

  You say:

  “Growing a vegetable and seeing it grow is more interesting than anything else. It’s magic. Don’t you agree?”

  Yes. Is interesting. But in China, is just for peasant. Every person can do this, nothing special for growing food. Why so different here?

  Then we see some little leafs come out but are bitten by the slug.

  “It’s dangerous that the slugs keep eating the small sprouts. They can die really easily,” you tell me.

  Carrying with flashlight, every night, around 11 o’clock, you sneek into garden and check the slug. They are always several slug hidden behind the young leafs. Enjoying the delicious meal under the moonlight. You taking them out from the leafs, one by one. You putting these slug together in one glass bottle. Soon glass bottle becomes a slug-zoo.

  “What your favourite words? Give me ten,” I say when we are sitting in garden. I want learn most beautiful English words because you are beautiful. I even not care whether if useful.

  A piece of blank paper, a pen.

  You writing it down, one by one.

  “Sea, breath, sun, body, seeds, bumble bee, insects.” You stop: “How many are there now?”

  “Seven,” I say.

  “Hm…blood…” you continue.

  “Why you like blood?”

  “I don’t know. I feel blood is beautiful.”

  “Really? But blood violence, and pain.”

  “No. Not always. Blood gives you life. It makes you strong.” You speaking with surely voice.

  You see things from such different perspective from me. I wonder if we change perspective one day.

  “And why breath, then?”

  “Because that’s where everything is from and how everything starts.”

  You are right.

  “So, what else? Last favourite word?” I say.

  “Suddenly.”

  “Suddenly! Why you like suddenly? Suddenly not even noun.” You a strange brain, I think.

  “Well, I just like it,” you say. “So what are your favorite ten words?”

  I write down one by one:

  “Fear, belief, heart, root, challenge, fight, peace, misery, future, solitude…”

  “Why solitude?”

  “Because a song from Louis Armstrong calling ‘Solitude.’ It is so beautiful.” I hear song in my ear now.

  “Where did you hear that song?” you ask.

  “On your shelfs. A CD, from Louis Armstrong.”

  “Really? I didn’t even know I had that CD.” You frown.

  “Yes, is covering the dust, and look very old.”

  “So, you’ve been through all my CDs?”

  “Of course,” I say. “I read your letters and diaries as well.”

  “What?”

  “And looked your photo.”

  “What? You’ve looked through all my stuff?” You seeming like suddenly hear the alien from Mars attack the Earth.

  “Not all. Parts that diary are make me sad. I can’t sleep at night,” I say.

  privacy n. 1. the state of being alone or undisturbed; 2. freedom from interference or public attention.

  privacy

  “You’ve invaded my privacy! You can’t do that!” First time, you shout to me, like a lion.

  “What privacy? But we living together! No privacy if we are lovers!”

  “Of course there is! Everybody has privacy!”

  But why people need privacy? Why privacy is important? In China, every family live together, grandparents, parents, daughter, son, and their relatives too. Eat together and share everything, talk about everything. Privacy make people lonely. Privacy make family fallen apart.

  When I arguing about privacy, you just listen and not say anything. I know you disagree me, and you not want live inside of my life, because you a “private” person. A private person doesn’t share life.

  “When I read your past, when I read those letters you wrote, I think you are drifter.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know what is drifter, do you? You come and leave, you not care about future.”

  “To me, to live life is to live in the present.”

  “OK, live in present, and which direction you leading then?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean, you don’t have plan for tomorrow, for next year?”

  “Well, we are talking about different things. I don’t think you understand what I am saying. To me the future is about moving on, to some new place. I don’t know where I am going. It’s like I am riding a horse through the desert, and the horse just carries me somewhere, maybe with an oasis, but I don’t know.”

  Suddenly the air being frozen. Feeling cold. I not know what to say anymore. You older than me twenty years. You must understand life better than me?

  You look at me and you say: “It’s like the way you came into my life. I feel as if I am not naked anymore.”

  I feel as if I am not naked anymore. That a beautiful sentence.

  I listen, I wait. I feel it something you not finish in your sentence, but you not want say it.

  So I help you: “OK, I come into your life, but you not know if you wanting carry on this with me all the times. You will want to break it and see what can make you move on…”

  “We will see.” You stop me, and take me into your arms.

  “It’s important to be able to live with uncertainty.”

  intimate adj. 1. having a close personal relationship; 2. personal or private; 3. (of knowledge) extensive and detailed; 4. (foll. by with) euphemistic having a sexual relationship (with); 5. having a friendly quiet atmosphere–n. close friend.

  intimate

  How can intimate live with privacy?

  We have lived together after first week we met. You said you never lived so closely with another person before. You always avoided intimate with the other person. You said to have your friends more important than your lovers. That’s so different with my Chinese love—family means everything.

  Maybe people here have problems being intimate with each other. People keep distance because they want independence, so lovers don’t live with together, instead they only see each other at weekend or sleep together twice a week. A family doesn’t live with together therefore the intimate inside of a family disappeared. Maybe that why Westerners much more separated, lonely, and have more Old People’s House. Maybe also why newspapers always report cases of peterfiles and perverts.

  We are in your old white van. You want to show me somewhere special called the Burnham Beach.

  “Is it the British
ocean?” I ask, excited to visit sea for first time. You are laughing.

  “B-e-e-c-h, not b-e-a-c-h. In English, a beech is a type of tree, not an ocean. I’ll take you to the sea another time.”

  How I ever understand your complicated language—not even any change in accent like we have in Chinese. We have four intonations, so every tone means different word. Like:

  mi in first tone means to close eyes.

  mí in second tone means to fancy something.

  mi in third tone means rice.

  mì in fourth tone means honey.

  Anyway, on the highway of M40, I have my dictionaries to check out what exactly that beach/beech is. Collins tells me that is a European tree, but when I look my little Concise dictionary, says it is a tree called “Shan Mao Ju,” which grows everywhere in China. We cut those trees for lighting fires in kitchen. We used to carry baskets and collect their nutty seeds when we were little.

  The woods are dark, lush, and wet.

  Trees are huge, tall, and solid.

  The whole woods are growing silently and secretly. The whole woods are decay. On way to woods it was a beautiful day, but inside woods the climate is totally different. Is chilly and rainy. Rain drops from those hundred-year-old greyish branches and leafs, and the rain fills the ponds stuffed by weeds.

  In the muddy and greeny pond, lotus gently floats, and the dragonfly dashes. You hold me and caress me. We are in each other’s arm. You lift my denim skirt, and you touch my garden. My garden is warm and moist. You stroke my hip, and I unzip your jean. We make love. We make love. We make love under the silent beech tree. So quiet, so quiet. We can hear children on the football field in the distance are yelling. Only the rain drops, fall on our hair, our skin. Rain drops on the cowslip flower by our feet, without disturbing us.

  free world esp. US hist. non-Communist countries.

  free world

  You say:

  “I feel incredibly lucky to be with you. We’re going to have loads of exciting adventures together. Our first big adventure will be in west Wales. I’ll show you the sea. I’ll teach you to swim because it is shameful that a peasant girl cannot swim. I’ll show you the dolphins in the sea, and the seals with their babies. I want you to experience the beauty of the peace and quiet in a Welsh cottage. I think you will love it there.”

  You also say:

  “Then I want to take you to Spain and France. I know that you’ll love them. I wish we could live over there for a while.”

  Later you say:

  “I feel so good about the love that you and I have with each other because it happened so quickly and spontaneously, like a forest fire.”

  And you say:

  “I just love the way you are.”

  Everything good so far, but from one thing—you don’t understand my visa limited situation. I am native Chinese from mainland of China. I am not of free world. And I only have student visa for a year here. I not able just leave London English language school and go live somewhere only have trees and sea, although is beautiful. And I can’t travel to Spain and France just to fun—I need show these embassy officer my bank account to apply my Europe visa. And my bank statements is never qualify for them. You a free man of free world. I am not free, like you.

  custom n. 1. a long-established activity or action; 2. usual habit; 3. regular use of a shop or business.

  custom

  The café is name greasy spoon, Seven Seas. All windows is foggy from the steam. You order tea as soon as you walk into. Noisy. Babies. Mothers. Couples. Lonely old man. You are opening the newspaper and start drink thick English Breakfast milky tea. And me being quiet.

  I want talk to you. But you are reading paper. I have to respect your hobby.

  “So where are you from?” I ask handsome waiter in white suit.

  “Cyprus.” He smiles.

  “Are these chefs also from Cyprus?”

  “Yes.”

  “So your Cyprus chefs cook English breakfast for English?”

  “Yes, we Cypriots cook breakfast for the English because they can’t cook.”

  I see from open kitchen that sausages are sizzling on the pan. And mushrooms, and scrambled eggs, they are all waiting for being devoured.

  I love these old oily cafés around Hackney. Because you can see the smokes and steams coming out from the coffee machine or kitchen all day long. That means life is being blessed.

  In this café, there is a television set above everybody’s head. The TV on but doesn’t have any images, only can hear BBC news speaking scrambly from the white snow screen. It is a little disturbing for me, but it seem everybody in this place enjoy it. Nobody here suggest fix the TV.

  Suddenly white-snow-screen changes to green-snow-screen, and the BBC voice continues. A man nearby eating some bacons with the Daily Mirror says to the chef:

  “That’s an improvement.”

  “Yes, Sir,” replies the chef. “Well, at least you don’t have to eat your breakfast, read the paper and watch the TV all at the same time.”

  “That’s true.” The man chew his bacons and concentrates on page with picture of half naked blonde smiling.

  I want to talk. I can’t help stop talking. I have to stop you reading.

  “You know what? I came this café before, sit here whole afternoon,” I say.

  “Doing what?” You put down the paper, annoyed.

  “I read a porn magazine called Pet House for three hours, because I studied English from those stories. Checking the dictionary really took lots of time.”

  You are surprised. “I don’t think you should read porn mags in a café. People will be shocked.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “But you can’t do that. You’ll make other people feel embarrassed.”

  “Then why they sell these magazines in every little corner shop? Is also even sold in the big supermarket.”

  I believe everything to do with the sexuality is not shameful in West.

  The man next to us finishes his bacons, half naked woman photo with huge breasts still being exposed.

  “I think I go now buy another porn magazine,” I say, standing up.

  “OK, you do whatever you want,” you say shaking head. “This is Hackney after all. People will forgive you for not being au fait with the nuances of British customs.”

  You dry up your cup of tea.

  fart vulgar slang n. emission of gas from the anus–v. emit gas from the anus.

  fart

  Suddenly the man next table reading newspaper with naked-breast-woman made a huge noise.

  “What is that noise name?” I ask you.

  You cannot understand what I mean. Too much involving in looking house property advertisement on the newspaper.

  I try to explain: “How to say a word which represents a kind of noise from the arse?”

  “What?”

  “You know that. You know it is a wind comes from between two legs.”

  “It’s called a fart.”

  Fart?

  The old man who reads the newspaper stares at us for several seconds, then buries himself into the paper again.

  I never hear English person says anything about fart. They must be too shameful to pronounce that sound. There are lots of words we used in China so often, but here people never use it. Even English dictionary say it is a “taboo.”

  “” is fart in Chinese. It is the word made up from two parts. is a symbol of a body with tail, and underneath that represent two legs. That means fart, a kind of Chi. If a person have that kind of Chi regularly in his daily life that means he is very healthy. Chi (), everything to do with Chi is very important to us Chinese. We had so many words related to Chi, like Tai-Chi, or Chi-Gong, or Chi-Chang.

  Yes, fart, I want remember this word. Is the response means you enjoys a good homely cooking, after big meal. Mans in China loves to use this word everyday.

  You are still concentrating on your Guardian, something serious about the terrorism. I am talking to nobod
y. The old man next table sees I am fed up, so says to me:

  “I’m off, darling. Do you want my paper?”

  He leaves the café but turns his head looking at me again.

  I pick the newspaper from his table. There is a headline:

  LOST FOR WORDS—THE LANGUAGE OF AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

  It is a story about ninety-eight-year-old Chinese woman just died. She is the last speaker of womans-only language: “Nushu.” This four-hundred-year-old secret language being used by Chinese womans to express theys innermost feeling. The paper say because no womans practise that secret codes anymore, it marks that language died after her death.

  I want create my own “Nushu.” Maybe this notebook which I use for putting new English vocabularies is a “Nushu.” Then I have my own privacy. You know my body, my everyday’s life, but you not know my “Nushu.”

  home n. 1. a place where one lives; 2. an institution for the care of the elderly, orphans, etc.–adj. 1. of one’s home, birthplace, or native country; 2. sport played on one’s own ground.

  home

  “I am going to go to see a family nearby, do you want to come?” you ask me.

  “Family? What kind of family? Not your family?”

  “No. They are Bengalis.”

  Is not very normal you want see other family. Because you not really like family concept. You say family against community. You say family is a selfish product.

  It seems that you like other’s family more than you like your own. In this Bengali family, you know those kids for many years, since you worked as youth worker. In a house, between Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road, old Bengali mother raises ten children. Is big three-floor house with ten little rooms. Five childrens are from same mother, and another five childrens are from another woman but with the same man. The father, a Bengali married man, came to London twenty-five years ago and remarried to this mother in London. He ran some business between England and Bangladesh. Then he died, left one family in London, one family in Bangladesh. But the five Bangladesh-living children want come to London, so they were brought here living with this London mother. These kids are from three to twenty-four. The youngest one was born in 2000. How strange a child born of that year! He only can say “bye-bye” in English. The oldest one just graduated from the Goldsmith College. He studied Politics and he wants become lawyer.