A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

by Xiaolu Guo

  “I not understand how mother can raise ten children without a husband,” I say in little voice. “And she doesn’t have any job either!”

  “That’s why I like this family. They just get on with their life without making any fuss. They have a small business making earrings and necklaces from home.”

  “And two groups of children from different mother, they don’t fight at all?”

  “No. They enjoy sharing life together, not like other families. I wish my family was like this.”

  “Do you hate your family?” I ask.

  “Well, I don’t like them. They are sad people. I broke away from them many years ago.”

  You go into silent.

  I can’t imagine what like to break up with my family. Even though my mother very bad temper and make me pain, my life relies on them, and I can’t survive without them.

  “Do you want have family with me?” I ask.

  “Aren’t we a family now?” you say.

  “No, a real family.”

  “What is a real family?”

  ‘“House, husband and wife, then have some children, then cooking dinner together, then travel together…”

  “I thought the Chinese were supposed to be Communists.”

  You seem like making fun. What you mean?

  We look at each other, no more discussion on this.

  You say salaam malai coom to the old mother. The mother, she is covered in old green Sari. Her skin is deep brown and lots of wrinkles on her face. She never any education and never speak one word English. She always smiles and very little talking. When her children talks in English loudly in TV room and watching BBC she just sit there, peacefully watching, like she understand they say. Bathroom flush doesn’t work and shower doesn’t work. There is not money to fix house. But it seem fine for them. It seem their life is not messy at all. They use cold-water-shower once a week, and they don’t use toilet paper because they always use water to clean then tip bucket down loo.

  There are drug dealers doing business outside of their windows, and many drunkens pass by with bottles clunkling every night, but the family not get any harm.

  In Chinese, it is the same word “” ( jia) for “home” and “family” and sometimes including “house.” To us, family is same thing as house, and this house is their only home too. “,” a roof on top, then some legs and arms inside. When you write this character down, you can feel those legs and arms move around underneath the roof. Home, is a dwelling house for the family to live.

  But English, it’s different. In Roget’s Thesaurus, “Family” related to: subdivision, greed, genealogy, parental, posterity, community, nobility.

  It seems like that “family” doesn’t mean a place. Maybe in West people just move round from one house to another house? Always looking for a house, maybe that’s the lifelong job for Westerners.

  I keep telling you I need a home. Your face look gloomy, and seem disappointed that you cannot make me happy.

  “But I am your home,” you say.

  “Yes, but you always move around, and you don’t want live in this house.”

  “You’re right. I’m tired of living in the city.” Then you add, “I can’t see myself getting married either.”

  “But I like city and like to have marriage. So that mean we can’t have a home together,” I confirm.

  “No, I didn’t say that,” you say.

  You look distant to me.

  Love mean home. Or, home mean love?

  The fear of without home. Maybe that why I love you? The simple fear?

  I am building the Great Wall around you and me because I am too scared to lose the home. I been living in that big fear since my childhood.

  You barely ask my childhood. To you it a blind zone. When I look back my childhood I realise how violence of my emotional world was.

  We were peasants. My parents worked in rice fields. They not making shoes until I graduated from high school. After they understood they never earn money from their fields, they sold fields cheaply, and start making small business. I always being beaten up by big girls. In village people show their emotion by hitting and shouting to each other. My father hit me sometimes, also my mother. That was normal.

  We were poor. The food was not enough. I was frightened to eat more than my mother expected in every meal. Occasionally there was some fried porks on the table, and it smelled like heaven. But I dared not to reach my chopsticks to the meat, which prepared only for my father. Man needs meat and man is more important than woman, of course. I looked at pork and my heart was squeezed by the desire. I give away anything for could bite one piece fried pork! My mother always watched out on the table. I hated her, but also frightened by her. She would beat my chopsticks if I reached that pork.

  My mother had very bad temper. Maybe she hated me because I was an useless girl. She cannot have the second children because we have one child policy. Maybe that’s why she beated me up. For her disappointment. Life to her was unfair too. She was beated up by her mother for marrying my father. She was deprive everything which belonged to her since she married him.

  When I grow up from teenage, I couldn’t trust anything and anybody. Maybe I even don’t have concept of “trust” at all. It not existing in my dictionary. First, I couldn’t trust my country. We told that we are proud of thousands of years history but next day we saw beautiful old temples being demolished into ruins. All old things have to be demolished and to be cleaned up. Does that mean our past value nothing anymore?

  I need make my own home, a home with my lover. But I don’t know how keep that home, all the time, for rest of my life. I’m scared I will lose that love. The fear is like poison in the every corner in my heart. That what you dislike.

  “You should trust me. I’m not going to fall in love with somebody else,” you say.

  “But who knows? I can trust you, but I don’t trust when you are seduced by someone,” I say.

  “But you have to trust me,” you insist.

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean you not fall in love with new person. You can trust me, but perhaps I fall in love with the new person. So what is trust really?”

  “Well, if we fall in love with a new person, then that’s fine. That’s not something we can control.” You look bit cool.

  “What you mean that’s fine? What you mean we can’t control? We can, if we want!” I say, as strong as woman warrior.

  So we change subject. We know we can’t go anywhere. Anything else we can talk under one same roof? Apart from the lovely tea, salad, and learning new vocabularies?

  “When is your national day?” I ask.

  “Why on earth do you want to know that?”

  “Not important day for you?”

  “Not particularly. We call it St. George’s Day. It is some time in April or May, I can’t remember.”

  I don’t know who is St. George. Or maybe he is someone like Chairman Mao. I don’t want bother myself to know all these dead people.

  So we are speechless again.

  “So, when is your birthday?” you ask me.

  “July 23, but that’s not my real birthday. My mother only know my birthday in Chinese moon calendar date and when Western calendar system introduced into our society she forgot.”

  “Seriously?” Your face is lighted.

  “Yes, we never had birthday cake in our family for ceremony so why you need the date of birth? Only because the official registration,” I say.

  “But what about your passport? What date is written on your passport?”

  “I wrote any Western date I think of and authority just print it on my passport.” How exciting to you, this subject.

  I carry on: “My father doesn’t know his birthday, because his parents died when he was little child. My mother know her birthday is on the fifteenth day of seventh moon, is the day of Hungry Ghost Festival. So all her life is about keeping away from that hungry day.”

  colony n. 1. a group of people who settle in a new cou
ntry but remain under the rule of their homeland; 2. a territory occupied by a colony; 3. a group of people or animals of the same kind living together.

  colony

  The way you make love with me, is totally new experience in my life. Is sex suppose be like this? Penetrating is way for you to enter into my soul. You are so strong. And your strength is overwhelming. For you, I am unprepared. You crush me and press me into your body. Love making is a torture. Love making is a battle. Then I get used it, and I am addicted by it. The way you hold my body is like holding small object, an apple, or a little animal. The force from your arms and your legs and your hip is like force from huge creature living in jungle. The vibrate from your muscle shakes my skins, the beating of your heart also beating my heart.

  You are the commander.

  You kiss my lips, my eyes, my cheek, my ears, my neck, and my silver necklace. It is like my necklace having a special magic on you. And that magic force you devote yourself to my body. Then you kiss my breasts and you suck them. You are like baby who is thirsty for mother’s milk. You lick my belly and my legs and my feet. You possess my whole body. They are your farm. Then you come back to my garden. Your lips are wandering in my cave, and in that warm and wet nature you try find something precious, something you always dream about. You wander alone there and love there and want live there.

  My whole body is your colony.

  prostitute n. a person who offers sexual intercourse in return for payment–v. 1. to make a prostitute of; 2. to offer (oneself or one’s talents) for unworthy purposes.

  prostitute

  I need develop my Western life so I go Charing Cross Road try to find some cooking books. I want know how to make Western food, like pastas, or Yorkshire pudding. I am ended up in Soho Original Bookshop. There are no kitchen books here, apart How to Make Love and Cook Dinner at the Same Time. Lots of books here exposing naked body. Prostitute, I read this word from one of photo books. The pictures are shocking. I am standing there and reading the whole book. Bodies, strange costumes, strange positions, more bodies having sex together.

  Soho, Berwick Street. My feet can’t move away from a sex shop. Some leather bras with two hole in middle, some leather belt, some handcuff…

  A word loin written on some instructions, which I never studied before. Standing in front of these shelfs, I check my Collins dictionary.

  loin n. part of the body between the ribs and the hips; cut of meat from this part of an animal–pl. hips and inner thighs.

  loincloth n. piece of cloth covering the loins only.

  There is no more explanation. I hate this dictionary. Where is an exactly inner thigh? And what loincloth look like? Do people wear loincloth everyday?

  Putting my dictionary back into pocket, I find shopkeeper stares at me like a tiger. And there are two old mans, both are bald, they stare at me too. I leave the shop.

  Red light district.

  One, two, three, four, five, six…I am changing the notes to coins.

  I am in peepshow room. It is tiny room for one person to stand, and I can see turning stage through little hole.

  I insert the coin of the first pound, and start watching a woman shows her nude.

  She is a blonde. Shining hair like golden velvet. She is young. She wears a tight shining top. Her lower body is also covered by piece of shining cloth. Is that the loin cloth? Now she uncovers herself. She has a fine round breast, like two summer grapefruits. Her skin is a little dark, like she just coming back from sunny beach.

  The peep hole close. I insert second pound. The light turns into red. Now her sex is bathed in redness. She lies down on round stage, which covered by red velvet. The stage is turning, slowly, smoothly.

  I insert third pound. She is opening her legs. The legs of white jade. She smiles to everybody; even the place between her legs is smiling. Her garden is flirting with the world around it. She has a rosy garden, which two lips half opened like waiting for the kiss. I never saw other woman’s garden before. It shocks my eyes. I remember one day when you and me making love, you give me small mirror to reflect the place between my opening legs.

  “That’s your clitoris,” you tell me.

  “Liquorice?”

  I found there my colour of my sex is brown. I never know the colour of my sex before.

  I insert fourth pound. Now her hidden place is totally exposed, showing her secret landscape. Then her right hand caress her valley of the tenderness. Her long slim fingers, reaching her sex, are like a beautiful ballet dancer dancing in her garden. She fondles her valley, up and down, gently, and again and again. Two petals blossom in her wet garden. The petals are fresh like rose. Her bush is dark, like a fertile delta, a delta connecting to a secret path. She looks light heated. But her face disappears, only the desire talks to people.

  I insert the fifth pound. Now she lays her back on the stage, raising her two legs high above. —Yin Dao: the tunnel of darkness, that is Chinese word to say vagina. Her tunnel of darkness is right in front me. Her secret tunnel, winding and curved, is like a maze. Inside of the tunnel is pink and juicy, like an open fig.

  The peep hole close off again, and I insert into my last pound. She still there. Her naked body moving on the red velvet. What her name? What her life like? Is there man in her life or lots of mans? Where she from? Serbia? Croatia? Yugoslavia? Russia? Poland?

  Same day, same afternoon, same alive sex show spot. I change more coins. This time I spent twenty pounds, for watching two persons performing.

  Now, on the stage, a beautiful young man and a black hair woman.

  The man has a masculine body. He is very fit, and his skin is golden. He wears pair of glasses. He has the beautiful lush hair tied up to a pony tail. He only wears tight shorts, and his legs are strong. He kisses the woman. The woman wears a red bra and a silver mini skirt. Her sweet breasts bulged upwards, inviting those thirsty eyes. The man unbuttons her bra. Her nipples are immediately blossom, like pink rose bud in early summer. He caresses her neck, her breast, her waist, her hip, and her legs. He is so elegant, a young gentleman. But he is a prostitute—person who offers himself for unworthy purposes, like the dictionary says.

  While I am standing there watching, I desire become prostitute. I want be able expose my body, to relieve my body, to take my body away from dictionary and grammar and sentences, to let my body break all disciplines. What a relief that prostitute not need speak good English. She also not need to bring a dictionary with her all the time.

  Now her turn, her power on him. She seduces him. Her hands with scarlet fingernail fondle his delta, a place like a hill covered by the grass. His bird is growing bigger and stronger. And he cannot help to devour her pink nipples, to kiss her snow white neck, and to whisper into her ears. Her body is a ceremony, a power station, a light house. And the neon lights spread the magic colour on her skin.

  He becomes impulsive. He lifts her short silver skirt, then I see her delta. She has very lush bush, like bush growing by the river in the tropical zone. His fingers travel through her bushes, and disappeared into her cave. Her face now is lighted. Her mouth is half opened. Waiting and arousing. His fingers come out from her cave. He kneels down, starts to kiss her bush and sucks her cave. Her juice is shining on his face.

  The great decadence is attracting me.

  The great decadence is seducing me like a magnet.

  The music goes to the end part. Big melody. Almost disturbing.

  On the turning stage, the man stands like a mountain. The woman kneel down and takes his bird into her mouth. Her lips are as wet as her valley. She sucks him. He is slightly shaking, and his body is swinging. He holds her naked shoulder strongly and he endures. Two bodies sticks together. Now he cannot hold her any more. The volcano erupts, and the silver liquid covers her face.

  heaven n. 1. a place believed to be the home of God, where good people go when they die; 2. a place or state of bliss.

  heaven

  My father said he once dreamed eating some spring s
prouts. My father loves spring sprouts. In that dream his teeth bites the fresh spring sprouts and he clearly hears the crispy sound from his mouth. It is such a beautiful sound. It is just like heaven, he said. But my mother always disagree with him. My mother think there is no sound in the dream. If you hear sound in the dream just because you imagine you hear it.

  “The dream is silent, like heaven.” That what she said.

  Chinese Heaven must have lots of peach trees, lots fairy ladies dressed in silk skirt with long sleeves, like we saw in the martial art films. There is no mans, but only the son of the Heavens lives there, eating peaches everyday, served by beautiful fairy ladies. I don’t know if this Heaven where my grandmother prayed and wanted to go after she died. I hope so. But if my grandmother really living there now, then she would ruin the whole fairyland. Because she is ugly.

  “Is Heaven really silent?” I once asked my mother, timidly.

  “What?! You think Heaven is as noisy as this compound?” she answered.

  The compound we lived was crowdy, tiny and messy like war zone. There were about twenty families live with us, and every family had seven or nine children since One Child Policy only starts from 1977. So there were about 150 children constantly shouting fighting crying everyday. Then there were about twenty grandmothers shouting to at least forty sons and forty daughters-in-laws every evening. So compound is like little village. And we raised roosters and hens everywhere in the compound too. All the time you can hear little chickens snivelling for being stepped when kids ran over them. And fathers would chase kids and beat the kids up. That was the life before my parents start make business. Soon, leather shoes, cloth shoes, sports shoes were piles and piles like hill sitting in our compound yard. At the beginning they worked for some shoes buyers. Five years later my parents opened their own factory, and then everybody from the same compound became their employees.