A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

by Xiaolu Guo

  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.

  equal adj. 1. identical in size, quantity, degree, etc.; 2. having identical rights or status; 3. evenly balanced–n. person or thing equal to another.

  equal

  Rupert Street, fish restaurant. Saturday evening. Large lobster placed on the window is so seductive that I can’t move my feet away. We get in. You order goat cheese, and extra vegetables. I order fish soup and squid BBQ in wine. We agree having two glasses white wine as well. Later, when waiter gives the bill it forty pounds all together. Expensive.

  You take out twenty pounds, put on the bill book. I don’t move. I look at you, wondering.

  “Half!” you say.

  “Why? I don’t have twenty pounds with me!” I say.

  “You’ve got a debit card.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m always paying for you. In the West, men and women are equal. We should split food and rent.”

  “But I thought we lovers!” Loudly, I argue.

  The old couple next table stops eating, look at me with strange face.

  “It’s not about that. You are from China, the country with the most equal relationship between men and women. I’d have thought you’d understand what I’m talking about. Why should I pay for everything?”

  I say: “Of course you have to pay. You are man. If I pay too, then why I need to be with you?”

  Now you are angry: “Are you really saying you’re only with me to pay your living costs?”

  “No, not that! You are man and I am woman, and we are live together. When couple is live together, woman loses social life automatically. She only stays at home do cooking and washing. And after she have kids, even worse. So woman can’t have any social position at all. She loses…what is that word…financial independence?” These are what I learned from Radio Four Woman’s Hour every morning ten o’clock.

  “Really? OK. So, if the woman stays at home all day, like you, why can’t she hoover the floor? Why do I have to do the hoovering after I’ve done a whole day’s work?”

  That’s true. I never woover the floor. I only sweep the floor. And my eyesights is very bad, so there are always lots things left on the floor.

  “But I wash clothes! And I cook everyday!”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind of you. But what’s wrong with a bit of hoovering?”

  “Because I hate that woover. You must pick it from the rubbish place. It is so noisy, and it is so huge. It is like dragon. I just don’t like something so big!”

  “Come now! You like a big cock, don’t you, so why don’t you like a big hoover!”

  “!”

  OK, so woman and man pay half half even when they live together. And woman and man have their own privacy and their own friends. And woman and man have their own separate bank account. Is that why Western couples split up so easily, and divorce so quickly?

  We argue all the way back to home. Open the door, make a pot of tea, you start woover the floor again.

  So noisy. It makes me headache immediately. The woover must be invented by mans. I sit on chair not let the big dragon swallow me and take out the Little Red Book from my drawer. There are some pages about womans and equal in Mao’s speech:

  In order to build a great socialist society it is of the utmost importance to arouse the broad masses of women to join in productive activity. Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production.

  This must be the original thoughts which became legend “womans hold up half of the sky” in China.

  While I am in deep thought about China, you switch off the dragon. You stare at me, and say:

  “I wish I’d never given you books. Now all you do is sit there reading and writing. You’ve become so bourgeois.”

  frustrate v. 1. to upset or anger; 2. hinder or prevent.

  frustration n. the feeling of being frustrated.

  frustration

  You lie in bath. The water comes to top, and the bubble covers your body. We both always take bath when we feel depressed. Do most English people do that, especially in the long dark winter? I wonder. How many baths we have been taken since we being together? In last six months the bath I had must be more than I did in the last twenty-four years.

  Now, you even didn’t switch on the radio. You lie there like a nude statue in the water.

  “Why you are silent?”

  You shrug your shoulders. Have no comments.

  You don’t want talk. Not at all. Not even one word.

  “Have you got headache?”

  You shake your head.

  “So you don’t want talk to me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just want to be on my own to think. You know people sometimes just want to have their own space.”

  Only your face is on the surface of water. Impression of your face is like the sky being covered by a big piece of dark cloud. You not happy.

  “Why you not happy? What have I done wrong to you?”

  “I just feel tired of you,” you say. “Always asking me words, how to spell them, what they mean. I am fed up.”

  I listen.

  “It is too tiring to live like this. I cannot spend my whole time explaining the meaning of words to you, and I can’t be questioned by you all day long.”

  You come out from bath, covering your body with that blue towel. You are so cold to me. You leave me there alone.

  I feel like being abandoned. The word I learned the first day I arrived London in the bloody red Nuttington House. It is the second word in my Concise Dictionary, coming after Abacus.

  You carry on:

  “It is so hard for me. I don’t have my own space to think about my sculptures, my things, and my own words. I don’t have time to be on my own. Now when I talk to other people, I become slower and slower. I am losing my words.”

  I listen. I am upset to hear this. I have to say something to defend myself.

  “If so, that is not my fault. It is just because we live in such different cultures. It is very difficult for both you and I to find the right way to communicate.”

  You listen, then you say: “You really are starting to speak English properly.”

  After this, the evening we are in the world of silence.
I don’t want ask you any words anymore, at least not in several hours, and I tell myself I shouldn’t talk to you either, at least tonight. You not want talk to me. The air in the house becomes heavy. Finally you say to me: “Come with me to see a film.” I take my jacket and I follow you. We are driving the white van to the cinema. Oh, cinema saves our life.

  Yes, maybe you are right. Words maybe not really the first thing in life. Words are void. Words are dry and distant towards the emotional world.

  Maybe I should give up learning words.

  Maybe I should give up writing down words every day.

  nonsense n. 1. something that has or makes no sense; 2. absurd language; 3. foolish behaviour.

  nonsense

  I am sick of speaking English like this. I am sick of writing English like this. I feel as if I am being tied up, as if I am living in a prison. I am scared that I have become a person who is always very aware of talking, speaking, and I have become a person without confidence, because I can’t be me. I have become so small, so tiny, while the English culture surrounding me becomes enormous. It swallows me, and it rapes me. I wish I could just go back to my own language now. But is my own native language simple enough? I still remember the pain of studying Chinese characters when I was a child at school.

  Why do we have to study languages? Why do we have to force ourselves to communicate with people? Why is the process of communication so troubled and so painful?

  discord n. 1. a lack of agreement or harmony between people; 2. harsh confused sounds.

  discord

  Forgot since when, we started to fight.

  We fight everyday. We argue everyday. The sound in this house is discord. Fighting for a cup of tea. Fighting for the misunderstanding of a word. Fighting for the ways I like to add the vinegar in the foods but you hate it. Fighting for the freedom as you think it is important more than anything else.

  Argument expands onto every possible direction:

  Typical argument 1: (On Tibet)

  “I remember you saying that Tibet belongs to China. I can’t believe you can think that.”