A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

by Xiaolu Guo

  I open my notebook again, looking at my everyday’s study, my everyday’s effort. I see myself trying hard to put more words and sentences into blank pages. I try to learn more vocabularies to be able to communicate. I try to put the whole dictionary in my brain. But in this remote countryside, in this nobody’s wonderland, what’s the point of this? It doesn’t matter if one speaks Chinese or English here; it doesn’t matter if one is mute or deaf. Language is not important anymore. Only the simple physical existence matters in the nature.

  pathology n. the scientific study of diseases.

  pathology

  You, my English patient, keep feeling ill. I used to lie beside you, whenever you suffered from headache or bodyache. I would just stop what I was doing and come to lie beside you. But after so long, so often you get ill, somehow I run out of patience.

  “Honey, I know how to cure your depression: practice yoga every morning, ride your bike every afternoon, and go swimming every evening.”

  “Perhaps I just need to find the right medicine.”

  “No. I don’t think you can solve it under the medication way. The problem is from your Qi, your energy.”

  You lie there, look at the ceiling vaguely: “Every morning I wake up and I feel tired before I’m even out of bed.”

  “That’s because your illness is brought from your thoughts. You hate this society so much, and you feel so fed up with this place. You don’t have any disease. You are just like your old van, old, too old, every part of the mechanic fell apart. Remember? Your white van and you, used to be so energetic.”

  “I just wish I knew what it was that was wrong with me.”

  “You Westerners always want to precisely name illness. But in China, we don’t name all these kind of diseases. Because we think all the illness actually causes from very simple reason. If you want to solve your illness then you must start to calm your whole body, not just taking pills every time.”

  “OK, tell me more.” You rise your head from the bed.

  “There are three general classes of the causes of illness in Chinese medication. Internal Pathogenic Qi, External Pathogenic Qi, and Trauma. Internal Pathogenic are organ dis-function, External Pathogenic are Qi from outside the body which enter the body, and Trauma is trauma.”

  “Trauma is Trauma?”

  “I guess Trauma causes Qi and blood to leave the normal currents of flow. And it causes the stagnation of your inner energy. So parts of your body will be suffered from the lack of Qi. That’s why you get tired everyday easily. And that’s why you get headache regularly.”

  “How do you know all this?” You stare at me.

  “Because I am a Chinese.”

  “You mean all Chinese people know about this?”

  “I think so.”

  “Are you serious? Even the ones who work in the Chinese takeaway on Hackney Road?”

  “You can ask them, next time when we pass by,” I say.

  “You know, you never tell me things like this.” Now you get up from the bed. You must feel better.

  “But you never really ask me. You never really pay attention to my culture. You English once took over Hong Kong, so you probably heard of that we Chinese have 5,000 years of the greatest human civilisation ever existed in the world…Our Chinese invented paper so your Shakespeare can write two thousand years later. Our Chinese invented gunpowder for you English and Americans to bomb Iraq. And our Chinese invented compass for you English to sail and colonise the Asian and Africa.”

  You stare at me, no words. Then you leave the bed, and put the kettle on.

  “Do you want some tea?” you ask.

  pessimism n. the tendency to expect the worst in all things.

  optimism n. the tendency to take the most hopeful view.

  pessimism/optimism

  A petal is a pessimist. A petal will fade away.

  An old man’s body is a pessimist, things are rotten and falling apart.

  A buddhist is a pessimist in his reality, but in the end when he faces his death he is an optimist, because he has prepared for whole life to welcome the peace of death.

  A farmer is an optimist, because he believes the potatoes will come out underneath the soil.

  A fishman is an optimist, because he knows whatever how far he fishes, he will come back with his boat full of fish.

  A pesticide is an optimist. It means sustain the good life by killing bad life.

  Everyone tries to be an optimist. But being an optimist is a bit boring and not honest. Losers are more interesting than winners.

  It is a quarter to six, and I am cooking dinner for you. It is already inky dark outside. I look at the clock and go back to kitchen checking the food. 6:00, then 6:10, then 6:20, then 6:30. I turn on the radio, listen to whatever I can understand. Finally it is 7:00. Since then every single minute cannot bear anymore. Paranoia takes over the kitchen. 7:30 now. You told me that you would be back home before six. Why you never on time? Are you flirting with somebody right now? Or maybe things much worse…

  Trying to stop this painful visual imagination, I turn up the volume of the radio. Today’s top news: “A woman murdered her husband’s pregnant lover after she discovered the love affair…She was found guilty in court this afternoon.”

  The soup is still bubbling on the fire but is nearly burnt. Murder…The whole world is crashed. The paranoia penetrates my body through my mind. My muscles are shaking badly, and my stomach starts aching. I am in the big nerve and I might do anything to destroy the furniture in this house, the symbols of our life together.

  Love can be so pessimistic, and love can be so destructive. Love can lead a woman being lost, and in that lost world perhaps the only thing to do is leave to build a new world.

  9.00, you come back home. I pour all the food into the rubbish bin. You are a bit scared seeing what I am doing. I say loudly, to myself, and to the whole house:

  “Never cook food before the man comes back home!”

  electric adj. 1. produced by, transmitting, or powered by electricity; 2. exciting or tense.

  electric

  Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused…mine too diffused,

  Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb…love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching

  Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous…quivering jelly of love…white-blow and delirious juice,

  Bridegroom-night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,

  Undulating into the willing and yielding day,

  Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

  This is in a book from Walt Whitman, which sits on your bookshelf covered by the thick dust. But during the last two weeks it becomes my bible. I read it every day and I think I understand it.

  Jelly of love. I think of you. You are like the man in Walt Whitman’s poem. I imagine you are naked by the sea, a wild landscape behind you. You are a young man with a healthy body and a free spirit. You are a simple farmer, with a natural passion. You have beautiful hips and legs and hands, and you have a strong love and sensibility to the nature. You are friends with the seagulls, the bees, the dragonflies. And you know that dolphin in the distance dancing on the sea. You walk through the fields of apple trees, and pass by the farm houses, and then down to the sea. You body carries the smell of grass and the warmth of earth to the sea water…I look at your reality here. How could these things being taken away from you totally? You will die. You will die. You will die like a fish without water.

  The life in the past and the life at the present are very different. When I first met you, I remember you always talked and smiled. You talked about interesting things in an interesting way, and you had a charming language. You used beautiful words, funny words, sexy words, electric words, noble words. Your language was as attractive as you. But what happened? It has changed. After all these fightings, all these miseries, you don’t talk as the way you did before. You just listen; listen to my words;
then stop listening and think of your own world. But I can’t stop talking. I talk and talk, more and more. I steal your words. I steal all your beautiful words. I speak your language. You have given up your words, just like you gave up listening. All you do is sleep, more and more sleep.

  bestseller n. a book or other product that has sold in great numbers.

  bestseller

  Last night I had a dream. I dreamed I was a cookery writer writing for housewifes who bored with their unimaginative life. I dreamed my book eventually exposed on the most visible and conspicuous shelfs in Waterstones. I become a bestseller who has the fame in England, Scotland, and even in Wales. My book was called Getting to Grips with Noodles: 300 Ways of Chinese Cooking. Actually, at the beginning of my dream, there were only ten recipes of cooking noodles, but in the dream I had the idea that a year has 365 days and I should write at least 300 different recipes. Rest of sixty-five days in a year people can have rice or bread or alternative food they like.

  I remember the first dish in my book is called:

  Dragon in the Clouds

  The recipe is: thin rice noodles with fried tofu and bean sprouts in a chicken soup. So everything looks white and gentle like clouds.

  And other noodles dishes in my dream are:

  Red River

  Mussels with spring onions in chilli noodles soup

  Double Happiness

  Roast duck and pork with fried noodles

  Dragon Palace

  Sliced eel with rice noodles in ginger soup

  It’s also about two-way-cooking, meaning either it can be prepared as Chinese food or it can become Italian spaghetti. For example, one can just change ginger into basil, or replace chilli to rosemary with a bit cheese, then noodles will get totally different identity.

  End of dream, there are a group of fat middle-aged English womans talking about my book in a countryside tea-house. They are all having their afternoon teas and carrot cakes with my book opened on the table, and discuss where is the nearest Chinese shop that they can buy all the ingredients.

  I wake up and I don’t know where is this idea from. I guess from my hunger for Chinese food. I am longing to eat hot dumplings with fennel and pork stuffing, and I am dying for roasted duck and spicy beef. Abroad, thinking of food is everyday’s obsession.

  There is an important thing in the dream: I am too ashamed to use my real name on the cover of the book because I know as soon as I get famous in West, Chinese will find out immediately and make a fuss. A writer who doesn’t write history or serious novels, but write about cooking noodles for English people—that would be a scandal in China. So I choose “Anon” as my name, the person who has no name.

  Getting up from the bed, I feel hungry. I have a great urge to taste those specially made noodles but, when I try remember how to cook the dream noodles, nothing comes in my head. I open the cupboard and take out a pack of instant noodles.

  Future Tense Sometimes when we talk about the future, we are just predicting. We are saying what we think will happen, without any reference to the present. At other times, we are really talking about the present and the future together. This happens, for example, when we talk about future actions which are already decided, or which we are deciding as we talk: making plans, promises, threats, offers, requests.

  future tense

  Mrs. Margaret say I am still no good at verbs, particularly future tense. “Don’t worry,” she always says. “It’s an Asian thing. You’ll get over it.”

  Is tense really an Asian problem? How is “time” so clear in the West? Is being defined by Science or by Buddha? Reincarnation, it is not past or future. Is endless loop. A circus, ending and starting is the same point.

  At beginning I don’t have concept of tense when I speak English. But now I think I understand more than before, after all our battles.

  Sun Tzu, the Chinese master who lived 2,500 years ago, says in the Art of War for Executives:

  The ultimate warrior is one who wins the war by forcing the enemy to surrender without fighting any battle.

  But neither of us wants to surrender to the other, and neither of us can win the battle. Neither of us is an ultimate warrior. So the battle carries on and on, as follows:

  ME: “I want future with you. A home, a house in beautiful place with you, plant some bamboos, some lotus, some jasmines, some of your favourite snowdrops.” (When I describe this, the image so strong that it must be a will from my Last Life.)

  YOU: “You can’t have the future now. That’s why it’s the future.”

  ME: “I disagree. Future comes from your plan, your real action.”

  YOU: “No, that’s not true. The future only comes when it comes. I don’t believe in promises. How can you know the future now? You can only know the future when you get to the future.”

  ME: “Does that mean you don’t want future with me?” (I look in your eyes painfully.)

  YOU: “You’re always worried about the future. How can we think about getting married when we keep fighting? You’re never happy with the way things are, you always want it to be different to how it is. We can’t be together if you don’t accept my lifestyle and realise you can’t change me. You can’t always want me to be different from how I am.”

  You are right, I know. I can’t say anything.

  Again I feel like I am the wisteria vine, and I can’t climb and rely on my tree, because that tree is falling.

  “Live in the moment!” You impose this idea on me, again.

  “Live in the moment,” I repeat. Why do I have to? “Live in the moment, or live for the moment? Maybe you only live for the moment. That is so hippy. I can’t do that as a humble foreigner,” I fight back.

  “Well, to live in or to live for the moment, that’s the same kind of concept.”

  “No. It is different,” I say, strongly and angrily. I recently learned what is the difference between in and for from Mrs. Margaret. It is definitely a different concept.

  “Love,” this English word: like other English words it has tense. “Loved” or “will love” or “have loved.” All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is “” (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.

  If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last for ever. It will be infinite.

  possess v. 1. to have as one’s property; 2. (of a feeling, belief, etc.) have complete control of, dominate.

  possess

  You tell me my love to you is like a possession. But how could I possess you when your world is so big? Maybe it not about possession, it more about me trying to fit into your life. I am living in your life. I am living inside of your body, trying to understand every single movement from your command. Every night I inhale and outhale your breath. The smells from your hair and your skin cover my hair and my skin. I know nobody in my life is as close as you.

  I just hope night carry on like this, go on for ever. Hope our bodies can be always close like this, and our souls always can be side by side. I don’t want the sun comes, the day comes. I know the light of day takes you away from me. Then you live in your own world, the world that has a big gap between us.

  In the daytime, you stay with your sculptures, with your clay, your sand, your wax. You are making many moulds of human bodies. All the materials they lie there, quiet, with vague and unclear statements.

  The conversation on the bed after we make love:

  “Why you are always so interested in the body?”

  “Because you will never get bored with the body.” You rub the sperms on my skin slowly, trying to dry it. “Eating, drinking, shitting…The body is key to everything.”

  “But why your sculptures ugly and miserable?”

  “I don’t think they are ugly. They are beautiful.”

  “Maybe. Beautiful in ugly way. But they are always in pain.”<
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  “That’s what life is like.”

  I can’t agree, but I can’t deny either.

  “My body always feels miserable, except for when I am making love,” you say.

  Your voice becomes sleepy, and you close your eyes.

  I turn off the light. I stare at the darkness. I have enough thoughts to talk to the long night, alone.

  Christmas n. 1. an annual festival on December 25 commemorating the birth of Christ; 2. period around this time.

  christmas

  Tomorrow is Christmas. We wake up to noises from neighbours’ kitchen. They are probably arranging tables or chairs for their guests. You tell me we will stay in London until lunch, and then you will take me to see your family in the afternoon. I am curious, but also worried. Meeting your family is a big thing for me. That is again something to do with the future.

  What happened to Jesus Christ at Christmas Eve? Was he hung on the cross? Did he almost reborn? We were taught when we were little that only the phoenix can be reborn. A beautiful huge bird, with the neck of a snake, the back of a tortoise, and the tail of fish. She eats dewdrops. She lives for a thousand years and, once that time is over, she burns herself in her own funeral pyre, and is born again from the ashes. Jesus must be something like a bird, the symbol of high virtue.

  Winter is such a long season in England. Hackney Road is dim, dark, wet and obscure. But there is something extra which makes you and me nervous about this time. Neither you nor me kind of person likes celebrating festivals, plus I don’t have any family here. Outside, neon lights are twinkling, shining like the fragile happiness.

  Almost a year has passed. In the beginning, we were so passionate about each other. Now everything grows older, and covered by the dust. Every morning you go to that corner shop to buy newspaper. You sit in a small café having a breakfast and reading. You would rather read the paper outside somewhere, because you say you can’t relax at home. Should I leave the house and give the space back to you?