As many of you know, in the United States, I hate to speak Chinese because I am self-conscious about sounding like a retarded 4-year old. Since Bailongsi is off the tourist track, the market vendors and shopkeepers have no need to learn even English numbers. This means I have a choice: I can go ahead and sound like a retarded 4-year old, or I can grunt and point like a Neanderthal. Four year olds are generally considered cuter than cavemen, and I can assure you that the market vendors find my Chinese very cute, occasionally even hilarious. This phase is quickly passing however, because when it comes to buying food, I'm getting pretty competent. There are mornings when I don't even hear myself make one mistake, mornings when I think the praise my language skills receive might not be total baloney.

I understand the gist of almost everything people say to me. (Eternal thanks to you, Jinyu!) The local dialect, which for you Sinophiles somewhat resembles that of Sichuan Province, is manageable. But there is absolutely no retroflex sounds of any kind. This means that except for a different tone, the word for "four" sounds pretty much like the word for "ten."

Ten yuan is a lot of money though, and anything that expensive we normally buy in a store with marked prices. It was only a problem once. We decided to buy a meter of fabric that could serve as an apron when I'm cutting John's hair and a table cloth when I'm not. We went to the village tailor who also sells fabric, picked out some royal blue 100% polyester (trying not to remember all the linen tablecloths at home in Cambridge). Of course, I have no idea what fabric costs in China. I asked the price and heard "si ba" which I interpreted to mean 4 yuan and 8 mao (dimes). That's about 60 cents. The tailor seemed astonished when we handed him a 5 yuan bill. Turns out that if he had spoken accurate Mandarin I would have heard "shi ba." It was 18 yuan, more than our dinners out in Bailongsi.

Incredibly, I have had more success in Kunming's electronic district where I serve as John's translator for purchases of all kinds of electronic doodads, the names of which are not even within my English vocabulary! Since my Chinese-English dictionary does not include words such as "solenoid" or "desoldering braid," I have to describe their function and appearance. I assure you, we never practiced things like this at Harvard!

My biggest Chinese conversations take place with Housao, the woman who cleans our apartment three mornings a week (one more perk not mentioned in my contract). I ask her questions about the way things work, she advises me about the most convenient bike parking place (37 cents a month for garage parking), I clarify appropriate prices with her, and we discuss our families. One morning, when she was dusting near my desk with my Chinese textbook open before us, I asked her to write her name so I could look up the characters in my dictionary to ensure I am saying the tones correctly. She explained to me that she couldn't read, but could only write her own name, and very slowly proceeded to write her name with large, awkward strokes. Normally, my favorite way to avoid having to speak complicated questions in Chinese is to write out my query, but since she cannot read, I have no choice.

Although knowing Chinese was not required for my teaching position, it has been helpful. Rather than try to describe in English how buckwheat differs from regular wheat or how a meadow differs from a field, I just write the Chinese characters on the board. Also, in my non-English teachers' class, there is one student whose English is completely limited to the very little I have taught him. Rather than taking time to explain very basic things that his classmates *can* understand, I give him a personal translation. I am convinced that it is my horrendous Chinese that inspires his own willingness to take chances speaking English.

I have always been more comfortable reading Chinese than speaking it, but that preference is fast changing. When we first arrived, I tried to read everything, including every slip of paper tucked under our door or pasted to our building's garbage bin. I assumed they were official notices. I could tell the very first one had to do with medical check-ups during an upcoming time period. Was this something mandatory for foreigners, I wondered? I phoned the waiban. They were quite amused by my question as the notice was just an ad for a new clinic. After a great deal of time spent with my dictionary, I have concluded that they are *always* advertisements. Now I rarely read anything except street names, my students' names, menus, and my textbook. Seriously, the college could post evacuation notices and I wouldn't pay any attention.

For the last few weeks I've been meeting with a college senior here who has remarkable English skills--better pronuniciation than about 1/3 of the English teachers--but heavily accented Mandarin. Although her Chinese is not the easiest to comprehend, her English explanations are so lucid that I will continue with her. She says my mastery of the tones is rapidly improving, but I know that is only when I am reading aloud. Let me loose in the market and I am just as apt to say "Please give me a passionate kiss" as "may I ask..."

Yes! One error in tone and I inadvertently invite romance! But that's another story....