A Month and a Half in Beijing

The Singhs had completed almost two months in Beijing. In the meantime I got acquainted with another Sikh guy and his friends studying there in some Medical college. He was a thin jovial fellow hailing from Ambala. He had been in Beijing for a long time now. Also, I was friends with a number of colleagues in my roommates’ team. I’ll introduce them all later.

By now, I had got used to the curious Chinese stares, all asking the same question, ‘Who is this Guy?’ Some of them voted in ‘Yes or No’ a number of times in their tiny brains before taking the courage to approach and ask in the little English, of whatever they knew. Whatever they asked, I could know the question and the reply was always ‘Indu’. That’s what they call India in China. ‘Awww… Indu’ came a relieved reply. Once or twice I replied ‘Indu’ even before they could complete the question. No matter if the question they were asking was something else. To my amazement, once, one of the Girls at a store thought that I was a Chinese from some other province. The conversation usually came to a dead end with the predator saying something in Chinese, and the Prey escaping with a grin and a five simple words, ‘Wo bu dong zhong wen’ and ‘Zaijian’ (means goodbye).

My lunch all these days used to be generally in the office cafeteria. The food was sometimes eatable, rest of the times to fill the stomach. Whatever I had was followed by a bar of chocolate to soothe the taste buds.

For the dinner, my roommates had somehow started accepting the idea of me burning the food until I gave up cooking. Not because I cooked badly, but because the Deepinder chef was too lazy to cook now.

Apart from a trainee, I was now an English teacher to my team in office. This idea was initiated by my mentor friend, Mr. ShenHong. Once in a week I conducted English classes for the members of my team. It used to be an hour and a half after the office of fun filled games and learning. We sang, danced, played games, and the best part was I got a chance to take test and evaluate my seniors, including my manager. The appraisal meetings, after all, are not just for them.

I had learned the Chinese counting by now and a few other simple words that helped me to buy stuff in market. Also, I sometimes used to carry a small English-Chinese –English dictionary to help me out on commodities. So, most of what used to be an array of meaningless drawings and erratic actions in any store, was now on the lips or under the finger pointing to the dictionary.

Here’s a brief of the little Chinese I knew by then…

Chinese Counting..

0 – lin

1 – e

2 – a

3 – sann

4 – szz

5 – wo

6 – liu

7 – chi

8 – ba

9 – jiu

10 – shrrre

For one alphabet they had five different kind of sounds. Eg. An a has five different sounds as a, a’, ‘a, a^, aa. Call me up sometime for the exact intonation because the sounds can make a difference. It sounds like some Indian raag if you speak them all in a sequence. These sounds matter a lot in the pronunciation. (Lest you call someone a cow when you intend to say beautiful girl).

No wonder, I earned the title of ‘Chinese Sardar’ from my roommates.