Page 11 of Twice the Love
“Yes, the ones the kindergarten children use. They have pictures and the words in Pinyin. It’ll be perfect for you to start learning to speak Chinese.”
“Oh, thank you. That does sound good.”
“And next weekend we’ll choose a quiet time and ride the buses for a while to familiarize you with how and where to catch them. With a few weeks of practicing you should be feeling ready to try by yourself. Or maybe we’ll ask someone to go with you. It all depends how confident you feel by then.”
“Thank you. I’m feeling quite excited about all this. I think once I can get around by myself, and expand my borders beyond these few streets I’ll feel much more at home in Beijing. It’ll be wonderful talking to people I meet, even if it’s only a little bit at first.”
Harry returned then and, bowing slightly, handed Cherry the glossy hardcover book in his hands. They all sat at the table and began to eat, Cherry turning the pages of her book and attempting to pronounce various words. The men carefully corrected her pronunciation and she jumped up from her chair to get her notepad and write some hints to herself about the tonal sounds. By the time they left for work she was proudly able to say several of the words exactly right.
After they left she sat at the table and systematically read her dictionary, practicing words she was fairly confident of the sounds for, writing notes about the rest.
By mid-afternoon she was starting to feel encouraged about learning the language, although well aware she would need some verbs as well as these nouns before she was able to go out and about alone.
****
Each night the men helped her with her language study and pronunciation, adding several more children’s textbooks to her “language library”. At the weekends, as promised, they took her riding on the buses and she soon understood the system and felt capable of finding her way around the city. She was surprised how quickly she understood where the various gates were and how the ring road system worked.
Beijing had originally been two walled cities—the northern “inner” city, the Forbidden City, and the southern “outer” city. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the outer city had seven gates, the inner city had nine and the ImperialCity had four. All these gates stood either on the central axis or bilateral symmetrically so the main streets in both inner and outer cities seemed to form a big chessboard in appearance from a bird’s-eye view. Most of the streets ran from north to south, and narrow streets, called hutongs, mostly ran from east to west. The ring roads spread out in circles from this inner core.
As soon as Cherry could visualize this, everything fell into place and she understood how to travel around the city. She felt like a cartoon character with a tiny light bulb flashing above her head. It was as though she’d been standing in the dark and someone had opened the drapes for her. Everything made sense. She finally grasped the geography of her new hometown.
One day she was sitting in the courtyard with her language books practicing making up sentences. She had managed, “The sky is blue today” and “There are three pomegranates on the tree”, when a soft old voice said in Mandarin, “Well done, Granddaughter. What else have you learned?”
Something Cherry had learned was always to respond in kind, so she bobbed her head in a respectful bow and replied, “Thank you, Grandfather Wang. I can say many words, but my sentences are not good yet.”
The old man pointed to various items around the courtyard and Cherry carefully said the words she knew. He corrected her pronunciation, and at times, taught her a few new words, which she wrote in her notebook. But mostly he nodded happily at her attempts.
“Let me see your book.”
Cherry handed him the children’s Pinyin dictionary and he helped her first to say the words, then string them into simple sentences. Before Cherry was aware of it, more than an hour had passed, and she felt much more confident about her Mandarin skills. It also seemed she’d made a friend as the old man said, “Tomorrow, at this time, you will come to my house and we will have tea.”
“Thank you, Grandfather. I will be honored.”
****
Cherry had made her birthday her goal, and when that day arrived she set out along on the now-familiar walk to the bus stop, and caught a bus to the SummerPalace. Once there she bought a guidebook, read the map and directions—which were fortunately mostly pictures—and managed to find her way to the front lake area to see the Empress’s marble dragon boat. The lake was enormous, stretching almost to the horizon, the water blue-gray, but smooth and calm. The boat was made of big pale stones and a two-story, white superstructure. At thirty-six yards long it was huge, and ornamented with four dragon heads.
“Ahh, lovely. I can see why Empress Dowager Cixi liked to sit in it,” she said softly to herself, unable to resist snapping a photo of it on her cell phone. It was so pretty, the elegantly carved white stone boat sitting on the blue-gray water. Cherry stood and just looked at it, absorbing everything for long moments, once again appreciating the Chinese ability to make everything much more beautiful through balance and symmetry.
She walked through the Long Corridor appreciating the delicately painted ceiling in blue, yellow and green, then bought a ticket on a tourist dragon boat for a trip across the lake, which took her to the exit.
Deciding she’d had a big enough adventure for one day she located the bus stop, found the correct bus and went home very pleased with herself and her brand new independence.
****
Li Chang and Song Hao had told her they would take her out for a Peking duck dinner to celebrate her birthday, so Cherry showered and put on a pretty dress when she arrived home. They’d gone to local restaurants many times but this time were booked for a meal across the other side of Beijing at a restaurant that specialized in the traditional celebratory meal.
Cherry loved it when the waiter stood beside their table, carving their duck into wafer-thin slices and rolling them into tiny dumplings. And the duck was delicious.
In fact, the entire restaurant was fascinating, with a fishpond as a central feature, a tiny bridge crossing over the water where patrons could stand to watch the golden carp swimming under their feet.
“Thank you for bringing me here. It’s all very exciting. I’ve really enjoyed myself. The duck was delightfully tender and very different from home—a much more enticing flavor. All the dishes here are prepared with so much thought and attention to detail. I love your meals.”
“I’m glad—we’re glad—you liked it. We both wanted to take you somewhere special to celebrate your birthday. In China three is a lucky number, so your thirtieth birthday is quite special,” said Harry.
“Tell me about lucky and unlucky numbers,” asked Cherry.
By the time they got home Cherry was still a bit confused—two, three, eight, and nine seemed to be good, and four was bad, but five, six and seven were dependent on other situations and effects, and could be good or bad. It’s all too much to worry about now. I’ll get it straight in my head later, she thought.