The extent to which I am able to get along Beijing is quite surprising. Prior to arriving, I was a little nervous because I don’t know how to say anything in Chinese and I can’t read anything either. I knew that there would be no way that I would be able to look at a Chinese character and guess its meaning. I am really grateful when signs are in English, (I don’t know how else I’d navigate the subway) but I know that I’m not doomed if they are not.
When you cannot communicate verbally, it is amazing how much can be communicated non-verbally. For example, Drew and I just returned from exchanging money at the bank. Upon entering, Drew said that he did not know the Chinese word for exchange. I wasn’t concerned. When we got to the bank, I pulled out my American money and a Chinese yuan and pantomimed that I needed to change the former into the latter. It’s like a game of charades. I used to wonder how people could come to the U.S. and carry on with their lives without learning to speak English. Now I can see how it’s possible.
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is true. Pictures, I have learned, can also have universal meanings. Not always, but more or less. A restaurant menu doesn’t necessarily need to be in English for me to understand it. Pictures are just fine. In our apartment, we have figured out how to cook with our hot plate, using the pictures on the buttons to navigate the temperature. Even though the remote control for the air conditioner doesn’t contain any pictures, we have figured out how to use this too (with a little trial and error).
Drew spent a good hour yesterday trying to translate the characters on the buttons of our washing machine. Turns out that Chinese characters don’t always translate into English very well. One of the buttons translated into “Press this button to change the clothing order: artificial intelligence-fast-parts-children-soft artificial intelligence.” You can put your children in the washing machine? This sounds like a great idea! Just think, let’s say your children are eating spaghetti and make a mess of it on their clothes. Have no fear! You can just toss your children, clothes and all, into the washing machine. I think the Chinese are on to something. Anyway, after spending an hour attempting to translate the characters, Drew just randomly pressed buttons and voila! We had clean clothes.
There is something almost liberating knowing that the people around you can’t understand what you are saying and not also being able to understand them. Conversations are just background noise. Not being able to understand what people are saying is kind of fun, too. Sometimes, when people are carrying on in the elevator, I like to imagine what they might be saying. Just right now, there were two women in the elevator, one with a baby. One woman asked the other a question, and I like to think that she was asking “how much for your baby?” And the other one responds, “$40.” And the first says, “$40, what a good deal! Finding a baby for $40 is hard to come by these days.” And so on.
Chris with a 'K' 
so, one thing that i want to alert you to (but you probably are already well aware of) — there are different menus for chinese and non-chinese speakers. we read about this, but witnessed it in beijing. we walked into a restaurant, i asked (in fluent mandarin) to see a menu, and they handed me the standard one that other patrons had. a white woman walks in minutes later, asks for a menu in botched chinese, and gets the “white” version with higher prices, of course.