China. Home to one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations. Home to a fifth of the world’s population. And home to the world’s Lhouie Vhuitton handbags.
When my wife and I first arrived in Beijing, the question that escaped my quivering lips as I met our hotel chauffeur at the departure area was: “Where is the toilet?”
The chauffeur scratched his head.
My legs were doing an involuntary jiggy. “This is not a time for you to be concerned about your head lice! I need to go the toilet right now!
“You know ‘toilet’?” I exclaimed while performing a series of hand gestures around my general pubic region that mimicked the motions of unzipping, pulling, poking, prodding, extending, heavy lifting, shaking, retracting and re-depositing my pink parts. However, instead of directing me to the toilet, the chauffeur instead promptly delivered a roundhouse kick to my general pubic region.
Apparently, there are no universally accepted hand gestures to indicate a full bladder.
(After that initial misunderstanding, a police report and a change of underwear later, the chauffeur finally led me to the public restrooms. However, I wasn’t sure how to use these urinals properly because the instructions were all in Chinese.)
But perhaps, perhaps we could have avoided all this miscommunication if I had spoken to the chauffeur in the type of pidgin English that I’ve seen in those pirated Chinese DVDs of Western movies with “English” subtitles, then perhaps I would have found myself in a state of relief instead of a state of debilitating groin injury.
You know the DVDs I’m talking about: English movies whose subtitles were originally Chinese but then were translated back to English. At least I suspect it’s English translation. Because it could also be Esperanto or a post-modern magic spell or a terrorist plan to cause massive brain hemorrhage among native English speakers.
But before you have an aneurysm, you might need to watch those pirated DVDs again — for your survival. Because as the de facto global language, English has been developing mutant versions of the Queen’s tongue in different parts of the world. And, as we learned from watching the X-Men movies, the most powerful of these mutants want to take over the world. Given this, the Chinese mutant version of post-English English might just become the dominant form of English and English as we currently know it may become as obsolete as Friendster. And that might actually be a good thing.
The book The Red Queen: Sex and The Evolution of Human Nature says that most mutations may start off as “bad news” but that among the bad there is always a good mutation that leads to a genuine improvement. And you know what makes for a good mutation? Sex.
And what does sex have to do with mutant Chinese post-English English (aside from the shameless way that the word “sex: purposefully drives several hundred No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs) to read my column)? It has more to do with an analogy of sex.
For many years, geneticists concentrated their research on good mutations and viewed sex as a way of distributing good mutations among the population (this was also a pick-up line that was used by many geneticists who were only having analogous sex). Examples of these good mutations can be found also in the “cross-fertilization” of good ideas in universities (I have actually seen a lot of this cross-fertilization in universities on several bootleg DVDS). So logic dictates that the English language could have had wild, animal cross-fertilization with other languages, rearranging English into new combinations and configurations until it results in “fortuitous synergy.” Or in a mutant strain of STDs.
The English language’s wild, unprotected nights with Chinese may have already created the beginnings of a new strain of super-mutant English that is being foretold in those baffling English subtitles. And since those English subtitles made as much sense to me as the prosecution team in the impeachment trial, I spent my China visit orienting myself to the ways of super-mutant English
At first, the superiority complex of my Pinoy American English mutant brain made me giggle condescendingly at super-mutant English’s improper usage, such as an advertisement for a local beauty beauty cream that urged me to “be waterful”; or when I drank a hot tea that promised to “captivate with relish”; or when I ate in a Chinese restaurant and the menu had “spicy diced rabbits head and assorted perverse delicacies” (a delicacy that only mutant DOMs could love).
But as I immersed myself more in their odd English, I realized that my lack of comprehension of super-mutant English might lead to more than just groin injuries and involuntary bladder discharge.
1. How do you flee? My wife and I were intrigued by the gas mask that we found inside of our hotel room. Or at least it was a called a gas mask if we were to use my limited Pinoy American English mutant brain perspective. Because when it came to mutant Super English, it was more purposeful than just a gas mask. It was a Fire Fighting Flier Filter Type Self-Saving Breather whose instructions for use were not only clear, but even bordered on the philosophical:
a) Take out the fire-fighting filter-type self-saving breather;
b) Tear at the packing bag of fire-fighting filter- type self-saving breather;
c) Wear helmet and pull contractive belt fast;
(And, most importantly:)
d) Choose way and flee for your life decidedly.
So remember, if you happen to be caught in the middle of a raging inferno, never flee undecidedly or else the fire fighting filter type self-saving breather might not work properly. Confucius himself couldn’t have written a better set of instructions.
2. Smells too late. Instead of marking my territory along the length of the Great Wall of China, we were fortunate to drive by several buildings on the way there that were dedicated solely to relieving my bodily functions: toilets. Or, as super-mutant English described it, “Toilet’s”. And, boy oh boy, did those buildings smell like they were dedicated to toilet’s. However, I believe that the lingering smell of these great edifices were intentional.
You see, these great toilets of China were not only tourist-friendly, but their super-mutant English signs had invaluable health reminders to impart as well.
Allow me to quote their reminder in verbatim:
“Friendly tips: Smoking in the washing room is much worse for your health. There is lots of toxic gas from excreta. Therefore O2 will be less in the washing room. In addition, tobacco can produce more SO2 and CO in the condition of O2, which is harmful to the health of a human being. If the patients who get heart disease or chronic bronchitis smoking in the washing room, the possibility of suffering angina, myocardial infarction or tracheitis may be higher than usual.
“So please cherish your health.”
The moral lesson of this is: If smoking won’t kill you, your own bodily gases will. Argh. If only I had known about this earlier, I would have worn the fire-fighting filter-type self-saving breather mask every time I used the toilet. At this rate, I may have already lost 378 years of my life to my own toxic gases.
3. I love you that much. One of the well-loved, government-mandated purchases that you can make in China is souvenir T-shirts. However, if you aren’t inclined to wear a printed shirt with images of droopy-eyed pandas or President Obama in a Mao hat (the “Obamao”) or Yao Ming (whose image, by government decree, has now been replaced by that of Jeremy Lin), then the alternative is to purchase one of their trendy Westernized English language “statement” T-shirts.
One of the souvenir super-mutant English T-shirts that littered the bangketas of Beijing tourist haunts was the “I Heart Beijing” shirts. But since placing the whole word “Beijing” on the shirt might not be hipsterish enough, they shortened Beijing into a couple of letters, much the same way that Manila is shortened to MNL and Bangkok is shortened to BKK. Thus, Beijing was shortened to “I Heart BJ.”
Unfortunately, my Pinoy American mutant English brain prevented me from purchasing the statement tee for reasons I will only reveal in an executive session with the impeachment court.
4. We get one every week. I further realized that even if we may be speaking the same form of English, there are still nuances in the interpretation in our mutant English brains that could lead to inadvertent attacks on occupied territory.
For example, our tourist guide had contracted the services of a massage therapist who would come over to our hotel room after our day-long tour of the Great Wall. He informed us that the therapist would be seated on the couch in the hotel lobby holding a pamphlet of their massage services and that the hour-long deep-tissue massage would only be 150 yuan.
Once we arrived at the hotel, my wife went ahead to pick up the therapist while I packed up our pasalubongs of local beauty creams and souvenir statement tees in the tour bus.
In the lobby, my wife immediately spotted a woman with milky white skin, dark brown hair and hazelnut brown eyes whose petite figure was squeezed into a tight white collared shirt and a pair of cream-colored shorts.
My wife approached her and asked, “Are you the one the tour guide ordered for Mr. Ledesma?”
The woman furrowed her brows slightly, tilted her head to one side, then nodded. “Yes, okay.”
“Good, good,” my wife replied to the therapist as she led her into the elevator where I had been waiting for both of them.
The therapist looked at me, then looked back at my wife, and smiled. “Is he your boyfriend?”
My wife let out a hearty laugh. “No, no, he’s my husband! We’ve been married for the past three years.” Then my wife gently stroked her stomach. “In fact, I’m pregnant again.”
The therapist’s eyes grew large. “In Beijing, most married women will be jealous if their husbands get a massage.”
My wife rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I am sooo used to it. In Manila, we get massages all the time. We even get them at the same time.”
The therapist smiled to one side of her mouth. “I see.”
When we entered our hotel room, the therapist asked my wife, “Madam, will you watch as I give your husband a massage?”
My wife sighed. “No, I’m just too tired. I’m just going to sleep.”
After I had washed up, changed my clothes, and laid down on the bed, the therapist gently straddled me and announced, “Sir, this is 700 yuan.”
My bladder suddenly discharged. “But the tour guide said the massage was only 150!”
“Seven hundred is my usual price, sir!” she insisted. Then she started rattling off that she had had to pay for her taxi fare, her manager and the several hundred relatives she was supporting in a remote province.
My wife haggled with the therapist until she grudgingly agreed to a rate of 500 yuan. Once the fee was settled, the therapist began to drizzle massage lotion on my back when the doorbell of our hotel room rang.
My wife answered the door and found a woman who was dressed in a plain white outfit and whose hair was neatly tucked into a bun. “Massage?” she said.
My wife stepped back. “RJ”, she said as she smiled through gritted teeth. “I think I may have picked up the wrong girl from the lobby.’
My wife gingerly approached the other massage therapist who was stroking my back. “I think I may have made a mistake.” She laughed nervously. “There could be somebody else waiting for you downstairs.”
The massage therapist stepped off my back and growled at my wife. “But we already started! You must pay me first!”
“No, I don’t,” my wife said and clenched her fists. “You have to leave the room. Now.”
“Not until you pay me!” the massage therapist growled.
My wife and the therapist started exchanging a flurry of expletives that did not require any subtitles. Meanwhile, I put on the first T-shirt that I could get my hands on, sank into the bathroom and then called the hotel security to save the therapist from my wife.
Several minutes and an embarrassingly long explanation later to the hotel security later (it didn’t help that I was wearing the “I Heart BJ” shirt), she bodily removed the milky-white masahista from our hotel room so she could wait again in the hotel lobby for that desperate mutant DOM whom we were depriving of her great 700-yuan therapeutic services.
See, that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention to those super-mutant English subtitles. Just imagine if the other massage therapist had not rung the doorbell in time and we continued with the massage service while my wife was in the room: I might have had nothing to wear except my fire-fighting filter-type self-saving breather while I fled for my life. Decidedly.
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For comments, suggestions or if you heart Beijing, please email ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net. Follow rjled on Twitter.