My Chinese is becoming riddled with slang and idioms…

…probably because the bulk of Chinese I hear is 6-15 year olds talking amongst themselves. It’s not my fault, I just tend to pick up colloquial stuff way quicker than most people! Three years in West Virginia and I stopped saying “Wicked Aaaaaaesome!” and started saying, “y’all”, “x needs done”, and nearly started calling soda, “pop”. Nearly did me in during the high holidays when I returned to roundabouts Beantown.

But the laughs or surprised looks on people’s faces are interesting at least. Hangzhou is a big (or small, by Chinese standards.) with a lot of universities and foreign companies. Foreigners are a common sight. Foreigners who can speak a smattering of Chinese aren’t even worth looking at anymore. Foreigners who say “好牛！*“ when watching someone play God of War 3 in an electronics market are the ones who get the stares! When they look just like what every Chinese person considers to be Harry Potter it only makes them more curious! Never mind all the stupid idioms I’m picking up left and right then for some reason finding myself in incredibly apt situations to use. 人山人海 elicited a reaction not only from my friend when I said it in a severely crowded street, but an old grannie who was confused about if I had actually said that or if I had somehow just made random noises and that came out.

I just think it’s interesting a foreigner who has perfect Chinese and can carry on a normal conversation with someone gets by without a glance, whereas someone else who says four words in the right order gets all the attention in the world.

I don’t know whether to thank my classes for constantly badly translating their Chinese slang and making me go and reverse engineer it back in to Chinese or not, but at least my vocabulary is getting bigger… I was really confused a bit over a month ago when one of my students, upon my performing an amazing feat of mental and physical dexterity, proclaimed at the top of his lungs, “Teacher is good cow!!!” The first thing I did, instinctively, was tell him he needs an “a” in there… the second was to inquire as to what the hell he meant.

*好牛 is a very “Hangzhou”, or at least Shanghai-ish, sort of slang. From what I’ve gathered they don’t use it in the north, though variations of it do exist. It’s more or less a less profane version of 牛鼻 (though, on the internet, that second character can be about anything that is phonetically “bi”, regardless of the tone, including the letter B itself. I’m sleepy and don’t feel like looking through for the character for “cunt.” However, rest assured, if a Chinese person ever yells “Niu bi!” in your general direction, you’re doing something right. If I were to translate it based on my limited knowledge, “Fucking awesome!” would do the trick. It’s a profane way to give something a lot of praise, more or less.