Barbarian Evolution- The Beginning

“The Chinese do habitually call, and consider, Europeans ‘Barbarians,’ meaning by that term, peoples in a rude, uncivilized state, morally and intellectually uncultivated,” reported Thomas Taylor Meadows, the most outstanding of the first British interpreters in China. “Of the words signifying the European, their vocabulary, though rich in vituperative and abusive epithets, had nothing more contemptuous than that. Comparing themselves to all other peoples, there could be no nation as evolved as themselves in point of civilisation; all but themselves were Barbarians, and accordingly met with a policy founded on a long experience and a just appreciation of their more or less barbarous characteristics,” pg4-5 of “Shanghai- The rise and fall of a decadent city” by Stella Dong.

 

This is a quote from the late 1800s. I was once called a barbarian by a Chinese person, when, seeing it begin to rain and deciding to “join” the Shanghainese in their penchant for stealing taxis, I swiftly pilfered a Chinese man’s taxi. As the traffic was moving slow, I saw the Chinese person joined by his foreign friends enquiring to the loss of their transportation. “The Barbarian took it,” he said, the car passing slowly enough for him to point out my offending person to his friends.

 

When first arriving in Shanghai in 2003, I was hit with the brutal reality of complete language inability. I felt that I had been reversed in age, to the pre-verbal stage of a toddler, at times feeling like throwing tantrums and bursting into tears at the frustration of my limitations in communication. I developed what I called “survival charades,” an urban form of mime that was an attempt to convey whatever requirement I was trying to fulfil at the time. Often the result was quizzical expressions or laughter and more often than not the gathering of a jury of the store- owner’s peers all discussing what I might be trying to communicate.

 

Try miming “english menu,” I opened my hands to suggest something like a book, when presented with a Chinese menu I looked at it and shrugged. Repeatedly saying “English” was to no avail. This also caused everyone in the restaurant to gather around my table, forming a committee of commentators and questioners. Other difficult situations arose. My apartment had a black out so I thought I better buy candles, a fruitless session of “survival charades” ensued. I suggest you try miming candle to one another, a very difficult one. When buying a mobile phone SIM card there were many manoeuvres I went through until the store-owner asked “sim ka?”

 

Survival charades was definitely a good way to actually learn the Chinese words for things. The trauma of becoming the amusement for gathering gawkers was good motivation to learn the new words, such as là zhú 蜡烛 (candle) and cài dān 菜单 (menu) , among others.  As I blundered around Shanghai like an escaped character from the film “Quest for Fire” I wondered whether Chinese people still thought of Westerners as “barbarians.” I certainly was not doing my part to dispel this image.

 

This blog is about the evolution of a foreign barbarian in Shanghai and my hope is that through your comments you will share your similar or contrasting experiences. I will be using Stella Dong’s history of Shanghai as the launching pad for each entry since after asking her at the literature festival about whether she thinks many things in Shanghai’s history were still present today, she did not actually know. So hopefully we can help each other find out.

 

Questions

 

Was there a particular time you employed hand signals, miming or vocal sounds (onomatopoeic, guttural or illustrative e.g. animal sounds) to convey meaning when you found you did not know the Chinese for that situation?

 

What is the most intense situation you found yourself in where you wished you knew how to speak Chinese?