From my Tingzijian

I heard the news last week that the creator of Gumby passed away at the age of 88. So it seems fitting that, even before he died and perhaps unbeknownst to him, he is being memorialized on a grand scale here in Shanghai.

Several years ago, we barely paid attention when Shanghai unveiled the new mascot for the then-distant World Expo 2010. Looks like Gumby, my sons yawned. But Haibo, as the blue near-knockoff creature is known here, has since become ubiquitous.  Gumbys greet you at the airport, adorn the Expo ads pasted everywhere promising Better City, Better Life, cuddle up as soft toys and dangle on the ends of keychains, and are carved into topiaries at traffic intersections.

My favorite rendition is in a park along a major boulevard in Gubei. How about this  multi-cultural festival of  Gumbys frolicking under the already-bizarre (permanent) flowerpot sculpture!

And I guess that would be the American Gumby/Haibo under the ten-gallon hat!

Art Clokey must be smiling.

For years now (more than five), I have traveled around Shanghai in a fog when it comes to the written language. Although I’ve struggled constantly to add new words to my spoken Mandarin, I have left reading and writing strictly alone. The blizzard of characters, each as different and imponderable as a snowflake as far as I was concerned, floated by me — on commercial signs, traffic directions, newsstands, wherever.

But since I’ve taken up the study of hanzi, characters, this fall, life has become one big flashcard. Not that I can actually comprehend many phrases, let alone whole sentences, but the few hundred characters I’ve supposedly mastered jump out at me from billboards everywhere, constantly sending me scurrying to my dictionary in on-the-tip-of-recalling frustration.

One of the new words I learned to write this week is 老, the character  lao, meaning “old.” After scratching its six strokes  50 times into my little copybook, I’m quite certain I’ve conquered it, at least for the moment. I’m even sure that the strokes are formed properly and in the right order.

Imagine my delight yesterday when I spotted a substantial sign with three consecutive characters that I recognized, including the word I’d just learned: 老 西 门, lao xi men, old west gate. (Ok, my pleasures are admittedly simple….)

But what’s this! Check out the English translation below!

If they get something this simple so wrong, what else have I been misunderstanding as I go through life here?

I guess I better get back to work on the remaining several thousand I need to learn and retain before I’ll be able to read a newspaper.

I’m not mentioning any names, but one of my family members got out of a taxi last night on our street and left behind his backpack, with his laptop inside. Zaogao! Disaster!

Did he have the cab’s receipt? (One visiting friend last year left the tennis racquet she had bought at the fake market in a taxi, handed the taxi receipt to the hotel concierge, and had the lost racquet back in a couple of hours.) No, the receipt machine in last night’s taxi was broken.

What company was the taxi? Dunno, but red in color. It turns out that there are over 100 companies in Shanghai with red — independent — cars.

There’s nothing you can do, my family member said.

But I can’t stand to leave something like this alone. This morning, I got help in drafting a sign offering a reward and went outside the lane to the place where the unlucky person had gotten out of the car. A small crowd of construction workers and a security guard gathered, curious as to what I was taping on the wall, just in case a super-conscientious driver returned to the scene. Oh, lost your computer, they read and crooned sympathetically. I can’t imagine that any of them has ever come near a computer.

I asked Driver Ou Yang to take me to the police station. He said that would be useless, but immediately swung into action with good ideas. After all, he is a driver. “You’ve got to get it onto this station before lunch, he said, turning the radio dial. That’s where they announce all the lost stuff, and the drivers will be listening while they eat. This afternoon, they won’t be paying any attention. But after he called and learned that it costs 600 RMB to run an ad 4 times, he changed his mind.

I had Ou Yang drive me to the police station anyway. There a polite officer with a cigarette dripping ash asked me the expected questions. What company, what color car, where did he get in, where did he get out. What are you going to do? He shook his head.

Back in the car, Ou Yang shook his head, too. Useless, he snorted with respect to the police. He insisted that we place an ad with the Xinmin Evening News, which I gather is a sort of taxicab newspaper, widely read. The ad will run tomorrow.

Then he suggested that I go onto the internet and place an ad there for other people to read. Not a bad idea from someone who admits he’s never touched a computer, but where on the internet? One Chinese friend said to read the offerings on Chinese eBay to see whether your computer turns up there.

Ou Yang  gets frustrated when we’re so inept, doing such obviously idiotic things as taking taxis, especially the red ones. For two days, you’ve lost gloves (it’s true — I’m down 1 1/2 pairs since Monday) and now this, he muttered as I walked away.

But I haven’t given up yet. Here in China, we’ve had waiters chase us down the street to return items we’ve left in restaurants, hotel maids bring items to the lobby. If a Shanghainese cabbie can find the owner of a lost computer, I think  he would try to return it. Anyone taking a bet on whether we hit the jackpot?

So there I am in my Chinese lesson, painstakingly (and painfully) reading aloud like a 5 -year-old.

水 龙 头

Shui long tou. Water dragon head. I look up. Okay, I can read it, but what’s it mean?

Tap, my teacher says.

I’m still clueless, so I wait.

You turn it and water comes out, she adds.

Ah, ok……. And why is a faucet called a “water dragon head”?

She seems to think this should be obvious. Because it looks kind of like a dragon head.

Oh. Well maybe this could be useful, I think. The terminology for water has been, shall we say, murky for a while. Ever since our first tutor back in Washington in 2004 told us not to drink any water in restaurants in China, but to stick to beer — this advice to a mother moving her teenage son to China! Her concern was that even bottled water may be unsafe tap water masquerading in a re-capped bottle.

On a roll, I write out 水龙头水。Shui long tou shui.  So is this how to say “tap water”?

Now my teacher is puzzled until I explain. No, here’s how we say that: 自来 水。 Zi lai shui. “Self comes water,” means “you don’t have to go to the well for it.”

Aha.

The Chinese teacher back in Washington used to say that Chinese is a very scientific language. I guess it does make sense. Well sometimes, sort of. As my son says, just not in a way that you would expect.