星期二
xīng qī èr
Tuesday

Xīng qī èr. Xīng qī èr. Xīng qī èr.

She must have said it a dozen times. Each time she’s got this expression on her face that’s a combination of amusement and disbelief. And it sounds familiar. I swear it does! But she does this to me all the time, wo de Zhongwen lao shi. She doesn’t begin our lessons in English. In fact, unless it’s absolutely necessary, she barely talks to me in English at all (which is what I’ve asked her to do). But there we are, in the bookstore, and she hits me with the Zhongwen right off the bat.

“Ni hao, Frank!” she says as she sees me approach.

“Ni hao, lao shi! Ni hao ma?” I reply. So far, I’m doing well!

“Hen hao! Ni ne?” she asks.

Again, nothing here I don’t know or recognize. In fact, I’m not even translating this into English in my brain anymore, which is progress. On some small level, I have started thinking in Chinese.

“Wo ye hen hao, xie xie!”

“Xing chi er, ni de duo peng you [unintelligible] shen me yang?”

(I’m a little off there, but I’m trying to piece this together from memory, based on the meaning.)

And right there, she lost me. She lost me at xing chi er. I don’t know why. I know the days of the week. I know the months. Numbers in general always give me a problem, but this is such an easy system of naming things that it should be a slice of dan gao!

“Xing chi er…,” I say, hoping that it’ll jog something. She nods and repeats the whole sentence, which is useless because all of my mental faculties are focusing on those first three syllables.

“Xing chi er,” I repeat. In fact, I say it about six times. Every time I say it, she says it back to me and she’s getting more amused with each repetition.

“I know this one,” I say.

But now I start getting nervous. We’re standing there in the middle of the café. I haven’t even put down my briefcase yet. We’re stuck in this ridiculous Star Trekkian time loop, doomed to repeat this cursed phrase over and over again until Commander Data blows up the ship!

*cough* Sorry. Too much TV as a kid.

We keep batting this phrase back and forth at each other like a game of ping pong. She doesn’t let me off the hook, either. She just keeps going. Me being nervous isn’t helping. But she knows what I know (or she has a very good idea anyway), and she doesn’t let up. So we keep repeating this phrase until I start to piece it together.”

“Xing chi,” I say, “that’s… uh… day of the week, right?”

“Dui,” she says.

“Er,” I say, and here’s where they hand me the dunce cap and put me in the corner. I’m blanking on èr. I mean, can you believe this?! “Er, er, er… OH! Two! TWO!!! Two’s day! Uh, Tuesday!!!” Duh!

Now she’s outright laughing at me and my face is flushed. Elapsed time? Maybe three minutes. Internal clock says different. My internal clock is the same one I’ve had since I forgot my lines on opening night of Annie. Internal clock says the elapsed time was 16 hours, 42 seconds.

The rest of the sentence, once she repeats it, I get in about 10 seconds flat. We had cancelled our Tuesday appointment this week because a few friends had taken me out for an early birthday bash. So she was asking me how it went with all my friends on Tuesday night.

After an hour and a half of face time with my tutor, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can understand a good deal more of Chinese than I can speak. I’m sure that’s partly a confidence thing. I hear the words in my head, I just need to roll them around on my tongue for a few seconds before I’ll let them come out.

When I get to China, I’m going to amuse the hell out of the locals.

Two’s day!

Sheesh. It’s not easy being green.