Received any false compliments lately?

The glorious art of the insult has been brought to a new level with Julius Malema around. I was sent an article about him recently (Feather in his cap as Malema agrees to shut up) in which he professed to stop making clownish statements and get more mature as he prepares for his rise to the presidency of this country recently. My heart sank, nay, plummeted. A sentence or two later I realised the author(s) of the piece were having me on. The article was a spoof.

The thought of no Julius to cackle at as he spews forth unruly curmudgeonry was truly a woeful thought, not to mention all the verbal or visual strafing he receives from Helen Zille to Zapiro. Hell, the guy is a buffoonish icon in his own time, worthy of a Nobel Prize for Inane Humour as he goes hammer and tongs at anything that is not in line with the ANC as if he were a cursing plumber with a particularly stinky obstruction in a huge pipe that needs elimination. He alone makes South Africa worthwhile returning to and there is certainly no end of entertainment to watch from China.

But what about that other art form, the compliment, especially the false one, that saccharine flattery which could be called a solid, verbal slap across the face? I must admit, the Chinese have brought the art of vastly inflated compliments to a fine level.

When I first arrived in China I soon learned that Mandarin is only one of a vast array of languages euphemistically referred to as dialects. All of them are forbidding great walls that resist comprehension to the average Westerner. I say “euphemistically” because a Chinese person from another province, even another city, cannot comprehend the natives of that different province or city of they speak in their own language and not Mandarin. So I still fail to understand why they are called dialects. For example, I am now an intermediate speaker of Mandarin but if a person just sounds the numbers one to ten in Shanghaiese, I am lost after the number two. Yep, that hectic.

The sounds of Mandarin are completely different to a Westerner’s ears and when I first arrived here the language sounded like radio static — zhi, zzi, shii, jige, izzz — or people shuffling along in slippers down an echoing corridor. What did not and still does not help is that many Chinese (especially those past the age of sixty) cannot accept a Westerner can speak Chinese. “You mean dat dude with the weird blue eyes and pinkish skin and face like a balloon? Him gonna gush forth Mandarin? No way.”

I remember my first attempt years ago in Shaoxing. The city was so far from anything Western that we were there for well over a month before we actually encountered another Westerner. The head of the English department at the college we were teaching was Catherine. I tried out my first few words that I had learned off a CD, essentially meaning, nice to meet you. Catherine stared at me in wide-eyed incomprehension. I tried again, doing my best to shuffle hard in my verbal slippers. Nothing, no lights on Catherine’s face. In despair I told her what I was trying to say in English. After a few seconds a light dawned behind her pink-stemmed glasses and she repeated the phrase I had so laboriously tried to learn, with perhaps a bit more soul in the shuffling slippers. Note painful pun. I repeated it after her and she corrected me a few times (for the life of me my ears could not tell where I was going wrong). Then, grinning with delight, she gave me the thumbs up and gifted me with the first of a long line of compliments in the department of my Mandarin Studies. “Your Chinese is now very good!” Yeah right. I am also pregnant with triplets.

Essentially, any time a Westerner speaks any Chinese to a Chinese stranger, he will probably be told his Mandarin is now excellent. It is endearing. I have improved in my Mandarin, but still get some people who simply have blocked out the fact that a Westerner can speak Chinese. I have noticed a fascinating phenomenon. Many times, if I speak to a Chinese and she gives me a blank stare, or, more annoyingly, turns and stares at her friend a second after I open my mouth, and says, shenme yisi, what does that mean? The friend will often understand what I have said, but not the person to whom I am speaking. The distinct impression I get is that, as they are often shy people, is that she is overwhelmed by the fact that a Westerner is speaking to her. The friend will then simply repeat back to the addressee exactly what I have said. A blush of embarrassed understanding will often prettify my listener’s face. Then either she or the friend will at some point compliment me on my superb Chinese. So cute, but hogwash.

The best was one that occurred recently. There is a convenience store right next to our apartment block (yes, the one of Top secret Wrigley’s chewing gum fame, my very first post on Thought Leader). Unfortunately the shop assistants change every month or so for reasons I have yet to determine. The previous ones have become accustomed to me speaking Chinese and understand my polite requests. I stared at the new lot giggling and bobbing behind the tills at me as I arrived as solemn as a ship docking in a harbour with all the stuff I wished to purchase. I could see what was going through their frantic minds. “You mean dat dude with the weird blue eyes and pinkish skin and face like a balloon? Him gonna gush forth Mandarin? No way.” Despairing inwardly, I asked in what I now know is reasonably good Chinese for four extra coke lights as the fridge only had a few. The two lasses gaped at me and then at each other in incomprehension. I repeated the request two more times. Another assistant, sensing some lack of communication, sauntered over as I spoke to his colleagues and immediately understood me. As always, he simply repeated what I said back to them, some annoyance on his face as well. Perhaps he was a manager. One of the girls then said to me — oh god I want to slap my forehead even as I write this — “Mister, you speak Chinese very well”. To which I responded with the no-brainer, “Thanks, miss, but how can you say my Chinese is so good when you did not understand what I was saying?” The sweet young woman’s face pinkened again with that sudden illumination.

That was about two weeks ago and we now all understand each other famously. They are mostly girls and are really lovely people, I get rather broody and fatherly, but I am glad I don’t get the hilarious flattery. In two weeks or so the shop’s staff will change again. (I don’t know why they change so often; maybe they win lottery tickets to come to our store for a while so they can they get to see all the Westerners.) And, as true as hens lay eggs, I will be back to square one with uncomprehending faces and wide eyes, and in for another excruciating compliment.