In the early 1990s, arriving with my long-suffering friend and colleague Xue Yibing in a typically bare and grimy office of the Bureau of Culture in a county south of Beijing, we settle down to courtesies with the Bureau Chief, to clear our way to go down to the villages. I launch into my routine again—delighted to be in this fine county, heard so much about your wonderful music, blah-blah, most grateful for your support, international cultural exchange blah-blah.

The Bureau Chief is looking even more nonplussed by all these pathetic clichés than one would expect, and eventually, as I flounder around searching for yet more sonorous bullshit with which to impress him, Xue Yibing interjects,

“Do you understand what he’s saying, Bureau Chief?”

He replies earnestly,

“Well, if Mr Jones could speak Chinese, I might understand a bit!”

OK, my accent may not be perfect, but really! Xue diplomatically explains,

“Mr Jones doesn’t speak Chinese so well…”, which prompts me to joke with him,

“My Chinese is a lot better than your bloody English, mate—wodya mean, motherfucker?”

Needless to say, these choice expressions come out in perfect Chinese readily understood by all. The assembled cronies are bemused.

This story soon became part of our Fieldworkers’ joke manual (cf. Writing English: the etic view), and has even been immortalised, if somewhat modified, in a little article I published in a Chinese conference volume. [1]

* * *

My confidence was restored soon after, when we visited an old-people’s home where we were told a fine former Daoist priest was living. We find him, and are soon chatting in the sunny courtyard with a crowd of lovely old geezers assembled. They haven’t had such fun since the Red Star Chairman Mao Thought Propaganda Troupe arrived to perform classic hits like We are little screws in the revolutionary machine and Thrust into the Enemy Rear. As I explain to the old Daoist,

“Old Wang in your home village told us we might find you here, he said you used to do some great rituals…”,

one old guy bursts out,

“Hey, this is amazing—their language is the same as ours!”

His ears were more finely tuned than those of the Bureau chief.

Cf. China: writing in the air; for challenges to communication in “English”, click here.

[1] “Cong ‘Jiaru Zhong xiansheng neng shuo Hanyu dehua’ shuoqi”  从《假如钟先生能说汉语的话》说起, in Qiao Jianzhong 乔建中 and Xue Yibing 薛艺兵 eds., Minjian guchuiyue yanjiu 民间鼓吹乐研究 (Shandong youyi cbs, 1999), pp.407–13.