Rebecca Henderson

Teaching English as a Second Language is not new to me, but the class I’m starting this week kind of has me scared to death. In a good way.

I began teaching and tutoring ESL my last year of college, and my first student was a Taiwanese lady who owned the Taste of China buffet in Waco. It was a volunteer job that I got through the literacy center on campus at Baylor, and every week after our class at the restaurant I came back to the dorm with a take-out box stuffed full of enough dinner for both me and my roommate.

Later, I taught a volunteer class at UT Arlington and had students from several Asian countries, most of them working on advanced degrees or research in science or engineering and in need of help with conversational English. Two nursing students from Thailand and Beijing talked me into having a separate class for them on another night each week, so I then found myself answering questions like, “What’s a better way to say the word $#!+ when we’re talking to patients?” That wasn’t something they prepared me for in my graduate classes at UTA — how to explain the subtle differences in usage of the words bowel movement, feces, poop, and number two. (Side note: In another food-for-English exchange similar to the one in Waco, these nurses took me to a sushi bar in Dallas as a thank you, and also because they wanted to help me improve my poor chopstick skills before I moved to Asia.)

Fast forward several years worth of experience — teaching English camps in China, Thailand, and India, a year of high school English at a minority school in China, business English for hotel workers, and countless hours of conversational practice with friends. And now here I am in Washington, about to start a new class with Somali women who came here as refugees.

This class scares me because, for the most part, I’ve only ever taught conversational English to people with a high school education or higher. From what I’ve been told, none of the ladies in my class has any formal education. In addition to not speaking English, they don’t read in any language. They will be starting with the very basics — how to hold a pencil, how to write the alphabet, how to make the sounds for each letter. Very different from teaching a mechanical engineering post-doctoral researcher from Shanghai how to have a meaningful conversation with his American coworkers.

But I’m up for the challenge and very excited. Excited to be teaching a new level of content, as well as teaching students from Africa for the first time. Wish me luck!

Did you know that in the 1990s Aung San Suu Kyi asked Western tourists to begin a boycott on travel in Burma to prevent their money from entering the coffers of the junta?

I didn’t either, until I started planning my trip. I respect Aung San Suu Kyi and would like to support her in her stand for democracy. But I decided that since I’ve spent the past ten years giving my tourism dollars to Communist governments in China, Vietnam, and Laos, and I don’t agree with them any more than I do the junta, then that aspect of the boycott doesn’t jive with me. Visiting people in the Burmese countryside and trying to get a better understanding of what their lives are like—that was a major purpose of my trip, and surely The Lady would agree with that. Thank goodness, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t ask her if she agrees—several weeks before my trip, she spoke from house arrest and encouraged tourists to come back to Burma.

Despite the newness of the lift on the boycott, we met quite a few people on our trip who speak very passable English and whose livelihoods depend on Western visitors. Guesthouses, restaurants, drivers, shop owners—everywhere we went, we found someone who could help us or translate for us. Early October is still the end of rainy season in Burma, so the number of travelers was at a low point for the year. Hopefully business will pick up and the empty places we visited will begin to draw more customers as the weather cools down over the next few months.

The evidence of tourism as an industry was particularly noticeable in Bagan. Since the whole area is an archeological zone, businesses and factories haven’t developed nearby, which helps the town maintain a quiet, rural feel. The bulk of the available work in Bagan is in catering to tourists, both national and international. When the owner of the vegetarian restaurant told us he wouldn’t send his children out to earn quick money off of tourists, he was referring to the abundant number of people waiting outside and inside the ancient stupas, trying to sell souvenirs at a high mark-up. Lacquerware bowls and bracelets, sand paintings of Burmese scenes, longyi made of cheap material, postcards printed circa 1980, the photocopied Orwell novel.

Erin and I were met by a small gang of children outside one of the more popular pagodas, and they wouldn’t stop bugging us to buy something from them the entire time we walked around the grounds of the site. One girl asked repeatedly if we would come look at her father’s sand paintings. Another offered to let me trade for souvenirs using as payment a Tibetan bracelet I was wearing. Giggling, cute, and annoying, they made me feel like the Pied Piper of Bagan as we made our way en masse around the premises.

The most persistent of the bunch was a little boy, probably 8 or 9 years old, who kept calling me señora and wanted me to buy some bamboo bracelets coated with lacquer. I told him I wasn’t going to buy anything until I was finished looking around the pagoda, and then I’d think about it. “OK, I’m waiting here for you,” he said.

Four steps later, he was at my side again offering the bracelets. “Wait here, and I’ll come back and buy them,” I said. “But stop following me.”

“OK, señora, I’m waiting here for you.”

A minute later, he was back. He was so darn cute, I couldn’t get mad. What decent Texas girl could get mad at a Burmese kid for addressing her in Spanish?

We repeated the whole process several times, me telling him to wait, him saying he was waiting here. Finally I clued in to the fact that he wasn’t trying to be obnoxious—he genuinely didn’t know the meaning of the English word wait. I let him follow me around and then bought the bracelets for $1 before I left. The last thing he said to me (and as far as I could tell, it was a complete non sequitur) was, “Mei guanxi. Weishenme?” Chinese for “It doesn’t matter. Why?”

I don’t know why either, kid. I’ve been asking that question for years.

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Con Artist“

I would love to talk to the Burmese ladies when I pass them on the street or in the market, but they don’t speak English or Chinese, and I don’t speak their language either.  Instead, I make a point to look them squarely in the eye and smile broadly as we pass.  Watching their faces brighten at my only way of communicating gives me great delight.  I feel miserable for these ladies, curtained in heavy black cloth in 100 degree heat, the physical weight of their robes an outward sign of their oppression, while I am free to flit around town in a tank top and short skirts like the Chinese.

The only one among my Burmese neighbors who I have had more than a one sentence conversation with is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in my complex.  I often see him wandering up and down the stairs, back and forth to the jade shops down the street.  And when he sees me, he always gives me a nod and a smile.

We’ve had the same conversation dozens of times as I ride up on my motorscooter.  He asks, in his rough Chinese dialect learned on the street, “Where are you going?”

“Home.  You?”

“Out.  Have you eaten?”

“Yes. You?”

“Not yet.”

I’ve tried asking him more questions than these in Chinese, but the most I’ve been able to gather from him is that he’s eleven, his parents are in another town on the Burma-China border, he lives with relatives, and his name is unpronounceable to me.  That’s where our language abilities hit a wall.  He speaks no English.  Once or twice he has rattled something off to me in another tongue, testing me the same way I’ve tested his English.  But with no luck.  So we smile, nod, wave, and endlessly repeat the conversation about going and eating.

Even more than the other Burmese immigrants in my neighborhood, I’m curious about this boy’s story.  How did he end up here?  Why is he living hundreds of miles from his parents?  Who is looking after him?  Why isn’t he in school?  What will happen to him in the years ahead?

My young friend is pictured here with a little girl, possibly a cousin, who I often see him leading by the hand.  I’m not sure why he decided to scowl when the picture was taken.  She also beams at me and waves when she sees me—on this day, as we parted ways, she walked backwards waving as long as she could see me, until she ran into a pole.

I was sitting in the café today, sipping a drink and pecking away at my laptop, when the cook stuck her head into the front room and yelled (in Chinese) after one of the waitresses, “Hey, come back in the kitchen and wipe your butt.”

Surely I misunderstood.  I turned to another waitress nearby and asked, “Did she just tell her to go wipe her butt in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” she barely paused in what she was doing as she answered, before realizing that the confusion still lingered in the expression on my face.  “But that’s not what it means.”

The next time someone you know makes a mess and doesn’t clean it up, remind him gently (or more strongly, depending on your mood and relationship to the person in question) to wipe his butt.

This may be the most useful Chinese slang I’ve learned in quite a while.

Day two of driving started out much the same way—two hours of DY driving on wide highway, with me taking over as the roads became progressively narrow and tortuous.  None of us had been on the road beyond LC and didn’t know quite what to expect.  I will post DM’s description of the roads to give his perspective of the dangers we faced.  After all my years of traveling Yunnan back roads, I’ve become a bit immune to the perils of the blind curves and unprotected drop-offs—day three was quite a wake-up call for me, but day two was still a sunny, pleasurable drive with an abundance of scenic overlooks as we drove up to the top of a ridge and then followed it for the next couple of hours.  I’m sure I missed some of the best views as I focused on the road, but more than once I found myself looking out the driver’s side window and over the edge of the road, no guard rail, straight down an almost vertical incline for hundreds of feet.  The driver’s seat is not the best vantage point for taking in the surrounding magnificence, but it was breathtaking for me, nonetheless.

Adam described the experience with his typical reticence:  “The mountains are very tall.”  Yes, they are.  I would try from time to time to get him to expound on his feelings and observations on his first long distance road trip, but without much luck.  He did become rather animated, though, when DM asked him to tell some stories in B language (a language DM doesn’t yet understand).  For the next half hour, Adam practiced telling stories while DM nodded and mm-hmmed and encouraged him to continue.  I’m sure it was a nice break for Adam, who spent much of the trip listening to me and the others rattle on in English (a language he doesn’t yet understand) about things like the modern history of Burma.

After several hours of driving up and down, up and down through the mountains, we came to a large river valley, where the road became somewhat flatter, though no less serpentine.  We pulled into town in time for dinner at a decent hour, after breezing through two police checkpoints.  I was slightly disappointed that the police didn’t care to ask what we were doing in the area—I was ready to proudly explain our journey to pick up coffee seedlings to be planted back in Adam’s village.  But the police didn’t even return my smiling “ni hao” through my rolled down window, waving me on without a word.

Next in the “A Different Trip” series:  ”Excerpt from DM”

(continued from The Language Café)

All I’ve ever called this waitress at the café is her nickname, Xiao Yang, Little Yang.  Yang is a rather common surname in China.  I would need a bit more inspiration, so I asked her for her full given name.

“Yang Li Ping,” she replied.

One of the other waitresses overheard and rolled her eyes.  I was tempted to do the same.

“No, really,” I said with a straight look.  “What’s your name?”

“It’s Yang Li Ping.  Why does no one ever believe me?” she giggled.

“I know who Yang Li Ping is.  Is that really your name?”

Yang Li Ping is widely famous in Yunnan as an ethnic minority dancer and choreographer, best known for her “peacock dance.”  I can’t speak for her popularity in other parts of the country, but she’s quite the celebrity in this province.

Xiao Yang sighed.  “Yes.  Bu no one believes me, so I have them call me Xiao Yu.” Yu as in yu mao—feather.

I went home to think about it overnight.  Feather.  Not a normal name in English, but this Cup of Tea is open to unconventional names.  A problem, however, would be that the th sound is particularly tricky for most native Chinese speakers.

I read through some names online and decided on Jewel, partly because I had also just been browsing through my music library and saw Jewel’s Christmas album, which is one of my favorites.  (Stick with me…there really is a thought process being revealed.)

The next day in our language session, I asked Xiao Yang to try to say Jewel.  As I had feared, the word final l sound wasn’t going to work for her.  I just can’t give someone an English name she isn’t able to pronounce.

I remembered reading that the name Jemma also means jewel.  But I think Jemma sounds too UK.  So I settled on Jenna.  I had Xiao Yang try that one out.

She pronounced it perfectly.  That name, I decided, will stick.

Later in the day, two more waitresses asked for names.  The inspiration seeking process began again.

If nothing else, the café looks busy throughout each week day, with all of the language lessons going on under the big sun umbrellas at our sidewalk tables.  The kitchen manager teaches Chinese lessons at noon four days a week to an ex-pat couple.  Adam teaches me and two others his minority language—I love meeting for class under the dancing shadows of the leafy trees out front, partly because of the cool afternoon breeze and partly because of the distraction of people walking by on the sidewalk.

Everyone should learn a minority language if given a chance.  You can say whatever you want about pretty much anybody with little fear that you’ll be overheard by eavesdroppers.  At any given moment, there are probably less than ten people in JH who could understand us—and we’d give just about anything to know where the other six people are!

English lessons were officially added to the language menu this week when I began tutoring one of the waitresses.  She doesn’t have an English name, so of course that was one of the first things she wanted in our first lesson.  Luckily for her, I’m one of the more creative English-name-givers in Yunnan.  I once had to name 500 high school students in a one week period.  Seriously.  I made sure there were no typical Chinese-English names in my classes, no sir.  No Rose and Jack.  No Grace and Walter.  Those kids were all named after my friends and family members, favorite singers and actors, my team members.  There was one row in an 11th grade class named Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross, Joey, and Chandler.  Five hundred is a lot of names.

(to be continued…)

Adam doesn’t speak English, but there is one word he understands and speaks clearly:  e-mail.  Being a pre-computer culture, the B language doesn’t have its own word for e-mail, and I have somehow managed to never acquire the Chinese word in my vocabulary.  Many Chinese speakers, even if they don’t speak English, will understand that word.  Adam has been around us ex-pats long enough to have acquired it, too.

Not that he has ever sent or received an e-mail.  He’s never used a computer, and it wasn’t until recently that he learned to use a cell phone.  That thing is glued to his hand now, and he is constantly sending and receiving calls and texts.

I noticed not long ago that Adam has also picked up a habit of mine when saying the word e-mail or text message.  I find myself talking with my hands even more than usual when speaking a second language.  Just as you might make a fake phone out of your hand and hold it to your ear when you say, “Call me about the plans for tomorrow,” I will often type on a fake keyboard when I say something to Adam along the lines of, “I sent my friend an e-mail yesterday.”  Adam transferred this air typing to his newly found SMS habit, and more than once I’ve seen him wiggle his fingers over an imaginary keyboard when mentioning a text message he sent to someone.

One day I asked him if he would like to learn to use a computer—it will be useful for the development of his language if some speakers can begin to be computer literate as well.  He replied to my question that he knows that lots of people like to play on the computer, so it might be something fun for him to learn, too.  A bit puzzled, I asked if he thought people only play on the computer; equally puzzled, he admitted he wasn’t exactly sure what people did besides play games and listen to music.

Now, one of my goals over the next few months is to get him started learning to type and to have a basic understanding of the usefulness of computers in doing actual work.

The second of my back-to-back trips up the Mountain was with three German sisters in search of minority musicians willing to let us record them while performing.  The oldest sister (and I mean “the oldest” at the ripe old age of 25) is a friend from JH who is beginning her graduate research in ethnomusicology, and the two younger girls were visiting from Germany during their school break.

Since I was going as their Chinese translator (and also was hoping to understand some of the B dialect wherever we ended up), I felt as if I were somewhat breaking the stereotype of the monolingual American.  My pride should be deflated, though, by the fact that I was communicating with the three girls in English, not German.  The middle sister kept apologizing to me for her poor English, but I contended that her English is better than my German (which consists of the numbers one to ten and a couple of cuss words).

After staying the night at David and Julie’s house, we headed out to a new village twelve kilometers from MN to visit a musician my teammate had met at a festival last year.  Adam’s father went with us as our escort; he knows the B musicians in the village and was willing to spend the day helping us meet them.  Before driving out of MN, he suggested we buy some packs of cigarettes to take as gifts.  I showed him a container of homemade chocolate cake, oatmeal muffins, and candy I had brought from JH and asked if that would work as a gift instead of cigarettes.  “Even better,” he said.

When we arrived in the village, dozens of people were standing along the road, in doorways, and on their balconies, waiting to see the foreigners.  I found out later that it was the first time foreigners had come to visit the village.  As if four white ladies showing up weren’t enough of a curiosity, I gave them even more of a shock by driving a truck all by myself.  I wowed them further by saying a few basic sentences in B language; I’m sure by now the rumor has grown to say I’m fluent in B!

We spent the next few hours listening to the musicians sing and play cymbals, an “elephant leg” drum, traditional guitar, and a bamboo flute.  My ethnomusicologist friend had them show her how to play each, and we recorded about twenty of their songs for her to analyze later.

As we expected, the B musicians wanted the foreigners to sing for them as well.  The three sisters are all very musically gifted, and they sang several songs in three-part harmony for the crowd.

I couldn’t help but make jokes to myself all day about how surreal the experience was—I felt like I was translator for “The Von Trapps Come to Yunnan Tour.”  Back home, the three sisters have five more siblings, and they’re all musically inclined.  They’re German, not Austrian—I do recognize the difference, as well as the fact that the real von Trapps might be offended by my comparison, given the history for which they are famous.

All we needed was to end our day by walking over the mountains into the next country, while a group of nuns sang “Climb Every Mountain.”  China and Burma, Austria and Switzerland…they’re practically the same.

The driving force that keeps Lydia’s family together, and keeps their business and their farm running, is Lydia’s mother.  She is tireless.  She never sits still.  She does all of the food prep for their noodle business and for their own consumption.  She does everything involved in caring for and harvesting their tea plants.  She feeds and cares for the family’s seven pigs.  She plants and harvests their vegetable garden.  She does all of this in a home with a very basic kitchen and without running water.

When Lydia lived with me her last year of high school, her mom came to stay at my apartment several times.  The first time she came, she showed up at my door with a whole chicken to cook—already dead and de-feathered, but a whole chicken nonetheless.  I let her have free reign in my kitchen to cook a meal, but it took some adjustment on her part to figure out how certain things worked.  I walked in the kitchen at one point to find her standing at the sink, raising and lowering the handle of the faucet to turn the water on and off, just watching the water stop and start.  The water at her home comes from a hose that carries spring water down a mountain to the side of the road where they live.  It’s always running unless they bend a kink in the hose to stop it.  There’s no sink.  There’s no faucet.

In 2005, I took my mom to visit Lydia’s parents.  Lydia’s mom sat down to talk to my mom, using me as a translator, which is quite difficult since Chinese is my second language and it’s her third or fourth language (to my knowledge, she speaks at least three minority languages fluently).

As they were chatting, my mom made the classic Western mistake in Asia—she complimented Lydia’s mom’s gold earrings.  I made a classic mistake and translated it correctly, instead of helping my mom prevent what would happen next:  she took off the earrings and handed them to my mother.  After many protests, my mom had to accept them, but she promptly took off her own earrings and gave them to Lydia’s mom in exchange.  Both ladies put on the other’s earrings then and there.

Every time I’ve been to visit since then, Lydia’s parents ask me when my mom is coming back to see them again, and my recent visit was no exception.

Next in the “Lydia’s home” series:  ”Lydia’s Dad“