Silent love

Ah, poor girl! Once more Jinlin has been quite silently suffering of multiple troubles before opening up about them. One month ago I wrote about her dramatic breakup with her mother and hope to her her to Finland rather soon. Well, that did not happen. In our rather patchy communication in the following weeks she was telling that she has not been able to proceed with the bureaucracy related to VISA and travel arrangements. I guess her intentions also changed, her moments rage to quickly leave everything behind fading somewhat. Now it seems that while her relationship to her mother has not been restored, she does continue her art studies in Shanghai for the time being.

Our communication has been patchy partly because of technical problems (her phone has been broken and the internet connection in her dormitory is not working), partly because of her overtly busy study schedule, partly because physical illnesses (she has been at times in hospital for treatment) and partly because of her ongoing insomnia, stress and anxiety. What is the relative contribution of these different factors is not quite clear to me: patchy communication makes it also difficult to find out exact reasons for the patchy communication.

But every now and then we do have long chats and she opens up about her worries and feelings and I try to comfort and help her as well as I can. Telling of the woes of her recent weeks, she wrote sad words:

我  最近     很  委屈    。 我 哭  了 快    一 个  月
wǒ zuì jìn hěn wěi qu 。 wǒ kū le kuài yī gè yuè 
I have had much grievance recently. Nearly a month I have been crying.

我  想    摆脱     自己   内心     。 很   多  不好    的  毛病      。
wǒ xiǎng bǎi tuō zì jǐ nèi xīn 。 hěn duō bù hǎo de máo bìng 。
I want to cast away my heart. Very many bad defects.

She had also been running out of money and she had been resorting to getting some money in ways I found quite desperate and sad:

我  把 我  的 头发    卖掉    了. wǒ bǎ wǒ de tóu fa mài diào le  

I have sold my hair

我  剪   了  短   发  。把  长发      换成        了 200元
wǒ jiǎn le duǎn fā 。 bǎ cháng fà huàn chéng le 200 yuán  

I cut my hair short. I got 200 yuan (30 euros) from the long hair.

Why, oh why, did she not tell me earlier of her troubles? Why did she not ask for help earlier? I cannot do many things from far away but I can write her comforting words and I have plenty of money I am happy to use to help her. She had me some answers, the crux of the matter being:

我  不想      麻烦    你 。wǒ bù xiǎng má fan nǐ 。  

I did not want to trouble you.

Well, there we go again. The overtly polite, non-demanding and secluded nature of Chinese mentality and Confucian philosophy: taking you almost rather to your grave rather than complaining or asking for help. It might still barely work if the other partner is fully in tune with the subtleties of the mentality and physically nearby to read all non-verbal hints. But neither of those is the case in our relationship. So then, as the Chinese say: 我 没办法 wǒ méi bàn fǎ : there is nothing I can do if she does not talk to me.

Bunny doll Jinlin crafted for me as a gift
in 2011 and pillow I made for her.

I have now sent 10 000 yuan to Jinlins bank account to ease at least her money trouble if not anything else. I have told her (once again) that I love her, that she should not be afraid to talk with me about anything at any time and urged her to buy immediately a new phone (she said she will) so that at least there would not be any technical difficulties in keeping in contact with me.

And she did give me something: some very beautiful words, words that I can keep in my heart when I patiently wait for a better tomorrow for us together:

抱歉      . 我 不善     于  表达     爱 。
bào qiàn . wǒ bù shàn yú biǎo dá ài 。
I am sorry I have not been good in expressing my love.

和  我 小时候         经历     有关    
hé wǒ xiǎo shí hou jīng lì yǒu guān
It has something to do with my bad childhood events.

谢谢     你  理解    我 。 默默   的 爱  。
xiè xie nǐ lǐ jiě wǒ 。 mò mò de ài 。
Thank you for understanding me. Understanding my silent love.

中国       的  爱 。 是  在   心里    。我  爱 你  在  心   。
Zhōng guó de ài 。 shì zài xīn li 。 wǒ ài nǐ zài xīn 。
Chinese love is hidden in the heart. I love you in my heart.

给   你 个  礼物   。我  的 爱  。
gěi nǐ gè lǐ wù 。 wǒ de ài 。
I give you gift: my love.

Fuck you, politely

Each language seems to have developed their own interesting culture-specific ways of cursing. Consider, for example, the extremely versatile work "fuck" in English language. In addition to the purely sexual meanings, it can be used to express, among other things, resignation ("Oh, fuck it!"), trouble ("I guess I'm fucked now."), aggression ("FUCK YOU!"), Disgust ("Fuck me."), Suspicion ("Who the fuck are you?"), Directions ("Fuck off.").

Cursing is something that is usually not taught in language courses and lessons, so it takes some time in a realistic language environment to start getting grasp of the bad words. Chinese is very polite language and Chinese are polite people, so it is no wonder that swearing in Chinese language usually involves clever disguises and alternate expressions. Jinlin in particular is very polite (perhaps too polite?) in her correspondence with me, but she sometimes posts messages and status-sentences on QQ social network that show more natural Chinese slang. Some time ago when she was outraged about one of her university study-mates being robbed on street in Shanghai, she posted:

想不到 TMD 什么 上海 ? 还有 抢劫 ? 

xiǎng bu dào  TMD  shén me  Shàng hǎi  ?  hái yǒu  qiǎng jié  ?

Literal word-by-word translation for this is: "Unexpected TMD something Shanghai?  Also robbery ?" The interesting part of course is "TMD", inserted with western characters in middle of the Hanyu sentence. As was revealed by my later chat with Jinlin and interesting article on Chinasmack site, this turns out to be a doubly-disguised swear-word.

The first layer of disguise involves the usage of western characters that act as initial characters of the underlying Chinese words pinyin. In this case the underlying Chinese is 他 (Tā) 妈 (Mā) 的 (De), therefore the letters T, M and D. What's the meaning of those? 他 (Tā) means "he", 妈 (Mā) means "mother" and 的 (De) is possessive suffix, so the meaning is "his mothers".

Not so bad, huh? Well, now comes the second layer of disguise. Turns out that the three-letter curse leaves the critical first and last character away from the full five-character curse. The full sentence is:

肏     他   妈   的    屄 

cào    tā    mā  de    bī 

肏 (cào) means "fuck" (in the sexual sense) and 屄 (bī) is "cunt", so now after the deciphering we have "fuck his mothers cunt". Fluent readers or listeners can infer this from the seemingly innocent letters "TMD" :D

Fucking Alpacas

The subtle tonal variations of Chinese language also provide endless possibilities to disguise swear words. For example, in todays slang, you can tell your fellow Chinese to go fuck their mom by saying "Alpaca" in Chinese. Alpaca, as we know is a small Llama-like animal of South-America. 

So how is this possible? In Chinese Alpaca is called with a literal meaning "Grass mud horse". "Grass" is 艸 (cǎo), "mud" is 泥 (ní) and horse is 马 (mǎ), so pronunciation for Alpaca is "cǎo ní mǎ", which is just few innocent tone changes away from "cào nǐ mā" which is 肏你 妈 meaning "fuck your mom". How convenient ;-)

Remarkable drawing, remarkable connection!

My weekly adult education center Chinese language classes have turned more chatty this term. The number of students seems to fall from the beginner course to the second level course and now on the third level course we have even less active students. Yesterday was one of the days that we had only two of us in addition to our nice teacher Lì Bái (白莉). I don't mind that: with small number of students we get definitely much bang for the buck: classes containing mostly very spontaneous (and hence realistic) Chinese discussion on various random topics between the three of us. Often the topics are inspired by whatever connection and interest we have to China and Chinese language, so the my travelling to China and my relationship with Jinlin has been often coming up in the past.

Today we were discussing home decoration, paintings and art. The photography profession of my sister come up as a topic, as did the great talent of Jinlin in realistic style painting and drawing. I have been in the past writing briefly about art of Jinlin. One of the really powerful works she drew in her junior middle school depicts another girl studying:

This work of Jinlin has participated in an arts competition, winning the first prize and was subsequently printed in a cover of an art magazine (the photo above is from the magazine).

So today in the Chinese class I ended up showing pictures of various works of Jinlin to my fellow student and teacher. When I showed this picture, Lì Bái told to our mutual amazement that she recognises the picture: she has read in the past an article about the competition and Jinlins winning picture! What a connection! Lì Bái has now been living and working 15 years in Finland. The fact that she has seen article about this work of Jinlin and myself studying in her class is such a remarkable connection in the world of 1.5 billion Chinese people! And it does seem to imply that the competition Jinlin won was a bigger thing than I had earlier realised.

Story of the picture

We were discussing this drawing with Jinlin in some emails quite early in our relationship, in November 2011. She had been seen sending me pictures of several of her drawings and paintings and in my reply I praised especially this one and asked more about it: who is in the picture? When was it drawn? Jinlin replied to me in computer-translated English (unfortunately I don't have the original Chinese from our early conversations):

From: Jinlin <19690xxxxx@qq.com>  To: Robert <2562970858@qq.com>
Date: Wednesday, 2011-11-23 10:28 AM 

My darling!
  This drawing is my competition work, the picture is a Chinese girl with big eyes. She was eager to learn and I was moved by her. I completed this picture in my comprehensive school time, long time ago. I won the first prize. The girl has now opened and become a useful person. She is now a white-collar, successful. I am honoured that I painted her when she was still a child. I send you here two more photos of the girl. In the first photo she is holding in her hand is my completed painting. In the second one she is today, as adult, with the childhood picture behind her.
 Dear. I will give you more interesting ideas. I love you 爱你的陈

It's a great story, and now it has been added with the further twist of me and my Finnish-Chinese teacher knowing Jinlin through the same drawing! 

Here are the additional pictures Jinlin sent me in the email:

The girl of Jinlins painting holding the completed work in her hand

The girl of Jinlins painting as successful adult

She's a model!

Well, not quite... But being a student in an arts & design university, there are occasional courses in people photography. There students train work as photographers, models, make-up-artists and image editors. It's student work so nobody gets paid, but the nicely stylised finished photos are nice enough to be price on their own for the students - and their distant admirers :-)

My contact information

Adding public comments to a blog can be scary :-)  I want to thank all the readers who have been sending their encouraging and/or informative comments on various posts in private emails. While digging up my email address through my Blogger profile is just a few clicks away, I could lower the barrier by giving it directly here: robert@iki.fi.

For the facebook users, my facebook profile is robert.brotherus. While facebook is banned in China, the are estimates on number of FB users there vary a lot, from meager 0.6 million to hefty 60 million.