The Nerd's Eye View

lofatmo note: my Dad does this when he travels. He gets a feel for a place and immediately feels the need to share it (familiar?). Anyway, he's currently visiting my sister in Shanghai and I wrote this. I thought you might all be interested.

“ EYELESS “ IN SHANGHAI !

Today, walking alone around our neighborhood in Shanghai, I discovered that I am virtually deaf, dumb, blind, and completely illiterate! This, let me tell you, is extremely frustrating if you are fortunate (or unfortunate) not to have experienced being deaf, dumb or blind…or illiterate.

Imagine being in the middle of the cacophony of a Chinese city, ”seeing” people talking, arguing, fighting, shouting in that unmistakable 3rd world fashion, but being unable to “hear” and understand what they say ! They try to speak s-l-o-w-l-y (when and if they address you), as one does when speaking to a child or a retard, and still you do not have a clue. And I must be dumb because the maximum I can do is utter monosyllabic noises, shake my head, gesticulate with my hands and, when all this does not help, grin like a village fool. If they address me (and they wouldn’t, being too busy ogling at this alien from Planet of the Apes), or if I want to utter the sort of words that one almost involuntarily utters hundreds of times daily (sorry, hello, thanks, woops!), nothing comes out of my mouth. These words, in several languages (except Chinese) jostle to come out, but nothing does and I end up, again, gaping like an imbecile. Sometimes “ish-shi”, the most versatile Amharic word (which happens to sound Chinese) comes out but sounding no less gibberish than any other word I say in whatever language that I speak or do not speak.

What is really frustrating is that, after so many years of schooling (primary, secondary, university, post-graduate) and the thousands of books I read, I find that in Shanghai, I am illiterate. It is just difficult to believe or accept that I can not decipher a single word, a single character in Chinese, even the most basic: here, there, no, yes, out, in, where, when, how much, and others. There are all those signs, some in giant “letters” in shouting yellow on red, that adorn all buildings that could be saying Workers of the World Unite! (or its equivalent in these days), or Foreigners Out!, or Free Lunch!, or any other important or banal message, and I have no way of reading it if my own life depended on that. The city is full of gated compounds with uniformed guards and elaborate signs that could be saying Foreigners are not allowed to walk in front of this compound! , or Mine Field Ahead!, or Come in and Have a Free Apartment! , or Beware of the Cute Dog!, or whatever these signs announce to everybody except me. What makes my situation worse when it comes to guessing what signs say, is that most shops in Shanghai are not easily identified by the way they look. They all have a spacious front hall that seem to proclaim them to be restaurants, massage parlours, banks, brothels, gentleman clubs, tattoo joints, or whatever. The only establishments that are clearly and easily identified are bicycle repair shops (in abundance for obvious reasons), and beauty and hair saloons (also now in abundance as a sign of the new prosperity and the new globalized taste that propels everybody to want to be, and look like “them”: white! No wonder that most TV commercials promote using beauty products that make skin “fairer” and hair longer and shinier, and you do not have to speak Chinese to get these messages).

I am now even wondering whether all my other senses have been disabled. I pride myself on having a very keen sense of smell. I could walk any city street elsewhere, blindfolded, and still be able to distinguish smells wafting from various establishments: restaurants, corner shops, barber shop, carpenter workshop, mechanics workshop, bakery, etc. In Shanghai, my nose seems to have lost its “memory”. There is no smell I can recognize or relate to anything I know. There is only that pungent but unfamiliar smell of rotting, fermenting vegetables mixed with the smell of fish and other hideous smells.

However, what makes me really frustrated is not being able to communicate, to make contact and engage in small talk with the hordes of old men and women (about half the population of China) and young children (very rare). I could see in the old folks faces, in their wrinkles and their smiley little beady eyes that they also yearn to make contact and engage in the small talk passengers on long train journeys in developing countries are likely to engage in. I, too, am dying to ask them hundreds of petty and not so petty questions : what do they think about rice prices and the cost of living in general compared to bygone days ; about the good (or bad) old days; about the cultural revolution; whether they were born on farms or in small village and in which province; whether they go back to these village ; whether they are nostalgic for the old China they knew or alarmed at the changes China is experiencing with its new wealth; are they annoyed and worried by the shouting billboards and loud TV commercials; whether they have sons and daughters and grand children and if they see them; are they annoyed by the materialism of the new generations; what do they do with their time and whether they are bored stiff; are they following the news of far away places like my country and other countries…..endless questions that storm in my brain and stay there. And I manage only to utter a guttural sound, grin, and nod my head in a friendly way, trying to convey in that little nod the torrents of questions and yearning and curiosity that crowd my mind. And I discover once more how lonely and cut-off deaf, dumb persons must feel in the company of “normal” people.