Phlegm and Prejudice

Alternate Title : Pride and Laryngitis

I'm sitting here drinking hot water with honey in an effort to regain my voice which I lost as of yesterday due to an all night coughing fit.  I'm trying to figure out how to explain my most recent somewhat amusing story.  Let's begin in the middle.  Sometime in the beginning of last week before I contracted this horrible cold!

I walked into the Drug Store and was immediately greeted  with a "What do you need?" by small stern looking (obviously Chinese) lady wearing a white lab coat.
"My husband has a cold with a cough and I need-"
"Do you have cold medicine?"
"Yes I do. I just need some cough medicine."
"Does he have *^%?"
"Hmm I'm not sure."
"You don't know?"
"I don't know what *^% means."
The woman's face changed from stern and confident to disappointment followed quickly by anxious glances toward her co-workers.  She shouted:
"I need someone to come over here and speak English with this girl!  So and so, you know English! Come over here and translate!"
"My English is not good.  Besides that girl can speak Chinese!"  A voice from behind the aisles shouted back.
"Yes but she doesn't know what *^% means!"
"It's okay I have a dictionary."  I interjected.  My face felt hot. Realizing that now I had an audience of about 4 workers and one interested customer,  I pulled out my I-touch and looked up the word.
"Oh, phlegm!  Yes, he does have phlegm."
She regained composure and then we discussed his phlegm for a minute while she showed me some options. I think she could tell that I could only understand about half of her instructions. She recommended some pills but I also wanted some syrup.  Then she asked if I needed anything else and I replied no but that I would like to look around a bit.  She said that was okay.  I always like to look around a bit but at this point too many people were interested in me so I felt self conscious.  I decided to just buy my stuff and leave.  I said thank you and goodbye to the lady who had helped me and started to make my way to the cash register.  I was almost there when I overheard the lady talking about me to her co-worker.  She was saying something was wrong or that she was worried about something with me.  I quickly turned around and said:
"What's wrong?  What are you worried about?"  She looked surprised and a little unnerved that I had heard her talking.  She was only a couple feet away, how could I not hear?
"Oh well I was just worried that your husband has a sore throat too.  Do you have medicine for that?"
"Yes, I do.  Thank you."  I quickly paid for my items and left, knowing full well that this little encounter would supply all the workers with something interesting to talk about.

So there you have it.  My latest language ability update.  I know enough to scare people when they are talking about me but not enough to discuss medicine or hair conditioner. (Another story)  Its rather infuriating for me and for them too.  What makes me irritated the most is how often people discuss you when you are within easy earshot.  Do they think all foreigners can't speak Chinese?  Just today an old couple sitting across from me on the bus commented to each other that my feet weren't placed right and that I sat on the wrong seat.  I moved my feet, looked at them, and smiled.  All the while I wanted to say "I understand you, so would you please wait until after I get off the bus to talk about me!"

words to remember:

gǎn­mào (感冒) = to catch a cold

ké­sou （咳嗽）=cough

tán （痰）=phlegm

Not only...but also...

Vacation is over and the weather is starting to warm up a little.  Sam's sister Elizabeth went home and we have got back into our usual routines.  That means back to teaching English.  Teaching kids can be very entertaining.  I also end up learning some Chinese too. (Don't tell their parents.)  Sometimes it just so happens they we are learning the same words.  Last week one of my students vocabulary words was "crowd" and this week its a vocabulary word in my Chinese class.  Quite convenient, huh? 

When Sam and I first started attending Chinese classes here in China (Two years ago!) we focused more on building our vocabulary rather than learning grammar.  While its good to know the meanings of words, if you don't know the grammar you will still find it hard to communicate.  Sometimes I know the meaning of every word someone is saying to me but I don't understand the meaning of their sentence and vice versa.  Because I want people to understand my meaning when I speak, I find learning sentence structure very useful these days.  One of the more useful sentence structures is "Not only...but also.." (不光……还 有...)

While one of my English students, Gita, was reading the book "Frog and Toad are Friends" we came across this sentence structure.  Toad said "Not only do my feet hurt, but I have lost one of the buttons on my jacket."  I thought this would be a good opportunity to teach this sentence structure so I pointed out that Toad used this sentence to talk about two bad things that happened to him.  I said she could use this sentence with adjectives such as "Not only am I hungry but I'm also tired."  Then I told her to try making a sentence.  She looked at me and said "How do you say 馋( chán) in English?"  After I told her that word means greedy for food or gluttonous she said "Not only is my father greedy for food but he is also fat."  I had to stifle a laugh.  Instead of changing her sentence I asked her to try to think of a sentence that said something nice about someone.  Her next sentence was "Not only is she beautiful but also clever."  I thought that one was okay.

Now try it in Chinese.

bù­guāng。。。 hái (不光。。。还)= not only...also

tā bù­guāng piào­liang hái­yǒu néng­lì。 (她不光漂亮还有能力)= She is not only beautiful but also capable.

Chán ( 馋)=greedy (for food) or gluttonous