今年夏天我学到的事情之一是,虽然我可能会留在欧洲假期,中国没有真的离开我了。 以上只是一个国家,它是一个自然的力量,人类的另一面,现在是我生活的一部分。 中国始终是存在的,和她是无处不在,出现在人们意想不到的情况下。
以西班牙为例。 中国人的社会存在主要是新的,不流利的语言,从一个单点,在中国的起源:来自温州的小县,青田上游。 当涉及到语言,西班牙都没有太大的比他们更好,整个形势是识字老外的机会。 虽然一个简单的“nihao”英雄的一天通常是足够的,做一些准备工作产生更好的效果。 徜徉成中国店随便丢弃一个Qingtianese的问候,并发表评论非凡的历史的老石雕县,家里的中国-西班牙。 这使得你受欢迎。 您还可以喝茶,实践为几个小时就结束您的汉语会话。
以下是一个真实的故事,发生在我的假期的最后一天。 它包括一个具有非凡的睡眠能力的中国人的家庭,和一队西班牙冒险鸭。 我希望你喜欢它:
这是第一天早上从毕尔巴鄂飞往巴黎,在那里我被安排与法国航空连接到上海。 当我进入机舱的A319飞机,我立即标志着一个中国人的家庭,坐在前排:,一个中年的母亲与她的儿子。
她穿着风格的100名在一个无形的紫色外套,和她的十几岁的儿子盖了他的头在韩国的髋关节,跳连帽衫。 他们在早期飞行的商业氛围中脱颖而出。 但是是什么让我通知他们,我忍不住微笑,他们已经快睡着了,之前我什至得到了我的座位。 至于我可以看到,他们没有一个相当忙碌的飞行时间切换自己的立场。
旅程从一开始,我的神经,试图证明。 正如我们起飞,一声巨响从飞机后部,振动,成长壮大,我们飞到。 有一段时间没有别的事,但随后,我们接近法国,飞机突然靠在一边,和比利牛斯山脉转动180度,在我们身边,直到我们从我们来到为首回西。
噪声恶化了,并与地理概念的旅客越来越着急。 圣塞瓦斯蒂安镇第二次出现在我们下面,只是这一次地面似乎更为密切。 一前一后去关闭所有的服务调用的蜂鸣声。 我环顾四周,其他乘客和他们都四处寻找。 没有人发言。
最后,机组人员出现在过道,提供逐行正式版的事实:在起飞一个飞行物体相撞2发动机的叶片,产生的爆炸和随后,我们遇到的震动。 这是一个普遍的现象,并没有危险。 作为正常的安全程序的一部分,机长决定返回国内机场进行维修。
“大概是一只鸟,说:”当她到我们行的空姐。
“鸟?”笑道:“管家”,这是一个大肥鸭队!“
我想他必须已指示保持轻的心情。 我努力笑,画面转动的涡扇发动机,作为我们挣扎着爬过去尖锐的巴斯克山谷小鸭圈。
***
无尽的飞行后,我们到毕尔巴鄂机场安全降落。 正如我们在等待下船,试验证实,飞机当天完成。 我们拿起我们的行李,然后上二楼去法航办事处请求一个新的机票。 像往常一样,我的行李箱的最后一个出现在滚动带,和我到办公室的时间已经有一条长龙,对鸭子灾区A319飞机的长度,和每一位嘈杂。
人群越来越刁蛮。 一些法国乘客harangued,真正的革命精神群众,开展对所有飞过的生物,包括鸭,空中客车,法国航空飞行员的口号。 由于我是最后的,有没有排队的多点,所以我只是站在一边的方式来表示我的不满。 然后,我注意到的重点逐步转向,热衷Robespierres队列前冲着自己的愤怒,一些不明身份的目标。 我走过去细看。
这是中国人的家庭。
显然,他们没有理解的指示,拿起行李,他们来之前,任何人都直接到航空公司办事处。 他们首先,他们表明无意放弃自己的立场。 相反,他们是令人钦佩的。 母亲布满了她的激烈眼的后卫,而儿子坚守到桌面。 他们显然训练有素的互相矛盾的队列,并且由暴民,他们似乎无动于衷。
语言学,情况并不理想。 尖叫Qingtianese,翻译成Chinglese和法航员工在精心制作的西班牙式英语回答儿子的母亲,而法国办公室负责人惊得目瞪口呆。 我独自一人,和我忠实的朋友的电子词典是在我的袋子的底部伸出。 但时间采取行动,我没有动摇,在危亡的时刻。
我砍前的权利,并在“阙PASA? 什么事?“ 所有四个面转向我一次。 队列变得突然安静下来。
在西班牙的雇员。叫道:“他们希望到中国去!”
“我们希望到中国去!”在中国哭了儿子。
各方的立场似乎对我非常一致,很容易达成共识的时机已经成熟。 但进一步的调查证明,这是不完全如此。 我设法重建了以下事实:
家庭睡通过飞行,直到我们降落在毕尔巴鄂。 然后,他们没有理解的强烈重音试点的消息,他们粉碎了飞机直接连接服务台,他们已经重定向到航空公司办事处。 他们敢如此迫切,因为他们只有一小时,以赶上转机航班。 所有他们要求立即登上他们的飞机,这在巴黎的工作人员的态度,他们相当可疑。
因为他们实际上还以为他们是在巴黎。
问题是不容易解释。 不仅母亲的普通话和我一样坏,而且她下定决心,和她有一个根深蒂固的常识。 他们刚刚飞往巴黎,因此,这是巴黎,她就从一个老外没有废话。 我用我所有的劝说。 我注意到,纪念品商店出售斗牛士,而不是游览eiffels。 最后,年幼的儿子理解,他帮我说服她。 落户的事实是:我们在西班牙,有没有直接从该机场至上海的航班。
其余是相当易于管理,几分钟后,我们三人一个新的车票离开办公室。 一旦得到充分表达他们的无限感激,我忍不住问儿子:
“但是,怎么可能你没有意识到,这是和以前一样机场吗?”
“Well,” he smiled shyly, “Mum was just telling me that she finds all airports in Europe look strikingly similar!”
And his mother, who was tough but good-humoured, found it rather funny, and we all joined in a face-saving laughter. Then I knew I was engaged as official interpreter of the sleeping family.
***
In the end, my work as a translator served my interests well. We got our new tickets before anyone else, the last three places left to connect with the evening Paris-Shanghai. The revolutionaries were so stunned by the performance that they forgot to guillotine us, and the Air France employee gave us some free lunch vouchers for the VIP lounge. To make our wait more pleasant, she said, the company was offering one of their specialty dishes in the “Restaurant des Mondes”.
It was still far from the Spanish lunch time, so we had to wait while they opened the kitchen for us. The prospect of a free lunch worked well to improve the mood of my Chinese friends, and we had a lively chat in the VIP sofas. I took the chance to impress them with my baidupedic knowledge of their hometown. After that they opened up to me, and the last lines of suspicion finally vanished from the woman's brow.
I listened distractedly as the son informed me of the state of the rap scene in Zhejiang. A terrible state that was, apparently, and I waited for a chance to switch topics. It was his mother that I found most intriguing. All the while she was sitting very still, as if lost in her own thoughts. She had an outside appearance that in China would be classified as “peasant”, but her proud, resolute eyes didn't quite fit in the picture. What was she doing flying around with her single son? I finally asked him.
As it turned out, she was a renowned chef back home. Qingtian is the origin of thousands of Chinese restaurants across Europe, and their extended family had made a fortune with a popular chain of Chinese food. She had come as an expert to establish new recipes in the family restaurants in Spain, all the while teaching her son the secrets of the Chinese cuisine. They had toured the country for three months, making the company's food “more delicious, more authentically Chinese”.
“Her most famous recipe is Beijing Duck,” said the kid, licking his lips, “You have never tried anything like that!”
“I would love to have a chance to try it,” I answered, suddenly hungry for duck.
Then the mother, who hadn't said a word all this time, looked at me with a strange smile. I felt there was an invitation coming. Instead, she opened her eyes wide and nervously shook her son's shoulder.
“Heavens!” she cried, “we still haven't picked up our luggage!”
***
When I took them down to luggage collection, their belongings were still lonely turning around on the band, a number of shapeless pieces covered in woven tarpaulin. As we loaded them one by one onto a trolley, the son suddenly found something was wrong. It was the last packet, a cardboard box with some strange little holes pierced on the top. He held the box on his knees and showed me one of the corners where it had been torn open. The box was empty.
The woman was very upset. She started moving her arms up and down and speaking in her sing-song dialect at an alarming speed. I couldn't understand a word of what she was saying, but the replies of her son were more composed, and I could more or less make out the gist of it:
“I told you we couldn't take them on a plane, mum!”, he was saying.
“But how can we pass the long winter without them?”, she replied.
Suddenly I had a very dark premonition. While they were busy arguing, I walked over to the broken box and examined it carefully. As I held it up in front of me, a small, delicate object floated down from the broken corner. It was a feather.
I dropped the box as if it burned my hands, and I kicked it behind the rolling band were it wouldn't be seen. I was in panic now, and I joined the arguing party with my own version of alarmed mandarin:
“We have to het out of here, NOW!”, I said.
“What? But the box?,” said the mother.
“Forget it!” I pushed the trolley towards the door, “we will see to that later!”
“What? But we have to file a complaint. They might have found …”
“No!”
I tried to control my nerves, as I envisioned charges for terrorism, and the dire diplomatic consequences of China's national dish being presented as evidence of the crime. I tried to relax telling myself that at least there hadn't been any human casualties.
“Please help us,” she said.
“We can't do this now! Spain is a bureaucratic country, these things take a long time…” I muttered. “And anyway I'm sure your little friends are going to be fine!”
She gave me another inquisitive glance, like the first time I suggested she was not in Paris. She was clearly reconsidering about my sanity.
“Well, excuse me ,” she said, “but they are important to me, and if you don't want to help me I will have to file the complaint myself”
Just at that moment the airport PA system cracked with a life-saving announcement. All the passengers of the cancelled flight were asked to go back immediately to the second floor, were new information was awaiting us from the captain.
“Quick, this must be our lunch, let's go before we miss it!” I translated, and this argument finally seemed convincing enough for the stubborn lady.
***
On the second floor, the slick French captain was putting in practice the company's open information policy. The maintenance staff had just confirmed—he said—that it was indeed the impact of external objects on the engine that had caused the vibration. The strange bodies had been already extracted and brought in from the hangar for analysis. The decision to return to the airport had proven a good choice, as it was the chief engineer's opinion that we would have never made it to Paris.
A drop of cold sweat fell down my right temple as I considered the chances of those little animals finding their way into the turbine. Even if they managed to tear open the box and then break free from under the piles of luggage, even if they could unlatch the hold door with their little beaks, still, how could they fly over to the engine? It seemed impossible. I remembered the laws of fluid dynamics, and how turbulent airflows exhibit nonlinear, chaotic behaviours. For the first time in my life I felt I understood the real meaning of the Chaos Theory.
In the meantime, the mother had sent her boy to inquire about lost objects, and he was explaining their problem to the captain in such a perfectly unintelligible English that the brave man could only smile politely. They looked around at a loss, only to see that their laowai friend was nowhere to be found. I had just in time slipped into the gentlemen's restroom.
At this point, the airport loudspeakers buzzed again:
Passengers of the AF2435 to Paris, please proceed into our VIP lounge. As a special attention, we are offering you the chef's specialty in our exclusive “Restaurant des Mondes”
***
I joined the family again as they walked down the corridor to the VIP Lounge. It seemed that the luxury meal kindly offered by Air France had conquered the heart of the frightful woman. Her expression showed no more pain for the loss of her beasts, and I hoped she had decided to give up the search. Presently, she was impressed by the quality of the service, and her mood was chatty.
“They know how to treat a client, in France,” she said conversationally, “back in China it's not even comparable.”
“Oh, sure, great service here,”
“Even if they don't have any proper backup plans,” she noted, “they are just great at doing nice surprises.”
“Oh, yeah, you can count on the French for surprises”
“It is all in the attitude, isn't it?”, she said, and her only child nodded in agreement.
As we approached the “Restaurant des Mondes”, the atmosphere was so relaxed that I thought we had passed the worst. I just had to get them on our plane right after lunch, and there would be no more nonsense of lost object complaints. Then I saw the stewardess at the restaurant door, smiling. She held a large sign written in all the major languages of the World, including mandarin. It read:
TODAYS SPECIAL DISH:
“Thin-sliced duck Beijing style”
In case there were any doubts, underneath the text there was a colourful picture of a team of ducks thinly sliced as if by fast rotating blades, swimming in the dark sauce of the traditional Beijing recipe.
I tried with my body to hide the sign from their view, but I was too late. There was not much point anyway, the pictures were all over the place, and the food was coming out any minute. As we sat down, I peeped at her out of the corner of my eye. Her expression was enigmatic, the initial apprehension had turned into something more lofty. Was it triumph? I trembled.
The dishes were served and, unexpectedly, nothing happened. I glanced at my two friends. The were obviously enjoying their meal, emitting now and then favorable grunts and other judgements with the assurance of the true connoisseur. Then, halfway through their ducks, they looked at each other with an understanding smile and, following some mysterious signal, the lady suddenly stood up, knocking her chair behind her, and crying out loudly:
“I want to speak to the person who cooked this!”
There was a spark in her eye as she glared at the kitchen door on the other side of the dining room. I could not think of anything to say this time, so I just sat still, helpless as the slings and arrows flew swiftly towards their target.
Seeing that no help was forthcoming from my side, the mother ignored me and took direct action. She strode across the room and, without further preambles, she thrust open the kitchen door, roaring in Qingtianese. In a minute, the cook came out sporting a high chef hat and howling even louder than her. To my surprise, he was also employing some variety of Zhejiang dialect.
Then something strange happened. The moment he saw the chef, the son stood up and ran across the dining room charging like a fighting bull, and when the three of them were at a close distance, they came together in a long, warm hug.
I stood rather awkwardly next to them, wondering what was next. The chatter of the adults had risen to undecipherable speeds under the flow of emotions. I looked at the teenager for an explanation, but he was too absorbed speaking to the cook. Finally, I managed to catch some fraction of the conversation:
“Uncle Li, we knew it had to be you, nobody else in the World can cook Beijing Duck like mother! What are you doing here?”
“You know, I got a catering contract with Air France, didn't I tell you?”
“Uncle, you really need to help us, mother is really worried! This laowai is with us, but his Chinese is so-so, and he just doesn't get it!”
“Say, my boy, what is the problem?”
“It is the new down-filled coats that mum bought to take home for the winter. She was so upset when we found out that they've been stolen from our luggage…”