I had always wanted to introduce my expatriate friend Jason to Yuxin, regarded as one of the best Sichuan restaurants here in Shanghai, so finally we decided to have a mid-week supper to take a break from work and have some delicious spicy fare. As he usually does, Jason invited his driver, Xiao Pan, up to have dinner with us.
I ordered sesame-glazed walnuts, a little appetizer that I always get at Yuxin. We were all ravenous and started to dig into all the cold dishes: beef tendon in spicy oil, garlic pork rolls, spicy vermicelli. Of course, I kept picking at the the sweet and crunchy walnuts.
Xiao Pan is Shanghainese and speaks only enough English that he knows when Jason wants to be picked up and when he wants the car stopped so he can vomit on the side of the road. When he joins us for meals, he typically focuses on the food and doesn’t say anything as the rest of us chatter on in English. Every now and then, one of us will engage him in some conversation so he isn’t completely bored out of his mind. That’s what Lynn, Jason’s girlfriend, tried to do.
She pointed at the walnuts in the middle of the table. In Chinese, she asked him if he knew how to way walnuts in English. He didn’t, so she taught him, enunciating every syllable: “Wah-uhl-nuts.” Xiao Pan repeated it perfectly: “Wah-uhl-nuts.”
Next, she pointed to the almonds in the shrimp dish. “All-muh-nds.” Again, Xiao Pan repeated it without error.
Lynn then asked him if he remembered the English name for 花生 (peanuts). He got excited and tried on his own.
“Pee….Pee….是不是 Penis?”
I may be turning 29 tomorrow, but like I always tell my grandmother: penis jokes and fart jokes never get old. My eyes got big and I started laughing obnoxiously loud.
Xiao Pan then turned to me, sticking his chopsticks in Jason’s direction, and said point-blank: “Jason 最爱吃 Penis (Jason loves to eat penis).” I wished I hadn’t laughed so loud a second before, because I wanted to laugh even louder after hearing that, and couldn’t. “他最喜欢的就是吃 Penis (eating penis is his favorite thing to do).” Awesome, just awesome.
Some things are just universal and transcend the language barriers that so often prevent us from expressing our true feelings and intentions. Yes, like saying that Jason likes to eat penis. Yeah, just like that.
I felt it a small personal victory to be able to read the characters in this article. Isn’t that sad.