Due Bu Qi

On June 5th, the second day I had arrived in California, I took the 22 bus from Santa Clara to downtown San Jose to meet up with my friends for the First Friday and Sub Zero art event in the SoFa district. Upon getting off the bus, I started walking towards Second Street, then realizing my mistake, I turned to head towards First Street, and in doing so nearly bumped into a man who was walking behind me. I uttered an involuntary "due bu qi," the same phrase and in the same tone that I have been accustomed to uttering when accidentally bumping into strangers on the subways of Taipei. Thankfully, I 1) didn't say it very loudly, 2) the guy didn't appear to hear or notice, and 3) upon realizing my error, my subsequent embarrassment was short-lived. I'm not in the land of "due bu qi's" anymore.

I hadn't been in an English-speaking country for 15 months, and my mind has been brainwashed. Over the course of my month-long stay, English came back to me in spades, and although every once in a while it still takes me a bit longer to find the right word, I was, by the end of the month, a fully conversant and functioning American English-speaking American. Conversely, this meant that my Mandarin went by the wayside, seeping out of my brain like a sieve.

My second week back in Taipei, I met up with two good friends for drinks. We arrived at the bar an hour before they opened, but the bartender invited us to sit and wait inside, so we sat and chatted and enjoyed the peace before they turned up the music and one must resort to shouting to carry on a normal conversation. They weren't serving alcohol yet, but that didn't matter, my Mandarin was already noticeably slower, a bit slurred with uncertainty, and my grammar and word choices basic. The bartender, himself an Indonesian with near perfect Taiwanese Mandarin, thought it was amusing that a grown person could talk like a child, and then refused to believe me when I said I was American (which is another story altogether). In spite of this, he was very nice about it and I don't resent him for the comment because it was the truth. I have reverted back to simple, elementary Mandarin, and my thick accent had also come back. It takes a bit longer for my mind and my mouth to form the words, and then there is the uncertainty of whether or not I was making the right sound, using the right tone, choosing the right words.

I feel like I'm in a bit of a linguistic netherworld right now, trying to brush up on my Mandarin, going through the chapters of an old textbook and marvelling both at how much I've forgotten and how much I've managed to retain. Maybe being bilingual means that our fluency fluctuates like the cycles of the stock market, and eventually it will even itself out, find the right balance in the dance of supply and demand. At any rate, I hope I don't find myself saying "due bu qi" on the streets of San Jose again, because it would be like trying to sell hard-boiled tea eggs to people who want omelettes (or frittatas, for that matter, mmmmmmm...frittatas).