Today was my last Chinese class for the forseeable future, and I had a significant victory on my way home.
Okay, we were on our way home from a bar. At 2am. And my last class was technically Friday. Details. Whatever.
There’s a near park near our flat where, I’m not joking, at least 10 cats live. Ten. Ten cats. And the majority of them are quite friendly – some even friendly enough to sit in our laps and fall asleep.
We call it ‘Maobury’ (‘mao’ from the Mandarin word for cat), which is different from the ‘Maotown’ right outside our apartment. It also happens to be on the way home from the bikeshare rental station we use, so it’s a huge motivator for me to bike home most days.
What I’m saying is that Maobury is great.
Adam and I had biked home and stopped by Maobury to sit for a few minutes. One cat, a slender and friendly brown tabby we’ve been calling Mayor (as in the Mayor of Maobury) instantly came over to us and nuzzled our knees as we sat on the stone steps of the park.
Around the corner, we heard a scooter start up. A single bright light washed over the park as the driver pulled into the center of Maobury. I expected Mayor and the other cat who had poked his head out, a lanky black cat we call Xiao Maya (literally ‘Little Maya’), to bolt from the sudden visitor.
I was wrong.
ALL the cats came out.
“Tā jiào ‘xiǎo hēi’,” the driver said, climbing off her scooter. His name is ‘xiǎo hēi,’ or Little Black.
She told us she takes the cats to the vet hospital to get spayed/neutered. That whichever ear is clipped (often done on feral cats to show they’ve been spayed/neutered) indicates if it’s a male or female cat. That there are eleven (eleven!) cats in this area that she takes care of. She told us their names as they came over to say hello.
She asked us if we’re here to study Chinese. I told her I had been studying for three months and Adam for four weeks. She asked us if we lived around there. It turns out we’re neighbors (I guess not that surprising). She told us that the botanical garden nearby was really nice. I told her we had been there.
This was all in Chinese. All of it.
This was one of my goals in learning Chinese. To not only be able to order food at a restaurant and ask how much something costs, but to be able to have real (albeit elementary and superficial) conversations with my neighbors. To feel like I actually live in Taiwan.
My Chinese is still pretty awful, but I finally feel like I’ve learned enough to keep improving. I know how to ask things like “what is this called?” or “what does this character mean?” I know enough vocabulary to be able to explain things I don’t know the words for.
It’s getting better. And I’m actually really, really proud of myself.
le riz qui rit 