Notes of a Chinese illiterate

If someone could only read a few dozen words, would you consider that person literate? Probably not. Guess this makes me illiterate when it comes to Chinese. I can write the character for my family name -- Gan-- but my first name, Mei, is a complex character which I never produce satisfactorily. In first grade, I also had trouble learning to spell 'Rosalind.' In China, my world is full of strange dashes and squiggles whose meaning I cannot puzzle out.









Illiterate people develop comples strategies for coping with a world which employs codes they do not understand. Here's what I did when I needed a surge suppressor for my computer: I found a pictue of one on the web. Then, I showed it to our administrative assistant. She wrote its name in Chindse on a slip of paper. This I took to an electronics store, and showed to an attendant, who directed me to the correct department. I successfully negotiated the purchase, but I am an outsider to the code in which it was mediated.