In unfamiliar parts of the planet, we humans are out
of place. Michelle McKinnon-Young and I
were in Chicago last weekend to visit my son Michael. It is not a difficult
city for an Americans to navigate, since the natives speak English, and the place
is laid out on a grid. Less so for
persons from farther away.The weather was very cold, and Lake Michigan was
frozen in places.
The tour buses weren’t all running, but we managed to find
one after a false start which included a climb down iced over stairs by the
river, to a ticket booth which turned out to be closed.
Three
quarters of the way through the tour, two Chinese gentlemen boarded. They knew
almost no English and did not speak standard Mandarin.
It turned I was the only passenger who knew any
Chinese,
but I’m not really fluent, and their dialect was difficult to follow.
Using the translator app
on
my phone, I managed to let these visitors know they should not give the driver
the hundred dollar bill they were waving at him, but should wait ‘til the end
of the tour when an agent would board.
My
attempts to translate what the tour guide was saying about Chicago were less
successful, but my
good
intentions were appreciated. We exchanged business cards, a common custom
in China when
people
are showing respect, and they took my picture. Then, when Michelle and I were
getting off the bus, they gave me to understand that they actually wanted to
visit Chicago’s Chinatown. The driver waived the tour fee, since they’d
not been on much of the tour. I found them a cab, and told the
driver
where they wanted to go. One of the men attempted to give me one of the
several
hundred
dollar bills I saw in his wallet. I told him “bu yao” 不要 (don’t need) and
“huanying dao meiguo” (Welcome to America) 欢迎到美国欢迎到美国.
