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12. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary
Learning Through Language
How Language Barriers Are the Path to Knowledge
With thousands of languages spoken on Earth, there are only a limited number of countries a person can travel to that speak their language. To a traveler, a language barrier can be a nuisance. Lugging around phrase books and dictionaries, not being able to ask for directions, and other inconveniences can often lead to a person traveling only to where their native language is spoken. But maybe, we would experience much more if we traveled only to where our language isn’t spoken.
In England, Z discovers new meanings for words she often already knew. From words as simple as “properly” to as abstract as “freedom,” the words not only translate differently across languages, but also across cultures. By immersing ourselves into another language, we are much more able to absorb another culture. In maintaining our own language, we are limiting how much we can learn, change and grow throughout our travels. It is only when something confuses us that we can learn to understand it; if we understand all of it already, there is nothing more to learn.
In order to gain a new perspective, we must first train ourselves to think differently. We must take everything we know and flip it around, look at it from another angle. Language is included in this everything; it too must be changed in order for our thinking to be altered. This presents a whole other level of challenges that would not be faced if speaking in ones native tongue, but it is only when faced with challenges that a person can truly grow stronger.
What's a Dictionary for anyway?
Definitions are not learned from a book, but from life experiences.
A bilingual speaker, like Zhuang, not only knows what Fertilize mean in English, but she knows what Shi Yue Huai Tai means in Chinese. Consequently, both these two words have similar, but not exact, meanings. In English, Fertilize is to provide a plant or animal with sperm or pollen to bring about fertilization. Z claims that in “Chinese we say Shi Yue Huai Tai. It means giving the birth after ten months pregnant.” (54) “I think this became the greatest obstacle in the way of Z learning both the meaning of words in the English language and their cultural applications. Languages are not created equally, what means something in one language could mean something entirely different in another. Most words do not have an exact translation. We know exactly what the word “annoyed” means, when to use it and how to apply it to the appropriate situation. In China, the closest translation for “annoyed” could be more similar to “bothered”. Although synonyms, these words carry slightly different meanings and aren’t interchangeable. For Z, this makes learning difficult; grappling with the simple nuances of a word, nuances that take years of living in London to pick up on.
Occasionally, Zhuang is familiar with certain English words, but to her, they are useless. Take privacy for example, “the freedom from interference or public attention” (85). Privacy has very little place in the Chinese culture because privacy creates boundaries and forces people apart. To Zhuang, privacy creates a distance between lovers and between family. Maybe this is why Westerners don’t know how to love fully, she thinks.
Sex seems to be a language that both Zhuang and her lover can speak fluently, and so the two not only find pleasure in the act itself, but in he joining of their beings, the conversation they can have without saying anything at all. Touch is a universal language, and since Z was unfamiliar with sex before moving to London, she delights in indulging her curiosities with You. Guo’s A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is probably the most sexually charged novel we have read, but it needs to be. It needs to have a third, mutual language that’s not literate in order for the reader to understand exactly how two people that are so different can fall in love.
Love as a Universal Language
Guo's novel exhibits how language both defines who we are yet is transcended by universal emotions
“Chinese, we not having grammar.We saying things simple way. No verb-change usage, no tense differences, no gender changes. We bosses of our language” (24).
Language both divides and unites Z and her boyfriend. A large part of their relationship centers on him teaching her words, her relying on him. " You are my academy," she writes. In return she shares with him Chinese translations of words, and they tell each other their favorite words and why. To a certain extent, mostly at the dawning of their relationship, her boyfriend finds her slip-ups and slightly broken English to be charming.Yet, as Derrida professed, language is unstable. It soon wedges a divide among the lovers. Her boyfriend complains that being around her is tiring, always having to explain words and translate for her. " I become slower when I talk to other people. I am losing my words," he says to her.
Zhuang views love as something that promises a future, something that can provide her with security. Her boyfriend views love in a more transient, bohemian perspective. He doesn't necessarily want to promise the rest of his life to one person, and he thinks that speculating the future is inferior to living in the present moment.
" ' Love', this English word: like other English words it has tense. ' Loved' or ' will love' or ' have loved', All these specific tenses mean love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ' 愛' (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future. If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last forever. It will be infinite." ( 239)
Perhaps their love was doomed from the start, because the love rooted in his mind from the beginning was transient.
Trav·el (trav-uhl) v. 1. to journey or traverse
Zhuang's experience in Europe and her ultimate return to China
Zhuang’s relationship with her English boyfriend progresses and truly affects her in a way no relationship has before. We have read in previous books, such as The Elephanta Suite, about the ways in which western culture affects those who have not previously been exposed to it. Often, western culture is depicted to demoralize or even corrupt those in contact with it and, in a way, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers exposes this concept as well. Zhuang grows to be dependent on her boyfriend and fails to explore England and get to know the new city. Since she doesn’t understand their relationship, she is left constantly thinking and worrying about him.
The inclusion of humor in the story is crucial for an understanding of Zhuang’s relationship with her lover. The language barrier often leads to misinterpretations but create a light-hearted aspect to their relationship. Further, when Zhuang starts to grasp the English language we can see how she chooses to apply it. The titles of each small chapter are telling as to what stood out to the character about the experience she proceeds to describe. Words such as guest, physical work, equal, and hero all expose Zhuang’s inner thoughts, deeper than she describes.
As her relationship with her lover disintegrates, the reader can see Zhuang’s desire to break away from the situation. Twice, there are paragraphs written entirely in Chinese, as if Zhuang gave up on English and her new life. Also, each time she meets a new man on her travels throughout Europe, the new relationship seems to fail. Each of these events pushes her farther back to England and eventually to China.
I was somewhat surprised but relieved at Zhuang’s decision to move to Beijing and start a new career there at the end of the novel. She grows into a mature adult capable of making her own decisions even if they go against her parents’ wishes. At the beginning, Zhuang lived in fear of her parents and often included their what their opinions would have been, had they experienced some of the occurrences in England. Zhuang’s travels distanced her from this dependency and ultimately she was able to live her life in a way that would satisfy her.
The Chinese Version of Love
How immersing into a new culture can open new ideas and leave a wanting for similar values from home
In looking at the plot through Z’s progression through school, we see how the material she learns there parallels her growth as an individual. Starting off the novel are a series of short, grammatically incorrect sentences, showing us that the speaker clearly doesn’t know fluent English. The simplicity of her phrases takes us into her mind and we see her naivety and the pure lifestyle she experienced in China. As she learns more English, and as her sentences develop, we see her develop as well, learning more about herself and the culture she is being immersed into. Progressing along, Z learns the past tense, and at that time, we also see her relationship with her lover develop into something more realistic and natural. As opposed to their passionate beginning, they fight more and Z learns the need to express her own feelings. Relating this back to her education at school, the point in the text where Z gains a grasp on the past tense is when she begins seeking to learn her lover’s past and what made him so needy of privacy and alone time. By the conclusion of the novel, Z has learned the future tense. This comes in the opposition to Z’s wanting of a committed future with her lover. Unfortunately, he won’t commit to spending the rest of his life with her, for he claims he wants to simply live in the present. After consulting her dictionary, Z learns of the differences between the past tense love and future tense one. This upsets her, for if “love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last forever. It will be infinite” (239).
This trip also sparks an awaking for Z. The progression from calling a housewife a “grass killer” after seeing her weeding her garden to exploring Europe alone shows Z’s immersion to a new culture and increased level of maturity. At first she feels the need to return back to London, but over time, she finds ways to appease her loneliness, and with that, she opens new sexual possibilities she previously hadn’t considered. After pleasuring herself atop a roof, having sexual fantasies, and indulging in the deed itself with a man that wasn’t her lover, she finally feels a sense of empowerment and claims, “I can be my own. I can. I can rely on myself, without depending on a man” (194).
Although the two part ways, when Z reveals the last letter she received from her lover at the end of the story, we see that they will never forget each other and their love will never cease to exist.
More than just a language barrier...
What Zhuang has to overcome in order to be a worldy traveller and an Englishman's lover
One idea that stood out to me was on page 54. Zhuang expresses her frustration or maybe her excitement over coming to a completely new land. “I not having past in this country. No memory being builded here so far, no sadness or happiness so far, only information,” (54) To some people an idea like this would horrify them. We have encountered this idea before in class, the loss of identity in travel. However, it seems like Zhuang takes more of the “blank canvas” stance. She is not very attached to her homeland. She recognizes and embraces the possibilities Europe has to offer her, such as sexual freedom. I admired how Zhuang would attempt to express such an abstract idea in a language foreign to her, but it was exercises like this that probably improved her English most of all.
The one major culture clash that interested me was Zhuang’s struggle with complete independence and the status of a loner. She constantly reminds her lover, as well as the reader, of the collectivist philosophy of The People’s Republic of China. She is accustomed to being surrounded by her screaming family at all times, but also not thinking of oneself as an individual with personal needs. Obviously its not as simple as that, but a good comparison to what would be at the complete opposite end of the spectrum would be travelling around Europe by yourself and acting on any whim. Her lover explains this Western idea to her in a letter during her trip: “In the West we are used to loneliness. I think it’s good for you to experience loneliness… After a while, you will start to enjoy solitude.” (257) Zhuang never does seem to reach this point of independence, but at times she does seem to revel at her freedom of choice. I suppose one cannot expect a person to learn a lesson that completely contradicts their entire life too quickly. Also it seems like Zhuang is never really alone for too long. She continuously attaches herself to men native to each nation she visits. She ignores many of the common laws of travel such as telling strangers her itinerary and lack of contacts. So perhaps Zhuang’s fear of loneliness is more of an emotional and unique quality rather than a cultural difference.
The Language of Love
An exploration of which Language(s) Zhuang learns and loses.
In addition to language(s), time is a major theme in Zhuang’s story. The entire book is structured through time and in the very first chapter Zhuang remarks, “I at neither [Beijing nor London] time zone…When a body floating in air, which country she belong to?” (3) to foreshadow that at the end of the story Zhuang doesn’t feel that she belongs in neither English culture nor Chinese culture. The fact that in this chapter Chinese and English culture are represented by their time zones is also significant. Lots of Zhuang’s trouble adjusting comes from her inability to first grasp the English notion of time, and then later her inability to go back to the Chinese notion of time.
In London, her lover is always telling her to “Live in the moment!” (238), but when she returns to china her mother shouts at her, “you never think of the future! You only live in the present!” (281). In Chinese there are no tenses so the very idea of “living in” a specific tense is completely foreign to Zhuang before she travels to England. The fact that in Zhuang can only fully grasp the English present tense demonstrates that she linguistically and generally “[lives] in the present” while she is living in London. When she goes back to Beijing she makes the impulsive decision to move to Beijing, which shows that upon returning to China, she continues to live in the present. By the time she leaves London, Zhuang does have a fairly firm grasp on all English tenses, and this new knowledge causes her to lose her original Chinese notion of time existing as one general concept.
Time and diligent studying are what allow Zhuang to learn English. By the end of her diary, she is fluent and only makes occasional grammar and spelling mistakes. Although she is quickly learning the English language (and thereby English Culture) and using it often, she speaks of her own Chinese culture less and less as the story goes on. When she tells her lover about Qi, he is surprised because he has never heard her talk about these types of Chinese beliefs before. In a sense as she learns more British culture, she loses her own culture. She also tells more and more people to call her “Z” instead of her real, Chinese name, Zhuang. This also demonstrates a loss of Chinese customs and her Chinese identity.
Strangely, the more English that Zhuang learns, the more difficult it is for her to communicate with her lover. This seems counterintuitive, but makes a complex statement about love. It expresses that love is a spiritual language. It cannot be learned, or taught, but only felt. The more Zhuang tries to understand her lover through reading his diary and letters and speaking to him, the less they get along. This is also represented through the fact that writing emails and letters to each other, does not convey love for Zhuang because this is purely literal, spoken language. At first the mystic language of love comes so easily to Zhuang, but with increasing fluency in English she loses the ability to feel the language of love and I believe that this is the language that the book is referring to on the dedication page.
Search for Language and Love
How Zhuang's journey to England is one of self-discovery and self-exploration.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo is a unique novel. Unlike the past novels we have read, this novel features a different main character. Zhuang is a 24 year old girl who has not experienced much in her life so far. All she knows is China and its communist practices that were currently installed in that country at the time. She is very different from past main characters that we have encountered so far in this class because of the learning process that she must go through. Other main characters that we have encountered have came from Western Civilizations and traveled to the lesser civilized eastern populations of the world carrying with theme some knowledge and common sense that will help them travel the world. Zhuang however doesn’t have much of these characters and goes to London in search for language and love.
The novel follows the exact growing process that Zhuang undergoes throughout her year away from China. It starts off with the “prologue” in which the readers are introduced to the language that Zhuang currently knows. She says things like, “But I at neither time zone” (3) and “I on airplane” (3). Immediately we are introduced to the extent in which Zhuang will undergo a personal transformation in order to become “civilized” into the western culture that she is about to visit. We then see the cultural clash that develops in Zuhang‘s mind. Zhuang must deal with sorting our her past beliefs and customs in order to learn the “English” way of things. One of the most striking conflicts that Zhuang encounters is how to deal with the loneliness that accompanies traveling to a new and foreign place. Xiaolu Guo describes this by saying, “I always alone, and talking to myself. When sky become dark, I want grab something warm in this cold country. I want find friend teach me about this strange country” (33). Zhuang struggles with being alone because this is a concept that isn’t practiced in China. Zhuang goes on to describe how people work together in China but in England, people are totally out on their own. Zhuang is forced to discover how lonely people are in the western world in order to help her understand the broader conflict that she has an even tougher time uncovering which is love.
The most deepest conflict that Zhuang encounters during her stay in London is love. It is like Zhuang is a young teenager exploring love for the first time. Guo describes her by saying. “I need somebody protect me, accompany me, but not staring at me in darkness. I longing for smile from man…”(36). Zhuang is only interested at first in someone’s presence in order to keep her away from the lonely feelings that travel can sometimes have. This search to cure her loneliness instead turns into pure love with a man twenty years older than her. Zhuang is always trying to learn the language and at times this causes problems in the relationship. Her lover is sick and tired of explaining everything to her which causes the first real tension between the two of them. Their relationship becomes driven by sex like so many of the novels so far have displayed. Guo describes Zhuang’s feelings towards sex as, “I never really knew what is sex before. Now I naked everyday in the house, and I can see clearly my desire” (57). Their relationship becomes a lustful one in which they don’t really communicate as people in love would. It is a relationship that is more about sex than it is about anything else.
As the novel progresses, Zhuang continues to deal with western concepts such as “privacy”, “intimacy”, “surprise”, “custom” and “home” that are very foreign to her. She is like a child in that she must learn all of these principles for the first time. This impacts both her search for language and love because of the way that other people perceive her. After her lover suggests she travel to explore her self more, she sets out on a month long journey across Europe. Even throughout her journey through Europe, her passions and desires are not much different. She meets a man who she barely knows and has sex with him. She mingles with and stays with many different man whether in Berlin or Venice or even while waiting for the train to leave from the station in Amsterdam. All this is new to her and so she doesn’t know how to act properly in front of these men that she encounters. As the novel progresses towards the end, Zhuang realizes what her journey has done to her. Although she has searched for self-discovery and a transformation, she sees herself as lost. Guo writes, “But I must leave. I am losing myself. It is painful that I cant see myself” (272). Like the other novels we have read thus far, this one ends in a negative light in which Zhuang returns heart broken and perhaps even more lost to China then before she set out on her journey to “learn the English language” in England.
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The Bricks of Her Life
Z's journey of self-discovery
Z’s interactions with humans left more of an impression on me than her descriptions of for example, Venice or London (most of the time). The moment in particular that stands out for me is at the train station in Amsterdam: “…he [Peter] is running towards me…stops right in front of me, breathless…I hug him tightly and he hugs me tightly. I bury my head into his arms,” (pg. 168). It is a very romantic moment in a way: beyond the train station, beyond Amsterdam, beyond place, beyond location. It’s timeless and transcendent. Z’s travels are perhaps best summed up by this phrase: “I know I am on a journey to collect the bricks to build my life,” (pg. 168). These “bricks” are the experiences she has with people: this array of European men in particular and of course, her lover yet also the bouncers outside the Venetian club. This has always been a key reason people travel: to have experiences with others they wouldn’t normally have experiences with whether they interact with them for an instant or for a day or for two weeks. Some travelers prioritize the physical space and place over the people that are in or around said place. The traveler has to decide which one they will most actively pursue on their voyage. I’m glad Z chose the people. It makes it more interesting for her and the reader.
Starting Fresh
How a silly cliche translates into something more
“I know I am on a journey to collect the bricks to build my life” (168). There is a certain ring of cliché to this, and I know that somewhere, perhaps in multiple places, I’ve seen this same sentiment before. All night I racked my brain for a blog topic. I went over all the phrases I highlighted, tried to connect them to other books we’ve read, and still, after hours of slaving, I had nothing to show; so indulge me as I begin with a reflection and intersperse random deep ideas throughout.
Aren’t we all collecting bricks right now? I didn’t identify with Z at all while I was reading A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, but once I take out this individual quotation, I realize that this is exactly where we all are in our lives. We are taking bits and pieces of our past, throwing out the ones that are no longer relevant and adding to the pile new materials with which we can create our adult selves.
There is so much fantasy surrounding the idea of New York City. It’s a place to reinvent ourself, and discover our true passions. The concept is the basis for broadway musicals like Thoroughly Modern Millie and dozens of rom-coms where the attractive twenty-something struggles with finding herself in the midst of the chaos that is New York. And there is a reason we are so attached to this type of story-line. We’ve all had that same desire. We want to throw our old self to the wind and say, “Screw it. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I am going to pack my bags, buy a one way ticket to the city and start anew.”
However, the problem for Z is that this fantasy was not her own (and yes I know that she doesn’t end up in New York City.) She is being forced to “improve” herself first by her parents and then by her lover who thinks that she should go abroad. Perhaps this is why there is a theme of loneliness throughout the novel. Z describes it almost as a tangible object, saying, “ [she] can see the shape of the loneliness in front of [her], then surround [her] body, [her] night, [her] dream” (125). If we are forced to change, then we are left with the feeling of not knowing who we are to become, and that can be truly frightening. Usually, we the choice is ours, the is a vision of who we want to be. If there is no vision, then there is just an empty frame that we must paint without any help, no paint by numbers or model to guide us.
Almost from the beginning, Z attaches herself to this stranger and he becomes her lover and only real friend. Not only is she being ordered around by the English language (she describes it as the boss of the user), but she also is at the mercy of this man’s schedule (20). Waiting at home for him, there is no way she can cultivate a new self. It is only once she goes abroad from London that she starts to really change. Yes her language steadily gets better throughout the novel, but she is not free until she flees the state of being the “wallpaper,” a mere observer in her lover’s life (153).
Some of her decisions are incredibly stupid (not to be judgmental by any means), but these are the ones she made on her own and in the end are the ones that created the strongest bricks. On the way back to china, Z notes that she will never see the world in the same way as she did the previous year (279). And while she attributes that to her broken heart, from the other novels we’ve read, it seems that her changed perspective is probably from letting loose instead.
Does this mean we should all flee from the social norms and try new things? Perhaps...luckily, we’re in Gallatin, so doing that is easy.
Learning About Love and Language
Learning is a trip.
Language is the cause of a large number of misunderstandings. Zhuang longs to be able to express herself in her own language again, which I wish she could too. It would come off as mildly comprehensible, whereas she makes small sense when she uses words incorrectly and unintentionally misuses common idioms. Her English gets better as the novel progresses and verbs function how she intends (more often).
I can relate because my mother came to the United States from Taiwan and she makes mistakes in her speech. She’ll leave out articles or conjugate a verb incorrectly, but I think Zhuang is too much sometimes. The first half of the book is an unpleasant read as I feel she struggles harder than actual immigrants.
Then the love story comes in and the relationship between Chinese and English comes through. The culture and ideology have vast differences, and Zhuang was deprived of love in China. Her childishness and naiveté come through as she learns about love in a second language.
Familiar Home of Yellow Sand and New Language of Blue Sea
English Language and her Chinese culture function as Z's lens for understanding Western culture...
Her purpose of her being in London in the first place is to achieve an ambitious goal of herself and her parents to master English and come back home for a better job. She studies hard, carrying her little Chinese dictionary everywhere and asking myriad questions to her lover and her English teacher. Her purpose is not to travel or to learn the Western culture. Rather than trying to make sense of the Western culture through learning the language, she focuses on learning the language and naturally finds conflicts and tries to make sense of the vastly different culture, while comparing it to her own back home.
Z is not a traveler. She stays with an English man twenty years older in Hackney, the most raw and ugly area of the city. She mostly stays home and becomes attached to her lover and even when she is sent on a month-long travel around Europe, she longs to go back to London to her lover. On the month-long trip around Europe by herself, she is not interested in learning the different cultures and being a tourist. She even considers the travel “not a holiday” but “like homework” given from her lover (179). She simply sees the different landscapes of Europe through lenses of her birthplace and hometown, of her own Chinese culture. In Paris, she thinks of the Chinese hero who swam across the English Channel as well as “Chairman Mao [who] used to swim across Yang Zi River” (162). She compares Berlin with Beijing: “This is a city with something really heavy and serious in its soul. This is a city which had big wars in the history. And, I feel, this is a city made for mans, and politics, and disciplines. Like Beijing” (172). In Venice, when she hears that a party takes place in Lido, she automatically associates it with “the very expensive hotel in Beijing and Shanghai” called Lido Holiday Inn Hotel, and taking the boats she “feel[s] like living in the old time of south China, that people have to take boat to get to other places” (182). Travelling, she “feel[s] really naked” and remarks that she “care[s] about nothing of this city. [she] ha[s] no love or hate whatsoever towards this city” (174).Understanding another culture is difficult: “Chinese always say West culture is a blue culture, Chinese culture is yellow culture. This because West from the sea, and China comes from the yellow sand. I don’t understand the sea” (183). Although some mastery of English language and knowledge of her own Chinese culture help her understand the foreign Western culture, she still does not completely understand it.
Z remarks while travelling that the cultures are different and languages are different but that “everywhere people live in the same way” (166). Throughout her stay abroad, away from home, she explores different concepts such as home, family, individuality, solitude, food, and sexuality of two different cultures—old, familiar one of her own Chinese culture and new, strange one of the West. She also reflects on her own culture as she compares Chinese culture with that of Europe’s; by learning another language and another culture, she learns more of herself and her own culture: “The day when I arrived to the West, I suddenly realized I am a Chinese” (148).
The Language of Love
How language and relationships shape Z's time abroad
The purpose of Z’s trip to London is to learn English. The entire novel is centered on her learning of a new language and each chapter is focused around a certain word that she has learned. Language, as well as communication, is a key aspect to understanding the novel. Z begins the story essentially ostracized because of her inability to communicate in English. This is what leads to her total dependency on the sculptor. He is able to understand her, and communicate with the outside world when she is not able to. Her inability to properly speak English, or truly understand Western customs, puts her into an “other” category. She is a foreigner; she is not part of Western society. Her acquisition of language, however, moves her out of the role of an outsider. She begins to assimilate to the culture through her growing ability to speak English. The goal of a traveler, after all, is to learn about another culture, which is difficult to achieve when one has an outsider status. By becoming more of an insider, Z can grow more appreciative of her environment. However, she does not entirely lose her heritage, which is important. She often thinks in terms of Chinese language. When discussing difficulties with her lover, she narrates, “It our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will forever. It will be infinite” (239). The implication here is that in English, their love is finite. Her understanding of her new world comes from her new insight of the English language. She comprehends what the world means in relation to her new language, but Chinese is never forgotten. Thus, Z’s acquisition of language is essential in her understanding her experiences abroad, but can never completely replace her heritage.
The novel, while never forgetting the importance of language, is largely concerned with Z’s growing relationship with the sculptor, as well as her affairs when she travels abroad. Z, who is a virgin before she meets her lover, is inexperience when it comes to relationships. However, it is through her innocence and excitement of the new love, that a major theme develops. Z seems to be unable to understand her travel without putting it in relation to a man. When she is in London, she is focused on the sculptor. When she travels to Europe, she becomes involved with a series of men. She seems desperate for any sort of connection, but the reason why is still unclear. For instance, in Berlin she meets a man who she stays with for a few nights. After he is sick, she reflects, “Should I leave? Should I stay? I feel like want to stay with this man” (179). Yet, she does not know the man at all. Travel is difficult alone, especially when one is unfamiliar with the language or customs. Z, who is an Easterner, most likely cleaves onto these men in order to better understand her new world. However, she gains independence in the end, breaking up with her lover and going to live in Berlin away from her family. The message her is, perhaps, that while relationships can introduce travelers to a new world, a proper understanding can only be gained by ones self—a sentiment that the sculptor shares. Over, Z’s involvement with men in the book raises the importance of interpersonal relationships while travelling
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You Live Inside Of Me, But I Don't Live Inside Of You
Distance in Language and Love
It seems that Zhuang’s relationship with her lover is deeply connected to that of her relationship to London and to her understanding of the English language. As one deepens, the others do as well. Being that language has much to do with place in that it is how people who reside there interact and express themselves, this parallel progression makes much sense. Guo describes this evolution using a beautiful comparison of Zhuang’s struggle to break down the walls that separate her from her Western lover while he maintains physical and emotional distance. Though she reads his diary entries and familiarizes herself with his past, there is something that she seems unable to obtain. One can understand her incessant effort to come closer and closer to him and finding it unreachable in the same manner in which her attempts to come closer and closer to fully understanding the English language are unattainable. She cannot breach a gap that is so apparent because each word he utters must be feverishly looked up in her concise Chinese-English dictionary, so her understanding of him and her understanding of English can never be organic or true to that of a native speaker.
Throughout the novel, Zhuang recounts several incidents of how her Chinese culture clashes with her Western love’s English one and how this cultural disparity causes even greater misunderstanding and disengagement in their communication. When she compares the Chinese view of family and lovers, she says, “That’s so different with my Chinese love—family means everything. Many people here have problems being intimate with each other. People keep distance because they want independence…maybe that’s why Westerner’s much more separated, lonely…” (87). That distance, which Zhuang associates completely with the West is what is separating her from feeling one with the culture and one with her lover.
The course of the novel follows her inability to come to a full understanding, to form a full connection, which so many people, travelers and non-travelers alike, can understand. The significance of this occurring while Zhuang is in a foreign country is that it strengthens her sense of not belonging to another person and not belonging to another country. Her struggle to comprehend her relationship and to comprehend the English language echoes so many other struggles to lessen the space that people surround themselves with and to deal with the realization that some of that space is far too massive to lessen. It is to decrease the limit, as Zhuang puts it, “from your heart, from your lifestyle, which makes love feel like a friendship. You live inside of me, but I don’t live inside of you.” (153).
Guo, Xiaolu A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
The Red Book
Collectivism and the self in A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary
Although the cultural divide between the self-centered West who favors individual freedom over the cohesion and community central to Chinese culture seems like a tired topic, Xiaolu Guo makes the subject interesting by exploring it from the perspective of “Z”, a young woman born and raised in China. For a Westerner who hears all about the various environmental and the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government, I found it extremely interesting to hear a regular every-day person from China defend the oppression of the Tibetan people and denounce the BBC as a biased news source.
Looking at the story through the lens of “self discovery”, Z’s journey seems to be one more focused on sexual liberation than anything else. Her crowning realization is not exactly as glamorous as meditating like the Buddha under the instruction of a man of ancient wisdom in some Devalayam in India; instead, Z realizes that she can rely on herself after successfully masturbating in the rooftop garden of a budget hotel in Tavira. Of course the only reason why that moment was significant was because hitherto, Z thought that she needed a man to provide for her both monetarily and sexually. The assumption that the man is supposed to provide for the woman was shattered earlier when she had to split the bill with her English lover, but the underlying assumption that a man must provide for “his” woman and family instead of only for himself is a great example of the sort of self vs. community conflict that arises from the cultural exchange between China and the West.
One thing that kept bugging me about the cultural conflict between the self and the community was that I instinctively wanted to side with the West whenever Z spoke out against the progressive liberal values of the West or clung tightly to assumptions that we in the West consider morally objectionable, like the aforementioned idea that a woman needs a man to provide for her. Having taken a few courses on cultural relativism and the like in high school, I am always hesitant to place another culture’s values under moral scrutiny, but it’s almost like Guo is baiting the reader to cheer each and every time that Z becomes more westernized. In the books we have read previously for this class, the stories are usually about Westerners traveling in non-western cultures, but unlike Z, they are rarely incorporate the new cultures that they encounter into their lives. I know that much common ground exists between Western culture and Chinese culture, but I wish that Guo had explored the similarities more than the differences.
