Gangster is a Universal Language

Tomorrow marks one month since I left home to go on this voyage. It has been a very quick month filled with new experiences, wonderful people, great food, and adventure. But it hasn’t been all butterflies and rainbows. Life in China has presented me with new challenges, struggles, and frustrations. Some of these I was prepared for; others not so much. My two biggest frustrations are communication and my backhand. The latter is the result of a grip change that I’ve been trying to become comfortable with. I am making some progress, but only one in every five backhands is well struck. I feel like a scrub, a beginner who shouldn’t be on court with professional tennis players. I resist my reaction to put down my racquet and crouch by the net post; ready to retrieve tennis balls for the worthy tennis players on the court. I keep trying, sailing one ball ten feet out, and burying the next into the net. I’ll get it.

Communication is my biggest struggle because I value it above everything. I view it as my gateway to human connection. To have verbal communication taken away from me feels crippling and wrong. I feel that I have lost my voice. This motivates me to learn like my life depends on it, because in a way, my quality of life for the next nine months does depend on it. Every day after lunch Oldman and I sit at the

table in the clubhouse as I read out of my Lonely Planet book on Mandarin. The book covers a broad array of subjects including dining out, cooking, directions, shopping, business transactions, etc… The words are written in Chinese symbols, then in Pinyin, a phonetic breakdown of the symbols, then in English. We spent weeks going through the food dictionary as I read out loud the names of different foods and wrote down in my journal the ones I like or don't like. Oldman closes his eyes and listens, gently correcting my mispronunciations. When we finished going through the food dictionary, we moved on to restaurant terminology. We are currently studying giving and understanding directions. I am slowly picking up social conversation, too. Though, people still stare at me like I have a second head when I try to put it into practice.

Every couple weeks Dani and Howard leave to a tournament in Thailand. It’s always a little more difficult when they are gone because nobody else speaks English here. Feelings of loneliness wash over me, and when I stop to ponder the reason, I realize that I haven’t spoken to anyone who understands me in a day and a half. When this happens I try to catch someone on Skype, just to make sure I still have the ability to speak English. But there is an upside to this. I have taken up interest in what I think of as absolute emotion- emotion that is felt by all humans, regardless of time and location. When thinking of communication, the natural thought is words…understanding through speaking and listening. But I am realizing there are many ways to listen without interpreting words. Of course there is tone and body language. However, this intimidates me more than helps. To an American ear, the Chinese language sounds very harsh. There are so many blunt and forceful tones to the Chinese language that I sometimes think people are in a heated argument when they are actually discussing a lesson that went well. This is the part of pronunciation that I struggle with, as I don’t yet have the fiery disposition to deliver the words with harsh fluidity as Oldman does. These absolute emotions aren’t always easy to spot, but they’re everywhere, creating a universal language all around me.

Yesterday I gave a lesson to a very cute little boy who doesn’t speak a lick of English. He’s six, tiny, and concentrates on each stroke like he is taking the SAT. I put him in the position to hit forehands and fed him ball after ball, standing a few feet away from him and tossing the balls, encouraging him after each shot. It was a struggle to get this kid to slow down and not swing for the fences at each and every ball. Halfway through the set, he decided to let loose and swing as hard as he could. He wound up and flung his racquet forward as fast as he could. The ball hit the top of his racquet frame and went spinning straight up in the air as the boy’s centripetal force spun him in a 360. He regained his balance in time for the ball to come straight down, hit him on the top of the head, and bounce away. The little boy looked at me, stunned, as if to say ‘Why did you do that to me?’ I stared back. Then, simultaneously, we both burst into laughter. Some things are just universally funny.

The guards that man the gate into my apartment complex exemplified this universal language. Usually there are three or four men who gaze after me in silence when I pass through. I haven’t been wearing make-up here because we sweat so much on court in heavy humidity that my face would always look like an abstract painting if I did. But on my day off last week I put on some eye makeup before I left my apartment to explore the city. The men at the gate were beside themselves. They

greeted me, talked to me in Chinese, and even kissed my hand. Beauty is a universal language. Since that day, the guards will playfully heckle me when I pass. On Tuesday morning I was coming back from my morning river run when one of the guards motioned me over. I thought maybe there was a problem and that I’d need to call Howard to translate. The guard pointed to my headphones and held out his hand. He wanted to hear my music. I handed over an ear bud and he put it to his ear just in time to hear Roscoe Dash chant ‘Rain rain go away, That’s what all my haters say’. His whole body bobbed up and down as he listened. I bobbed my head and did my best gangster hand motion while I sang ‘Roscoe Dash!’ He repeated. ‘Dusoo Dag!’ Gangster is also a universal language.

When I was in second grade a space expert came to our classroom. He finished his talk on space and afterward we were free to raise our hands and ask questions. My classmates asked him various questions about what stars are made of, and where babies come from, and whatever other bullshit things 8-year-olds wonder about. The 8-year old brave, stubborn little half Navajo girl that I was raised her hand and asked, ‘How is it that space goes on forever and ever and ever and never ends?’ I don’t remember what the man said, but I do remember that it wasn’t a clear answer that I was happy with. The sky has always enthralled me. It is huge and expansive and beyond my comprehension. There is a moment in the game of tennis when all is calm and the world dissolves. It happens while the athlete serves, right after the ball

leaves the hand, right before the racquet strings strike it. In this moment, there is nothing but ball and sky, the same sky I wondered about as a girl. The athlete doesn’t need to be anything, do anything, say anything, or think anything. In that moment, he or she just is. I have always relished in this moment for that reason. But I am also realizing that this feeling is not specific to tennis. All day, every day we have opportunities to get lost in a moment. We can surrender to the experience and feel the love, the joy, the anger, the hilarity, the beauty, the loneliness, the sorrow, the calm, or the compassion. We don’t need to buy books or twist our tongues to learn this language. We simply need to be present, to be right here right now and listen, not with our ears but with our hearts, to the conversations happening around us. I can’t think of better way to put this than the rapper Brother Ali does in his song “Good Lord”. He asks,

‘Can you tell me what language do you laugh in? A human reaction of smiles and cries- what language are the tears when they’re falling from your eyes?’

There are always going to be frustrations in life. When it happens, when everything seems wrong and dark, when we feel as if we are standing alone, it is nice to know that these opportunities to connect exist. I don’t yet speak Chinese, but I do speak this language of absolute emotion, the language of humanity, and through it I have had some great conversations.