Made in Taiwan 03

Day 22

It was now the middle of September and having finally started my Chinese language course at Tai-Da university, I was feeling completely lost. Mandarin as it turns out is much more complex than I had ever imagined. I mean, I knew learning a new language was going to be tough, having struggled to learn even the basics of French in school, but I still wasn’t prepared for what I was about to face.

I’d only been at it for four days, but I was already doubting my ability to ever get to grips with this mindboggling language. As I had recently learnt, Mandarin is a tonal language consisting of four distinct tones. What that means, in reality, is you could essentially learn a word or phrase but unless each syllable is delivered in the correct tone, it will come out as a confusing illegible mess.

To make matters worse, if the tongue-twisting pronunciation wasn’t bad enough, there was also the reading and writing to contend with. A mammoth task lay ahead of me to try and memorise thousands of characters and somehow not only be able to recall them but also somehow be capable of writing them out in the right stroke order. The year ahead was going to be a challenging one, definitely no walk in the park.

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Around ten in the morning, unbeknown to me at the time, my world was about change forever. Sat around in a large circle with all my fellow students, having just butchered the sentence I was trying to repeat back to the teacher, Miss Li, there was a loud banging sound towards the back of the room.

Everyone turned, even Ms Li, who took a momentary break from shaking her head at me with a look of disgust written all over her face, a look I was quickly becoming accustomed to.

The heavy wooden door, at the top of the entrance stairs, hit the wall with a bang before a silhouette of a girl started walking carefully making her way down the steps in her ramped footwear. As she approached the bottom of the staircase, everyone in the group stared, transfixed on the striking-looking girl with her long lilac hair, wearing a tight white top and a tiny, checked pink skirt.

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You could hear a pin drop as she sauntered across the room silent room, all mesmerized by her presence and the hypnotic rhythmic clumping sound as the sole of her high cork sandals met the wooden floor beneath.

Reaching the group, the girl turned to Ms Li and in perfect Chinese seemed to apologise for being late. Strangely, Ms Li didn’t seem particularly upset which shocked me. I had been five minutes late on the second day and got a scolding, this girl was two hours late, having missed the first four days of the course and received a friendly smile.

The lilac-haired girl took up a seat opposite me and after arranging her skirt beneath her, looked over in my direction to catch me staring. Our eyes locked and my heart quickened in my chest. She smiled, it was a warm friendly smile that said be a man and ask me out on a date, big boy. Well, that’s what my twisted logic interpreted it as anyway, she was more than likely just being friendly. Flashing her a quick smile back, I looked away hoping she couldn’t see that I was blushing.

Throughout the rest of the day, I could feel her eyes on me as the class went on. I tried to avoid looking whenever possible as this girl made me feel nervous. But there was also something about her that intrigued me, something that made me want to learn everything about her.

Not that it was likely that a girl like her would go for a guy like me. Back home in Chester, I had never been what you would call a ladies man, with only a few short term relationships that always seemed to fizzle out after a few weeks. I would always get dumped, later to find out the girl was seeing was with someone else, as the rumours of how negative and miserable I was spread throughout my small friend group.

There was also the fact that I was a little short and it seemed girls, where I come from, don’t like to date guys shorter than them. This is something that had always annoyed me, especially given I wasn’t even that short, a little less than average at best and if the girls around the northwest of England stopped wearing those ridiculous sky-scraper heels that seem to be all the rage these days, I would be taller than most of them, or at least on par with them.

I didn’t learn much Chinese that day, but I did learn a few things about the mystery girl. Her name was Simona and she and Ms Li knew each other well. Her Chinese, from what I could tell, was also fluent which begged the question. why was she on a course for beginners? But perhaps the weirdest thing was the feeling I got from her. It seemed the longer I spent in her presence, the more I felt as though we had met before, something about her just seemed so familiar.

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I spent the evening, doing the thing I did most nights, sitting on the patio outside my little apartment, smoking and chatting with Jamal.

We talked about what I had learned that day in class and I tried to recall some of the random sentences I had been forced to recite about stationary. “wo you yi zhi bi” (I have one pen) I said aloud, which was pretty much the only thing I could remember. Jamal laughed at my pronunciation and made a joke about how useful that would be when looking for the bathroom or ordering food. I had to agree, it didn’t seem like the most useful thing to be learning at this stage. To be fair to Jamal though, who could speak Chinese effortlessly, having lived in the country for so long, he made fun of me but was always encouraging and helping me out.

After a while, the conversation moved on to the enigma that was Simona. Jamal didn't seem to find her entrance strange and instead just wanted to know if she was hot. I nodded my head, she was definitely attractive but at the same time, for some reason, I felt strange saying it, something just felt a bit off.

All in all, it was a good day, I was now well and truly settled into my new routine and feeling very comfortable in my new life. All I had to do now was focus a bit more on my studies, but there was plenty of time for that, right?