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Wed | November 15, 2006

C'était horrible.

There were three main categories of people at last night's Mandarin language meetup:

Dorky, tactless Asian guys. There is nothing worse than dorky, tactless Asian guys. Their goals are so transparent; their desperation is so palpable. I feel like I've been slimed. Actually there is something worse (group #3 below, who shall be flayed in due time).

As soon as I walked into Sui lounge, I was accosted by two short dorky Asian guys, Jack and Jeff, or John and Jeff, or something, who talked to me in English. I asked them (in Mandarin) if they spoke Mandarin, and they said a little. We spoke Mandarin for about five seconds before they reverted to English again. Really, I went there to practice and learn some Chinese. I didn't go there to be ogled by dorky guys in English. If they had done it in Mandarin, I might have tolerated it. But this was too much. I moved on...

Too-nice Asian women. I met one of the few women there- a super-cute Asian girl who was an official greeter. She handed me a yellow flash card. She spoke to me in English also. I replied in Mandarin but she kept speaking in English. She told me to make a sentence from the word on my card and try to match with someone else's card. I thought this is soooo fucking nerdy and I don't want to do this. But not a trace of that was evident in my response. After all, there is some too-nice Asian girl in me as well. I said okay and took the card.

Clammy white middle-aged men. The next few unfortunate minutes were spent talking to a forty-something white guy, from Belarus. He at least had some working knowledge of Mandarin and knew some things. His accent was horrible, no tones at all, not even an attempt at them. He had studied Mandarin for a few years but didn't have a ton to show for it. "Mandarin is harder," Steve told me later. I don't fucking care. Learn it. I really don't think it's that difficult. I mean, French challenges me in its pronunciation and everything. But I am finding ways to learn it. I am dealing with it. If I can deal with it, they can deal with it. Chinese is not hard. These people are just lazy. And these middle-aged white men, I spoke to a few, were generally incompetent at Mandarin. I taught this Russian for a little bit but then I was like, I didn't come here to teach Mandarin for free.

The group should be renamed "Spoon-Feed Mandarin to White People" because that was the predominant activity there. I think they meant well, but the truly fluent Mandarin speakers were mostly supporting the white people, who really hadn't invested anything into their Mandarin. This isn't the way to encourage Mandarin speaking, because if you don't demand anything of anyone, they are never going to be committed to it. From my end, I tried to make it clear that if they didn't bring anything to the table they weren't going to eat there. But these other girls were being so super nice to them, letting them dominate the conversations, and as a result, of course, the fans of the group are mostly white men who don't enjoy working for anything.

That and all the desperate Asian guys. Ick. There are simply thousands of super-cute Asian girls in the city. Most of them make me look like a neanderthal, they are so cute. None of them were at this meetup, because they were probably scared away by the hoard of Asian guys ready to ambush them. I sure as hell am not going back.

The thing about Asian guys is that they are tremendously bad at learning. I am bad at learning so I recognize a bad learner when I see one. As bad as I am, these guys are worse. After a few minutes of talking, I left, without much ceremony, which you would think was kind of a sign that I didn't want to talk anymore. They followed. Made me suffer through more stupid English conversations. Finally I said, if you don't want to speak Mandarin I don't want to talk to you. And they were like who whooo. I was so not having fun. I was like That was not a flirtation device. You're such an idiot. The meaning of my sentence was go the fuck away. Instead they kept speaking just bits of mandarin and then English, and worse, repeating themselves in English, giving a translation.

I did get the email of this one Asian girl, who is 30, and maybe I'll email her. We're both middle children and she has a little sister with the same name as me. There is the small problem that I wrote a long response to the email survey I got in my inbox last night, explaining what I thought was wrong with the meetup (i.e. too much English) and submitted it only to find that it was automatically published on the website. Whoops. Mostly what I wrote was still acceptable, not a complete disaster, but I don't think I would have written that much if I had known. I didn't even write that much, but in that format it looks like a lot. Especially since most people said nothing. Anyway maybe that girl will not hate me for it. We'll see if she emails me back. It's not a big deal either way because she's mostly a too-nice Asian girl who totally allowed the white men to come over and talk to her. Maybe I won't even bother emailing her.

It just makes me realize how far I am from my white-respecting days, and how I don't belong with anyone anymore. It's very depressing. At the same time I did decide that my birthday party would be at the Half King, which is a white a place as any. It was basically Chrissa's influence though, because she didn't take to any place I suggested but as soon as she saw their divey website she was like, let's just go here. And I was like ok whatever. So we are having dinner instead of drinks, and I am going to have to sit and tolerate this for an hour or however long it takes us to eat, and then it will be over and I can crawl back into my cave. And next year I won't have a birthday celebration, I will just stop this madness.

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