Communication of a Different Kind
The train stopped in a small city. The middle-aged, obviously foreign white lady exited the train. A middle-aged Chinese lady walking by looked at the foreign middle-aged white lady with curiosity. The Chinese lady approached the foreign middle-aged white lady and began to talk to her, hoping against some mostly irrational hope that this particular foreign white lady understood Chinese.
She didn’t, but without hesitation, the foreign middle-aged lady smiled sociably, and began speaking to the Chinese lady in English.
They both perched on a low wall and continued amiably in both English and Chinese. The middle-aged white foreigner’s young Chinese friend appeared, walked over to them, and said with just the tiniest hint of surprise, “Oh, you’re chatting.”
I can’t really explain how or why, but this scene was repeated with variations when the urge for contact, rather than the need for actually communicating, overcame the fact that we had no common language. In such situations, what we said was not as important as the act of saying something.
Tags: Communicating while traveling, Travel
