Mangling the language all part of the learning curve

"Little monkey, c'm'ere a moment!" The man sitting next to me beckoned.

It was my first time in southwestern Yunnan province and I thought my Beijing-trained ears might have heard him wrong amid the clamor of the noodle stall, so I stopped eating and listened.

Soon, a woman looked up from her bowl and shouted: "Little monkey, maidan - check!"

As the waiter ran to grab the check, my humble Midwest American sensibilities recoiled.

This noodle stall in Yunnan was only my first stop outside of Beijing, but already I was nostalgic for the manners of the capital.

I knew things would be different here. My favorite Yunnan restaurant in Beijing hangs a proud list of the province's shiba guai, the "eighteen weirds" of the province's customs.

Beijing isn't exactly a bastion of politeness toward service workers, the standard practice is to just shout "waiter!" But surely ordering people around with the epithet "little monkey" exceeded any community's sense of decorum.

That night after my meal, I called my Yunnanese friend back in the States for some answers that might assuage my outraged sensibilities.

"People here call waiters xiao houzi - little monkeys? Isn't that kind of rude?" I asked.

I had to hold the phone away from my ear the laughter was so loud.

"That's not xiao houzi! That's xiao huozi - young man," she explained.

Language mangles happen around the world, even in our mother tongues. I once met a guy at a Halloween party in the States dressed from head to toe in a homemade corduroy robe, carrying a fake sword. I asked him who he was supposed to be.

"A corduroy ninja," he explained as if it were obvious. "You know, like the Outkast song: Shake it like a corduroy ninja."

"The lyric's 'Polaroid picture', not 'corduroy ninja'," I said, watching his face drop when he realized he'd wasted days making a costume based entirely on a lyric his ears had butchered.

Sure, all languages have traps. But I suspect Chinese and its mountains of homophones create the world's most ridiculous misunderstandings.

Chinese professors from my alma mater teach their students early on about the dangers of China's homophones. Their favorite example is wo xiang wen ni, which can mean either "I want to ask you" or "I want to kiss you" depending on one critical tone. The only upside for students making that mistake on their first visit to China is that they're sure to learn a new word: liumang, creep.

Thankfully, the context is usually enough to prevent blunders from becoming sexual harassment lawsuits. But sometimes an odd mistake powers its way through an exceedingly obvious situation.

On a hike near the Guilin hills that grace the back of the 20 yuan note, a buddy of mine asked our Chinese guide why there was a nasty smell coming from the farm fields on either side.

"Is that stench coming from chemical fertilizer?" he asked.

Our guide looked puzzled. "Coming from the telephone bill?"

"No, chemical fertilizer. Chemical fertilizer!"

These two words are so far apart in English that the mistake seems absurd. But in Chinese, a single falling tone turns "huafei" from a chemical product to a phone bill.

Language traps are common in the already-difficult Chinese language, but they remind me to keep a sense of humor through the long process of learning, and they're the best insurance that I'll remember the difference between kissing and asking, between monkeys and waiters.