So last night my subconscious transported me to China of old. My closest guess is that it was several hundred years ago. By some stroke of terrific luck, I was part of the royal court and the empress was going to give a speech to her subjects. But our empress was afraid to appear in front of so many people for security reasons and her guards couldn’t guarantee her safety, so they set about looking for a body double who would brave the slings and arrows of a potential malcontent for her majesty. I happily volunteered myself to be her body double, and followed her courtly entourage into the speech-giving-waiting chambers. I guess they were the feudal equivalent of a TV set’s waiting room. There I was decked out in a royal red kimono (I know, I know, not really consistent) and told that the only thing I would have to do is appear before for the people and preside over the proceedings. I was forbade from showing my hands because for some reason my hands would reveal me to be an impostor and the gig would be up.
At the last moment, I buried my hands into royal red sapphire folds of kimono fabric and daintily ascended the stairs to a platform surrounded on all sides by seething, roaring masses of Chinese people. The setup was like the Superdome, only there was no field, only a small raised platform upon which I and several other dignitaries stood. I nodded sagely, fulfilling my body-double cross dressing duties, and the ceremony got underway.
But what was this?! A dignitary approached me and asked me expectantly to give the opening address for the festivities. This hadn’t been in the job description. The crowd roared and I looked down onto a sheet of vellum densely populated by characters I had never seen before, with unreadable pinyin underneath. The pinyin was dream-writing so I could sort of understand it, but the letters kept changing, making the syllables un-utterable. What’s more, I felt that my Chinese professor from Oberlin (Ma Laoshi) was standing close at hand frowning at the thought of me reading pinyin. Her frown was enough to make me try to read the characters.
“Shooooo uannnngggggg . . . . daaaaooooooo . . . .”
The dignitary holding the speech was clearly embarrassed for me and I couldn’t figure out why nobody could tell that my deep voice wasn’t that of the empress. The dignitary started mouthing the pronunciations, but it was unintelligible.
The crowds were veritably bathing in my palpable embarrassment as I mangled syllable after syllable, grinding out incomprehensible Chinese as the visage of Ma Laoshi’s disappointed face appeared to my dream self.
Finally one of my friends on the platform (who were all very uncomfortable by this point) came near and whispered that he could take over. I was so relieved that anybody would help an illiterate like me that I gladly accepted, not realizing that he was climbing into the kimono with me. Apparently he had to conceal himself and the train wreck of a charade involving my empress-ness had to continue. He poked his head out of the kimono, proceeded to read the speech, which wasn’t very interesting as it turned out, and then I woke up.
Whew. Perhaps the lesson is that I should be studying more Chinese over the summer? I’m sorry Ma Laoshi that I couldn’t uphold the honor of Oberlin’s Chinese department at the royal ceremony!