Today's new words
Wo bu pang. Wo huai yun le. I'm not fat. I'm pregnant.
I am cheating a little bit because these aren't exactly today's new words, but it is something I was surprised to have to have said today. I am due in two-and-a-half months, and as my friends and family in America will attest, there can be no doubt about my being of pregnant-lady shape.
I first learned to say this exact statement a few weeks before we left for the US. I was shopping at Benetton at the mall near our house, and I was trying on some oversized shirts. I had just gone from merely bulging to a nice roundness, and I was admiring in the mirror how the shirt showed that off. The salesgirl was checking in on me. She looked almost horrified at me until I explained to her that I wasn't just fat. I had a baby in me. She sighed in relief, and told me the shirt was perfect. To her, I looked like just another fat foreigner. At my next Chinese lesson my teacher gave me the correct words, wo huai yun le.
This afternoon I once again found myself explaining to a grocery cashier that I was not exactly as I appeared to her. I'm sure at this point I am still not dressing the part as far as Chinese women are concerned. Today I was wearing shorts and one of my favorite maternity/nursing styles, an XL men's dress shirt from the GAP. Okay, so that shirt is also one of my favorite all-the-time styles, but usually in one size smaller.
It really amuses me that even today I am still having to point out to some Chinese people that my size and shape right now come from being with child.
I am cheating a little bit because these aren't exactly today's new words, but it is something I was surprised to have to have said today. I am due in two-and-a-half months, and as my friends and family in America will attest, there can be no doubt about my being of pregnant-lady shape.
I first learned to say this exact statement a few weeks before we left for the US. I was shopping at Benetton at the mall near our house, and I was trying on some oversized shirts. I had just gone from merely bulging to a nice roundness, and I was admiring in the mirror how the shirt showed that off. The salesgirl was checking in on me. She looked almost horrified at me until I explained to her that I wasn't just fat. I had a baby in me. She sighed in relief, and told me the shirt was perfect. To her, I looked like just another fat foreigner. At my next Chinese lesson my teacher gave me the correct words, wo huai yun le.
This afternoon I once again found myself explaining to a grocery cashier that I was not exactly as I appeared to her. I'm sure at this point I am still not dressing the part as far as Chinese women are concerned. Today I was wearing shorts and one of my favorite maternity/nursing styles, an XL men's dress shirt from the GAP. Okay, so that shirt is also one of my favorite all-the-time styles, but usually in one size smaller.
It really amuses me that even today I am still having to point out to some Chinese people that my size and shape right now come from being with child.
Comments
I really think it is because they see me and they assume I am just another fat foreigner. Particularly in Shenzhen, where a women's size XL in the shops is usually a US size 6, and the population is still mostly migrants who have never had much contact with foreigners or Western media, their expectation is that I am a foreigner, therefore I am fat. I even got this from Myles' Chinese tutor a few weeks before we left for the US. I mentioned something about the baby coming, and she had a look of surprise. "I thought you just got fat," she told me.