Library

It’s been two weeks since he was living with Marco and Harry. The negotiations weren’t going so well, and it really didn’t look like he was going home anytime soon. He was stuck in England for 3 months once, so it wasn’t all that bad.

Today Harry needed to check out some books at the library and Mr. Chien decided to tag along. It wasn’t like there was much to do in the house anyway.

He walked along the shelves and came across to the foreign language section. There. Chinese. They even had some Chinese newspapers. They were only 2 days old, so he sat himself down and carefully unfolded the newspapers.

And in came Marco. It was embarrassing to be an 28 year old adult and walking into the children’s section where Harry was, even if he was an “escort.” He decided to wander around and see what Mr. Chien was doing.

“Oh, hey Mr. Chien!”

“Shhhh. Don’t be so loud.”

“Oh… ssssoooorrryyy…”

Marco turned his attention to the shelves. They were lined with books that were… OLD. Like, really old. He took out one of the beaten books. It had pictures of some calligraphy and he showed it to Mr. Chien.

“Um… Can you tell me what this says?”

Mr. Chien shook his head. “I can’t really read it. It’s like chicken scratch, really.”

Marco went back to the book and flipped through it. It seems to be a book on how to write Chinese characters. IN CHINESE. It was slightly redundant. It’s like a book teaching you to write English while written in English. He then came across one very nicely written complex character and he decided to question Mr. Chien on it.

“Um. How about this character? What does this say?”

He pointed to a character that appeared to have over 50 strokes in it. Mr. Chien shook his head. “I don’t know that one.”

“You… don’t?”

“No. I don’t. There are so many characters in the Chinese language, and there’s only about 5,000 that are commonly used. And of those 5,000 characters, you only need to know about 2,000-3,000 of them to be considered literate.”

Marco was aghast. “O-only 2,000? That’s not even half of the commonly used words, let alone your language! And that’s considered literate?”

Mr. Chien frowned slightly. He folded up the newspaper on his lap and placed it on the table. He stood up and walked to a small pedestal that held a large dictionary. He picked it up and walked back to Marco. “How many words do you suppose you know in this dictionary?”

Marco gave a small pathetic look. “Um. Probably only 1/3 or ¼th of it.” His voice lowered. “A-and that’s probably being generous.”

Mr. Chien smiled. “This dictionary probably doesn’t contain every word in your language, even though it is so big. And you are considered literate, yes?”

“Um. Yeah. B-but…”

Mr. Chien flipped open the dusty book. “Do you know what ‘dolmen’ means?”

“N-no…”

“How about 'gusset’?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“So, what about 'ecru’?”

“No clue.” Marco sighed. “Ok, fine. I get your point.”

Mr. Chien gave a victorious smile. He closed the dictionary and tapped Marco gently on the head with it. “Think before you speak.”

Harry walked in. “Um. I got my books, we should check out…”

It must have been a strange sight. There was a Chinese man hitting an utterly defeated looking guy on the head with a dictionary. Harry smiled. Marco was probably being an idiot again.