Here I use emasculation in the least gender connotated (I’m making up a word here as my vocabulary won’t allow me to find a more suitable alternative) way possible. It has nothing to do with being a man. It is all to do with having a large part of my autonomy taken away from me.
I use the very selective word ‘taken’ here. As though I was non-complicit in this process. That’s not entirely true. It could have been prevented. Learning absolute fluent Chinese would have been the solution. I had a go. It was a decent go, just not enough. And to be honest, even if I was better, a lot of my larger responsibilities would probably still have ended up being deferred to native speakers. Be they colleagues, bosses or my partner.
When I was at university, increasingly ‘adult’ responsibilities cropped up. Whether it was budgeting, paying bills, renting houses, managing time. Flying the nest and starting to comprehend all the roles that came with being a grown up was eye opening and I felt for the first time that I was starting to become one. Even despite occasionally bringing traffic cones home.
This all ended in China. Even after completing some high-tier adult responsibilities like applying for work permits and visas, all the adult life skills I was developing began to atrophy. I was in a country that played by different rules and, even when I was relatively conversational in Chinese, most important things went over my head.
Dealing with landlords, going to the bank, sorting out VISA renewals, hospital visits, paying bills and registering at the police station (an administrative procedure and not a criminal one I’ll add). All of these tasks are a pain when dealing with them in your first language, dealing with them in a second language is an ordeal.
I became a baby again in China. Regressed. Every problem I had became the problem of someone else. I had to hold hands and stare blankly whilst giving the odd nod and “Xie xie” as the locals who were responsible for me handled each situation on my behalf.
I tried. Kind of tried anyway. My Chinese was better than most non-Chinese I knew, and I still felt like a little boy when left alone to deal with people sat behind desks, closely losing patience as I asked them to repeat what they just said or answering yes to not-even-questions.
Saying “yes” was a particularly bad habit of mine. In Chinese, hearing the word ‘ma’ at the end of a sentence denotes a yes or no question. Every time a ‘ma’ was dropped, my brain kicked in to gear at the realisation that it was my turn to give an answer. In a Douglas Adams kind of way, I often didn’t understand the question. Instead of asking to repeat or avoiding the question, I mostly answered “yes” to these mystery questions and simply hoped for a good outcome.
I never understood how others were so cock-sure in their battles through language barriers. I saw others around me deal with these situations by sassily making it the problem of employees of whatever establishment to figure out how to communicate with the non-Chinese speaker. I usually felt a mix of awkwardness and shame that I didn’t understand. I felt that I should really have put myself in a position to negotiate these tricky transactions. Small voices would whisper in my mind, suggesting I should have stuck with the lessons longer instead of insisting to study myself.
The truth is that I actually dealt with very few of these issues myself. From the day I started working for my company, my hand was held by daddy most of the time. I was comfortably sitting in my bubble wrap while battles were fought in my honour. Representatives from my company would back and forth with various staff while I sat idly on a stool waiting to be handed a piece of paper or to sign something before going on my way.
I enjoyed the simplicity of life for a while. The nuts and bolts of adult life were mostly hidden from me. It became worse when I had a partner. Rebecca would take the initiative and solve most problems. The guilt started to come from my end. I would hover around her during important phone calls trying to look as though I had something to offer to the conversation. I didn’t.
There were successes at times. When Rebecca could not accompany me to the bank and I was on my own, I sometimes proved I could get through it and achieve a result. Albeit with many important details avoiding me which prove to be crucial during complex money transfers abroad. These lapses in understanding didn’t hurt my ego which was enjoying the rare pleasure of making itself understood in the complex language of finance.
Guilt was a side effect of this period. I tried to show my worth in other ways. Like cooking more dinners and cleaning more. That was my contribution.
The aftereffects of this period have been clear since my return to the UK. I felt the responsibility to step up and take this kind of work into my own hands. Turns out it’s pretty easy, but overcoming the urge to pass my phone to Rebecca whenever it rings (as was the norm when we were in China) took some willpower.
My skills of doing grown up things have atrophied, but I’m trying to make up the shortcomings now. At least the only language barrier I need to negotiate is the subtextual language of customer service instead of failing to understand Mandarin, though they can both feel like foreign languages sometimes.
