No place like a 'meet-up' to practice Chinese

Our organizer Evelyn asked us to stand up and introduce ourselves. I stammered: "Dajia hao! Wo jiao... (Hi everyone! My name is...)" As I had been taught, I tried to stress the fourth tone of jiao as if scolding a naughty puppy.

"Time to change partners," Evelyn announced gleefully after we had all introduced ourselves. This meet-up resembled blitz chess or 4-minute dating with an Asian flair. Evelyn was a purist and spoke only in Mandarin.

My next partner was Keith. His eyes had the keen look of Chow Yun-fat. Keith radiated Mandarin, and he soon tired of tutoring me. He had come to learn Chinese, not to teach it. Luckily for Keith, we soon switched partners. He was happier with a Chinese American from California.

Now I was facing one of the three Davids. This Da Wei was fortunate to be in a government-funded language program. He diligently pulled out two textbooks and a dictionary. We exchanged some awkward sentences about how long we had studied Mandarin and which Chinese cities we had visited. We looked up some Chinese words together. "Interesting", we discovered, is you yisi - to have meaning.

"Now what's the word for panda?" David asked, scratching his head. "Something with cat... yes, xiongmao (bear cat)... oh, and I forgot the word for forget." He carefully consulted his dictionary. "It's wang, fourth tone!" he announced triumphantly.

When David asked me what my favorite food was, I blurted out xia (shrimp) because I had just learned it in Mandarin class. Actually, I don't care for shrimp.

Strictly speaking, we had been using more English than Mandarin. Yet at the end of the meet-up, I could claim I had achieved its goal of making three new friends. I am game for the next session.