"Yes, darling! That is what I have been saying for the past two hours: Gerway lee ker chi…something something something."

"No, dearest, you have been saying ‘Gerway lee ker chi…something something something’"

"Yes! Exactly!"

"No, not exactly…maybe not exactly at all. You know ‘Ber Per Mer Fer’?"

"Of course," I said, stung by her disloyalty. "Everyone knows who that is…"

Later I lay in the darkness, staring at the ceiling and wondering just how deeply this heretofore undetected current of cultural enmity ran?

Two years later my 7 year old son came from Australia to live with me in Taiwan. He travelled with me as I moved about, spending more time than was healthy in hotel rooms watching cable cartoon shows. After a few months, I overheard him conversing in Chinese to his step sisters. I thought: "Uhuh, they are taking pity on him." Another few months passed and one day, as the three of us were driving somewhere, my friend Oliver told me: "Your son speaks very standard Chinese. How did he learn it?"

By now there was a great rift between me and Mandarin; my current theory was that you had to be born into the language. "I guess from his sisters," I said.

"No, Dad," he said from the back seat. "I learned it from TV."

"Hah, hah!" said I acknowledging his infantile attempt at humor.

Two years later I realized that I was the only member of our family who couldn’t speak Chinese; at dinner time everyone else would yap back and forth while I wielded my chopsticks in silence. I had to face reality: I needed to learn Chinese.

And so I resumed my quest. Where should I start? I just happened to take another flight with my son from Kaohsiung to Taipei and heard the same announcement. "Okay," I said to my son. "What did that mean?"

He looked up from his Game Boy. "What?"

"That announcement."

"I didn’t hear it, Dad."

"They said ‘Gerway lee ker chi…something something something.’ He looked at me blankly. Fortunately for our relationship at that moment the same announcement was broadcast again. "That! You heard that, right?"

"Yes, dad. They said ‘Gerway lee ker chi…something something something’ But that’s not what you said. You said ‘Gerway lee ker chi…something something something’"

His expression was so kind, even pitying, that at last my arrogance crumbled. Crestfallen, I asked: "But why? Why can’t anyone understand me?"

He thought that over. "It’s because you don’t have a Chinese sound, Dad. You’re trying to speak Chinese with your English sound. It doesn’t work. You have to get a Chinese sound. That’s how I did it. I got it from TV."

"You mean like ‘Gerway lee ker chi…something something something’?" I said trying for the right intonation.

"Yeah," he said, going back to his Game Boy. "But Chinese."

Now when he and I go somewhere he does the talking. Inevitably taxi drivers and shop assistants remark with delight on his extremely standard and fluent Chinese, and then they ask if the brooding fellow beside him can also speak Chinese. In his reply I imagine he is summing me up most succinctly: "Sadly, my honorable father is wise in many things but he is a complete moron as far as speaking this excellent language is concerned. He is deserving of pity. Don’t look at him for he will feel ashamed."

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