Talking with Tennis

One thing that goes without mentioning about my time in China,
(evidently it doesn't), is that I do not speak the language at all.
So far we have all had about 16-20 hours of language class a week and
are functionally bilingual when talking about the price of something,
food we like/dislike, or the weather in Chengdu. The cool thing about
the latter is that you only need to know how to say two words: hot &
rainy. The good news about my language deficiency, besides having
zero expectations and thus constantly impressing myself, is that I
have had to find other ways to 'communicate' with the Chinese people
around me. Charades have been a total disaster (see "Chinamerican
Differences 10101" article-5), but I have managed to find a common
language in tennis. I try to play everyday but only have time about
every other day. I just walk up to a court with a racket and all
language barriers fall almost instantly. I don't need to say, "I'd
like to play," "Nice shot," or even "40-love." We all understand
already that everyone on the court would like to play because we are
there in 90-degree heat playing with flat balls that have almost lost
all of their fuzz from so many previous days of people wanting to
play. There is no need to say "nice shot," because everybody already
knows what's nice… and also what's bad. If they can't tell, they need
only listen to the passersby who stare into the court to watch the
"laowai" (foreigner) play. For the first time, I think my egocentrism
is actually justified in assuming that people are watching me and not
just watching tennis. Lastly, calling out a score of any kind is
totally unnecessary because we often play without keeping track of the
score. If a game is actually being played, there might be a score,
but there probably won't be any teams; whoever else wants to play
simply rotates in and takes over where the other left off. The
philosopher inside me is reminded of Theseus ship and laughs about the
possibility that my Chinese tennis mates might be thinking the exact
same thing without me even talking about it… or maybe not. I guess
there are some limits to the language of tennis. I'll need to keep
studying Chinese then.