OUR FAVORITE CHINESE

Dear Spike:

We've long since lost track of how many words you know in Mandarin. You're far from fluent, but you can identify all the most important people, places and things out there; you can answer simple questions and you can ask — politely — for the things you want.

Your mother is picking things up quickly also. She's gonna have a pretty gnarly English accent, of course, but she's got a lot of words under her belt.

And then there is me. I've always been a little bit tone-deaf, and Mandarin is a tonal language. I'm lousy but I'm trying.

So it was a real confidence booster today when you and I went to our favorite Chinese restaurant and — working together — successfully completed our order in Mandarin. (I think Mandy, who was waiting the tables this afternoon, was being quite forgiving, but I'm still tacking this one up in the wins column.)

Feeling rather good about ourselves, we decided to do lunch in Mandarin.

We had soup. Hē tāng.

And drank water. Hē shuǐ.

And had vegetables. Chī shūcài.

With rice! Fàn!

While we ate, you schooled me on all the animals on our Chinese Zodiac place mats, and Mandy came by every few minutes to fill our water, praise your Mandarin and correct my pronunciations.

Toward the end of our lunch — just like every meal we eat, no matter the language — I noticed that you really hadn't eaten much off your plate.

"Chī Fàn!" I pleaded. "Chī Fàn! Eat Rice!"

Finally stuffed, you turned to me and said:

"Daddy, I'm eating so much rice, I'm going to get Chī funny."

Really? Chinglish puns?

Zhēn bàng!

Love,
dad