A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

Zhuang (who insists on going by just "Z", as she says Europeans struggle to pronounce her name properly) is a 23 year old Chinese girl whose parents send her to London to take English courses. They believe if Zhuang can master not only the English language but take in European culture & etiquette, she can come back to the village and help successfully grow the family business. Z is nervous yet excited to jump into her classes, but soon feels overwhelmed by it all. It doesn't help that her English instructor only seems to offer a modicum of help with Z's struggles. The teacher keeps noting that Z is mixing up her sentence structure in both speaking and written assignments, which confuses Z because, as she explains, in the Chinese language time and place are put before people while in English, the person is generally put before location. Also, Z humorously points out I'm backwards? Have you read this guy Shakespeare? His structure is all over the place! {I'm paraphrasing here}.While attending her classes, Z meets and falls in love with an Englishman. They pretty quickly decide to move in together, and it is after this new living arrangement that Z is surprised to learn her new lover is bisexual. She is not upset when she finds out, but over time starts to feel jealous, feeling that he'd probably wish to spend more time with his man than her. Not only is there a cultural divide between Z and her lover, but also quite the age gap -- him being about 20 years her senior.Z's lover suggests she take a European tour through surrounding countries, not only to see more of the world but for them to have a chance apart, maybe break her of her clinginess.This novel is inspired by Guo's own personal memories, when she once took a similar trip to the UK and journaled all her thoughts and experiences. She uses an interesting format to tell the story. It's sort of a blend of dictionary and journal. In her journal, Z explains that she writes down all the English words (and their definitions) that she doesn't understand and that are not being taught in her classes. There's a different word at the beginning of each chapter, and that word sort of foreshadows or hints at what is to come in that chapter. In the early chapters, Z has very broken English, so the writing is very jumbled up, which may turn off some readers but I urge you to stick with it. About forty pages in, the reader sees a significant improvement in Z's writing and by novel's end, you almost have to really look for the spelling or structure errors. I just thought this was a really cool way to really bring Z's story to life. There's a beauty and a poignancy to the way her English unfolds. Sometimes the simplicity of her sentences, the almost child-like way she expresses herself really hits right in the heart.I didn't really love the character of Z's lover. Sometimes he was nice to her and said pretty things to her, but as the story progressed, it seemed more and more like he was taking advantage of her naivety and the fact that his way of life was foreign to her.It just felt like he sometimes toyed with her, sometimes led her to believe there was a deeper bond between them than what actually was, and he just got more and more moody and intolerant of her. Kept wanting to say "Go get yourself something better, girl!" But people fall for who they fall for, whether anyone else likes it or not.Highly recommend trying this one if you are looking to branch into more culturally diverse reading. The writing is really stunning in its simplicity and much of what Z talks about lingered in my mind for quite awhile.Note To Sensitive Readers: There is some profanity here and there is some sexually explicit content, particularly when Z, in her curiosity about exploring London, comes upon a sex shop and a place to see peep shows on Charing Cross Rd.

If there was ever a story with an extreme cultural divide to navigate, it's this one. A young woman from the Chinese countryside is plopped down in London for a year on a study visa with little English ability or understanding of Western culture. Soon an Englishman she meets in a cinema seduces her and she moves in with him. He's not your typical British male (if there is such a thing) but an unpindownable bisexual eccentric and failed sculptor with leftist anti-establishment leanings and a Luddite distaste for the trappings of modern society. He's also twenty years older than her but handsome and fit enough for her to completely fall for him - her first significant relationship with a man. His general aloofness and conflicted attitude towards traditional monogamous relationships perplexes and tortures her, and she only makes things worse by overwhelming and smothering him with her love and attention. He avoids her and disappears for days at a time, leaving her abandoned and distraught in his flat. To cultivate her independence, he sends her off on a trip to the Continent alone for several months. Reluctant at first, she discovers she extracts much enjoyment out of her picaresque adventures (including spontaneous sex with strangers). These chapters become a turning point and centerpiece of this Bildungsroman novel, where naive rural girl emerges as a liberated female.The book's masterstroke is its captivating style. The author made the risky but astute decision not simply to write it in English but to exploit her inevitably imperfect control of the language as a vehicle for depicting her personal transformation. The early chapters employ a delightfully entertaining broken English fashioned out of Chinese grammar: "I standing in most longly and slowly queue with all aliens waiting for visa checking. I feel little criminal but I doing nothing wrong so far." Or, "Even when I see a beggar sleeping in a sleep bag I am scared. Eyes wide open in darkness staring at me like angry cat. What he doing here? I am taught everybody in West has social security and medical insurance, so, why he needs begging?" By the later chapters, her English has improved considerably, and her expanding vocabulary reveals the correspondence between linguistic and real-world knowledge, the almost claustrophobic relationship between language and awareness, the recognition - captured in the book's title - that words are as important as money, food and shelter for surviving in an unfamiliar society.The strength of the book, its effective fusing of linguistic texture and real-world experience, also constitutes its weakness. Just as the narrator is stuck in the narrow world of her little red Concise-Chinese English Dictionary (I carried around the very same dictionary in my early years in China) without which much around her would remain incomprehensible, she is also stuck in the fraught space between her marital expectations with this strange man and his enigmatic refusal to rescue her with a marriage visa and a happy ending. Many details of the narrative are too true to life, and I assume the novel is autobiographical. This is where Guo falters, as it's never clear where fiction and artistic objectivity fall off into personal grievance. We never learn the man's name; he is referred to throughout in the second person as "You." I'm not sure what Gao intended by this device, but to me it lends the book the quality of a long, desperate love letter, as if it had been written not for a readerly audience but him alone. The funny early chapters give way at the end to a humorless despair after the author's visa application is rejected and she is forced to return to China. Her evident failure to comprehend the significance of the previous year and achieve some kind of psychological closure leaves us hanging as well.

As a Brit in a relationship with a younger Chinese woman (although we live in China) I found this story both touching and amusing. It catches the peculiarities of Chinese speaking English well and explains why some of my students find the concept of articles hard to grasp. A superb first novel, although the 'hero' is a jerk!

A beautiful story about a young chinese woman who is sent to London to learn English so that she can return to China and help her parents run their shoe factory. To begin with, the grammar in the book starts off child like, much like a chinese would speak English had he just arrived in London, with only a dictionary to help him! She meets a man, he befriends her but she misunderstands him when he asks her to visit and she ends up living with him. It's a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant look at life in England from a Chinese perspective...it's also very true of any immigrant from a country where the first language is not English. I loved this book so much, I first read the inside cover at the library and came home and ordered two copies on amazon! One for a friend! This book is truly beautiful, so different from any book I've ever read. You will not be disappointed, a great book gift for someone you know really well...

Read through this book without a break and finished it within a couple of hours. It's so easy to read, simple language but it did not stop catching me deeply. I sort of see myself in there. I was falling in love with a English guy who is about 20 years older than me when I've just done my master. I also travelled around Europe on my own. The more places I've been to and the more people I've talked to, the more confidence I've gained from the experiences. But probably different from Z, I am more independent and I knew the attachment on him will ruin the relationship by the end of the day. It's is the difference (culture, mindset and even my chinglish) that draw us together. And it will be the closeness that tear us apart. Later I found a job and moved out of Cambridge. Now we still care about each other and still fancy each other. I completely understand Z and how she sees her English boyfriend as nothing but the whole entire world. She made him to pay her meal, she made him to do housework...This novel not only talk about the cross culture relationship, but something in general. What keeps love going on? And what would be the best distance for a couple etc...you'll find out more in this one.

Having being set this book for University i had reservations, namely about the title and the blurb of the book. After reading the first few pages i saw this novel is being set as a bildungsroman- a coming of age novel. I decided to give this book 4 stars for its originality on broadening the horizon of a foreigner coming to the UK and trying to learn the English Language. I particularly enjoyed the Mandarin translations littered throughout the book which gave the novel an authentic feel of a diary. The surprising twist of the detailed sex scenes were unexpected but somehow gave this book a charm, a must read for anyone trying to broaden their knowledge of World Literature

This was one of my favourite books last year & I also purchased it for two different friends who also thought it was fab. It is written from the perspective of a Chinese girl who comes to England & is trying to learn to speak the language. It is easy to read, witty & very interesting to see the misunderstandings that happen. Read it...