This story is about an amusing incident that happened in one of my classes when I was teaching English in Taiwan in 2002.
I do my best to avoid telling my students that I can speak Chinese. This is mainly because I want to keep them focused on learning English and having a total English environment in the classroom. While this helps the students learn English it also means that when they speak Chinese they are totally unaware that I can understand what they are saying.
Students often ask personal questions in class. Often they are very curious about various aspects of foreign culture and asking me is the best opportunity they might have to answer their questions. I always do my best to answer the student’s questions, but I am often amused by some of the student’s strange ideas or misconceptions about foreigners. I would like to relate one particularly amusing story.
A sixteen year old girl in one of my classes commented to me that I have a lot of hair on my arms. I replied in a joking manner that it is because I am like a monkey. She then asked me why all foreigners have a lot of hair on their arms. Again I jokingly replied that it is because we are all like monkeys. She then commented to one of her classmates in Chinese that it is because they have a lot of xingyu (a Chinese word meaning sexual desire).
Of course she was unaware that I could understand Chinese so she said it without the slightest bit of self-consciousness. When I heard her say this though I was quite shocked. She then asked one of her classmates in Chinese how to say xingyu in English. He then translated it for her as, “they like to have a lot of sex.” As I understood it the first time I wasn’t really shocked by the time I heard the translation although I rapidly moved on to another topic.