China Night

So…this story is going to take lots of setup, and to those that don’t know Chinese, it will be more or less incomprehensible. I’ll try to translate, but the punchline has no English equivalent. On the plus side, I think it has a good ending.

As part of our partnership-thing with the Vanderbilt Chinese Program, Mrs. Whittaker and the Chinese teachers at Vandy arranged China Night, where groups of students (or in the case of the high schoolers, whole classes) presented skits.

The best moment in the whole night was during one dialogue between a black guy (henceforth known as B) and an Asian jock type (A) who was holding a basketball. At some point (I couldn’t understand all of it), the following exchange was heard:

A: 我喜欢打球。 (I like to play ball)
B: 我也喜欢打球。 (I also like to play ball)
A: 我们打球吧。 (Let’s play ball)

So the Asian starts dribbling and “shoots.” The black guy smacks the ball down and in the process, knocks the Asian guy over and says…

B: 怎么样，fo’!

Also, as I was walking back to my car, there’s some sort of financial firm across the street with an LED display that shows current stock prices. Unfortunately, when we looked at it, everything read 0.00.

So either their internet connection is down, or the stock market just fell through the floor. Hopefully it’s the former.