Every Year Has Fish

As reassuring as the idea that we will never run out of fish may be, this phrase has been dogging me for weeks. It was on an advertisement for cooking oil and I can't for the life of me connect the annual possession of marine life to pressed canola. Now, I've often peppered my emails with my favorite chinglish phrases, but this one is different. This one was in Chinese.

The trouble with reading Chinese is you don't know what you're going to read until you've read it. Oh, I remember with what joy I slowly sounded out the words on the sign near my apartment. What secrets would it reveal? What product or service had I been missing out on all these years? "Permit parking, 7-9:00," it read. "Additional parking on Nanyaun Street." Oh. Actually that sign was pretty disappointing.

It turns out most things written in Chinese are the same as things written in English. "Two Birds appliance factory: the best in Jiangsu," said a billboard. "Safety first" was all I gleaned from the sign on the construction site.

Of course Every Year Has Fish makes perfect sense to the other billion people here. But this is a language that is steeped in metaphor and imagery. Although my sampling of Chinese food has widened to dishes like sour cabbage fish and Wuxi-style ribs, I'm still trumped by dishes like "Cross the Bridge Rice Noodles" and "Monk Jumps over the Wall." What do you do when, after 15 minutes of poring over a menu, you come up with "the Old Scholar Reads Quickly?" The same thing I did when I couldn't read a lick of Chinese: just eat the thing.