Chinese Vocab for the Shower

Sometimes it's a bit funny the situations that you never thought you'd get into while having to speak a foreign language. You don't usually learn in class how to yell at a restaurant manager when you wait for 40 minutes for your food before someone finally tells you they've run out of what you ordered. Your Chinese teacher won't teach you the necessary vocabulary to set right an uncivilized person who cuts in front of a line, spits at your feet, or pushes onto the crowded subway while you're trying to alight. Similarly, looking back on a situation that I had last week, it makes the memory even more hilarious that it was Chinese rather than my native language that spewed out of my mouth.

I've found a new hobby that I've luckily been able to spread to a few friends of mine as well: Squash. It took me 20 years of living before I'd even heard of squash, when a cute boy I met on a Spring Break trip to Acapulco played it at his college. The sport became nothing but an inside joke between my travel companions (who had both taken interest instead in athletes of the rather more manly sport of ice hockey), and we laughed it off. As it turns out, squash is actually one of the more fun sports I've ever played, and I wish I'd let it spark my interest a bit more back then.

Last week, three friends and I went to a local squash court at a hotel here, where we'd played a few times before. I like the place. The prices are decent, the courts are nice, the facilities are good, and it's simple to make a reservation. Each person pays 40 RMB for an hour of play, which is about US$7. Squash: it's fun, social, and amazing exercise. The only problem is, it's played in a tiny enclosed court with barely any ventilation, and I live in a very tropical climate. Thus, by the end of an hour, the walls themselves are sweating, let alone your own exhausted body. Luckily, the locker rooms have some amazing showers, so we always enjoyed a quick rinse before heading off for a celebratory pint.

On this particular day, however, my friend had gotten out of the shower before me, when I heard some sort of struggled argument between her and a gym worker. (She is a beginner in Chinese; the worker spoke very broken English.) I could tell something was wrong, so naked in my shower with the water still running, I stuck my head out of the curtain and asked the woman in Chinese what the problem was. She angrily exclaimed that we hadn't paid for the showers, and that we each had to pay a whopping 40 RMB for them.

Side note: when I say we were yelling at each other, in American terms I do mean it. But in China, it wasn't really an angry conversation, as those of you who have visited or lived here know that sometimes even conversations that aren't heated occur at a loud volume.

"40 RMB for a shower!" I exclaimed from my shower cubicle in Mandarin. "No way! No one told us you have to pay for showers! Every time we come here we take showers and no one has ever told us this."
"You must pay! It's our policy!" She retorted. "You owe an extra 160 RMB!" (Keep in mind we'd paid that amount for the entire hour of play.)

Thus, the woman and I shouted at each other in this way for about 5 minutes before both of us looked down and realized something: we would never come to a conclusion while I had soapy hair, water gushing on my back, and my nudity was separated from the room by nothing but a thin sheet of plastic. Thus, she blushed after realizing the awkward position she'd put me in and looked at the tile floor and muttered, "Let's talk about this after..." I laughed and pulled my head back inside the curtain.

Luckily, I eventually persuaded them to allow us that day's showers for free, with a promise that we wouldn't take them after future squash games.

So, to all you textbook authors, I recommend you write a chapter for your next Chinese book called Vocabulary for Arguing About Showers While You're Naked in the Shower.