NanDa or Bust

I’ve always had the gift of the gab—able to talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere, as long as it was in English.

Before arriving in China, I hadn’t seriously considered the possibility of a language barrier. I assumed everyone spoke at least a little English and that I, brimming with confidence, could talk my way around the world—until China defeated me.

In Malaysia, I worked at a zoo placement arranged by an English charity. My supervisor spoke English, taxi drivers could hold their own, and the glossy malls were a breeze. I even befriended Awang the orangutan, whose soulful brown eyes seemed to say, “Go on—just keep talking to me using that accent!”

The first time language nearly got me killed was with Grandma Tiger. I’d accepted an invitation to step into her cage, accompanied by the zoo’s Big Cat Keeper, whose English turned out to be minimal at best. Grandma Tiger gave us both a long, appraising look, licked her lips, and her eyes began to glitter ominously. Despite near-crippling arthritis, she lunged—fast enough to send my past life flashing before my eyes. Her breath was so close—I felt my hair move!

That’s when the Keeper, who’d insisted he couldn’t speak English, suddenly found the words: “Run! Run!”

And run I did. If he hadn’t acted quickly, there’d have been little left of Grandma Tiger’s English visitor. Turns out, when a tiger’s about to eat your companion, the right words tend to come.

Later, in Costa Rica, I volunteered at a sloth rescue centre. I thought about learning Spanish, but an American friend thought it was a waste of energy:

“What for? They all speak English. Well—they did at the Marriott I stayed in.”

And it sounded reasonable. I’m not naturally gifted with languages. Despite living among Spanish-speaking staff, I left Costa Rica with vocabulary that reached the dizzy heights of “Buenos días” and “Adiós.” Fortunately, fluency didn’t seem necessary for bonding with sloths.

So when I set off for Nanchang, a large inland city in China, I didn’t give language a second thought. I couldn’t imagine that I’d be plunging into a world where no one could speak English—and worse, no one wanted to. My work contract, rather optimistically, stated I was “required to speak English.” Thank goodness—it was the only language I had.

Sensing I might need a little help, my sister bought me a handheld translator from a TV shopping channel. Back in 2008, these weren’t sleek apps—they were clunky plastic bricks with scroll wheels designed for toddlers. A child could’ve spun it like a charm; my 55-year-old fingers just poked, cursed, and got nowhere. Using it was far worse than simply learning Chinese. The thing was permanently stuck on Ni Hao, which, while friendly, won’t get you far when you’re lost, hungry, or in urgent need of a toilet. I quickly discovered I wasn’t just linguistically challenged—I was a fully certified Luddite. After several futile hours, I gave up and instead began hoping to find a friend with deft fingers and a technical mind one day.

I assumed Chinese taxi drivers would be like Malaysian ones—fluent in charming, broken English. They weren’t. They could barely speak to each other thanks to the dizzying number of dialects.

In the shops, there was no coffee, confectionery, cakes, or biscuits. In Nanchang, I couldn’t even buy an egg. Not a single shopkeeper spoke English. So I knew I needed to make a friend. Fast.

There were twelve foreign teachers on campus. Half were native English speakers (from the United States, Ireland, and Australia); the rest were from Asia or Europe and freely admitted that their English was “not great.” Lily, a Filipino who’d lived longest in Nanchang, and Sasha, a shy Ukrainian, decided I was worth adopting.

Sasha’s English was shaky; he declared UK English unnecessarily complicated. Although employed as an English teacher, Lily couldn’t follow English-language films without subtitles. As for my crisp British accent? It bamboozled everyone. My students—expecting Hollywood-style drawls—seriously considered reporting me to the university because I “clearly didn’t speak English.”

In those days, phones were only phones! Mine had neither a camera nor internet, and I rarely carried it with me since most locals spoke only Chinese. Even if it rang, I wouldn’t have understood a thing. So I lived on campus, phone-less, clutching my jammed translator like a talisman… even if it only said ‘Hello’.

One weekend, Lily proposed a shopping trip to the city, about 30 minutes away by bus. “Shopping” meant Walmart, which had recently opened. It would be another three months before a McDonald's or KFC appeared, so for us, Walmart was an expat’s paradise. In Nanchang, the biggest clothing sizes seemed to be at most 32aaa—but I was a 36c—the sheer joy of finding that Walmart stocked T-shirts that actually fitted was enough to bring tears.

But the real Western treasure: Nescafé instant coffee, Lipton tea, and UHT milk! The tantalising promise of deodorant took at least another month or so to materialise.

I was utterly dependent on Lily and Sasha. My nervous attempts at Chinese were delivered in perfect British diction—completely incomprehensible. I began to develop a deep, sweaty fear of leaving campus.

That weekend—a Chinese holiday—we set off, clutching our money and ready to buy whatever Walmart could offer. I’d learned to elbow my way onto a bus with the best of them, then cling to Sasha, taller and steadier, as the bus lurched along like a drunk dinosaur. Despite being short, I could just about see over the heads of the tiny passengers to vaguely guess our location. Vaguely.

But this time, Lily, our fearless leader, decided we’d take a different bus—number 708—to some mysterious part of Nanchang, for reasons I’ve long since forgotten. As we waited excitedly at the local stop, Sasha and I launched into one of our routine arguments. Our spats worked wonders on his English; it was like a linguistic miracle. Lily ignored us entirely, mentally shopping in silence. She loved shopping more than anything else in the world.

Much later, after a satisfyingly large lunch, we tried to make our way home. But the holiday bus schedules had gone rogue. Routes were unrecognisable. Buses were overflowing. The numbers were all wrong. After much shuffling between stops, we finally boarded a mystery bus. It was packed to bursting. When three seats eventually became free, Lily took the one up front, Sasha squeezed into a seat at the back, and I landed in the middle, separated from both of them.

Undeterred by the horrified stares of my fellow passengers, I rose now and then to peer over the sea of heads, searching for Lily’s familiar hairdo. I didn’t bother looking for Sasha—we were still mid-argument, and besides, the aisle was so jam-packed that even if I’d stood on a chair, I’d never have found him.

The journey dragged. Everything outside the window looked unfamiliar. I might have been on the moon.

Eventually, the woman I thought was Lily stood to leave. I half-rose from my hard plastic seat, ready to fight my way to the exit. Then I froze. Horror of horrors—it wasn’t Lily. Just another petite woman, with similar hair and a familiar outfit—but not Lily. I couldn’t believe it! When had Lily and her doppelganger changed places? Was it the last bus stop or an innumerable number of stops before?

Panic thundered through me. I craned my neck for Sasha. Nothing. They’d both gotten off and somehow left me behind.

I was alone on a mysterious bus, lost in a sprawling city, unable to speak the language, armed only with a broken translator, and feeling a rising sense of panic. For the first time, I genuinely regretted not carrying a phone, although I had no idea whether Sasha or Lily had one with them.

I felt like a doomed character in a terrifying horror movie.

The crowded bus, packed with locals, was visibly uneasy about the lone foreigner among them—the middle-aged blonde woman with Western makeup and flaming red lipstick. I stood out against a sea of dark-haired heads and looked like an alien from a low-budget sci-fi show.

I stood up gingerly, elbowed my way toward the door, and rang the bell, ignoring the stunned faces around me. At the stop, I stepped off and waited, convinced that Lily and Sasha would appear on the next bus, frantic and apologetic.

They didn’t.

Three buses passed. Still nothing. I stood bravely by the roadside—pale beneath my foundation, blatantly foreign, so otherworldly that passersby gave me a wide berth. My bladder throbbed ominously. My stomach churned. I couldn’t ask for help, I couldn’t even read a street sign, and I didn’t know where I was. Then—oh joy! Like a vision from the heavens, my bus—the 205—finally appeared.

I leapt forward, heart pounding, convinced I'd finally found them. A surge of determination gripped me. Confidence—something I was sure had permanently deserted my body—returned just long enough for me to raise my hand and wave the bus down.

“NanDa!” I shouted—the one word I could pronounce with any conviction. The driver grunted and extended a hand for a one-yuan coin.

I climbed aboard, frantically scanning for Lily and Sasha, certain they’d be waiting anxiously. They weren’t.

A teenage boy caught my crushed expression. “NanDa?” he asked gently. I nodded. He nodded back. I sat down stiffly in front of him, trying to breathe a little easier and control the rising, tearful emotions that had gripped me.

When the time came, he tapped my shoulder and we disembarked together. We walked in silence through the darkening campus for thirty minutes or so, bonded by mutual incomprehension.

Hours later, stiff with being permanently glued to my condo window, I finally spotted them—Sasha and Lily, storming across campus mid-argument. I bolted downstairs.

“Where the hell have you been?” Sasha snapped, full of righteous indignation, like an angry parent.

Lily’s face was thunderous. “Thank God you had that translator,” she muttered. “We might never have seen you again if you’d got lost.” She turned her back on me and got into the lift. Sasha followed, still fuming.

“Get in, for God’s sake! We’re not spending all night wandering the campus looking for you!”

I stepped meekly into the lift, simmering with rage and disbelief. It didn’t seem like the right moment to scream, “YOU LEFT ME ON A BUS.” The words vibrated in my skull, but I bit my tongue. Three glowering faces rode the lift upwards in complete silence.

I stayed in Nanchang for eight years. Despite hiring a tutor and trying to practise regularly, my Chinese remained catastrophically useless. Luckily, Sasha and Lily, who had now acquired perfect English accents, stuck with me, and I shamelessly used them as my personal translators. I never let them forget the day they left me on that bus—one exiting at the front, and the other at the back, both assuming the other would grab me.

We still howled with laughter whenever they recalled standing frozen, staring at each other in horror, as the mystery bus—and their foreign friend—vanished into the depths of Nanchang.