On 8/7/2021 at 5:31 PM, liuzhou said:When I resolve the mystery, I'll let you know. Maybe!
Solved. Back in May, an ex-student of mine who graduated in 2006 with her BA in English tucked under her belt, contacted me to ask for help. She is now a high school English teacher in Nanning, the provincial capital. She had been charged with getting her students to come up with a short play (more of a sketch) to explain something about Chinese culture to ignorant foreigners. Well, that wasn't how they put it, of course. They were running some kind of competition across Guangxi's high schools.
So, she asked if I would mind recording a short selfie-video (is there a word for that?), in English, on my experience of 螺蛳粉 (luó sī fěn), my city's iconic noodle dish. I consulted my lawyers, personal trainer, fortune teller, and life-style consultants and they couldn't come up with any justifiable objection. So, I complied.
Apparently, her class (and she) won the Nanning heat, then went on to get the bronze medal in the Guangxi-wide final. So, she called her family in Baise, her hometown, and asked them to send me the mangoes as a 'thank-you'.
She was able to see the delivery tracking information on-line and knew I had received them, so contacted me this morning to confess!
I let her off with a caution!
Her given name is 海燕 (hǎi yàn - pronounced like 'high yen' ), which means 'petrel', as in the seabird. Not a Chinese word I would have expected to learn, but she told me one day and it lodged in my brain. In fact, it's possibly the only non-edible bird name I know in Chinese. Of course, tomorrow, I'll find out that someone eats them!
