There was laughter in the chilly air of late autumn. A group of children rushed down the street, giggling in excitement, so fast that an old lady yelped in shock when the small crowd flashed passed her. The kids were chasing each other, yelling and joking loudly in fluent Cantonese. In this crowd of Cantonese kids, there was one who remained a strange tongue, a different language that usually represents sincerity and rigidity in the minds of the children, a language that they rarely used.

Mandarin.

Among all my friends who were born to speak perfect Cantonese, I spoke Mandarin.

My family came from the north where no one had any idea of Cantonese. Though I lived in Canton, I could only speak Mandarin since it was the tongue of my family. My parents never took my inability to speak Cantonese as a problem. “Go to school,” they promised, “and you will find yourself as fluent in the dialect as any other Cantonese kid. Friends will be the best teachers.”

I was convinced. But the reality did not seem to develop on the track of our anticipation. My schoolmates soon realized that it was exceptionally difficult for me to communicate in Cantonese. I could partly comprehend dialogs when highly concentrating, but when I tried to talk, the syllables just got stuck on my tongue. To express my point, I found myself mumbling in strange languages mixed with Mandarin, Cantonese, English (“yes,” “okay” and “sorry”) and lengthy meaningless fillers; I waved, shook my head, blinked my eyes, stamped in eagerness, making gestures so weird that others might think it was sign language that I was learning. Eventually, in despair and embarrassment, I switched back to Mandarin, not sure how I should feel when I saw the sign of relief on my friends’ faces.

To my surprise, however, my kind, clever friends soon figured out a way to adapt my linguistic barrier.

It seemed to be a silent, tacit cooperation, formed in a way so natural and smooth that I did not even realize it. I found myself with surprising ease to communicate with my schoolmates, given that my Cantonese did not improve in such efficiency. I did not change, they did.

An invisible Mandarin bubble had shaped around me spontaneously. People still talked in Cantonese daily, played around yelling Cantonese phrases, but to me, all of them automatically shifted into the language that I was familiar with.

Such kind people.

I felt embraced; I felt included. All of a sudden this strange, puzzling world unfolded itself before my eyes, showing me all the warmth, light, young eyes glimmering with joy. Alien syllables turned into verses, mystery codes into jokes. All insurmountable gates of language broke down into pieces, and towards the end of the ruins, greeted my new friends. Those were the best days, days without worries, days when I truly thought that I could become one of them.

I was soon proven wrong.

It was a golden afternoon, sunlight tender, clouds pure and high. Children crowded in front of the school gate discussing where to play. But soon the debate went further into aggressive arguing, partly fueled by the coarsely spat words that I did not hear often.

“Diuleiah! What’s the fun in that, coward!”
“I just don’t want to piss my mom off again okay? You humggarcan!”
“Say that again and I’ll—”
“Hey hey…” I took a step forward and tried, in Mandarin, of course, “why don’t we—”
Nobody bothered to notice me.

“Wait, listen, maybe we can…” I tried once more, this time directly talking to a girl beside me.

She glared at me, seemingly still in bad mood from the dispute, impatience written on her face. “Can’t you just—” she spat out three words before realizing her mistake of speaking Cantonese to me. Frowning in expanding annoyance, she sighed and shifted to Mandarin to explain.

For a moment I could do nothing but gape, wounded, not by her words but the blade in her tone. My mouth half opened but no word came out, and I knew I looked just as dull and sluggish as she thought I should be. The way she spoke, slow, clear but deeply disgruntled, was like she was spitting out bloody bullets one by one. She pronounced the Mandarin syllables as if she was facing an irritatingly curious toddler and was forced to answer all her silly questions. I hated that look on her face, a mixture of disdain, annoyance and sympathy. I hated it.
The quarrel was still going on, and there was a sudden realization that only a Cantonese tongue could be the qualification to participate. I blankly stared at the once-familiar face, tremor climbing up my spine. I started to understand that this wasn’t just about joining the quarrel: this was about EVERYTHING.

I never had a chance.

I stepped out of the circle, looking at them from several meters away without being noticed at all. I was never treated like this before. This is the first time I ever felt so deeply isolated and somehow, betrayed.

I let out a short, dry laugh, and walked away.

It was late autumn; winds and leaves whirred around me. The leaves looked nearly transparent in the warm orange light beam from sunset, but I ruthlessly crushed them. They whined beneath my feet but I did not bother to listen. I did not speak their language, after all.

It is getting chilly. I told myself.

I began to learn Cantonese, more eager than ever. I watched local channels, listened to Cantonese speeches, chatted with the old lady in my neighborhood, hoping that her motherly patience would tolerate my clumsiness. Sometimes my parents told me not to push myself so hard. But I could not stop, not when numerous situations similar to that painful afternoon were reminding me of the insurmountable gap between me and my friends, not when I still pounded on the solid walls of the language bubble, wandering at the edge of the crowd, not when I screamed but was never heard, stretched my hands out but could reach no one. I could not stop, not until the day I broke the isolation.

The moment I joined the conversation in Cantonese, I felt all the eyes of the circle focused on me. My timid, shy voice trembled under the gaze, and soon got lost in the wintry air.

I looked around, pretending to be confident and natural, “Guys?”

They all smiled; some giggled a bit. One of them put a hand on my shoulder, the touch tender and warm. I shivered.

“That was…” they thought for a while, searching for the right word. I noticed them using Mandarin again; my heart sank. “That was cute.” They eventually agreed, “Weird, but indeed a very cute try, ha-ha…”

I laughed with them, loudly enough to hide my embarrassment. For a moment I could just let my tears run and cry out everything—months of frustration, hardships of correcting my tongue and most of all, the afflicting sense of failure… I laughed so hard that I coughed, bending down in suffocation. Bitterness stuck at my throat; I gritted my teeth and swallowed it along with my tears.

“Wait… hey, are you alright?” Hands gently patted me on my back. I looked up, the friendly and familiar faces seemed so unreachable, but the warmth so real.

I breathed. Cold air cut through my lungs.

“You know you don’t have to try so hard.” They said, still grinning, “We are better in Mandarin than you are in Cantonese. So why bother? There is no difference for us anyway.”

No, there is a difference. A huge difference. You could never talk to a person in Mandarin in the way you teased in Cantonese, never truly relaxed, never fully opening. Mandarin, as an external tongue taught in schools, was never, and never would be their mother tongue. The jokes they knew would never sound funny in Mandarin, the idioms they used would never be so lively in another language. The dialect represented far more than a way to communicate. It was a passport, a key, a cultural identity card. My friends had tried to show kindness to a kid from the distant north. But no, treating a guest in good manner did not mean embracing her into the host family, no.
However, should the hosts be to blame for that?

Is it really their fault? Is it really their hostility that shut me out?

The questions screamed in my brain.

I looked into their eyes, finding nothing but real friendliness and concern. The eyes made me faintly reminiscent of the early days of our friendship, when we walked home together, chatting in mandarin along the way. I remembered the secret narrow path they showed me, aged red walls decorated with shades of trees. When we jumped off the stairs we always rushed to see who ran the fastest; laughter wrapped in mild sunlight and breeze.

I wept.

The kindness, the abominable kindness. It melted my resentment so quietly and quickly that I could not even say a word in complaint. How could I still look at them with anger when they reminded me again and again how tender and friendly they were; how could I blame them for the isolation, when they already tried so hard to let me in.
I just had to accept that I was different. Born in the frozen land in the north, I did not belong to the warm raindrops on delicate flowers or the gentle subtropical breeze in Canton. I just did not. A person like me could never completely become one of them. And now I had to accept facts that I could not change.

“Never pretend to be someone else.” As the northern saying goes. After all the tears, despair, anger and frustration, it is time for me to stop torturing myself and return the friendliness of my Cantonese friends, as myself, a northerner who speaks awkward Cantonese, but still shares all the great times with her local friends.

It is time to stop struggling, and smile back at the isolation.

The kindest isolation. I know.