A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers by Xiaolu Guo - News - Evening Standard
       

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

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Catherine Shoard

22 February 2008

"I am alien, like Hollywood film Alien, I live in another planet, with funnylooking and strange language. I standing in most longly and slowly queue with all aliens waiting for visa checking." If you're not ripping your own eyes out already, chances are you might rather take to this comedy about a small-town Chinese girl negotiating the pitfalls of British life, and bridging the language gap with her bisexual vegetarian boyfriend from Hackney.

The avalanche of malapropisms and Manuel-ing does grate, but it's lovely to learn that the Chinese for daffodils is "fairy maidens from the water".

Synopsis from Foyles.co.uk

Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself) arrives in London to spend a year learning English. Struggling to find her way in the city, and through the puzzles of tense, verb and adverb; she falls for an older Englishman and begins to realise that the landscape of love is an even trickier terrain.

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