During my oral English lessons, I occasionally use the audio tapes provided with the textbook. In last week’s case, the students were to read along in their books and identify the eight differences between the audio conversation and the transcript.
The transcript was printed inside a yellow box, as a way of spicing up the page, I suppose. So, in order to draw the class’s attention to the correct location on the page, I would say “q?ng zh?o huáng duì huà,” which means (in my butchered version of Chinese) “please find the yellow conversation.” I thought that this was relatively straightforward, but without fail it would immediately reduce the class to hysterics.
Finally, on the ninth and last time I taught this class, I asked my students why they thought it was so funny. Immediately, the students reverted to the all-too-familiar reddened faces and downcast eyes — certainly better than the Chinese Blank Stare Of Death (a.k.a. CBSOD), but only marginally so: I knew they knew and understood my question, but the debilitating and often self-destructive Chinese shyness had kicked in.
Knowing what to do, I approached the most outgoing student during the break, and after only a little pressure, he relented and informed me of my faux pas. As it turns out, describing something as “yellow” implies that it is of a sexual nature; thus, porno flicks are called “yellow movies,” smut literature “yellow stories,” and so on.
So, unknowingly, I had been asking my class to “find the dirty conversation.” I would have laughed too, and in the end I did. However, now I know to use extreme caution when describing anything — even a ripe banana (well, especially a ripe banana) — as yellow.
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