A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, September 2007
Reviewed by Allycen Quan
There is more to learning the English language than knowing what all the words mean; likewise, just understanding the words your lover uses doesn't mean you will understand him. This is the painful (and funny, and romantic, and quirky) lesson learned by Zhuang Xiao Qiao, the main character of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo. Zhuang (or Z, as she is called because most British people can't pronounce her name) leaves her native China to study English for a year. On her own, homesick, and overcome by culture shock, Z meets a hippie drifter twenty years her senior and falls in love. She asks if she can see his home and he says "be my guest;" she takes him literally and moves in. From there she begins to realize that love means something different in England than it does in China.
Written in broken English that becomes increasingly more correct as Z learns, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is a charming and intelligent story about a girl who has to come of age in a world fundamentally different than the one in which she grew up.