Don't Hassle Me I'm Local

One of the guys on my trip to North Korea put together a pretty great four minute montage of our time there (and a little bit of our time in China). Here's the link:

http://vimeo.com/53760734

While getting dinner today after class I was waiting for someone from the drink station to come serve me. The way the cafeteria is set up is kind of like the shape of The Pentagon, except there's nothing in the middle except plastic tables and chairs where people can eat. Along the walls stations that have different types of food you can choose from and, in one section, a station where you can buy drinks. Since I usually get to the cafeteria after class at around 5, they're still setting up and getting ready for the dinner rush. This means sometimes waiting to get served. Since no one was at the drink stand at the time, I casually waited, listening to music. I wasn't in any rush.

After about a minute of standing there, an employee waddled through the door to get my order. He was a little squat Chinese man of, if I had to guess, around 35 or 40. He had a big smile on his face and seemed to be generally in good spirits. I usually order water or juice with dinner, but tonight I decided to go with a coke. When I ordered it, he gave me an even bigger smile and said 'hallelujah.' I chuckled and responded back to him with an emphatic 'hallelujah.' To which he immediately responded to again with "hallelujah."

Now I was concerned. I wondered if this was some subtle attempt to make a socio-religious statement about the Western capitalist and religious proselytization of China. However, he only continued to beam at me with that big, happy, expecting smile. But I was on guard, who knew what web of lies and deceit I could be falling prey to. Yet, at the same time, I also wanted to probe deeper into this mystery labyrinth of 'hallelujahs.' So I responded back, again, with 'hallelujah.' He seemed even more delighted by my response and responded back to my response again with a response of 'hallelujah.'

This started a bizarre and somewhat comical exchange of hallelujahs. Not wanting to lose face or embarrass my country, I was determined not to be the first to stop saying hallelujah. Now, I lost count of hallelujahs but if I had to guess what our conversation sounded like, I would surmise it looked something like:

him: "hallelujah!"
me: "hallelujah!"
him: "hallelujah!"
me: "hallelujah..."
him: "hallelujah!"
me:  "... hallelujah"
him: "hallelujah!"
me: "hallelujah!"
him: "hallelujah!"
me: "hallelujah!"
him: "hallelujah!"
me: "hallelujah!"
him: "hallelujah!"

Yet as we continued to communicate with each other through hallelujahs, different thoughts began wandering through my mind. I began to wonder if there really was a deeper meaning to our hallelujahs, one that I just wasn't grasping. 

In English there's a type of constrained writing that uses only one word to make a grammatically valid sentence. One of the most popular sentences looks like so: 

Bufallo buffalo Buffalo bufallo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. 

What wikipedia tells us is that when synonyms are used this can be read as : 

Buffalo-origin bison that other Buffalo bison intimidate, themselves bully Buffalo bison.

Now this may seem like an impressive use of English linguistics, however it pales in comparison to a Chinese poem by 20th century poet Yuen Ren Chao that does the same thing with Chinese linguistics. Written in Chinese, the poem looks like this：

石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。氏時時適市視獅。十時，適十獅適市。是時，適施氏適市。氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。食時，始識是十獅屍，實十石獅屍。試釋是事。

However, when written in pinyin (the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script) the poem looks like this:

Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.Shì shì shì shì.

Yes, that is an actual poem. Here is the English translation:

« Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »

In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.He often went to the market to look for lions.At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.Try to explain this matter.

(Sorry about the formatting, but I'm too lazy to change it)

Now obviously, Chinese has a tonal element to it so it has a big advantage. But the poem, in my opinion, is nevertheless quite an impressive feat.

So why do I bring this up? Well in the midst of the dialogue between the drink server and myself, I couldn't help but wonder if there was some cryptic message he was trying to tell me akin to the stylings of Yuen Ren Chao, maybe some unknown secret that couldn't be articulated in words beyond 'hallelujah' lest it fade away back into the nothingness from which it came like the sound of a bell's dying toll.

I guess I'll never know, because after I paid for my coke he gave me one last definitive "hallelujah," and stuck out his hand. To my undying regret, I was only able to take his hand into my own, give a shake, and say "hallelujah" one last time.

Hallelujah.