Chinese Dental Floss

Sat 21Feb09

Chinese Dental Floss
Something happened to me for the first time this morning. My dental floss broke.
It wasn’t under any more than normal stress. That something unorthodox happened to this particular floss is appropriate. I had a minor adventure acquiring it earlier this week, in Taipei, where English is rarely spoken.
I speak no Chinese so it is not easy to say dental floss in the sign language I use, a sort of default dexterous Esperanto. When I asked the helpful smiling people at the front desk of my hotel, they had no idea. But the word dental meant something because one of them indicated that I should go down the street and around the corner, where I found a dentist’s shop. Yes – a dentist shop, with dental chairs lined up like a barbers and open to the street. There was even a display case of dental products at the little reception desk.
I saw two packages that looked like what I wanted, but it turned out one was inter-dontal floss which I don’t use, and the other about the size of a tennis ball, which I didn’t need. But I did get something useful. It was the Chinese word for dental floss, which I repeated over and over in my head as I headed to a seven eleven store to which it was suggested I go.
And there I found it, displayed right opposite the cash register. And because I found it, I didn’t need to say anything; just hand it over and pay the indicated amount. But I didn’t want to waste my newly acquired word, which I did as I handed the article over, expecting at least a patronising smile. There was no smile of any sort. (If you think about it, my expectation was pretty stupid. If, in a similar transaction at home, I had said “dental floss” as I handed it to a cashier, she could be excused for responding with a derisive, “No shit?”) The cashier took my money without reaction to my lingual skills. I was the new owner of a dental floss dispenser with a Chinese seven eleven label. I forgot the Chinese word for dental floss a few seconds after leaving the shop.
That was only 4 days ago, and now I discover it is of inferior quality. I just pulled out a length to check the stuff and it’s clearly poor quality. It’s probably that the cashier back in that shop is smiling quietly to herself, knowing that this is how the dental floss Gods get their revenge on the would be linguists who know only one word of a language and insist on saying it.
And I just remembered a tiny emergency roll I keep in the side pocked of my computer bag. It’s strong and mint flavoured and probably made in China.