22. Find a way
It is important for broth to have a bronze color (una bella tinta ambrata), insists Ada. Okay. But if it doesn't naturally?
A few drops of caramelized sugar syrup does the trick!
*
Put three spoonfuls of sugar in a small, unpolished copper saucepan. [I don't own a copper saucepan. I've read that they are excellent conductors of heat and have an agreeable, solid weight. They're also quite beautiful...and can be expensive. To own one is a treat worth considering.] Wet the sugar with enough water to melt it, and put it on the stove. The sugar begins to boil, Ada writes, and after a few moments you will see it take on an increasingly blond color until it becomes black and sends off a thick smoke. [!] Pour half a glass of water into the pan; the burnt sugar will hiss and become a hardened mass. Boil again (Fate bollire di nuovo. "Di nuovo": literally "of new") slowly slowly (adagio adagio) and with a wooden spoon, gradually (man mano) stir the sugar until it forms a dense syrup. When the caramel is cool, pour into a small bottle and "keep it in a place to which you have ready access" (tenetelo in serbo, a succinct phrase in Italian, from the verb serbare.)
The caramel, if you do not abuse it, continues Ada, doesn't communicate a bitter taste and is a powerful and absolutely harmless dye.
*
Now this I'm going to try. Caramel, for una bella tinta ambrata.
HIS SHINY BLACK SEDAN WAITED AT THE CURB. With smiles and a Nǐ hǎo, we slid into the cool comfort, Paul up front, his daughter and I in the rear.
After spending the prior week with Paul's sister in Shanghai, we'd now be on our own in the ancient walled city of Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province in central China. We'd arranged a guide for the following day, the highlight being a trip to the excavation site of the famed terra cotta army of Emperor Qin.
But there was still today. So much to know, to learn. Paul handed our driver the address of our hotel, written in both Western and Chinese letters, and we pulled into the flow of vehicles making their way from the airport. Our driver had an ease about him and looked willing to converse, though he spoke no English, and we no Mandarin. (Paul speaks Japanese, and although the languages are entirely different, there is a resemblance in meaning between the written Kanji characters, a source of endless fascination for him, and occasionally a little help to us, too.)
Opening an app on his phone, Paul typed "I like your sunglasses," and Google, master (female) translator, spoke the words aloud in Mandarin. Surprised and pleased, our driver thought a moment then pressed an icon on his phone (suctioned to the front windshield like so many in the U.S.). He spoke to it in Mandarin, and his phone spit out in perfect, humanized female English: "Thank you. They are very practical."
Paul snapped off his sun shades (old-fashioned clip-on types... a pair we'd actually picked up at a gas station outside Turin two years before) and wiggled them before our driver, who was, of course, wearing the same fashion-faux-pas clip-ons. When the driver saw Paul's and got the connection, he laughed.
The driver spoke again. And Lady Google offered this: The environment is bad. We have no place to live. Although...everyone's awareness of environmental protection has improved.
Paul smiled and nodded yes.
When a tiny woman driving a big Mercedes swung recklessly into our lane, the driver shouted something, and this came to us in English: On this network, the Chinese female driver is the generation...
No! he said [or something to that effect]. Seeing in the app the voice-to-text written Chinese used in the translation and realizing it was off, he repeated a phrase again, and this time she nailed it: "Not generation..... Road Killer"
He was a funny, fun guy.
*
It was a curious situation, though, two men in the front of the car, communicating via female voices (interpreters). Was there some science behind Goggle's gender choice? Is the female voice more acoustically preferable? Does its pitch carry better...? Or, was it decided that because of the exceptionally challenging nature of translation, putting a woman in this intelligent, blame-able role was, well, a no-brainer?
I found a Google forum in which users (men) were asking (griping) about the female voice. And rightly so, I'd agree. One user wrote in: "As I am a man that's kind of odd and I would like to be able to change my Google preferences to always use a male voice when using Google Translate." To which someone responded, "I don't have an answer but I have something to say: you are a man and you feel odd listening to a female's voice? What is this logic?" And another wrote, in response to the initial post and falling further down the information rabbit hole... "Yeah, it sucks. But she's sexy tho." Bottom line: It is possible to change the voice gender (through settings, and if you've a hankering for something nonstandard, it may require a download), though, notably, the current default remains female.
*
Paul typed something. Unable to see, I only heard the Chinese. The driver nodded, and he/she gave us this:
My english is poor... so i don't know if he [actually, she] translates correctly. He paused, chuckled, then this: The children in kindergarten have better English than me. Then: There are many meanings of the same word... In Chinese different pronunciations [actually, intonations] have different meanings.
This we knew. And Lady Google was having a rough time accurately deciphering his tones.
I'm a southerner ... in Mandarin, he/she said. And I wondered if he knew why this is funny to us...That an American southerner with an emphasized drawl might have similarly challenged Google. He/she added he was from Chairman Mao's hometown.
We learned about the four main gates, the bell tower which marks the center, the subway line, the wall--as wide as it is high--which is best traversed by bikes--available for rent on the wall. The hours between 4 and 5 in the afternoon are best.
Paul again asked something... and the driver, his pride evident, spoke slowly and clearly now, allowing the translation to proceed phrase by phrase, to get it right: It can be said that he who lives here works here. The population of Xi'an [the translation pronounced the city name as ZION, terribly false. Google, are you listening? Fix it.] is now more than 8 million. The leadership of the government is trying to reach 10 million people and has been importing talent. It's going be a first tier city...and the population is the bottom line. Now Xi'an can only be described as a second tier city.
Big plans by an ambitious government. There was no doubt that Xi'an would soon be "first tier." Apartment high rises were everywhere, with new ones going up. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of them. Cranes filled the horizon. The momentum was unstoppable.
He continued making jokes about the other drivers. His laugh came easily now.
"It's about 500 meters to the hotel," he/she told us. "Wish you a happy journey."
When we pulled over, Paul stashed his phone and hopped from the car. He shook the driver's hand. Xièxiè, he said. Paul's daughter and I did the same. Thank you. If you choose to master one phrase, let it be this one.
Our driver warmly returned the hand shakes and, with no help at all, sang Byebye!
