bar baby

It is not that weird to walk into a bar and find a small child sitting behind the counter. It's only slightly weird to pass most of the evening in a playful chip fight with said child.

I like to talk to toddlers because they are usually about at my level, mandarin-wise. They good at have and want type sentences, but frequently just say the name of whatever it is they want put in their mouths. I did hear some very standard phrases from the kid such as "go over there" and "it's okay to eat these chips" (the second being untrue, his chips were covered in baby slobber). The rest of the time he was pretty unintelligible. This turns out not to be because he was speaking Chinese or baby talk, but because he was speaking some impenetrable northern dialect, that no one in the bar understood. Not even his guardian.

How this came to be was a long story that no one really wanted to tell. The kid seems doomed to an interesting life.

[expanded upon June 14th]