I knew my nap from my siesta, my Irish stew from my cocido and my Céili dancing from my flamenco. I thought I was solid on all fronts.
我从午睡中知道我的午睡，从我的cocido中知道我的爱尔兰炖菜，从我的弗拉门戈中知道我的Céili舞蹈。 我以为我在各方面都很坚定。
And then, Nanjing.
然后，南京。
Nothing and no-one could have prepared me for the deep dive into multi-culturalism that awaited.
没有什么和没有人能让我为深入等待的多元文化做好准备。
This year marks the beginning of our 2nd decade in Middle Kingdom. This, in itself is quite shocking for me; a decade learning the rules of the road, the correct volume in which to communicate in my pigeon Mandarin, the only temperature at which water should be drank, ever.
今年标志着我们在中王国的第2个十年的开始。 这本身对我来说是相当令人震惊的；十年来学习道路规则，用我的鸽子普通话交流的正确音量，这是唯一应该喝水的温度。
More shocking still is the metamorphic evolution of intercultural competence that is simply inevitable when living in a city teaming with cultural flora and fauna. And to be clear, I had considered myself pretty savvy in terms of cultural know-how upon arrival at Lukou way back when.
更令人震惊的是，生活在一个与文化动植物群合作的城市中，跨文化能力的蜕变演变是不可避免的。 说白了，当我到达鹿口时，我认为自己在文化知识方面非常精明。
But then…
但是后来……
Friends invited us for dinner when we were waking from siesta; our dinner invitations at 19:00 were only accepted by other vampirical culture vultures.
当我们从午睡中醒来时，朋友们邀请我们吃晚饭；我们19:00的晚餐邀请只被其他吸血鬼文化秃鹰接受。
Other folx celebrated Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Diwali, Hogmanay, Ramadan… A period of bombastic side eye occurred. Halloween, a holiday filled with lore, bonfires and the Celtic tradition of dressing up in ghoulish costumes to ward off spirits wandering the waking world on 31 October, was now filled with muscular-superhero and less-muscular princess attire.
其他人庆祝感恩节、光明节、排燈节、霍格马奈节、斋月……发生了一段轰轰烈烈的侧目。 万圣节，一个充满传说、篝火和凯尔特人传统的节日，在10月31日穿上可怕的服装，以驱除在清醒世界中游荡的灵魂，现在充满了肌肉发达的超级英雄和肌肉发达的公主服装。
Some things felt right, others less right and others downright disconcerting, if not to say wrong. From my cultural high horse, it was disrespectful and dangerous to warp Halloween or Sámhain in such a way. A part of me took some comfort in the fact that revellers who were not kitted out in defence of dark spectres would be spirited away.
有些事情感觉是对的，有些事情不那么正确，有些则完全令人不安，如果不是说错的话。 就我的文化高高在上，以这种方式扭曲万圣节或Sámhain是不尊重和危险的。 我的一部分感到安慰的是，那些没有为防御黑暗幽灵而装备的狂欢者会被精神化。
Of course, none were. My cultural beliefs and biases did not translate in to my new international community, no more than Friday the 13th made sense in Spain, where everyone knows that the day of Bad Luck is Tuesday the 13th.
当然，没有。 我的文化信仰和偏见并没有转化为我的新国际社会，在西班牙，13号星期五更有意义，那里的每个人都知道厄運日是13号星期二。
There was more; the number 4 was bad luck also, the number 8 good. The number 7? No one cared a fig about it here. Chopsticks standing up in a bowl was bad luck, a knife falling on the floor didn’t mean a man was going to visit.
还有更多；数字4也是坏运气，数字8是好运气。 数字7？ 这里没有人关心它。 筷子站在碗里是倒霉的，一把刀掉在地上并不意味着一个男人会来拜访。
What did a chopstick falling on the floor mean? It was polite to burp after a meal; was stretching at the table still impolite? What about “Please” and “Thank you”?
筷子掉到地上是什么意思？ 饭后打嗝是礼貌的；在餐桌上伸展身体还是不礼貌的吗？ “请”和“谢谢”呢？
A cultural staple of the Irish discourse, these had already become complicated after a decade in Spain, where “they are implied in the question”.
作為愛爾蘭話語的文化主食，在西班牙十年後，這些已經變得複雜，在那裡「它們被暗示在問題中」。
Here, thanking my ayi incessantly made her roll her eyes and eventually explain that thanking her for performing her duty was not cool. It’s an ongoing struggle, often ending in a “Xie….” and an apologetic shrug on my behalf.
在这里，不停地感谢我的ayi让她翻了个白眼，并最终解释说，感谢她履行职责并不酷。 这是一场持续的斗争，通常以“Xie……”和代表我道歉的耸肩结束。
UNESCO previewed its Intercultural Competencies report with the following food for thought in 2013, the year we moved to Nanjing; “All living cultures are outcomes of intercultural communication. Human history is the tale of such journeys.”
2013年，即我们搬到南京的那一年，教科文组织预览了其跨文化能力报告，并提出了以下思考材料；“所有活生生的文化都是跨文化交流的成果。 人类历史是这种旅程的故事。”
As an Irish person, I can testify to this. Since the initial explosion of homo-sapiens from East Africa 300,000 years ago, humans have been gathering in communities, hunting and gathering, diverging, exploring, intermingling, revolutionising agriculture, diverging once again, and so on and so forth.
作为一个爱尔兰人，我可以证明这一点。 自30万年前东非的智人首次爆发以来，人类一直在社区中聚集、狩猎和采集、分化、探索、混合、彻底改变农业、再次分化等等。
By the time The Celts, or whoever they were, reached The Emerald Isle, melanin free and pasty as could be, traders and journey people from the North of Europe jumped on the intercultural bus. Viking and Norman and Anglo-Saxon homo-sapiens joined each other’s gangs, before sling-shotting off again across the seas to intermingle with other communities and build even more diverse populations of homo-sapiens.
当凯尔特人，或者不管他们是谁，到达翡翠岛时，黑色素是无的，像糊糊一样，来自北欧的商人和旅行者跳上了跨文化巴士。 维京人、诺曼人和盎格鲁-撒克逊智人加入了彼此的帮派，然后再次用弹弓穿过海洋与其他社区交织在一起，并建立更多样化的智人种群。
With estimates reaching 70 million, the Irish Diaspora is certainly a case in point for intercultural communication. Whether or not that creates intercultural competence or integrated communities is a different matter entirely.
据估计，爱尔兰侨民人数达到7000万，无疑是跨文化交流的一个例子。 这是否创造了跨文化能力或综合社区是另一回事。
The Irish have not always been at the vanguard of intermingling, despite our massive migration to the global community at large. Not to minimise the historical marginalisation of Irish immigrants, comedian Des Bishop explores this tension in his documentary, “Under The Influence” (2013), regaling audiences with his observations of Irish press reports on the recent wave of migration to Australia; “The Irish Have Lost The Run of Themselves in Australia”.
尽管我们大规模移民到整个国际社会，但爱尔兰人并不总是处于交织的最前沿。 为了不减少爱尔兰移民的历史边缘化，喜剧演员Des Bishop在他的纪录片《Under The Influence》（2013年）中探讨了这种紧张关系，他通过观察爱尔兰新闻界对最近向澳大利亚移民潮的报道来向观众展示；“爱尔兰人在澳大利亚失去了自我的奔跑”。
Bishop helpfully (and contentiously) clarifies, “The reality is, the Irish are doing exactly the same as they do at home, but to another culture”.
毕晓普乐于助人地（且有争议地）澄清道：“现实是，爱尔兰人正在做与他们在国内所做的完全相同的事情，但对另一种文化”。
There is some truth in this, in terms of our international and intercultural melting pot here in The Southern Capital. Although we are by no means losing the run of ourselves, we are all sometimes happily engaged in doing what we do at home to another culture, another community.
就我们在南方首都的国际和跨文化熔炉而言，这其中有一些道理。 虽然我们绝不会失去自己的奔跑，但我们有时都很乐意为另一种文化、另一种社区做我们在家里做的事情。
And that’s hard. No one explains the rules. There aren’t any rules to explain.
那很难。 没有人解释规则。 没有任何规则需要解释。
Culture is a nebulous ephemera of assumptions, norms, unwritten rules and quirky, weirdly wonderfulness. Even beginning to try to unpack our community culture here leads to, “Yes buts”, and, “What ifs”, and, “Absolutely nots”.
文化是一个由假设、规范、不成文的规则和古怪、奇怪的奇妙组成的模糊的短暂。 即使开始尝试在这里解开我们的社区文化，也会导致“是的，但是”、“如果”和“绝对不是”。
Not to mention the fact that the rules keep changing, paradigms continue to shift, cultural understandings morph. How is a person ever expected to keep apace?
更不用说规则在不断变化，范式在不断转变，文化理解也在不断转变。 一个人如何保持节奏？
In 10 years here and 10 years before that in Iberia, I am no more the wiser. I still say, “Thank you”, when I shouldn’t. My Halloween costumes are not for the faint of heart (though too it is true that I shall not be on the radar of any errant spirits on All Hallow’s Eve). I reason with myself that this is ok. It is an enculturated response.
在这里的10年和之前在伊比利亚的10年，我不再更聪明了。 我仍然说“谢谢”，而我不应该说。 我的万圣节服装不适合胆小的人（尽管在万圣节前夕，我不会成为任何流浪精灵的雷达）。 我自言自语，这没关系。 这是一种文化化的回应。
But lately, I’ve begun to think of ayi, and how utterly exasperating it must be for her to have expressed clearly the reasoning behind her discomfort, and my pitiful attempts to curb my own cultural propensity for thanking anything and anyone that moves.
但最近，我开始想到ayi，她清楚地表达了她不舒服背后的理由，以及我可怜地试图抑制自己的文化倾向，感谢任何感动的人，这一定非常令人气愤。
I think of the times where I top up glasses, or pop another cork because in my heart culture, this is the polite and expected way to express care and kindness.
我想到了我加杯或弹出另一个软木塞的时候，因为在我的内心文化中，这是表达关心和善良的礼貌和期望的方式。
Of the relentless over-cooking to show appreciation for friends when perhaps, just maybe, it might be too much? My famine mind screams “Too much food? NEVER!!!”
无情的过度烹饪来表达对朋友的感激之情，而也许，只是也许，这可能太过分了？ 我饥荒的頭腦尖叫著「食物太多？ 永远不会！！！”
And yet. And just yet. Maybe the best way to show this care and kindness is not to stuff my guests as though the next Great Hunger was imminent. Give the Reece’s Pieces and full-size Snickers bars to the Justice League kids Trick or Treating. Try not to poison your gluten free friends, a crime of which I am hopelessly guilty. Eat at weird times and embrace the flow when it comes to the “rules” of the road. Be careful with “Thank yous”. Shout it all out, the louder the better. Boil that water; you know it will cure all ills. But do all these things with positive intent.
然而。 并且只是。 也许表达这种关怀和善良的最好方法是不要像下一次大饥饿迫在眉睫一样塞我的客人。 把Reece’s Pieces和全尺寸的Snickers酒吧送给正义联盟儿童不给糖就捣蛋。 尽量不要毒害你的无麸质朋友，我无可救药地犯了罪。 在奇怪的时间吃饭，在道路的“规则”时拥抱潮流。 小心使用“谢谢”。 大声喊出来，声音越大越好。 把那水煮沸；你知道它能治好所有的病。 但带着积极的意图做所有这些事情。
At the end of the day, it is this care and kindness that will see us right whenever faced with intercultural clashes. And for that pearl of wisdom, I am grateful for our last decade in The Great Southern Capital Community!
归根结底，每当面对跨文化冲突时，正是这种关怀和善良会让我们正确。 對於那顆智慧的珍珠，我感謝我們在大南方首都社群的過去十年！
