milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

In years to come Peking will be known to the barbarian world as Beijing and will be the capital of the most frighteningly vast population the world has ever seen. But for Number Ten Ox, the capital city is Chang'an, the city he dwells in is only pronounced 'Beijing' by the population of the Forbidden City, and the only way to get more than three million people is to be someone imperially connected in desperate need of a massive engineering project that depletes the entire Empire's resources.

All of which is to say that when the door opens, the Peking on the other side bears small resemblance to the concrete-and-steel, car-ridden, bicycle-infested Beijing of the twentieth century. And by the look on Ox's face, Milliways bears small resemblance to Meng's Money Exchange, either.

Oh well. He needed breakfast anyway.

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Amanda got a glimpse of his entrance from her seat at the bar. She speaks to him in Cantonese, "Good Morning"

It takes Ox a moment to bludgeon his way through the dialect. He turns and looks over his shoulder, carefully digging up his more southern dialect. "Good morning," he answers politely (his accent in Cantonese is horrible).

Amanda can tell and switches to chinese, "Sorry, mixes up dielects. Mt name is Amanda" she bows her head (hoping that she has the right language)

Peking dialect. Later centuries will call it Mandarin, but Ox doesn't know that. This, at least, he can understand. "That's all right," he says. "I'm Number Ten Ox."

"Pleasure to meet you. Have you been coming to Milliways long?"

(if he would speak in his own dielect she would gladly do the same.)

(His dialect is relatively close to Peking's, as his village is only a few hours of running from the great city, but unless Amanda spent significant time in an unremarkable village named Ku-fu in the valley of Cho sometime around 640 A. D., she likely won't have encountered Ox's local dialect.)

"A few times in the past two weeks," Ox says. "It tends to happen when I'm trying to go to other places. It's starting to get inconvenient."

(I was talking about the Manderian. *shrugs* at least they're communicating)

"Where were you trying to go?"

"This time?" Ox shrugs. "Kang Number Eight's. It's happened before, though. Mostly when I try to reach One-Eyed Wong's wine shop. Once when I was going to the outhouse."

"Yeah, normally it happens to me when I am trying to go to my bedroom. But the outhouse, that is unfortunate. I hope you were able to go here."

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