BEIJING - Today I am reborn. I'm changing my name, Prince-style.
For someone whose Chinese is still at an elementary level, I've burned through a good number of Chinese names.
Several weeks after starting Mandarian lessons, I took some random characters from the first few lessons of the textbook and created my first name, 书八书. That name, although symterical, makes absolutely no sense ("Shoe Eight Shoe"), so I turned to my friends for help.
First up was Cho, born in Hong Kong and now in advanced Mandarian classes. He came up with "shu qing ping" - perhaps 书请平 - but I'll never be sure. Before he got around to writing the characters for me, I was told my new was "too femine," and I needed a new one.
I turned to another college friend, Tiffany, during our Spring Break. Suitably loaded up on rum cocktails, I asked to devise the perfect Chinese name. She came up with 书真大, which sounded fine with me, but this summer in China people kept laughing when I repeated it.
So today, when a nice woman in the Office of Foreign Students at Tsinghua University asked if I had a Chinese name, I replied with hesitation.
"Yes," I said, "But I'm not sure if it's any good." I repeated my last name, and she shook her head.
"Perhaps we can come up with a new one," she said. Then she started talking among her two collagues in furiously fast Mandarian. Five minutes later, the committee had an answer: 苏彬. Pronouced "SUE-BIN," it seems perfect.
I'm going to stick with this name, at least until someone else has a problem with it.
