Breakfast After Dusk: An NYC Experience That Trasnported Us to Hubei

Breakfast After Dusk: An NYC Experience That Trasnported Us to Hubei

In a tightly packed exhibition space in downtown Manhattan, Chiarina Chen stood before a full audience, presenting her spoken essay in the Wuhan dialect. Before the presentation began, an envelope was passed around the room, and inside were slips of paper with Chinese phrases written on them. Mine read “个斑马” (gè bān mǎ). I knew its literal meaning—a zebra—but there has to be more to it. Later, Chen explained that these were colloquial phrases fr…