By staff translator YAO BEI

Spanish expert, Oriol.

HE Liou (Oriol), our foreign expert, has been a colleague of mine for five years. He and his Chinese wife have a very lovely daughter. Unlike those of a fiery temperament that one associates with Latin blood, Oriol has a quiet, gentle demeanor that frequently lights up with a bright, warm smile.

On recalling how he and his wife first met, Oriol always says "Destino" very seriously, and then adds one other sentence, "As the Chinese would express it."

It was on a day that a party was being held for Beijing's Spanish foreign experts at the Beijing Friendship Hotel, where most foreign experts live. Oriol did not plan to attend at first, even saying to himself, "Even if I could meet the woman of my life tonight at this party, I would still not go." But, who knows why, in the end he attended the party and met his wife.

For their first date, they agreed to meet at the entrance to the gymnasium at the Asian Games Village -- a mid-way point between their respective homes. Although they both speak Spanish, it happened that as arrangements were being made over the telephone, they inadvertently agreed to meet at different places. Consequently both of them waited at the places they believed to be the ones arranged, until Oriol realized that there had been a misapprehension, and quickly went to the other place, only to find that his date had gone. This was the first of a series of misadventures that occurred owing to differences in language and culture.

Oriol's daughter, Jennie, playing Karaoke.

This kind of thing happened frequently when they later began to see each other on a more regular basis. Sometimes something one of them said with no particular significance in mind resulted in the other's angry reaction, thus completely baffling the one that had first spoken. On one occasion, Oriol's wife spoke to him in a long Chinese tirade, in an effort to express everything on her mind, which made him feel wronged and confused. As Oriol cannot speak Chinese, he and his wife communicate in Spanish, and she, understandably, feels tired at speaking a language other than her native tongue for extended periods. This is particularly so as they have, since marrying, continued to live at the Friendship Hotel, where the staff's English level is not high, and so Oriol relies on his wife's communication skills for even the most fundamental matters.

What I most like is when Oriol's two-year-old daughter, Jennie, comes to our office. Her liveliness and good behavior are an indication of Oriol and his wife's parenting skills and their essential closeness. She is an entirely lovable little girl, who, with just a little encouragement, dances and sings with abandon. Some colleagues joke that they would like her to be betrothed to their sons. On one occasion, a colleague brought his son, who is a year and a half older than Jennie, and normally as mischievous as would be expected of a child his age, to the office. Everybody teasingly encouraged Jennie to give him a kiss, which she did quite naturally. This, however, led to her being urged to give her little big brother a "film star" kiss on the mouth. Jennie, again, happily obliged, but the little boy was so embarrassed that he blushed scarlet and rushed to his mother's arms. The expression on his face while stealing a glance at Jennie was one of shocked awe. The diversity of family cultures was thus demonstrated in the most natural way.

A happy family.

Jennie likes to sit on Oriol's lap, while strongly advising him to find the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on the computer. She talks to her father in Spanish and to us in Chinese. If we speak Spanish to her, she goggles at us for a while, but gives no answer. Perhaps this is because she associates us with her mother, with whom she speaks Chinese exclusively.

On the back of Oriol's bike is a child's seat. Each day after finishing work, he picks Jennie up at the kindergarten, and like the father in any common Chinese family, secures her safely in her seat, and cycles her home.

Oriol says that when he first got to Beijing in 1996 he felt as if he were in a dream, and could not for a long time get used to the fact that he was living in an Eastern country. After a week or so, however, he was relieved to see that the people here are just the same as anywhere; they also get angry, quarrel, have fun, and delight in playing with their children. Two years later, when he ended his first contract and went back to Spain with his wife, he felt more of a stranger walking on the streets of Barcelona, where there were women smoking, and strangely dressed youth everywhere. He could not help but frown and think disapprovingly to himself, "How did this happen?"

Now, as Oriol takes his steel lunch-box and goes with us to the dining-room, I see him as a Chinese person, but one who does not speak Chinese.

Yesterday he called his friend and told him, "I am learning Chinese, but my wife is a little impatient!" Well, every family has its communication glitches, now and then.