Yu Ming is Ainm Dom

• published: 06 Oct 2014
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Yu Ming is bored. He's stuck in a dead-end job in a dead-end country, tending a store for a grumpy grocer, and wonders where his life is going. On a whim he goes to the library, spins a globe with his eyes closed and jabs his finger on a random spot, which turns out to be Ireland. His atlas tells him all about the country, including the fact that the official language is "Gaelic", so Yu Ming gets himself some audio tapes and goes about learning the language of the Emerald Isle. Six months later, he flies to Dublin, checks into a local hostel and asks for a bed with "Ba mhaith liom leaba." [I'd like a bed.] The clerk, has no idea what he's saying, but with the help of another resident is able to determine that Yu Ming would like a place to stay. Yu Ming goes out for dinner, and we see him struggling with knife and fork, which he has never used. It's too many for him, but he's a clever lad and comes up with an elegant work-around. Poor Yu Ming has discovered that nobody understands a word he's saying, and assumes that his language skills are at fault. He goes into a bar and tells the bartender "Táim ag lorg obair" [I'm looking for work]. The barkeep responds, "No, we haven't got any of that, how about a Guinness?" At the end of his wits, Yu Ming explains [in Irish] that he's just arrived in the country and he's sorry his Irish isn't better. The blank stares he encounters seem to spell doom for Yu Ming's aspirations until an older gentleman at the bar says to him, "Suigh síos, a bhuachaill, agus ceannóidh mé deoch duit." [Sit down, son, and I'll buy you a drink.] Delighted to find someone he can understand, he sits down and the man asks him his name. He answers proudly, "Yu Ming is ainm dom" [my name is Yu Ming], whence the title of the film. He tells the old man that he just arrived in Ireland yesterday, but he thinks it was a mistake, because nobody understands his Irish. The gentleman explains to him that he speaks Irish better than most of the people in the country, and educates Yu Ming to the fact that Irish is the national tongue in name only - everyone in the country speaks English, except in the few scattered Gaeltacht areas. Yu Ming is crestfallen, but his companion comforts him, and we see that he has a solution in mind. Astonished beyond measure, the barkeeper asks his colleague, "Did you know that old Paddy could speak Chinese?" The last scene shows a busload of tourists driving into a Gaeltacht area and entering a pub, where they are greeted by a beaming Yu Ming behind the bar, who welcomes them, in his best Irish, to Connemara.