Swimming to Breakfast

Apparently, Noah was Chinese.

It has been raining for approximately five thousand years, or so it would seem. Good hard rain, too. I like it because it knocks down the temperature and the pollution; Hong Kong in July is usually like living in a smoker's lung.  Late winter and early spring, on the  other hand, are like living in a dead smoker's lung. And he died before exhaling.

Never mind.

This rain is unbelievable. It's chronic.

Of course, it doesn't interrupt the flow of life here. People just put up their umbrellas and keep slogging. Rainy weather for me means umbrella too, but it also means safety goggles; the average HK umbrella is right about eye level for me. I often walk with my hand held vertically in line with my nose; it deflects the incoming umbrellas away from my eyes. Whenever people do get me in the eye, I just say " Don't worry, I have two" in Cantonese.

So anyway, off I go to breakfast this morning, across the street from my new digs. Sun Chui is a public housing estate with a shopping center in the middle of it, replete with restaurants, a grocery store, a Chinese herbal medicine shop, and of course, McDonalds.

I didn't eat that sh*t in America, I sure as hell won't eat it here. One, I don't feel like fulfilling the stereotype, and two, I am so unused to that toxic swill that its effect on me is... let's just say I don't buy that food; I rent it, very short-term.

So rather than eat McDeath, I went to a small congee restaurant, rainy weather being conducive to large bowls of hot food. I'm used to being stared at whenever I venture off the Beaten Gweilo Path (i.e. HK Island and TST), so that didn't bother me; by now, if people didn't stare, I'd get nervous.

It seemed like the waitress was avoiding me. When I got her attention, she just put a menu down and walked away. She came back shortly after, and when I ordered the minced-beef congee and cold milk tea in Cantonese, her face lit up like I was her cousin at a family reunion. If anything, she seemed relieved. As is so often the case, it set me to thinking...

I have a small collection of such experiences, and let me start with a humorous one. There's a GREAT char siu place across from that big-@ss Hui Lau Shan (Cantonese for Adored by Sean) in Mongkok, the one by the Newport Cinema and the public toilets. I had been there before, so I knew how good it was (the restaurant, not the toilets. They're nasty...). That was why I was there.

Okay that, and a voice in my head that sounded like my mother told me I ought to eat something otherthan mango-based dessert, preferably beforethe mango delight...

The waitress, a rather solidly built woman of middle age, walked past me, brusquely said " No English menu!" in Cantonese and kept going. On her next pass, I flagged her down and said politely " Char siu with rice and cold Ovaltine, please." Her eyes got wide (like the waitress this morning) and she walked away muttering to herself none too quietly " The gweilo speaks Cantonese..."

But the big one for me was in Tsing Yi MTR station. I bought water at the 7-11 (maybe it was Pocari Sweat...) and when I got my change I said " Thank you" in Cantonese. The girl dropped my change, she was so surprised. " The gweilo speaks Cantonese!' she said to her colleague. No, the gweilo said thank you. That hardly counts as linguistic facility.

Or does it?

Deductively, that experience tells me that it is apparently rather rare for gweiloto even be able to say thank you in Cantonese.

The language of the place they livein.

Let's face it, Tsing Yi is no tourist trap. If a gweilois there, it's very likely they're an expat. That means they live here. You know, Hong Kong, where 90+% of the people speak Cantonese.

No wait, Stanley and Disco Bay are probably almost exclusively English-speaking environments. An oasis, a refuge from the horrible nightmare that is Not The West.

God forbid they actually try to cope with people, places and things that are differentfrom them.

Of course, for lots of them (us) differentequates to inferior.

And they're too busy running around Central doing business and throwing darts at portraits of Karl Marx (and/or drinking in LKF) to learn Cantonese. All their Chinese friends speak English, so it can't be THAT hard to learn, can it? That's why they can't speak any Cantonese.

Not even thank you.

So I have to live with the vestigial colonial condescension that prevented or excused gweilofrom learning to say thank you.

Sometimes, when I order food, people look at me blankly. But when I repeat myself, they understand. Then comes the usual smile, and/or they tell me my Cantonese is good, or they think that because can say "Club sandwich and cold Horlicks, please" that they can launch into a conversation that quickly surpasses my linguistic capacity.

I used to wonder why I had to repeat myself until Rick offered a simple and very likely explanation: they don't expect to hear Cantonese; they're listening for English, so when it doesn't happen, they are flustered.

It cuts both ways. The Cantonese word for office in the dictionary is not 'Oh-fee-see', but that's what it is called.

Or my friend's daughter who addressed me as 'on kew', a term that mystified me until I realized it was Uncle.

I do not blame the Chinese people in these situations. But I think it's really sad that they can be so easily shocked and pleased.

I mean, in the US, when foreigners (or people who look like foreigners [cue banjo music]) speak English, we just assume they ought to.

Why is it dinner theatre if a gweiloeats anything other than sweet-and-sour-something? I've had a friend argue with a waitress who refused to believe the gweilo(me) would eat what was ordered, because "They don't eat that stuff! Now what does he want?!?"

So in addition to getting compliments about my language, I get complimented for eating things gweilousually won't.

I'm very flattered when people compliment me, but I feel sad that they seem so happy.

I also notice that whenever there is a delay during a business transaction (like buying a washer), people start apologizing profusely and get nervous.

Apparently gweiloare not very patient and will get loud. That's what my friends tell me anyway.

Boy, what fun it must have been to be able to act like a spoiled brat without fear of recrimination or punishment. Thank God the sun finally set.

Can't really blame the British; they cling to that fading colonial glow, buoyed by the sense that they are better than anyone else in almost every way (dentition obviously excluded).

That doesn't give them the right to jump the queue in 7-11 to pay their CLP bill, especially when there are other gweilo(i.e. me) in line. But they do it.

Maybe it's because I come from a coutnry that told Britain to go get f@#$ed 200+ years ago, but I feel bad for anyone who had to live next to, much less under the British. Bad teeth, bad food, bad attitude, bad cars...

Well, they didgive us the Sex Pistols and Motorhead.

Speaking of which, Knighthood for Lemmy Kilminster!

Where was I?

Ah yes, the idea of people who expect the world to change for them, not to change for the world.

Even when they live in a part of it they do not own (any longer).

Once in Mongkok, on Shanghai St. south of Langham place (i.e. no tourist spot), I listened to some Australians goad and berate a cashier in 7-11:

"Hello."

No response.

"HELLO... YOU DO UNDERSTAND ENGLISH, DON'T YOU? This IS Hong Kong, isn't it?"

Yeah, it is. Ten years afterthe handover. In Mongkok, you moron.

And let me say that an Australian getting judgmental about English is just... special.

My major problem with this sh*t is that I have to live with it; I have to be lumped in with these jackasses (like the kid I watched puke in a corner in the Kowloon Tong MTR station on Western New Year's eve and just walk away...)

People aren't really amazed that a gweilospeaks Cantonese.

They're just surprised we're not all insufferable pricks.