The dog who came for a break (France)

 

On a(nother) visit to the French farm one year, I was greeted upon my arrival by a small black dog barking furiously at me from the sofa where he had been dozing comfortably.

I knew it didn’t belong to the farm because the farm dogs were:  

• all hunting dogs and brown;
• always friendly and happy to see me, even at the first meeting — sometimes too friendly, putting their front paws on my shoulders and walking forwards with me if I tried to make them drop their paws by stepping back;
• bigger than this small yappy thing; 
• not allowed in the house, never mind actually get onto the sofa, let alone dozing, and comfortably to boot — most unthinkable.

They said this dog was from Lasseran, the neighbouring village on the parallel ridge to the north. He was stressed out from his home environment as his owners had lots of boisterous children, so they brought him to the farm for some peace and quiet. 

A couple of days later, I noticed he was not around. They said he’d gone home, as he’d de-stressed enough from his stay on the farm.

A day later, I saw him coming back, trotting across the fields.

So, he’d come back to his spiritual retreat for another stay. And this time, he knew how to get to the farm himself.

(Gers, S.W. France, 2012)

Jiāng the Abyssinian cat (London)

 

Jiāng 薑 (“ginger”) is so named because of his colouring. Not “ginger” in the Western red hair colour sense, but root ginger, the common ingredient in Chinese cooking.  His owners, Irish David and English Jane, had done a degree in Chinese, you see. 

    Jiāng is a long lean cat. His fur is speckled with various shades of brown. His tail is a gorgeous series of rings of darker and paler brown, like a lemur’s tail. 

    I was visiting David and Jane one day, standing at their front door after having rung the bell, when I suddenly looked up and spotted Jiāng sitting on the external sill of the first floor window, looking into the distance like he was day-dreaming. I called out to him, “Jiāng!” He turned round, immediately meowed back, and actually started to walk along the eaves over the ground floor (which is rather precarious) to come across to me. He did reach me, jumping down from the first floor. 

    A while later, David asked me to go to their house and stay overnight a few times a week during the three weeks that he and Jane were going to be away in Botswana. A neighbour would come round and put down food and water, he said, but they felt that Jiāng needed company. The last time they went away for three weeks, Jiāng wouldn’t leave them alone after they got back: he stuck to their heels wherever they went in the house, refusing to let them out of his sight, as if afraid of being abandoned. 

    Being an evening teacher, and going to the pub with my (mature) students after classes at nine o’clock, I’d only arrive at David and Jane’s house around 11:30 pm. Feeling that I couldn’t just go straight to bed, I’d switch on the TV and sit on the floor, leaning back against the front of the sofa in a near-horizontal position. Jiāng would come and sit on my chest, stretching out his long body over my front: his hind legs down my upper legs to just above the knees, and his head below my chin, paws wrapped around my neck. (Writing this has just made me realise that when stretched out, he's more than half the length of me!) He’d then go to sleep contentedly in this position, leaving me unable to move until my legs went numb and I had to shift, or I had to go to bed. 

    It was just before the cat-sitting stint that I got an attack of bad back. My lower back suddenly simply gave way one day as I was walking down the road — without my usual rucksack, ironically. I felt a sharp twinge, and couldn’t stand up straight after that. I tried all sorts of things: stretching, massaging my back with a tennis ball, using the hand-held massaging rod from China. 

    A kind Japanese colleague gave me some heat pads, each individually packed and sealed. The moment you open the pack, the contents, which feel like crushed up lava or porous gravel, will start to get hot upon exposure to air, lasting some ten hours. You slap one on the affected area, held down with some tape. 

    I’d open one of these heat pads at bedtime at David and Jane’s, so that I could sleep pain-free. It was winter at the time. Jiāng was normally not allowed in the bedrooms, but I decided to let him sleep in my bed for a prolonged duration of human contact, since he was left alone all day. (I’m allergic to all sorts of things like house dust, pollen of all kinds, smells like perfume, deodorant and flower fragrance, but luckily and mercifully not to dogs and cats — it’d be a massive hole in my life not to be able to have them around me.) 

    Part-way through the night, I was woken up by this feeling of a huge weight on my right hip — I’d been lying on my left side. It turned out to be Jiāng perched on my hip, as that was the spot nearest my lower back, where the heat pad was. Cats are so good at finding heat sources, aren’t they? (See also Four-legged heat radar.) One always knows when a car’s just come back or parked — from the cat sitting on its bonnet. 

    I left Jiāng there for a bit longer, not wanting to disturb him in his sleep, so I was locked into that position for a while. Then, I had to change position, so I picked him up, moved him off my right hip, and turned the other way. Back he’d climb onto the other (/left) hip, and stay there until I had to change position again. 

    At one point, I turned to lie on my back, so there was no hip for Jiāng to perch on. Undeterred, he then snuggled right up against my side. (Most considerate of him not to plonk himself on my tummy. Actually, on second thoughts, that'd be because the heat pad was on my back, the other side of my tummy.)

    This position shifting for me, and for the cat accordingly, went on every hour or so throughout the night. (Apparently, we toss and turn 40–50 times a night in our sleep.) 

    After David and Jane got back, they reported that there was an improvement in Jiāng: he was not as clinging as before when they got back from their previous holiday.      My back, however, had not improved in spite of those heat pads. Maybe because it had to carry the weight of a long lean cat perched on top, not daring to move for fear of disrupting his slumber... 

    What is short-term physical pain in exchange for an eternal and irreplaceable smile-triggering and heart-warming memory, huh?

(London, UK, 1990s)

Xiǎo Lóng (London)

 

Then-student was going back to Malaysia for a holiday, and asked me to look after her cat, Xiǎo Lóng 小龍 / “little dragon”.

What can you do when it’s someone else’s place? The point of my presence, anyway, as in the case of staying with Jiāng (see Jiāng the Abyssinian cat), is to keep the cat company: help it feel less alone and deserted. So, I sat in an armchair, reading, with my feet up on a pouffe. Xiǎo Lóng went on my lap: on all fours, with his face towards me but head dropped, in a doze.

This went on for a while. I then broke the silence and asked Xiǎo Lóng, “Happy?”

In answer, he rolled over and, belly up, looked at me backwards over the top of his head, reached out a paw and stroked my cheek.

(London, UK, 1995)

Chinese sayings: 21 (同病相憐 / 同病相怜)

同病相憐

tóng bìng xiāng lián

“same illness mutually sympathise”

One dictionary gives the definition as:  Fellow suffers have mutual sympathy.  (憐 lián: sympathise / have pity for)

    This saying is descriptive of people being able to understand how other people with similar afflictions feel.  

    One example is hoarders, of whom there’re a few in my circles, including myself.  It’s always, “Such a shame to have this thrown out.  I might be able to find a use for this, or someone will need it.”  

    Trouble is: that day might be quite a few years down the line, and in the meantime, the items will sit there taking up space.  And you can bet that the day after you choose to throw them out, along will come that person/use.  (Like buses that you don’t want to catch on that day: often three will turn up in quick succession.)  The best excuse is: it’s good for the environment, that one’s being ecological (and economical).

    What’s worse is if you are with someone of the same bent, as you’ll end up egging each other on.  This is where the 同病相憐 comes in.

    I visit an 82-year-old Mauritian Chinese lady in west London to give her massage for her bad back and aching knees/legs (and Longevitology energy adjustment for her kidney-case husband).  I mention age and ethnicity only because she’s of that generation and culture who won’t throw things away.  

    She does actually find a use for lots of things, even more than I do.  Every visit to her place produces a new discovery.  A plastic lid will get used as a base for a plant pot (to collect the excess water) — plastic so that rust won't set in.  Used large mouthwash plastic bottles will turn into drinking water vessels on the dining table in the living room to save trips into the kitchen.  Cloth and clothing will get turned into patches for artistic mending or a quilt (remember patchwork quilts?).  (When I was growing up, old clothes would become mopping cloths, window-cleaning cloths, feet-drying/-wiping cloths when we emerged from the wet bathroom, etc.)   

    A mainland Chinese lady I used to know, here in London at the time to be with her daughter studying at university, would use the plastic tubs/punnets that fresh mushrooms or strawberries come in for holding her cooked Chinese dumplings.  She didn't want to buy more crockery just for the three years that they were going to be here, which is indeed very ecological.  

    It’s not a matter of cost.  If anything, the cost factor is often a big culprit.  Things produced on low-cost labour in poorer countries and going cheap over here in the West are one of the main culprits for items ending up in landfill sites, as it’s not expensive to have them replaced, rather than repaired.  (I know, I know, the work feeds lots of families.)

    The Mauritian lady and I will often tell each other what we'd seen thrown out in the street, and go together to check them out.  (Having another person there makes one feel less self-conscious about picking up stuff thrown out.)  

    A fortnight ago, I saw a wooden tray on the pavement in her street (a lot of fly-tipping these days) on the way to her, so when I left her place, I asked her to come along and check it out with me.  We discussed how to repair the scratched wood of the inside bottom, which was all that was in need of fixing (and even then, only aesthetically).  She said her flat was bursting at the seams but she’d take it — much to my relief.

    On the way to view the wooden tray, she pointed out a three-section, collapsible/fold-up, foam single mattress sitting on the street corner opposite her flat.  We inspected it, talked about how it could be used for the unexpected guest (no, they don’t really have space, but that’s not the point), and moved off down the road to go and look at the tray.  When we parted company after deciding on the tray, I said to her, “Don't forget to pick up the foam mattress.”  Well, she didn’t take it.  The next day, she texted me, “Looked out of the window this morning and the mattress is gone.”  Much to her relief.

    The Giant Gentle, in his quaint English, used to say, “We’ve come out of the same hospital.”  

    I’ve often quoted this to people, and to this Mauritian lady, I now simply say, “Same hospital, same hospital,” and she’ll know what I mean.

Coincidence?? (London / Singapore / Shanghai)

 

I play a mainland Chinese crossword puzzle game on my phone.  It comes under the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp, which I’d had to download because some mainland Chinese people wanting to do English lessons with me can’t use anything else.

    The crossword puzzle game uses four-character Chinese sayings: some are common everyday usage ones, some are more erudite ones picked from classical Chinese texts and poetry.

    A student who works in Singapore has his lessons with me via WhatsApp.  One day more than a year ago, he told me at the end of his lesson that he’d be getting married.  Lesson over, I went to play the Chinese crossword puzzle game.  Among the first round of sayings was 男大当婚 nán dà dāng hūn / “man big ought-to marry”!

    For today’s lesson (still via WhatsApp) with the same student more than a year later, I fed him a four-character saying 花言巧语 huā yán qiǎo yǔ / “flowery words clever language” which the dictionaries have given as “slick / smooth talk”.  When I went into the Chinese crossword puzzle game after the lesson, one of the sayings in the first batch that came up was 花言巧语!

    During a lesson a few months back with a different student based in Shanghai, I gave him a saying that involves a slightly more classical Chinese construction: 诸 zhū which is short for 之于 zhī yú, roughly broken down as “it into”, e.g., 付诸东流 fù zhū dōng liú / “pay it-into east flow” (dictionary says: throw it into the eastward flowing stream; English equivalent: throwing something down the drain).  

    The 付诸东流 saying is common enough, without every Chinese user necessarily knowing the breakdown, as they tend to learn things by rote and repeat parrot-fashion.  It’s the 诸 being short for 之于 that’s the more obscure bit, often encountered in this meaning/usage only in set phrases or literary language.  

    After my lesson with the Shanghai-based student, I went into the crossword puzzle game.  Yep, up popped 付诸东流!

(London / Singapore / Shanghai, 2021–2023)

Chinese sayings: 20 (牽衣投轄 / 牵衣投辖)

 

牽衣投轄 / 牵衣投辖

qiān yī tóu xiá

“pull garment throw linchpin”

(轄 xiá / linchpin — a pin passed through the end of an axle to keep a wheel in position)

This is a saying to describe the extent the host goes to in an attempt to make the guest stay.

    The 投轄 tóu xiá here is throwing the linchpin of the [guest’s] cart into a well, so that they can’t leave. 

    I can understand pulling at the guest’s clothes to stop them from leaving, but throwing their cart’s linchpin into the well?!  I just love the imagery!  Hahahahaha.

Chinese sayings: 19 (己所不欲，勿施於人)

 

己所不欲，勿施於人

jǐ suǒ bù yù，wù shī yú rén

“self that-which not want, do-not give to people”

This is from 孔子·論語 / The Analects by Confucius, and is immediately explanatory.  It can be shortened to just the first phrase.

    The English equivalent is:  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31).

    The latest Korean modern drama I’ve been watching on Netflix (a kind ex-student made me his guest for my helping him out for free with his new baby and other related matters) is set in a mental hospital.  

    One of the nurses went into a deep depression after a patient committed suicide: she stayed in bed for days, wouldn’t interact with people, and was admitted to a mental unit at a different hospital.  When she recovered and returned to work, one of the patients’ mother found out and started to object to her daughter being treated by someone who’d had a mental illness before.  The matter escalated to all the family of the patients protesting about it outside the hospital, demanding her resignation or removal.

    The head of the nurses’ team (who herself had a sister with a mental issue) responded in this way at the confrontation, which I find touching: 

    (my summary) “Someone who’s been through a similar frame of mind would actually be in a better position to understand how the patient feels.

    “Also, how would you feel about your own family member, who’s in here at the moment being treated for a mental issue, getting well enough to leave here and going out to society at large, and then being rejected, sidelined, shunned, turned down for participation as a member of society in work and social life?”

    It put those relatives to shame.  

    I wish more people in modern life (or the ones I’ve observed behaving badly here) were more aware of not doing unto others what they wouldn’t want done unto themselves.

Chinese sayings: 18 (不怒自威)

 

不怒自威

bù nù zì wēi 

“not angry naturally awesome/threatening”

I have unfortunately been blessed with a demeanour that looks angry even when I’m enjoying myself.  So many times I’d been at the computer screen, having a good time all focused on the task in hand, and someone would ask me what I was so angry about.  A lot of Chinese seem to have this body language, too, actually, so maybe it’s a cultural thing.  (However, an ex-student Patsy, who’s English, told me she’d often get told, “Don’t worry, it might never happen,” when she was sitting happily somewhere daydreaming away.)

    This misunderstood body language has had its dramatic effects in the classroom and the exam room.  

    Students will change what they’ve offered in translation purely on the basis of my asking “Why?”, instantly thinking I’ve asked because their version is wrong.  It’s the what-I-call “shake the tree” device in my teaching style, i.e., if they can justify why they’d parsed the sentence a certain way (interpreting a word as a verb rather than as a noun, e.g.), then they can be sure they’d got it right, rather than arriving by hit or miss.  If their tree is weak to start with (they’re just guessing wildly, pinning the tail on the donkey, rather than analysing the sentence based on actually knowing how the Chinese language works), it’d keel over at the slightest shaking.  They need to shake their own tree in real life, as I won’t be there to tell them if they’d been right or wrong.  

    Admittedly, it could be the way I ask “Why?” (too challenging a tone of voice), but one particular oral exam episode showed that I don’t even need to open my mouth.

    It was a final year oral exam, therefore two examiners present.  The other examiner was a colleague from Taiwan, who has smiling eyes even without moving her lips or feeling happy.

    The candidate on the day was presenting his arguments on some given topic (environmental pollution or human rights violation, which are common final year themes).  My colleague and I, seated opposite him, were making notes as we listened to him.  At one point, I looked up at random from my note-taking, not for any particular reason, and my eyes met the candidate’s.  He immediately stopped in mid-flow, and looked very nervously at me.  

    Exam over, I asked him why he’d done it.  He said the look on my face made him think he’d made a mistake (wrong grammar, or wrong usage of language / expression).  I said, “But I didn’t even open my mouth!  And I wasn’t thinking that at the time!  You weren’t saying anything wrong at that point.”  不怒自威 indeed.

    After that, I would remember to keep my eyes down all the time and not make eye contact, or prime myself to smile before I raised my head.

(London, 2000s)

Pidgin English

I was invited to lunch at ex-student Singaporean Linda’s, the other guests being two couples.  

    The conversation got round to the Malay and Indonesian languages being simple in structure with no conjugations, just adding “already” or “not yet” to the verb, rather like in Chinese.  For example:

to eat = makan; 

to have eaten = sudah makan / “already eat”; 

not have eaten yet = belum makan / “not-yet eat”.

    Irish Peter, who works for an oil company that has Filipino workers on their offshore rigs, said Filipinos use “already” a lot in English.  

    One day, the duty manager asked a Filipino worker to go and open a valve.  The Filipino came back and said, “Valve already open”.  

    This sent the duty manager into a bit of a panic, because this could mean: (i) “I’ve now opened it,” but it could also mean: (ii) “It was already open when I went to open it” — in which case, an oil leak situation, therefore serious.  Especially since it was an offshore rig.

How to get your guest(s) to eat more: 01 (London)

The Chinese style of hospitality is to make sure your guests have enough to eat — the host must not be seen to be stingy.  The guests, on their part, must make sure they’re not seen to be greedy, so they must exercise restraint — I’d heard of people who’d actually eat BEFORE going to a dinner party, so that they really cannot eat much.  This is, therefore, the ritual (what I call “a silly game”): the host will press the guests to eat more food, the guests will decline; this will go on for a few times (sometimes even five) before one party surrenders.  It’s an interesting exercise for guessing who’s genuine: in pressing more food onto the guests’ plate / in refusing another helping.

    I’ve always found food tastes better when partaken in company.  (When I’m the guest, there’s also the element of the host being a better cook than I, which is not difficult.)  So, it’s not surprising that I end up eating more than my usual quantity.  (My mouth and stomach do not always work together: if my mouth fancies the food, my stomach gets overruled even when it has no more room.)

    The other element is my abhorrence of waste, so I will clean out the rest of the dish if there’s any threat of it being binned, even when I've had enough already.  This is where some astute friends have worked out how to get me to eat more or take the rest home.

    One of them, ex-student Slovak Martin, would take the dish to the bin, sort of dangle it close to the flipped-up lid as if about to tip the contents into the bin, and look at me with raised eyebrows.  Never failed to help me decide I’d eat that last morsel or take it home.

    Mauritian Colette would cook an extra large portion, then say they don’t eat leftovers, that it’d all go to the food waste recycling bin (therefore not really wasted).  I always succumb.

(London, 2000s)

Chinese sayings: 17 (外厲內荏 / 外厉内荏) (London; Singapore)

外厲內荏 / 外厉内荏

wài lì nèi rěn 

“outside stern inside weak”

I have a reputation for being a strict teacher.  Some students had even called me a Dragon Lady.  Off duty, however, I do a lot of things for them: baby-sitting, gardening, DIY.  I say to people, “In class, I’m the whip-cracker.  Outside class, I’m their slave.”  外厲內荏.

    After I got my LCC (London Chamber of Commerce) Private Secretary Certificate, I applied to a law firm (Boey, Ng and Wan) in downtown Singapore for the post of legal secretary.  

    I was at the time, while waiting for the results of the LCC exam, working as a telex operator in Conoco Singapore, doing the early shift, starting at 6am, so I had to drive to work as there weren’t night buses in those days.  I, therefore, drove to the law firm for the interview after my shift, which was around 2pm — a busy time of the day for road traffic.  With no air conditioning in my car, and being stuck in the snarled-up traffic, fretting about making a bad impression, being late already for just the interview stage, I arrived for my interview all sweaty and nerves jangling.

    It didn’t help at all to find that I was to be interviewed by not one but three lawyers.  It was a firm with three partners, so they all wanted to have a part in the selection process.  The partner whose office it was sat at his desk, the other two flanking him, one standing, one sitting on the edge of the desk.

    I sat down, all hot and flustered, holding my hands together in my lap (which they couldn’t see from the other side of the desk), wringing them to help calm myself down.

    After that, I went for the shorthand dictation and transcription test.  

    Yes, I passed both parts of the interview, and got the job.  A few weeks later, the partners told me how impressed they had been by me at the interview: all cool and calm, collected and confident.  

    Haha, a good example of 外厲內荏, indeed.

(London, 1985–now; Singapore, 1974)

Chinese sayings: 16 (醉翁之意不在酒)

 

醉翁之意不在酒

zuì wēng zhī yì bù zài jiǔ

“drunk old-man ’s intention not in alcohol”

This is from a poem by Sòng dynasty poet Ouyang Xiu / 宋•歐陽修 (1007—1072).  

For those who might be interested, the second part, which is often left out (like in Cockney rhyming slang), is 

在乎山水之間也 / 在乎山水之间也

zài hū shān shuǐ zhī jiān yě

= (his interest is) in the mountains and the waters

    So, he’s not so much interested in the alcohol but the views that he’s drinking the alcohol to.

    I apply this to my giving people presents or helping people with chores.  It’s not so much the actual gift itself but the act of giving that is the pleasure-giving bit.  It makes people feel nice because they’re remembered (when it’s a gift), that other people are caring and supportive (when it’s help offered/rendered).

    The same when I say “thank you” to non-English speakers in their own language.  The effect is particularly remarkable, especially since I look Oriental, therefore not expected to know how to say “thank you” in, e.g., Albanian(/Kosovan), Bulgarian, Kurdish, Romanian, Turkish — just to name a few of the not-so-well-known ones (compared to French, German, Spanish, say).  

    It’s what I call a heart opener: almost invariably, they break into a big smile when they recognise the sounds coming out of this Oriental mouth.  A heart-warming ice breaker.  Makes their day.  And mine.