Chinese sayings: 06 (瞎貓撞到死老鼠 / 瞎猫撞到死老鼠)

瞎貓撞到死老鼠

xiā māo zhuàng-dào sǐ lǎoshǔ

“blind cat to-bump-reach dead mouse”

This means the cat had only run into the dead mouse, it didn't kill/catch the mouse, being blind.  It’s used to disclaim the credit given to one, i.e., one had only solved the problem serendipitously.

Old friend Valerio put a test to me in our WhatsApp message exchanges just now.  It’d started with him telling me one big chunk in my Introduction to the animal collection stories that I’ve been meaning to self-publish is too long for putting within parentheses.  I added as a btw cultural/linguistic practice note that the Chinese reader skips anything within parentheses because it means extra information, therefore optional.  Valerio the Maths Professor then says that the asterisk in Maths plays that role.

So, he then moved on to: how to, in WhatsApp messaging, make two stars on either side of a word/sentence appear without emboldening the word/sentence (with the star not showing up, being there only for the emboldening command).  

I fiddled around and got there somehow, based on the 負負得正 / 负负得正 fù fù dé zhèng / “reverse reverse get upright” / two-negatives-make-a-positive principle.  

Valerio said he had to Google it (and it’s less simple than my method), so he was impressed I got there.  

My response to this is:

瞎貓撞到死老鼠

xiā māo zhuàng-dào sǐ lǎoshǔ

“blind cat to-bump-reach dead mouse”

(London, 2023)

The cross cranes (Singapore)

My visit home in 1993 was after a 14-year gap.

    My eldest sister was keen to show me how Singapore had changed.  She had two young daughters at the time, aged six and four, so she thought a visit to the Singapore zoo (official name: Mandai Wildlife Reserve) would be perfect for a day out to keep me and her little girls entertained.

 

    In response to my protests (that I didn’t like the idea of gawping at animals penned up), she said Mandai zoo is a different concept, and that I’d find it an interesting experience.

 

     Sure enough, it was different, in a way, from my past experiences of zoos: Johor Baru Zoo (in Malaysia across the border) when I was about ten, and London Zoo in 1977.   

    Right next to the ticket window, even before you enter the zoo, was a fried chicken kiosk. Immediately inside the main entrance was a local-fare canteen.  Singaporeans get their priorities right: food first before the long march around the grounds.  (In case the items on offer in the canteen didn’t quite fill the tummy, there were also machines positioned among the trees in the grounds, dispensing snacks in the form of chocolate bars, sweets, crisps.)  

    Belly filled, one moved on to an animal performance area, with a stage section and an amphitheatre, to catch the acts during the scheduled slots (only twice daily, according to their website).  On the day we were there, the stars were a baby elephant and a seal.

    The zoo is beside a reservoir, on a wooded piece of land.  The animal sections are spread out around this wood, so the visitor is taking a walk through the wood, stopping at animal sections dotted about.  For a tropical island 1˚N with average humidity levels around 80%, it is, indeed, a pleasant way to spend one’s day — among the trees and beside the water.  So, she was right: it was an interesting experience. 

    The most interesting part from that day’s visit was when we were walking from one section to another, and my sister suddenly stopped beside the reservoir.  There was nothing else around, so I asked her why we’d stopped.  Her answer, “Just wait and see.”

 

    It was around noon.  We stood there under the trees.  First, one crane flew across the reservoir to where we were, and landed a few feet away.  Then, another one.  Next, a couple more.  A small group after that.  Soon, we were in the company of about one or two dozen cranes, standing around. 

    The cranes then started getting cross, pacing up and down, stamping the ground, back and forth, back and forth.

 

    Eventually, a milk float* loomed up.  The cranes rushed up to it, and the driver was besieged before he’d even put one foot on the ground.   

    He was the feeder, and he was late with their lunch.   

    Haha.  Never seen cranes in a fit of temper before.

 

 (Singapore, 1993) 

 * milk float:  (British) An open-sided van, typically powered by electricity, that is used for delivering milk to houses.

Cultural behaviour: 03 (Taipei)

Tom, one of the three radio operator colleagues at the American oil company Conoco Taiwan, asked if I could give his five-year-old daughter, Florence, some lessons in English.  (Not a lot of people in Taiwan spoke English in those days.)

We then began our Saturday morning lessons at the office.  I started by teaching her the usual basics: numbers, days of the week, months of the year, then her personal details (surname, name, age, nationality, etc.).  The following week, I’d re-use what I’d taught the previous week as revision, while adding on new material.

A few lessons in, Florence couldn’t remember something.  I said to her, “How can you have forgotten this word already?  I’d only just taught it to you last week!”  

Florence started crying.  I felt so bad.  Perhaps I was being too strict with her.

The next Saturday, I mentioned this to her father.  He said, “No, it wasn’t because you were too severe with her.  She was crying because she was ashamed at not being able to remember it.  She felt that she’d let you down.”

These days (and in the West?), the parent would immediately protest and lodge a complain, if not a lawsuit for emotional hurt.

(Taipei, 1975)

Instinctive cultural behaviour in reverse (London)

During my house-sitting stint in south London, the old neighbour (in his 90s, from Pakistan) from across the road came knocking on the door one day.  

He’d just returned from a family visit in Canada, to find that he couldn’t ring out on his mobile phone, for some reason, so could I give him a hand, he asked.   I went over with my phone to ring the people on his list (someone to fix his boiler, someone to fix something else).  His son was there, too.

The following day, returning from a food shopping trip, I thought I’d check on him, just in case he needed more help.

As the son opened the door, my head was already shaking from side to side, the Indian sub-continent way, even before I asked him, “Has your mobile phone problem been sorted out?”  

And I’m from a culture that doesn’t do the head-shaking….  So impressionable!

(London, 2023)

Instinctive cultural behaviour (London)

I had a Japanese student in one of my evening classes.  Let’s call her Yuki.

During the course of the lesson, I’d call out individual students to answer the question I’d put forward to the class.  

Whenever I addressed her in the Japanese way, calling her Yuki-san, her immediate reaction would be to say “Hai!” and bow (even while seated).  

(I could almost feel the military-style heel-clicking as well…)

(London, 1995)

Inadvertent word play (London)

I’ve just learned a new skill:  the channelling of cosmic energy to adjust a person’s balance of 氣/气 qì.  

The practitioners of Longevitology (LG; 長生學 cháng shēng xué / "long life study") have an impressive success record with cancer, stroke, and all other conditions of the internal organs that my style of massage cannot reach (or not to the same deep level).

I’ve been telling people about it, encouraging them to come along for the free adjustment sessions.

My reply to an ex-student’s email asking how I’ve been says:

Quote

LG is adjusting people’s 气 balance using cosmic energy through their chakras.  All free of charge.

Unquote

(London, 2023)

My tennis "playing"

When I first arrived in London, my English friend said he’d teach me to play tennis.  

There were two parts to it, he said: serving, and hitting back.  As one starts the game serving, that was what he taught me first.  

This went on for a few weeks, once a week, then the weather got cold and I started college, so the sessions stopped and I never learned how to hit back.

A year later, someone at university said his parents were going away for the weekend, so he and his siblings decided to have a children’s partying weekend at home, inviting their friends round.  

They had a tennis court at home, so this friend invited me to play singles with him.  I told him I’d only learned a bit the previous year.  When I served beautifully into his court, he said, “I thought you said you’d only learned it for a few weeks?  That was good!”  But when he hit it back to me, I’d either miss it altogether or hit it way up into the air.  We spent more time retrieving the ball than hitting it.

At one point, however, he said something that made me very angry.  I then found myself doing something quite surprising:  not only was I able to hit the ball back properly, I was even able to hit it back into the furthest corner away from him, to make him run all the way across the court for it.  Back and forth, back and forth, I kept it up for quite a few minutes, in perfect control of the ball.  

I had never been able to repeat it since.  Interesting how anger is capable of making one do things one’s normally unable to…

The hitting the ball high up into the air bit, I was able to repeat without any trouble at all.  A few years later, a friend invited me to play tennis at a tennis court surrounded by plane trees.  When my racket did actually manage to make contact with the oncoming ball, it’d send the ball flying high up into the trees.  At the end of the hour’s session, the plane trees all had a big pile of green leaves at the base…

The man who taught a crane to fly (Japan)

When I had a TV set in the 80s, I saw a documentary programme about a Hokkaidō National Park warden who found an abandoned crane’s nest after the heavy rain flooded most of the park.  

He took the egg home and incubated it in his oven, getting up every few hours to turn it over, apologising to it for disturbing its sleep.  

After it hatched, it followed him everywhere, as he was mummy, being the first creature it saw upon hatching.* 

 

When it got big, the warden felt it needed to learn to fly and go somewhere else to start its own life.  He started off running up and down the paddock, with the young crane chasing him close behind. 

 

A few more sessions later, he started to flap his arms while he was running, and the young crane mimicked him.  

One day, the flapping raised the crane into the air. 

 

So, a human taught a bird how to fly, haha.

When the crane found a mate, it brought her home to “mummy”, then their children when they were born.  

Year after year, they’d come home to visit “mummy”.  Sweet.

(Japan, 1980s)

*  Reminds me of Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989) and his geese.  Google: Quote In his classic experiment, Lorenz divided eggs laid by a greylag goose into two groups. One of the groups was hatched by their mother and immediately began following her around. The second group was hatched in an incubator, but in the absence of their mother, they began instead to follow Lorenz. Unquote

Word play (London)

A married professor at an educational institution I’d worked at in the 80s had caused a huge scandal, culminating in a scene in the reception area with one of the women pulling off the other’s skirt.  

My supervisor and I had somehow got embroiled: he’d kindly listened to the other woman’s sob stories about the professor when she’d turned up looking for him in person but couldn’t find him; I’d taken a phone call on my supervisor’s behalf one day when he was out, and had listened sympathetically to her sob stories (complete with sound effects).  Anyway, so that’s how I got to know the details.

One day, the professor and I were at the bank — he two places in front of me, with an American woman between us.  

Trying to check if that was the queue, the American woman asked him, “Are you in line?”  (She didn’t say “the”.)  

The professor said to her, “Oh yes, Madam, very much so.”

And I immediately thought, “Really?!  That’s not what I’ve heard.”

(London, 1987?)

Chinese sayings: 05 (癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉 / 癞蛤蟆想吃天鹅肉)

癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉

làiháma/làihámá xiǎng chī tiān’é ròu

“toad would-like-to eat sky-goose meat”

A tiān’é / “sky-goose” is a swan, all white and graceful.

This is a Chinese saying for describing someone who’s aiming for the impossible, often applied to a man in trying to win a woman’s heart.

It’s a common put down delivered by women when pursued by someone they don’t desire.  The man doesn’t have to be ugly (warty like a toad).  The woman doesn’t have to be beautiful (like a swan).  It’s cruel enough to put the man off.

A more cruel one, in my opinion, is the woman asking the man, “When was the last time you had a look at yourself in the mirror?”  Ouch.

Oxymoronic situation: 02 (Muting oneself) (London)

During an online Mandarin lesson with a group, one student’s side was producing a lot of noise (with her husband coming in to make coffee — it’s amazing how noise we often don’t notice can get amplified so much digitally), so she was asked to mute herself.  

    She then said, “OK, I’ve muted myself.”  

    Another student piped up, “How can we hear you if you've muted yourself?!?”

    Haha.

(London, 2023)

Update, 2024:  Another student in the group did the same thing the other week, saying, "I've muted myself.  Can you hear me now?"

Rocket post (India)

In the 70s and early 80s, my peers would take off, after graduating, to somewhere exotic (e.g., Far East, S.E.Asia, South America) and travel around (often for a whole year), before coming back to the UK and then start looking for a job.  

(From the second half of the 80s, people would start looking for a job even before they went into their final year.  Companies would do the Milk Rounds of universities, recruiting.  Google: Milk Round — a series of visits to universities and colleges by recruiting staff from large companies.)

After having done China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Simon went to India for a few months, buying stamp albums along the way.  As they were heavy, Simon decided to post them back to England rather than lug them around India.  

He went into a post office in a small place (small town?).  This was the dialogue:

Simon:  I want to send these back to England by post.  What are the different ways, and which is the quickest?

Man at the Post Office (Simon narrated this bit with a heavy Indian accent, complete with the shaking of the head):  There’s sea mail, which is the cheapest but the slowest.  They can go by land as well, but the fastest is ROCKET!

Simon chose ROCKET.  

He got back to England some three months later, and the parcel still hadn’t arrived. 

A bit later, the parcel sent by ROCKET post finally reached England.  It was stamped all over — it had obviously worked its way up the chain, from small town post office to the next, bigger one, and so on, probably around half of India.  It was a little bit frayed at the edges, but nothing was missing otherwise.

(India, 1982? / 1983?)

Not authentic enough (London)

I took an English friend, Simon, to the Indian YMCA canteen for lunch one year.  

Simon had travelled around India for a while after he graduated from SOAS in 1980.  

The moment he walked in, he sniffed the air, and said, "OH!  This smells just like India!"  

Then, when his chicken curry dish arrived and he started to tuck into it, he said, "No, it's not authentic enough -- there's too much meat on the chicken…!"

(London, 1982? / 1983?)