"Huh?!?" attitude: 01 (English-speaker about Mandarin)

I had an American private student in the 80s who was in London because her husband got transferred here for a stint of work. She was in her 20s, I think (or early 30s at the most -- I'm very bad with age).

    She was planning to apply to Columbia University for a postgrad in Business Studies. One of the criteria was knowing a second language (just like for the London Business School MBA programme, where I taught Mandarin to the students for a couple of years). As this was the 80s and China was opening up to the outside world after the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), she decided to go for Chinese for that second language.

    The Chinese language is mostly SVO (Subject Verb Object) in structure, e.g., 我喝茶 / wǒ hē chá / I drink tea. This matches English, so lots of English speakers do not have a problem with it.

    One problematic structure for lots of Mandarin learners is the 把 bǎ construction, with the (for Mandarin) unusual word order of S 把-O V (e.g., 我把茶喝了 / wǒ bǎ-chá hē le / I took the tea and drank it).

    This American student struggled with this, and said, "What a stupid language!"

    I was stunned by this attitude: calling a language "stupid" just because she couldn't cope with a construction that does not conveniently match English that she's comfortable with.

    I say "comfortable with" for a reason, because English is not the most consistent of languages, yet English speakers don't object to this, because they grow up speaking it -- what I call the osmosis effect: it all seeps in and stays under the skin, without the speaker noticing it.

    As a lot of my students will know, I'm constantly sympathising, and empathising, with them, calling the Chinese language a monster, which makes them laugh (and feel better about their own struggles), so my feeling shocked about the attitude of this student was not in defence of the language at all, and certainly not because I'm from that cultural background.

    My concern is purely from a pedagogical perspective, which I always explain to the student: "Taking this attitude is counter-productive. Since you've launched into it (learning the language), you have to block out all negative thoughts, or it'll hamper your coming to grips with an already challenging task which you can't do anything about but to devise coping strategies for. Or give up."

    When students say that they're too old or too stupid to learn such a hard language, my immediate response is, "That's the first thing you should do: try and stop taking that attitude. If you say it often enough, you'll start to believe it -- this way, the battle is lost before you've even started."

    I give the same advice even when I hear people talking about being too old or too stupid to learn anything else.

    Of course, I'm not saying that just thinking that you can become fluent in Chinese or German or French will immediately remove all the obstacles. We have to be realistic and recognise (/acknowledge) that some of us are not cut out for certain things in life, e.g., being an Olympic athlete, or a UN interpreter. Some people are born with a talent for music, some for carpentry, so one has to be aware of one's limitations, it's true.

    This American girl was aiming to do an MBA with Mandarin as her second language. With such an attitude about the language (calling it "stupid"), she wouldn't get very far, I feel... (With learning the language, I mean, not in life, although her attitude would probably also throw a lot of self-created obstacles onto her path through life.)

(London, 1987?)

The nature vs nurture of food: 15 (What is acceptable or not)

(Forewarning to vegetarians:  don't read any further.)

A friend saw a newly made video by a white American going "Inside China's poorest and most drug addicted areas".  She said the children asked the documentary maker at one point if he ate humans, which then started a conversation (via texting) between us on the subject of which cultures do or won't eat what kind of food.

Dog meat:  It's fairly well-known that Korean people eat dog meat.  

    A Hong Kong-born woman I used to know ate dog meat in the southwest of China in the 80s when she was there as a tour guide.  The tourists (all Westerners) noticed her not having dinner with them in the hotel and asked where she would go for her meals if not at the hotel.  When told it was at various local restaurants, they asked if she could take them to one, for the experience.  She agreed, on the condition that they didn't question her choice of food.  At the end of the meal, she asked them for their opinion of the meat dish -- they thought it was delicious.  She then told them it was dog meat.

    I myself have tried it once before in 1975 when my landlord's son came home for a weekend with some cooked in a hongshao [red braising] sauce (light and dark soya, Shaoxing wine, star anise, ginger, garlic, rock sugar, scallion) by a national service camp mate of his.  It was similar to beef in texture and taste, but then hongshao sauce is quite a strong flavour, so any meat cooked in it would probably mainly differ only in the texture.  The hongshao venison served at a small dinner party in London when I was at university also tasted pretty much like beef.  Maybe it's me, not having a discerning palette.

Horse meat:  The French are known for eating horse, but the Brits baulk at the practice.  So, it seems to be purely a subjective approach, because why not horse when they happily go for cow, sheep, goat, pig, poultry?  As with dog meat, it seems to be simply due to the attachment to these two animals (horse and dog) that the Brits don't eat either of them.  And while we're on the subject, it doesn't seem to be a common practice among dog meat eaters to eat cat meat either.

Snails:  I ate snails for the first time in my life in Taipei in 1976 at a French restaurant (therefore posh, since it was European) instead of a Chinese one -- interestingly enough, since the Chinese are known for eating a very wide range of food.  It was expensive, as you can imagine, sold under a fancy name "escargots" and served up as a French dish.

Snake meat:  I've only eaten snake meat once before, back in 1976 in Chiayi (嘉義 Jiāyì) in south Taiwan.  If I hadn't been told, I'd have thought it was firm fish meat.

    I shall not go into some of the squeamish ones that I'd heard about, eaten in various countries / cultures without anyone batting an eyelid.  One of them has recently (in the last decade or so) even made it into health food shops as a health supplement, in powdered form, for its high protein content.

Quick tallying up: 02 (Every bowl of veg for a quid)

The first time I came across this way of doing things was back in 1996 in Brixton, south London.

    A then-student and I were taking Mr Moon there as it's an ethnic area with all sorts of exotic foods, fresh and packaged, which we thought might be fun for him.

    Mr Moon was in London for a year with a group of a dozen or so colleagues from the South Korean Housing Board, learning English and studying the UK's housing policies and practices.  His digs were across the street from the university where I was teaching at the time.

    We ended up in the Brixton open air veg market area around closing up time (4pm'ish).

    As we walked past one of the greengrocers packing up, I heard him say, "One pound, one pound, one pound."  I turned round to find him holding out a weighing scales pan filled with French beans going for £1.  I love French beans, and it was cheap, so I asked my student if he'd like to go halves.  

    After the French beans were poured into our respective rucksacks and we were walking away, I heard the same man say, ""One pound, one pound, one pound."  I turned round to find him holding out the same weighing scales pan now filled with potatoes.  I love potatoes, and my student is Irish, so we went halves.

    Yet another "one pound, one pound, one pound" lot of veg later, we had to stop, because our rucksacks were bursting at the seams (and my knees buckling under the weight -- I was also worried that the bus on the journey home might end up with a puncture).

    Not long after that Brixton experience, I noticed roadside stalls starting to sell veg in big plastic bowls, all going for a quid each.  As with the uniform-price format for the dim sum dishes (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/06/quick-accounting-01-multiples-of-5.html), just put less in the bowl for the pricier items (e.g., broccoli).

    This makes transactions quicker for both seller and buyer, unlike in the old days when time was spent weighing up the veg, then collecting the relevant sum for each type, not to mention giving change in return (where applicable).

    The downside for the buyer would be if you didn't want or need so much, e.g., if you live alone or are a small eater.  My solution was to take advantage of the cheaper price all the same but share them with friends and students. I used to go to private students for their lessons, loaded up with fruit and veg from these stalls.

    What I'd experienced in Brixton might've been the start of the trend.

    Actually, prior to that, in the mid-80s, a greengrocer's in north London (Gibbers on Seven Sisters Road) was already doing something similar -- selling things off in £1 lots, but in clear plastic bags tied up.  This means extra work for the shop staff, though, whereas the plastic bowl system is less work and quicker for processing on all fronts.

    Both systems involve plastic bags, unfortunately, and not everyone is conscientious about recycling them.

(London, 1980s and 1996–present)

Quick tallying up: 01 (Multiples of 5)

I first saw this happen as a 15-year-old in Singapore having a dim sum meal, which was a fairly new import at the time -- to my consciousness anyway.  

    For those interested, dim sum is a Cantonese cultural practice.  Its proper name is 飲茶 / yum cha [yǐn chá in Mandarin] / "drink tea", for the activity.  The original practice (started during the Qing era) was a social gathering of people (family, friends) over a few cups of tea, usually at the weekend or a festive day.  Because it's not good, health-wise, to have tea on an empty stomach, the tea drinkers would order "snacks" [點心 dim sum / diǎnxīn in Mandarin] in the form of dumplings and other small items of food that are not eaten at a main meal (e.g., spring rolls; steamed or pan-fried stuffed beancurd skin rolls).

    In time, this practice became popular for the eating rather than the tea drinking, and a new concept of dining out was born.  Now you know why Chinese restaurants stop serving dim sum at 5pm -- because it's not considered a proper / main meal.  No one eats those dumplings for dinner.  Not even for a proper meal, really, but acceptable in the day.

    The British equivalent would be eating peanuts, crisps and/or pork scratchings with the alcoholic drink in a pub, because it's not good to drink on an empty stomach -- or maybe it's boring to just drink.  Westerners might not have the same perspective on health issues as the Chinese. 

    At the restaurant I was taken to in Singapore as a teenager, the offerings came on trolleys that perambulated within the restaurant.  The dishes were the same price, which is how the system works so well.  Dishes with more expensive ingredients, e.g., prawn, would have fewer items.

    When you saw that the trolley that came round had what you wanted, you'd indicate your interest. The waiting staff would put it/them on your table, then, on the piece of paper left on your table, record the number of dishes you've taken in the form of a build up of strokes in the character 正 (zhèng / upright, but the reading and meaning are irrelevant here in this context).

    The 正 character is made up of five strokes.  There is a fixed order for writing characters, with the one for 正 being:

1st stroke:  top horizontal (full stroke), written left to right

2nd stroke:  middle vertical (full stroke), written top to bottom

3rd stroke:  middle horizontal (half stroke on the right of the middle vertical), written left to right

4th stroke:  left vertical (half stroke on the left of the middle vertical), written top to bottom

5th (and final) stroke:  bottom horizontal (full stroke), written left to right

    If your first lot is three dishes, the 正 character would be incomplete, with only three strokes written in.

    If your next lot is three dishes again, two of these three dishes would complete the first five-stroke 正 character, with the third dish being the first stroke of the next 正 character.

    The Western equivalent is the system of four vertical lines with the final line written as a horizontal line across.  This is most often seen in films on the wall of a prison cell with the captive person keeping track of how many days have passed.

    The problem with the Western version is that one might write five vertical lines (or three) and it might not be obvious, as they can/might be a bit close together.

    With the 正 character, if there's one stroke missing it'll show up immediately.  (One stroke too many will not happen unless the person is totally illiterate.)  Of course, the final toting up might not see the last 正 fully written out (with five strokes), as diners don't conveniently order/eat in multiples of five.

    So, when it comes to adding up, it'll be x number of fives, plus whatever number of strokes there are in the final incomplete 正, multiplied by unit price of dish.  Bob's your uncle.

Good practices: 08 (Covered ashtrays)

When I went to visit Danish friend Helle in Aarhus in June 2003, I noticed that outdoor tables at cafes and drinking places all had upturned small terracotta flower pots sitting in the ashtrays.

    This meant that the ashes wouldn't get whipped up and around on a windy day.  (Aesthetically too, the contents of the ashtrays would be out of sight for people who might find cigarette butts visually repugnant because of the association with the bad habit.)

    This good practice would be redundant now with smoking being phased out to a large extent in many countries, but it's still a good example of how some people (/ cultures) think of things that other people (/ cultures) don't seem to be able to come up with.

(Denmark, 2003)

PS:  I've recently (in the last year or two) spotted a couple of drinking places in London taking up this practice for their outdoor tables.

Good practices: 07 (Keeping rice warm)

This was in Sydney in June 2002, so I don't know if they still keep up this good practice.

    In the Chinese restaurant I was taken to, the rice came in an insulated food container, with a lid.  Think thermos flask but much wider.  Also called food flask or food thermos.

    It sat in a wine bucket stand placed by the table, rather than on the table competing for space with the dishes.

    Because it has a lid, the rice is kept warm throughout the meal, unlike the usual practice (over here in the UK, anyway) of a bowl of rice sitting on the table, taking up space and going cold in no time.

    A wine bucket stand doesn't take up much room, sitting by the table.

    It's a shame that no restaurants over here have adopted this good practice.  Maybe it's the extra cost of providing the bucket and the stand.  If customers are happy to put up with cold rice, why bother forking money for the extra equipment?  It might also hamper the movements of the waiting staff when bringing up dishes to the table.

(Sydney, Australia, 2002)

Fuzzy communications (London)

This happened about 25 years ago.

    I was helping out an ex-student with her MA Linguistics dissertation (for a different institution), so we'd meet up to discuss the points she was making, including the examples she was using to illustrate her arguments.  This meant sessions that could go on for hours.

    When she was my student on the BA course, she had often sought me out for a shoulder to cry on:  her issues with the head of department; her family problems (being deserted by her father for a new family); etc.  These conversations also took up a bit of time, often a few hours going for a walk or a few pints in the pub.

    Imagine, therefore, my receiving a text from her, just saying, "Are you free on Friday?"

    Which part of Friday?  How long for?  To do what?  Urgent or not?  Where?

    I needed the details to see if I might be able to fit her in, because I might have other things to do (hence the "where?" as well for the logistics in case I had to go to another place in London).

    Her vague question meant my having to go back to ask for more information.  It would've saved a lot of time, not to mention money (I was on PAYG [pay as you go] for my mobile at the time, being on a half salary; as a foreign student, she'd need to be careful about outgoings, too), if she'd spelled it all out in one go in the first place, e.g.:  "Are you free on Friday, any time that suits you, to go over my dissertation in the students' coffee bar at SOAS?"

(SOAS:  School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)

(London)