Chinese sayings: 59.1 (施不望報 / 施不望报: Can I use your landline phone?)

Case study 1 for my wondering why I should feel hurt having the door slammed in my face when I needed help from the people I'd been helping for a long time, unstintingly.

    Someone in her 80s (let's call her Wang Meiling) said to me one day that her husband was in pain from sciatica.  Being me, I instantly leapt into action, going to her house to give him massage.

    Upon arrival, I was asked if I could also give her son one.  Nothing serious, it turned out, mainly some pain in the lower back and shoulder -- just a bit of wear and tear from being almost half a century in age.

    Then it was herself as well:  all sorts of aches and pains, all over, from head to feet.

    Yes, it did have a whiff of the hitchhiker's trick to it, but I went along with it as I'm passionate about healing and pain relief, and my upbringing won't let me walk away from helping people if I'm in a position to.  The opposite of 見死不救 / 见死不救 / jiàn sǐ bù jiù / "see dying not save".

    (For those who might not know what a hitchhiker's trick is about:  a female hitchhiker in a skimpy dress or pair of shorts thumbs a lift.  When the car stops for her, with the driver more likely than not a male one, out from behind the bushes jumps a chap [or more] who might not have been so successful.)

    And yes, I didn't have to let myself continue to be used, by not returning after that first visit.  However, my upbringing has been:  施不望報 / 施不望报 / shī bù wàng bào / give without expecting anything back.  This is an old couple who needed help in pain relief (and moral/emotional support), I was able to provide it -- my upbringing has instilled in me that I can't walk away when faced with such a situation.  I couldn't 見死不救 / 见死不救 / jiàn sǐ bù jiù / "see dying not save".  My conscience (良心 / liáng xīn / "good heart") wouldn't let me.   

    She never offered any monetary payment, and I never broached it, not even to let them know how much it'd cost them if they were to go outside for their massages, never mind have someone go to their home.  All they had to do was wait in the comfort of their own home, no travelling to do, no petrol to spend on their journey there and back.  

    I often arrived with fruit that I'd buy from a stall en route, because my upbringing says never arrive empty handed, even though I was doing them a favour.

    so I was spending at least three hours (practically always longer) of my time (excluding travel time there and back) relieving three people of their aches and pains nearly every Sunday, plus money bearing gifts as if it was a social call.  (She did invite me to stay for dinner.  How much can one eat?)

    (For reference:  massage shops charged around £55/hour to £75/hour, the last time I looked two decades ago.  Yes, I'm aware that these businesses have to pay rent and other overheads.)

    I'm not very good at asking for help, so when I do, it's because I'm desperate.

    One January, I was doing my tax returns, and needed to make a call to my bank in Singapore for some information.  

    Calls to institutions often take a long time -- one has to explain what one wants from them, they then have to go and look it up, and so on.  

    I thought it might be much less expensive to make that long distance call from a landline number, which I don't have.  So, I phoned this Wang Meiling, explaining that I was desperate for time (being very close to the deadline for the tax returns submission), and very stressed out over it, and asked if I could go to her house and use her landline phone for this.

    Back came a very hesitant:  "Oh, I don't know..."  

    (In case you're thinking I might've misunderstood her hesitation:  being sensitive to issues like displays of loyalty and moral support, I then withdrew my request.  She didn't pursue it on that occasion, nor did she ever bring it up again.  My impression was [still is] that she was relieved she wasn't going to have to pay for that international phone call, even though I'd said I'd pay for it.  This incident has left a horrible taste in my mouth and heart -- to this day.  The word "betrayal" comes to mind, staying to this day.  The only consolation, if any is to be had from it, is that they'd lost out on three free massages every single Sunday thereafter.)

    In the context of 施不望報 / 施不望报, though, I still can't explain why I should have felt so betrayed and hurt by her not helping me out on such a small thing (even if I weren't so stressed out and desperate, which I was at the time and had conveyed it in no uncertain terms to her).

(London, 2024)

Chinese sayings: 59.0 (施不望報 / 施不望报: An introduction)

施不望報 / 施不望报

shī bù wàng bào

"give not hope repayment"

The literal breakdown should make it clear:  giving help or kindness to others without expecting anything in return.

    (An aside here:  I teach my students all the time to do literal breakdowns for everything, as this will help them see the wood/forest from looking at the trees, apart from learning the original meaning of all the characters in a word or phrase, which would help them arrive at the final meaning when they see them in different permutations.)

    I help a lot of people in a lot of ways -- for free, without wanting anything in return:  massage; house sitting (three months each time, and lumbered with fiddly tasks, as well as more major house problems); cat sitting; gardening; food shopping (and delivering to their door); mentoring for studies; even looking in on their elderly neighbour for them while they were away on holiday; etc.

    So, why do I feel hurt by their slamming the door in my face when I appeal to them for help (only in my desperate moments)?

Raising awareness of civic mindedness

Further thoughts here, as a side shoot to my blog about the 94-year-old woman constantly and instinctively giving way to people on the pavement and on station steps:

    There should be more publicity to raise awareness of the issue of civic mindedness / 公德心 / gōng dé xīn / "public virtue heart".  

    It is true that I have a soft spot for old people (have been like this since a child), but the bigger issue is that people cannot help getting old and becoming frail, so they (old people) need extra help.  Not just help in giving them a walking stick, a zimmer frame, a wheelchair, or a carer who comes to their homes to feed and wash them.

    The culture over here is (/ seems to be, to me) not to come across as being too "controlling" of people (or one's own children), so all the things I'd been taught as a child in Singapore (under the civic mindedness umbrella of being respectful, considerate, caring, supportive and unselfish) do not seem to be actively filtered down that much to the younger generation, from my own observations.  

    To be fair, I have seen some parents teaching their children to be considerate and all that, on public transport, but it is a very small percentage of the population, I'm afraid, from what I've seen.  

    I do whizz around London quite a bit on my Freedom Pass, zooming from allotment (in east London) to soup kitchen meals in west London (eating as a diner, and helping out as a volunteer at one of them).  So, I do get quite a lot of exposure to human behaviour, including parenting (good or non-existent).

    The current buzz focus seems to be on old age and the situations that come with it, e.g., dementia.  I think there should also be more focus on instilling in the younger generation over here the kind of civic mindedness that I'd been brought up on in Singapore in the 1960s.

(London, 2026)

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/11/good-practices-14-asking-people-to-make.html 

Good practices: 14 (Asking people to make way)

The 94-year-old woman I've taken under my wings since I met her two months ago uses a stick, which is common for her age group.

    She can only hold on to her walking stick or handrails with her right hand, as a car accident a while back had hit her on the left side, leaving her not only with pain in her left shoulder and arm, but also no strength in that hand to grip handrails for support.  So, she has to have the handrails on her right side when she goes up or down steps (at Tube stations, e.g.).  

    I've been telling her over the last eight weeks to make people walk around her, rather than her walking around / giving way to people, because just one tiny little trip-up, especially on a flight of steps, can be disastrous.

    The injury itself will be bad enough, but for a 94-year-old especially, it might have nasty consequences, such as injuries to her eyes or teeth.  (As it is, she already has precious few teeth left.  She's been telling everyone about her being unable to eat all sorts of things, with so few teeth left.)

    It is through looking after her the last two months that I've learned to walk behind or ahead of her when going up / down steps (e.g., at Tube stations), to catch her or break her fall should she trip up, something I'd never had to do before, as I'd never looked after someone so old.

    It is also through looking after her (accompanying her home on the Tube after the soup kitchen meals at various sites, carrying her takeaway boxes of surplus cooked food and the goodies bags handed out) that I've become assertive on her behalf, actively asking people to give up their seats.  (To their credit, a lot of them do, without having to be approached.  One positive outcome of looking obviously old...)

    At her station, we would wait until the disgorged passengers had all gone down the steps to the ticket turnstiles, before venturing down ourselves.  

    However, there are often also crowds of people coming up the steps to the platform to catch the train.  This is when she then leaves the handrail to avoid the upstream flow, which gives me kittens every time.  

    Whenever I issue yet another reminder, her answer is, now, "Old habit."  

    Her answer used to be that her stopping mid-path and standing still (on the pavement, say) didn't make people walk around her.  She said they simply barged into her -- not deliberately, I'm sure, just not being more mindful of old people.

(London, 2026)

Batting it back: 02 (London)

At a soup kitchen meal run by a group of Mother Teresa nuns, I sat next to a chap in his 70s(?) with an Irish accent(?).

    There's always a mad rush for the second helpings -- even before the nuns give the green light for people to go up to the serving counter, so when he came back with a piled-up plate of food, I said, "So, you've managed to get something."

    He said, "I don't like to talk when I'm eating." (He hadn't started eating at this point.)  I didn't like his tone of voice, so when he next spoke to me, I said, "I don't like to talk when I'm not eating."

    He said, "You're sharp, you're sharp."

    I didn't bother asking him if it was meant to be a compliment or not.

(London, 2026)

"Huh??!!" conversations: 11 (I didn't see them)

After leaving the soup kitchen meal, I was walking along the pavement with the 94-year-old woman I've been looking after over the past two months, heading for the Tube station.

    A middle-aged couple coming from the opposite direction started to walk around her (on her left), to make way for her.  

    She, on her part, also started to walk around them on the same side (on her left), to make way for them, so she ended up blocking their way (not deliberately, of course), almost bumping into them in the process.

    Over the last eight weeks since I first met her, I've been trying to teach her to make people give way to her, rather than her giving way to them and walking around them.

    Apart from the fact that her age means she has the right of way (out of respect, based on standard behaviour "rules"), I'm also trying to help her avoid a fall, because she's 94 and not always steady on her feet.

    By walking around people, she needs to take more steps.  Taking extra steps might increase the risk of falling, as she has two bad knees and frequent leg cramps.  A fall at that age might have serious consequences, not just inconvenience mobility-wise.

    After the encounter on the pavement with the couple, I said to her, "Why did you walk around them, giving way to them, when they were already trying to give way to you by walking around you?"

    Her answer:  "I didn't see them."

    Huh??!!  If she hadn't seen them, then why was she walking around them to give way to them (instead of walking straight on like she'd been doing up to that point)???!!!

    I pointed out the illogicality of her reply, and got silence back.

(London, 2026) 

Out of one's depth: 04 (Chinese person eating pita/pide bread as a first course)

I've been watching a mainland Chinese drama series set in China in the 1930s and 1940s (before, during and after the Japanese Invasion).  

    There is a scene with three of the men in the story eating a Western meal at a restaurant in Qingdao city (Shandong province, east China).

    On each one's plate are two slices of bread, a slice of spam, one fried egg, two cross-sections of carrot and some unidentifiable brown thing.

    One of the men, who is very successful at running a dyeing factory but who had started life as a beggar and is illiterate, can't handle the Western cutlery provided, and asks for chopsticks.

    This reminds me of something in reverse of sorts that I'd witnessed at a soup kitchen meal provided by a charity.

    The first course was half a pouch of pita/pide flatbread, with dips (tzatziki, hummus and taramasalata) and some salad on the side.

(AI says)

Quote

East Mediterranean flatbreads (like Greek pita, Turkish lavash, pide, and yufka) are traditionally eaten with your hands, not cutlery.  In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dining cultures, flatbread serves as both the food and the "utensil" itself.

Unquote

    I vaguely saw, out of the corner of my eye, a young Chinese man (from mainland China or Hong Kong, going by his body language, in his mid-/late-20s or early 30s, at the next table from mine) using his knife to spread the dips on his flatbread, like what one would do with jam or honey.  

    He then proceeded to cut up the flatbread into smaller pieces with his knife and fork, like what one would do with a piece of steak, after which he delivered each piece to his mouth with his fork, the way one would do it at a Western meal.

(London, 2026)

PS.1:  For those who might be interested, Qingdao city is famous for its Tsingtao beer, with the factory set up in 1903 by the Germans still there.  

    Tsingtao is the Wade-Giles romanisation system version of 青島 / 青岛 / “green island". 

    Qingdao is the post-1949 mainland Chinese romanisation system version (called 拼音 pīnyīn / "put-together sounds").

PS.2:  Spam = spiced ham, a tinned food made of shoulder of pork and ham. The generic name is luncheon meat. Spam is a specific brand of luncheon meat. Tinned luncheon meat is fairly commonly consumed by the Chinese, and is one of the items in a Chinese New Year gift hamper in my childhood days in Singapore.