Out of one's depth: 02 (Chinese person eating rice with a knife)

I got my first professional interpreter assignment in 1979 as a third year BA student.

    A delegation of four mainland Chinese textile industry engineers had come over to learn how to fix minor technical problems with the machinery they'd bought from a British factory.

    (Just a comment on the side about their far-sightedness:  their purchase agreement covered free technical repairs as a warranty.  They decided, however, to come over and learn how to do minor repairs themselves, because getting a British engineer sent over would take too long:  

* they would have to make a long distance phone call for this, with an interpreter in tow; 

* the time difference would make timing the call placement a bit tricky, especially with each side's working hours to consider; 

* the British engineer would have to apply for a visa for China, which would take time to process, then get a plane ticket; 

* he would arrive in China something like 24 hours after he got on the plane.  

They couldn't afford to down tools for all that time while waiting for the expert to get out to them to fix a minor problem.  I was impressed by how forward thinking they'd been.)

    During their training programme over here, the routine was basically:  

* breakfast at the hotel on our own; 

* off to the factory for the training session (dismantling huge textile machines, identifying the problems, fixing them);

* lunch at the factory canteen (with someone from the British side eating with us);

* back to the factory for more training;

* dinner back at our hotel (with someone from the British side eating with us, then post-prandial drinks in the hotel bar).

    For the two meals when a Brit was present, I wouldn't get much eating done, as I'd be interpreting both ways -- while the British host could do some eating while the Chinese side was talking; and vice versa.

    At lunch in the factory canteen one day, I saw one of the three Chinese male engineers trying to pick up some rice on his pate.  

    The cutlery was set out for a Western meal:  knife and fork.

    A cultural practice note here:  the Chinese try as much as possible not to trouble people, so the engineer decided to make do with the knife and fork arrangement that he'd been presented with.

    For some reason, he chose not to use the fork to shovel up the rice.

    Even given that this was 1980, when not many Chinese knew much about things Western, it would still have been more logical to use the fork.

    Not to this poor man, obviously (an engineer to boot).  He pushed his knife into the heap of rice on his plate, ending up with a row of rice grains lined along the edge of his knife, then raised the knife to his mouth, losing most of the rice along the way.

    After following his next few attempts with my eyes while I was interpreting in both directions, I eventually found a gap in the conversation to excuse myself from the table and go and fetch a spoon.

    My fault.  I'd only remembered to ask the British side to provide rice with each meal, but not what the process entails (i.e., the right implements to eat it with).

    A case of 見樹不見林 / 见树不见林 / jiàn shù bù jiàn lín / "see trees not see wood" / not seeing the wood for the trees.

(Accrington, Lancashire, Northern England, 1980)

See also:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2015/10/not-seeing-wood-for-trees-china.html

"Huh??!!" conversations: 10 (Do you have a key?)

I have been helping out various plot tenants on a huge allotment site (176 plots, big and small, with three areas for parking) in Woodford, East London, watering the plants and doing some weeding.

    For those who might not know:  allotments are plots of government-owned land rented out to people by local councils (/ government authorities) for them to plant things -- mainly vegetables, sometimes fruit trees, occasionally flowers.

    The site has a padlocked gate at each end.  Not a snap-on padlock.  One has to insert and turn the key even for locking.

    Quite a number of times, I'd arrive (on foot) at the gate to find people just leaving/arriving in their cars, so I'd offer to lock up after them.  Since I'd be locking up anyway, I might as well save them the trouble of getting out of their cars to lock up once they'd gone through the gate.

    On one such occasion, the owner of a car leaving the site asked me when I said I'd lock up, "Do you have a key?"

    Huh??!!  How else was I supposed to lock up after him?  Was he thinking of having me take his padlock key off him, locking up after he'd driven out of the gate, then walking up to his car to hand his key back to him (with him seated in his car)??

    Anyway, how do I get in in the first place (or out, once I've got in) if I didn't have a key?  Hang around each time on the off chance I'd catch someone arriving or leaving? 

(London, 2026)

Out of one's depth: 01 (American eating chilli crab in Singapore)

American Sally sat next to me on the Jakarta–Singapore flight in January 1974.

    She had spent Xmas in Bali (like me, but our paths hadn't crossed) and was stopping over in Singapore en route back to Taiwan where she was a school nurse at the American School in Tainan (south Taiwan).

    As she'd never been to Singapore before, didn't know anyone there, and hadn't booked her accommodation (this was decades before online bookings), I invited her home to stay and took time out from my secretarial course to show her around Singapore over the following few days.

    One evening, I took her to a seafood dinner with the rest of my family -- as with Chinese meals, one needs a crowd to share the range to get the full benefits.

    One of the dishes was, naturally, chilli crab that Singapore is famous for.  It's crab broken up into chunks, and comes covered in a thick spicy and garlicky sauce (my simplistic description for it as a culinary ignoramus).

    I put a few pieces onto Sally's plate.  Everyone else tucked in.

    Sally sat there, all at sea (ha! word play!).  Eventually, she asked, "How do I go about eating it?"

    For those who need to know how:  

* pick up the crab pieces with your fingers, and suck out as much flesh (and gravy) as you can;

* use the bread cubes provided to wipe up your plate so as not to waste the delicious gravy (and all the money, time and effort that had gone into making it), as well as to minimise what goes into the bin for ecological considerations;

* lick off the surplus gravy that's left on your fingers;

* wipe your fingers (I'm trying to remember if a finger bowl was provided for rinsing your hands).

    My memory of that meal is that Sally didn't eat much of the chilli crab.

    It is a messy process, but there's really no civilised and dainty way of going about it that I can think of.

(Singapore, 1974)

Out of one's depth: 00 (An introduction)

AI definition:

Quote

In English, the phrase "out of one's depth" means to be in a situation that is beyond one's capability, knowledge, or experience.  It describes the feeling of being overwhelmed because a task or conversation is too difficult for you to handle or understand.

Unquote

Cultural practices can be a tricky thing for the uninitiated.

    The most obvious trip-up situations (off the top of my head) would be:

*  Westerners using chopsticks;

*  Chinese people (can't speak for other Orientals) using Western cutlery; 

* non-Muslims eating with their hands at a meal with Muslims (avoiding handling food with their left hand).

    This series is from my own observations.

Good practices: 11 (Whole cloves in cooking)

Cloves (丁香 / dīngxiāng) are a common ingredient in Chinese cooking, especially in dishes like slow-braised meat dishes, called 紅燒 / 红烧 / hóngshāo / "red burn".

    I associate them with toothache, from my childhood experience of using them for short term pain relief, so biting into one in a hongshao dish does not bring pleasant memories.

    One solution is to note how many cloves have gone into that hongshao dish, so that one can fish them out before serving.

    I first came across this method when visiting a couple (Aldo and Ling) back in 1979 or 1980.  For dinner, they'd made a dish using cloves.  Each time they came across a whole clove, they'd put it aside and say aloud, "That's one, which means x left."  Very systematic way of avoiding an explosion of a toothache-association taste in your mouth.

    Another way is to use a small bag (made of muslin or something) just for holding them together, which will make it even easier:  no need to fish out the bag at the end, just let it sit in the stew.

Good practices: 10 (Crossing the road with an elderly person)

It's now been almost two months since I met, and started helping, a 94-year-old woman from a country not far from my place of birth.

    The circumstances of how I'd come to be doing this will be covered in another blog.  What this blog is about is how I've been training her to be more road traffic conscious, to make her less dependent on whoever it is who happens to be with her at the time.  At the moment, that person is me five days/week, but I'm trying to prepare her for the time when I won't be able to be by her side, for whatever reason, or if/when she's on her own, which will be most likely most of the time -- for now anyway, while she's still mobile (she walks faster than I!).

    One of the things I've been doing five days/week since I first met her is taking her to all the soup kitchen places that I know of.  This is to:

* show her where she can eat free meals (thus saving her money, time and effort, which also reduces her stress levels on the financial front);

* let her get extra food in the form of takeaways of the surplus cooked food (I think Health and Safety rules require them to throw away uneaten food; plus they don't have the space to store surplus cooked food, even if they were allowed to, and weekly cumulation would make it unfeasible);

* give her a specific reason for getting out of the house, which is also physical exercise for her, having to make her way to these places;

* give her a change of scene, travelling to new places and meeting new people (even though some of the soup kitchen attendees are rough and aggressive), thus brain exercise as well.

(Another routine is taking her to free energy adjustment healing sessions for her long list of health issues, but that's for another blog.) 

    I first noticed her inattention when I was taking her back to King's Cross station after a free energy adjustment session.  We were standing at a set of traffic lights when people started to cross over when there were no cars immediately in sight (even though the lights were still green for the vehicular traffic), and she simply followed suit.  I pulled her back in time from an oncoming lorry.  I had to remind her repeatedly afterwards to make sure that the pedestrian crossing light was green, rather than blindly following the crowd.

    Subsequent episodes:  simply crossing without looking, be it a quiet back street, or a side road at a junction with a main road.

    I started to stand back at the kerb, and watch what she'd do.

    The first time, she'd assumed I was crossing alongside her, so she walked on (presumably leaving me to check for oncoming traffic).  I had to call out to her to stop and look.

    The next time, she would stop when I stopped (to wait to see what she'd do), and just stand there, without looking up to see why I was stopping.  Again, just blindly following my lead.

    After a few more times of this and my repeated reminders that she should apply the Green Cross Code, she's now learned to look up, look right, then left, then right.  (The Green Cross Code was a UK pedestrian road safety campaign launched in 1970.)

    The significance of her having to learn to look up:  she's since explained that she's mostly looking down while walking along, to make sure she doesn't trip over objects left on the pavement (a sort of fly tipping but on a small scale and on urban streets instead of farmland or out in the countryside), or step on what dog owners let their dogs leave behind.  (The littering problem is quite bad in London.)

(London, 2026)

Good practices: 09 (Going up/down steps with an elderly person)

This is my first time looking after someone as elderly as 94.

    Prior to this, I'd looked after a 92-year-old and an 89-year-old (my then landlord and landlady at Belfiore Lodge in Highbury), and an 84-year-old (my ex-teacher at SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London]).  This one is the oldest to date.

    I'm learning new things all the time these last seven weeks since I first met her and helped to lug her heavy shopping trolley and big plastic bag, both filled with cooked Thai food, back to her home.

    One of those new things is anticipating her falling when going up or down steps at Tube stations.  It's something that came to me from accompanying her every step of the way, a sort of common sense one develops from being immersed in the actual situation.

    When going up a flight of steps, I'd keep behind her, so as to be there to catch her or break her fall should she trip over a step.

    When going down a flight of steps, I'd go ahead of her, to catch her or break her fall should she trip over a step.

(London, 2026)