“Knife mouth, beancurd heart” (London)

There is a Chinese saying — 刀子嘴、豆腐心 dāozi zuǐ, dòufǔ xīn / “knife mouth, beancurd heart” — for describing someone who has a tongue as sharp as a knife, but is actually soft-hearted underneath.

One particular example comes to mind.

When I was working at the Baker Street branch of the pub chain, I used to pick up the small plastic food boxes that were thrown out, to take home, wash and re-use.  They contain pre-portioned-out quantities of, say, baked beans (for English breakfast), or mushy peas (for fish and chips), and are thrown out once the contents have gone into the dish.  

As an ecologically-minded person, I simply cannot bear to see this one-off usage of these plastic boxes, even though the financial cost isn’t mine to bear.

One of the kitchen hands — let’s call him Adam — was a fiery character.  He was loud, swore a lot and complained a lot about things, and I often witnessed heated exchanges between him and another kitchen hand.

Adam saw me picking up the boxes one day, and said, in a harsh tone of voice, as was his wont, “What do you want that SHIT for?!?”  Even though he meant it metaphorically, I still felt a bit offended — “rubbish” would’ve been acceptable to me.  I explained that I was trying to recycle the boxes as much as possible, to save the environment.  He said nothing.

After that, I missed out on a few months of my once-a-week Saturday shift because of a couple of broken fingers from a fall.  

When I did eventually return to work, the first thing Adam said to me was, “Where have you been?!?  I’ve been collecting the boxes for you!!”  He led me to the storage room at the back where there was a huge plastic (rubbish bin) bag of the used plastic food boxes.  

I was so touched.

(London, 2014 and 2015)