Another use for talcum powder (Singapore / France)

 

Further to my blog Simple folk remedies: 03 (minor cuts and grazes), there’s another use for talcum powder I’ve discovered, apart from applying it to a graze to dry up the scraped area to form a scab within a short time.

On a visit home to Singapore one year, I’d bought a bag of duku (a sour fruit native to S.E. Asia) and started to eat some of it.  Went upstairs to go to the loo, leaving the skin and stones sitting on a few sheets of newspaper (to soak up the juice) on the coffee table which was in the middle of the big living room, about 12 feet away from the kitchen door.

Came back after a couple of minutes to find a trail of ants had made their way from the kitchen (probably up the rubbish chute in the far kitchen wall, a typical feature in high-rise blocks in Singapore), across the living room floor, and up the coffee table.  They’d scented the duku all the way from that distance!  I sprinkled some talcum powder (which I always pack on a trip, as a freshener) across the floor.  The trail stopped within a minute: they didn’t like to get their feet powdered!

I went to France the following year, staying a couple of nights with Colette’s relatives in Toulouse before going to the farm with them in their car.  We were eating lunch on their balcony when a trail of ants emerged from the flat below, attracted by the smell of the food.  I got my talcum powder out and sprinkled it in their path.  Stopped them within no time at all.

(Singapore; France)

The perversity of students learning Chinese and English

 

A lot of speakers of Western languages have trouble with getting Chinese tones right, even years into learning the language, and even with the tones clearly marked over the vowels in the pinyin (/romanised) version.  

One of them will consistently do a rising tone for a sound in the middle of the sentence, even if that character is in the falling tone, and do the last sound in the sentence in a falling tone, even if that character is in the rising tone.  She is applying her Western language rules to the Chinese language.

A Chinese native-speaker learning English consistently adds a vowel to a consonant, much like the Italians, so she ends up saying “didder” for “did”, “atter” for “at”, among a long list of others.  However often I correct her, she goes back to uttering an extra sound after a consonant.  

Last week, I was teaching her “neither…nor…” and “either…or…”.  Guess what she did?  She consistently gave me “neith…nor…” and “eith…or…”.  How perverse is that?!

English as used by non-native speakers (Pakistan)

 

Just heard an Afghan man being interviewed on Radio 4, talking about his hiding somewhere “on the backside” of some place.

I’ve more than once heard people from the Indian sub-continent using the word “backside” for “the back of / behind” somewhere.

The 37-day 1988 film shoot in China ended in Xinjiang, so we flew back to London from Islamabad.  We’d driven through the Pamir Mountains and down the Karakoram Highway into Pakistan, with the plan being to stay the first night in Gilgit.  A landslide somewhere along the route made the road impassable, so we had to backtrack and stay somewhere else for the night.

The next day, we started off once again at the crack of dawn.  At least the road was now being cleared, albeit very slowly.  We got in the long queue and waited.  

At one point during the long wait (five hours), the driver said to the director, “Memsahib, you know the water you were drinking at dinner last night?  It comes out of the backside of this mountain.”

In British English, “backside” = buttocks (/ bottom).

(Pakistan, 1988)

Simple folk remedies: 06 (insect bites) (Indonesia, Taipei, Helsinki)

On a pan-Java tour in December 1973, my leg reacted badly to a mosquito bite:  the bitten spot swelled up, became very hard, hot, and itchy.  Luckily, I had a tube of cream for bites.  

When I went to Taipei in the summer of 1979, however, I didn’t think of packing something for bites, probably because I’d never been bitten by mosquitoes in Taiwan before, not throughout my two years there.  (I know, still no excuse not to go prepared, just in case.  Too young in life experience, too inexperienced a traveller.)  As with the mosquito bite in Java, the bitten area swelled up, became very hard, hot, and itchy.  I was staying in the new flat my ex-colleague’s parents had bought for their son (for when he got married), so there were ice cubes in the fridge.  I applied ice cubes to the area to bring down the temperature to start with.  (This was inspired by the practice of applying ice bags to the forehead of a feverish person — I’d been the recipient of this treatment when I contracted dengue fever in 1973 and my temperature shot up to 42C.)  I then discovered that the ice cube treatment also numbed the itchiness.  The swelling then subsided with repeated subsequent applications.  Chemical-free!

In 1996, when I was in Helsinki, my Finnish friends invited me to their summer house in central Finland for an al fresco lunch party in their garden with some other guests.  Finland has something like 188,000 (according to Google), which means a lot of boggy areas: perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes who like stagnant water.  During the four hours in that garden, while I was filling my tummy with human food, my legs under the table were feeding the mosquitoes.  I didn’t even feel them gnawing at my legs until I got back to my hotel room and saw my legs.  My left leg had 32 bites, my right leg 35.  Each bitten spot had swelled up so much that they all merged into one big lump.  My legs looked like I was suffering from elephantiasis.  It was Sunday night, pharmacies weren't open, I worried about scratching in my sleep and ripping the skin open.  Ah, ice cubes!  I asked reception for a big bowl of ice, and spent the next few hours applying them to my legs.  Went to sleep without worrying about scratching my itchy legs and tearing my skin in my sleep.

I’ve since been recommending it to people.

This ice-cube method is also safe for people who are allergic to certain chemicals used in creams for bites.  The only problem is, unlike the cream in a tube, ice cubes are not always readily available.

(Indonesia, 1973; Taipei, 1979; Tokyo, 1993; Helsinki, 1996)

Simple folk remedies: 05 (swelling / inflammation)

An ex-student’s mother (from Shandong province) has used salt water as an antiseptic.

Her father had sustained a leg injury (don’t know how), but not told her about it.  The wound then got so bad that he was hobbling, which was how she found out — when she spotted his strange gait: it was one huge, angry-looking red swelling.

She boiled some water (to sterilise it), added salt to it, let it cool down, sat him down, and applied the salt water with a cotton wool to the affected area: gently swabbing the outermost area to start with.  She said the redness and swelling started to go down within a few minutes.

An ex-colleague from the pub, of Iranian parentage, said his father rinses his mouth with salt water every night before bedtime.  

I had an attack of gingivitis a few weeks ago, and tried to go to the dentist.  He’s always been off-hand / unsympathetic about my dental issues, telling me a tooth was “doomed!”, which doesn’t help if you’ve always had dental problems and are terrified of needles and such medical traumas.  Found a sign on his front door saying not to enter without an appointment, and to make an appointment online.  With this reprieve, I thought I’d explore alternatives for reducing the pain at least.  Tried the salt water treatment, and it has helped.

Simple folk remedies: 04 (minor burns and scalds) (Singapore)

A Chinese household will always have dark soya sauce.  In my house, we used it for treating minor burns and scalds as well.  

The principle behind it, according to how I was taught: 

1. the burned/scalded area will be hot, which will create a temperature differential, so air from the atmosphere will be drawn towards it;
2. the viscosity of dark soya sauce seals the surface of the burned/scalded area, preventing moisture in the air from getting in, thus preventing a blister from developing; 
3. Westerners’ way of holding the burned/scalded area under a cold running tap to cool it down is a big no-no in my house, because this will let water in and create a blister.

An alternative to dark soya sauce is butter — for the same reasons listed above.  Butter is a common enough item in the Western kitchen, so it’s a convenient substitute.

I have my own first-hand experience to testify to the effectiveness of the butter treatment.

I was staying at my grandma’s coconut plantation as a 12-year-old during the school holidays.  A bonfire had been going for a while, with the middle reduced to a heap of burned-down wood, and the outer rim the unburned stubs.  I decided to move the unburned stubs into the centre for them to carry on burning.  In the strong mid-day sunlight, I couldn’t see any flames or smoke, so I grabbed one of the stubs fully in my hand.  It turned out to be a smouldering stub, so my whole palm got burned.

Straightaway, I smeared the palm with butter, then sat down to wait.  The pain subsided within a few minutes.  Half an hour later, I wiped off the butter.  

There was not a trace of the injury I’d sustained: no pink palm, no pain, and certainly no blisters.  I was back to normal.  Just like that.  Half an hour.

When I was working in the pub, if I happened to be in the kitchen when a colleague burned/scalded their hand/arm, I’d ask them to apply butter on the affected area.  It was always effective in stopping the pain within a short time.  No burn marks either.

(Singapore, 1960s; London, 2016–18)

Simple folk remedies: 03 (minor cuts and grazes) (Singapore, Taipei, London, France)

For minor cuts and grazes, which is very common for someone as clumsy as I am, the simple method I’ve always used, up to this day six decades later, is to spit on the affected area.  

This is better than plasters because a plaster (a) is not always to hand; (b) will cover the cut/graze and therefore keep it moist, which makes it take longer to heal.

Apart from the fact that one’s own spittle is instantly available, even though using it rather than a plaster seems counter-intuitive because it’s even wetter than a plaster, it actually serves to seal the cut and stem the bleeding within a few minutes.  The injured area can then come into contact with water without any stinging feeling.

One observation in support of this spittle method:  animals licking their wounds.

When I was working in the pub, if I happened to be in the kitchen when a colleague cut their finger, I’d ask them to spit on the cut.  It’d always stop the bleeding within a minute, then form a protective coating, so that they can continue working.

For a graze, I’ve also used powder: to absorb the fluid that oozes out from the graze (serum?*).

On the eve of a trip to France, I’d gone on my bicycle to visit a friend, and fell off my bike on the way back, grazing my knee as  I was wearing a dress at the time.  Back at my flat, I was worried that more of the fluid would ooze out from the injury during my sleep, ending up sticking the bedding to the area, which would need peeling off in the morning — a messy, not to mention painful, situation too horrible to imagine.  I had some talcum powder, so I sprinkled it liberally over the graze.  It immediately soaked up the oozing fluid, and formed a dry’ish crust within a minute.  I went to sleep without any worries.  

This adaptation was inspired by a brown powder we always had in our first aid cupboard at home, made from grinding down various Chinese herbal-medicine ingredients: leaves, twigs, barks.  Presumably blood-stemming, just to name its primary function.  On one occasion, I’d cut my index finger very badly in Taipei.  The cut was dripping like a tap.  I applied some of this brown powder, under the name of 金真散 jīn zhēn sàn / “gold real scatter” (the “散 sàn / scatter” presumably refers to its being in powder form), to the deep cut.  It not only filled the gap of the cut — within half an hour, a dry scab had formed, and I was able to let that hand come into contact with water (for various washing functions).

In the West, one can use talcum powder or flour, I imagine.  The talcum powder trick not only meant that I woke up the next morning without finding my knee glued to my bedding, I was also able to make my way to France and enjoy my time there without it giving me any more trouble.

*from googling: 

If the drainage is thin and clear, it's serum, also known as serous fluid. This is typical when the wound is healing, but the inflammation around the injury is still high. A small amount of serous drainage is normal. Excessive serous fluid could be a sign of too much unhealthy bacteria on the surface of the wound.

Simple folk remedies: 02 (fish bone in the throat) (Singapore)

During my childhood days (in the 60s), the way my family dealt with a fish bone stuck in the throat was to swallow a lump of cooked rice, unless it was a big bone.  The idea is that the rice will wrap around the bone, thus protecting the walls of the throat and the oesophagus, and take the bone with it down to the stomach, where the digestive acid will break down the bone.

When the Queen Mother had a fish bone stuck in her throat, I heard on the news that she had to go to the hospital.  I’d immediately thought at the time, “She could’ve adapted the Chinese method by swallowing a lump of bread, which almost every Western household will have in ready supply.”  But then, she was the Queen Mother, so no simple folk remedy for her — it had to be professional help.  Most Westerners’ approach, too, I think, from what I’ve seen in my decades here.

(Singapore, 1960s)

War of attrition (Singapore)

Re-reading blog Punishing errant husbands (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2016/06/punishing-errant-husbands-china-hong.html) has awakened the memory of what happened when I was 18.

For Oriental girls, 18 was the age to go partying — maybe 17 or 16, but not really any earlier than that out East then (the 60s).  In those days, partying meant going to someone’s house, or to a disco, and spending the evening dancing.  Some people might wander off to the corners of the garden or another room for some smooching, but no further than that.  I once found a party slightly boring about an hour into it, so I sat down on the floor against the wall, hugging one of the speakers.  Soon, a whole row of people joined me.  We spent the rest of the evening with our eyes shut, listening to Led Zeppelin and The Carpenters emanating from my lap, and had a good time.  All clean fun.

My mother, however, wasn’t so laid back about her youngest (and therefore pet) daughter coming home late.

The first time it happened, which was 10:30pm, I got home to find the lights all blazing in the living room.  (My mother went to bed at 9pm, with us children retiring to our rooms in the annexe.)  My mother was sitting upright in one of the armchairs.  A stern “Why so late?” greeted my entrance.  I said, “But, Mother, it’s only 10:30pm.”  That was accepted.

The next time, I got home at 11pm.  Mother was waiting in an armchair, “Why so late?”  “But, Mother, it’s only 11pm.”  Got away with that.

The third time, I returned at 11:30pm.  Lights all off.  Oh good.  Crept in.  A voice in the darkness, “Why so late?”  “But, Mother, it’s not midnight yet.”

The fourth time, I got home at midnight.  Gate locked.  Not a problem.  I hitched up my ankle-length, fairly close-fitting dress, and climbed up and over the gate.  The friend who’d given me a lift home, with the front of his car pointing at the gate, cheekily switched on his headlights so that the whole neighbourhood, if people were still up and happened to be looking out, could see my legs (probably even my knickers) as I climbed up, then down, the gate.

Crept into the dark living room.  No reproachful voice emerged from the depths of darkness.  My mother had given up waiting up for me to question my late return.

(Singapore, 1972)