I’ve been having a fair bit of success in my massages.
People would tell me things like:
“I didn’t even know I had a problematic spot there!!”
or
“How did you know where to find my problematic areas?!”
Some of them even asked,
“Which acupressure point is that?”
or
“Do you know all the acupressure points?”
My answer: “If the recipient starts screaming, I’ll know I’ve found the right place.”
(London, 2022)
Some of my favourite Chinese sayings:
1. 倾巢而出 qīng cháo ér chū / “tilt nest and exit”, sometimes 倾巢出动 qīng cháo chū dòng / “tilt nest exit move”.
倾巢而出 / 倾巢出动 are defined as “turn out in full force”, for a military campaign.
My perverse sense of humour has this graphic image for it: the birds are sitting happily in the nest, all settled down; a hand comes along and tilts the nest, tipping them out (thus forcing them into action).
2. 囊中羞涩 náng zhōng xiū sè. The online dictionary gives it as “to be cash strapped”. I love the literal breakdown of the phrase: “pouch inside shy astringent”.
羞 xiū / “shy” is easier to imagine: there’s not enough money for the inside of the pouch to be seen, hence “shy (to be seen)”.
涩 sè is a trickier word to convey adequately in English but common in Chinese. It’s most often used for the feeling on one’s tongue if one’s eaten fruit that’s not fully ripened. Not tart / acidic / sour / sharp like unripe mango or apple. Rather, more like unripe persimmon (kaki / sharon fruit), so that it furs up one’s tongue, giving it a slightly rough feeling. Another definition of 涩 is “unsmooth”, like the furred-up feeling on the tongue, which is closer to 涩 than tart / acidic / sour / sharp. It is this “unsmooth” quality to the inside of the (money) pouch that makes me laugh: there’s not enough money to be moved smoothly (out of the pouch).
Calling the inside of the pouch 羞涩 / “shy unsmooth” is such a euphemistic solution for describing being cash strapped, haha.
The dementia lady I’ve been massaging (left leg which had no strength, and sciatic point) now lifts her feet when she walks instead of dragging them along. She even recognises people at the Chinese community centre, it seems, as she smiles at some of them.
Unfortunately, she’s now regained enough brain activity and awareness for her to feel jealous of me, as I’ve been massaging her carer husband (neck for his Bell’s Palsy and bad shoulder from holding her up when they walk). She growls and snarls at me, especially when I’m massaging him.
On Monday, I was at the table in front of hers in the karaoke corner, minding my own business. She got up and pulled my hair, growling at me, murder in her eyes.
It’s good that she seems to be more aware now than her previous zombie state, but I’m getting worried about my already diminishing amount of hair...!
(London, 2022)
There’re so many similar looking/colour suitcases around in the market that some people tie something like a small strip of ribbon/cloth to theirs for easy identification when at the carousel claiming their luggage at the destination. This was the tip given by my aunt when I took my first flight out of Singapore as a teenager.
The syntax module of my MA Linguistics course at SOAS had 120 (150?) students, with the different colleges (SOAS, UCL, Birkbeck) pooling their students.
The professor would set homework each week. He’d then put the stack of 120 (150?) pieces of marked homework on the corner of his desk, for us to go up and retrieve at the end of the lecture.
A long queue would build up as each student took ages going through the pile. A4 sheets of paper all look the same.
After the first time, I came up with a fast way. I snipped off the corner of an envelope that is not white (often brown, sometimes electric blue or red if it was for a special card), slotted it into the top right hand corner of my A4 sheet of homework, and stapled it.
It’d take a second to retrieve, as I could see it from miles away and just pull it out of the pile.
(London, 1992)
Whenever I went away on holiday, I’d bring back something for then-landlord and landlady, Fred and Nora: chocolate from Switzerland, caviar from Sweden.
One day, Nora gave me a little bottle of red wine that she’d got free on her flight back from their timeshare in Portugal.
In my typical-Chinese-politeness way, I immediately protested, “Oh no, keep it for yourself!”
She said, “YOU are always giving people things. You must let people have a chance to give you something sometimes.” Yes, indeed.
Since then, I’d relate this story to people, especially when I’m giving them a free massage, and say, “Thank you for accepting my massage and making me feel useful.”
(London, 1980s onwards)
Staff lunch at the Chinese community centre. Bobby the raconteur was telling story after story about being a civil servant in Hong Kong.
I said to the group (all from Hong Kong) that it should’ve been video’d as it was all so witty. One of the staff said to me, “You seem to be able to understand all the profound Cantonese expressions he uses.”
I said, “Not really. I just know how to laugh at the right moments.”
(London, 2022)
Dementia lady has so far worn a dead-eyed down-in-the-mouth look. I’d thought when I first saw her some six months ago that she disliked me — gave me this dead-eyed down-in-the-mouth look when I smiled at her. I only found out later that she had dementia. Then the husband said she had lost strength in the left leg, which is why he asked me for a massage for her — not for her dementia.
Thursday, I gave her another massage: 5th leg massage and 3rd sciatic point massage. Hubby said her sleep has improved with my massages.
She even started to join in a bit of the karaoke singing, seeming to remember something.
When they walked past me as they were leaving, she actually raised a hand (slightly) and waved at me with a smile!!!
(London, 2022)
The two boys (aged 7 and 4.5) that I babysit now and then will take ages to finish their food. (Confession: I was a difficult eater myself as a child — taking ages over half a bowl of rice.)
They also often say the portions are too big and they can’t finish it all.
One day, I decided to try a new trick. With a spoon, I drew a line down the middle of the lasagne they were having for dinner that evening, and said, “You eat this half, I’ll help you with the other half if you can’t eat it, OK?” Readily and eagerly accepted, and they started eating.
Half way through the meal, their spoon crossed the line a bit into the other half. I said, “Oh! Your spoon’s touched that half now, so you’ll have to eat it, since I won’t.”
(London, 2022)
The Chinese, especially the southerners in my own experience, often come across as abrupt (or worse: rude and aggressive).
I put it down to the Chinese language, especially the southern dialects, having harsher sounds (and intonations for Cantonese), which is jarring to Westerns. As with accents being transferred to a foreign language (e.g., Spaniards speaking English with a Spanish accent), so this harshness gets carried over to English spoken by a Chinese person, resulting in the speaker sounding very abrupt.
The Chinese are also not always immediately friendly. They seem to work to two extremes: unfriendly when they don’t know you, but very warm and welcoming when they do. This is my own personal generalisation.
The Chinese community centre where I teach Mandarin and English has a group of ladies from Hong Kong who play cards in the morning at one of the lunch tables. One day, I approached the table as my student Sui was sitting there. The three ladies looked up. So fierce and unwelcoming was the look on their faces that I immediately backed off and went to another table.
I have encountered friendly Oriental-looking people, however — on buses, at bus stops. They make eye contact, smile (which causes me to do a double take), and even say hello.
Soon, I discovered what they are: either Filipinos (I look like one myself, or an American Indian when in Peru), who are usually friendly, or Christians trying to get me to go to their church, or follow their branch of Christianity.
(London)
The ping pong players at the Chinese community centre bring in a lot of food to share: fruit, biscuits, cake. The kitchen downstairs gives them the unfinished soup from lunch.
One day, one of the players was eating a banana when I said, “Don’t throw the skin away, give it to me.”
He asked why, so I told him the story about the time I asked my full-time BA students at the university for their banana skin. Up shot their eyebrows: "Why do you want the skin?" I said: “The university pays me too little.”
Since then, it’s become a joke between me and this particular ping pong player: he gets to eat the flesh, I get the skin. He’d wish me each time he gave me his skin: “Enjoy your dinner!”
(London, 2008 & 2022)
The lunch routine at the Chinese community centre canteen where I teach Mandarin and English is: when done with eating, take the plate to the trolley, scrape off uneaten scraps into the bin, then place the cutlery in one plastic basin and the crockery in the other.
One day, a young man — in his late 20s / early 30s(??) from Hong Kong whom I’d never seen before — was the last to finish his meal. He took the whole lot to the kitchen. I told him that plates were to be taken to the trolley, not straight to the kitchen. He gave me a look of disdain, and went back to his table.
Once my teaching table was set up on the other side of the canteen, he realised I was a teacher. Walking past my table when leaving the canteen, he said a very respectful, “See you, Teacher!” in Cantonese.
(London, 2022)
See also: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/03/old-man-in-chinatown-london-uk.html
The middle three of the five children in my family were sent off to live with Grandma on her coconut plantation once they were born, as there wasn’t enough space at my mother’s rented room.
Grandma’s plantation, out east not far from Changi International Airport, had no electricity before sundown — after sunset, the village generator would run until 11pm — therefore no fridge. My mother’s brother, who lived with my grandma as he was the older son, was also very strict about unhealthy eating, so no chocolate and no Coca Cola.
Every now and then, my third sister would come to stay in my mother’s bungalow house in suburban Singapore.
She’d go straight to the fridge the moment she arrived, fill a tall glass with ice cubes and coke, then go and sit on the floor of the front verandah against a wall.
To eke out the enjoyment, she wouldn’t drink it, not even in sips. She’d dip the long-handled spoon into the ice cold coke, lift it to her mouth, and lick the spoon for the flavour on her tongue. There she’d sit for ages, stretching out the enjoyment of a chilled soft drink this way.
I’ve since coined the phrase “Licking the spoon” for enjoyable things in my life. If I’m having fun at a party but have to go to work the next day, I’d say, “I want to lick the spoon. I can catch up on sleep another day.”
(Singapore, 1960s)
Dinner trick I played on the boys (James, aged 7, and William, 4.5) I was childminding last night:
Asked them around 5pm if their dinner time was the same as term time (5:30pm). They said they weren’t hungry (I’d given them apple around 4pm). I said maybe dinner around 6. James said he wasn’t hungry at all. William echoed it.
At 5:30, I asked again, got the same answer, so I said I was going ahead and eating without them.
When I went back into the living room with my food, saying what a good cook daddy was and how yummy the food was, they changed their minds immediately.
Not only that, they then asked for a second helping — same amount as the first, they said!
When they started to lose interest half way through the second helping, I said they shouldn’t have asked for a full second helping, that I shouldn’t have believed them, that I wouldn’t make the mistake of believing them again, that they should stick to their word, that trust is important.
James the negotiator then backtracked and said he would eat it, but later.
When William wanted me to play ball, I said, “Food first, then I’ll play ball.”
This way, I managed to get them to finish their food, feeding them spoonful by spoonful.
(London, 2022)
See also: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/10/trick-or-treat.html
Throughout my life, I’d be the first port of call for mosquitoes — in any country. I react very badly to mosquito bites: they’d swell up into a hard, hot, itchy lump. In Finland, after an al fresco meal at my friends’ summer house, I got back to my hotel to find both legs covered in bites. I counted them: 37 on one leg, 34 on the other. The lumps merged into each other. I looked like I had elephantiasis. As a child, the grown-ups would offer the consolation: you have intelligent blood.
If you’re vertically challenged, they’d say it’s because you’re extra clever. All your energies have gone into developing your brain power, so the rest of your body is deprived.
Ditto if you start to lose your hair. There’s a Chinese saying 聰明絕頂 / 聪明绝顶 / cōngmíng jué dǐng / “clever bright extreme top”. It means “clever to the highest degree”, but the pun-loving Chinese like to put a different spin on it: that “everything stops growing on the top of the head (头顶 tóu dǐng) if someone knows too much knowledge” (李懿 / Li Yi, 2022).
A very sharp-eyed PhD student from China made the observation that I always eat my food in such a way that leaves the plate totally clean.
This brings to mind what I used to do with my pet dog, Bear Bear.
In our family (not sure if other Chinese families do the same thing), we’d feed our dog and cat rice and some fish/meat and veg. Not really a deliberate choice: there was no commercial dog food in those days; the (southern) Chinese diet is practically always rice-based, so the family pets got what the rest of the family ate.
I’d stand by my dog Bear Bear and make sure he finished all his food. I’d point out the grains he’d not picked up, “Here, you missed this one,” and he’d eat it. I’d then point out another one, “There, you missed that one,” and he’d eat it — every single one until the dish was completely empty. Such a compliant dog, putting up with me and my fussiness!
(London, 2022 / Singapore, 1960s–70s)
Student in Paris has been missing lessons here and there for various reasons (health, etc.), and is starting to forget more and more of her Chinese (and English since she moved back to Paris because of Brexit).
As she’s 78, I think it’s already remarkable that she should want to be carrying on at all with the gruelling routine of learning Chinese. I’ve always said, “It’s attitude, more than aptitude, that counts.”
During last week’s lesson, as she was discovering more gaps in her Chinese, she started to apologise.
My attitude about students learning Chinese is that unless they’re taking an exam, in which case they’ll just have to knuckle down and get on with it, what’s most important is for them to enjoy the learning.
With this student, the most elderly in my current small clutch, it’s even more important that she should not be reminded yet again of her failing memory.
So, to help lift her out of her depression about this, I said to her, “If students don’t make mistakes, I’ll be out of a job!”
She laughed — long and loud.
(London / Paris, 2022)
I teach Mandarin and English at a north London Chinese community centre, the Islington Chinese Association. It’s not just a place for (mainly old) people to get together and socialise, join in the activities (qigong, taiji, ping pong, karaoke, Cantonese opera, Chinese card games), eat in the canteen. They also organise away-tours: pre-Covid, they’d go to Europe; now, they only go to other parts of the UK.
What’s admirable is also that they run counselling sessions for alcohol and drug addicts (all non-Chinese, as it happens). So, it’s not just a place that serves the Chinese community, but the community at large.
It’s a place with a truly charitable spirit.
(London, 2022)
The Friday kitchen team at the Islington Chinese Association is a different group of people from the Tuesday to Thursday one.
The assistant is Bobby whose wife is a volunteer at the reception on Fridays.
Yesterday there were two ladies I’d never seen before: a younger one (40s? 50s?) with an older one (70s? 80s?). Not sure if they’re related.
At one point before lunch was served, I saw that the old lady was in tears. (She was earlier talking to Bobby’s wife when she got in, talking about something unhappy by the looks of it.)
Bobby, in spite of being needed in the kitchen as lunch was about to be served, kept consoling the old lady, saying sympathetic and supportive things, “Let’s go for a cup of tea later, OK? Don’t dwell on it, OK?” He's a big man, but he was so gentle with her.
It was the way he was handling her that moved me: so kind and caring.
(London, 2022)
The Friday cook at the Islington Chinese Association is a lady called Hou jiě (Sister Hou).
During the wild garlic season, I was picking wild garlic regularly and giving bunches away to people, mostly the ones at the centre, including Hou jiě.
One Friday, I went in with another lot of wild garlic, and offered a bunch to Hou jiě. She said, referring to her assistant Bobby (whom I’d not spoken to before — I’d only seen working him around the kitchen), “You’ve already given me some. He hasn’t had any yet. Give them to him.” So altruistic.
I then went out to the reception and offered some to the reception volunteer. As I was filling a bag, Bobby came out and said, “She’s my wife, you’ve already given me some, so let someone else have this lot.” So kind and generous.
It’s such a caring place.
(London, 2022)
I’ve been asked to tutor a very bright six-year-old boy in his schoolwork, mainly because he has trouble focusing.
James’s maternal grandma is from Yunnan in S.W.China, and has been learning English with me on and off. James was born here in London, has an English father, goes to an English school, has English friends, doesn’t speak that much Chinese, yet bizarrely pronounces some of his English words just like his maternal grandma.
Grandma will consistently do the Italian insert-a-vowel-after-a-consonant thing, so “did” comes out as “didda”, “bought” as “boughta”, etc. James does that too, though not on the same scale.
Grandma pronounces “sport” as “si-port”, “spring” as “si-pring”. Ditto James.
Yet grandma doesn’t really speak much to him on the phone as her English is still hardly good enough to make sense (although she’s been gaining confidence and trying harder and more often), so it can’t be that.
It was grandma who’d recommended me for the tutoring, saying to James’s mother, “I know the very person who can discipline him!” So, I’ve been reporting back to her on James's progress (his marks have improved at school).
On the subject of his English pronunciation being just like hers, I offered this explanation: “I’d heard that genes skip a generation, so it must be that!”
PS: (from googling) “...the expression or manifestation of genes — traits — can skip generations under some circumstances.”
(Beijing / London, 2022)
Colleague Alma at Conoco Taiwan was a mumsy kind of figure, in a positive sense: gentle, soft spoken and kind. I wish I’d got to know her better.
Her husband’s surname is 鈄 Dòu, but it kept getting read as 斜 xié, which means “oblique, slanting” — not a nice meaning at all when applied to a person as it means “not upright”, therefore dodgy or crooked. He kept getting called 斜先生 / Xié xiānsheng / Mr Slanting.
So when the first son was born, they called him 鈄非斜 Dòu Fēi Xié / “Dòu Not Slanting”, which is a good reminder, especially since the two characters are close together for any reader to see the difference.
For the second son, they came up with 非我 Fēi Wǒ / “Not I”. This is from the text 秋水 Qiū Shuǐ / Autumn Floods, by the philosopher Master Zhuāng (莊子 Zhuāng Zǐ (/ Chuang Tzu, circa 369–298/286 BC), he of the famous I Dreamt I Was A Butterfly story.
Zhuang Zi and his disciple Hui Zi were looking at some fish swimming. Zhuang Zi said the fish were happy. Disciple Hui Zi said, “You are not a fish. How do you know they’re happy?” Zhuang Zi said, “You are not I. How do you know that I don’t know the fish are happy?”
The third son got given the name 非非 Fēi Fēi / “Not Not”.
These three boys (now middle-aged men) must be the only ones in the world with that combination of characters for their names, as well as having such wonderful stories behind them!
For those interested in the full context for the fish story, I’m reproducing it below:
莊子與惠子遊於濠梁之上。莊子曰：「儵魚出遊從容，是魚樂也。」惠子曰：「子非魚，安知魚之樂？」莊子曰：「 子非我，安知我不知魚之樂？ 」惠子曰：「我非子，固不知子矣；子固非魚也，子之不知魚之樂全矣。」莊子曰：「請循其本。子曰『汝安知魚樂』云者，既已知吾知之而問我，我知之濠上也。」
For a translation, see (among others): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09608788.2019.1667294
*baidu.com says of 鈄 dòu: (my summary) that it’s a kind of cauldron used in ancient China; that those with this surname are found scattered around in modern-day Zhejiang province and Taiwan.
鈄為釜，支子別姓鈄氏。 鈄姓，在《百家姓》中排名第246 位。鈄姓，中國姓氏，漢唐時以遼西郡為郡望，說明在當時河北有鈄姓族人。如今在浙江縉雲、開化及台灣等地有零散分布。
(Taiwan, 1976)
I decided to learn Japanese during my first winter in Taipei.
In my Beginners class at theYMCA, I was invisible as I looked just like the rest of the class. Nobody gave me a second look.
Ditto in the Intermediate class — for the first couple of weeks.
The Intermediate level entailed a lot more, and harder, grammar than the Beginners level. Everything was taught in Chinese. I was making notes in English.
The teacher walked around the class as he was teaching. Suddenly, he came to a halt beside me, and asked, in Chinese, “Why are you writing your notes in English?!?” I said, “Because I’m from Singapore, and English is my first language.” He took a longer look at me, as though he was trying to see if he could find some feature in me that would distinguish me from the rest of the class.
My fellow students also perked up and took a fresh look at me. After the lesson, I felt all eyes on me as I left the room, as if they, too, were trying to find out what might be different about me.
(Taiwan, 1975)
A similar thing happened a few months later when a friend, Jin, came over to Taipei.
I showed him around.
We got on a bus. Nobody gave us a second look.
We stood in the crowded bus, strap-hanging. Nobody gave us a second look.
Then, Jin opened his mouth to ask me something — in English.
It is very common for Singaporeans to speak in English to each other, even if they are both/all Chinese (or Malay, or Indian).
When Jin put his question to me, it was as if he’d set off a firecracker on the bus: up jerked all the heads, with all the eyes trained on him — the source of the alien sounds.
They saw a Chinese face, so they turned to look at me, as if to find the reason for this Chinese man speaking English: his companion must be a Westerner.
But no, they saw a Chinese face on me as well.
In disbelief, they looked back at Jin, then at me, then at him, then at me. Yes, both Chinese faces indeed. Then why are they speaking in English?
The eyes travelled from our heads to our toes — slowly down, slowly up, then slowly down again, scanning our faces, clothes, shoes, trying to find some clue for our using English with each other.
(Taiwan, 1975)
It’s the linguistic False Friends that are the hidden reefs.
One example I cited to my Chinese community centre Mandarin students:
In my dialect (Teochew / 潮州 / Cháozhōu), “stingy” is made up of two sounds, which are “鹹 / 咸 xián / salty” and “澀 / 涩 / sè / tart*”.
(*澀 / 涩 / sè: “tart” is the best word I can think of for the furring-up effect on one’s tongue when one eats unripe fruit, especially persimmons / kaki / sharon fruit.)
One day, a Teochew speaker tried to describe, to some Cantonese speakers, a man (who was present) as being “stingy”.
(BTW, this was done good-naturedly, as the Chinese tend to go for what I call “rough humour”, i.e., the closer one is to someone, the freer one can feel about giving that person a hard time.)
They simply converted the two Teochew dialect sounds (“salty tart”) into the Cantonese pronunciation. Unfortunately, those two sounds in Cantonese = to be lecherous, so the Cantonese listeners all looked at the poor man in disgust.
(Singapore, 1960s)
On my morning school runs escorting two children to school, we walk through the grounds of Ally Pally (Alexander Palace) in north London.
Lots of people walk their dogs there.
On the way, I often come across earthworms that have found their way onto the tarmac paths, so I pick them up with sticks and throw them back onto the grassy area, so that they won’t get squashed underfoot.
One morning last week, a small dog suddenly stopped by me, and started to do a growly bark. I wasn’t quite sure why it should be growling at me — surely it didn’t feel threatened by me?
I asked, “What?? Why are you barking at me??”
The little dog growled again, and lowered the front half of its body, as if it was ready to bounce up and run off.
This was repeated a number of times.
Ah, Eureka!! It wanted me to throw the sticks in my hands for it to go and fetch.
The only thing is: the sticks were the size of a toothpick for one of them and a chopstick for the other. How the little dog could’ve thought they’d be candidates for Fetch is beyond me.
What I have learned from this episode , though, is: after the event, it occurred to me that the dog’s growl on this occasion was from the back of the throat, not the usual frontal loud bark. So, that growl was a request or invitation, “Come on, throw them, throw them, I want to go fetch!!”
(London, 2022)
During my undergraduate days at SOAS, an English chap in the Japanese Section introduced me to the expression “swan’s feet”: to the observer, the swan is gliding smoothly and calmly on the water but under the surface the feet are paddling madly. (I can’t find it under google, so he must’ve invented it.*)
I remember going to a job interview for the post of secretary at a lawyers’ firm in 1974.
It was my first secretarial post after graduating from secretarial school, my previous job being as a telex operator at Conoco Western Pacific in Singapore (an American oil company, now ConocoPhillips).
I’d driven there after my morning telex shift, got stuck in the traffic, arrived late, sweaty and stressed out and anxious and nervous and flustered.
Sat there opposite the three partners, wringing my hands under the table as they fired questions at me.
There was also a test of course: dictation, shorthand, and typing out the dictated document in triplicate.
Anyway, I got the job.
All three partners told me later how impressed they’d been with me — sitting there so calm and confident during the interview!!
Classic swan’s feet, though I didn’t know the term at the time.
(Singapore, 1974)
*Thanks to Valerio for unearthing this:
https://www.horebinternational.com/the-swan-metaphor/#:~:text=We%20don't%20see%20the,They%20are%20like%20white%20swans.
When my mother repeatedly failed to get a response from my then two-year-old eldest sister, the family started to worry that it might be her hearing.
After checking her over, the doctor said, “There’s nothing wrong with her hearing. She’s just stubborn!”
(Singapore, 1947)
Last Thursday, I was sitting with students Edouard and wife Monique during the pre-lesson lunch in the canteen.
I’d say things to Edouard on my left, and get no response. “OK, he’s in his 80s, so it’d be his hearing,” I concluded.
When I chatted to Monique on my right, however, Edouard would join in, hearing everything perfectly.
I said to him, “Your eavesdropping skills are excellent! You can go and be a spy.”
I added, “Next time I want to talk to you, I shall speak to Monique instead, then you’ll hear everything!”
(London, 2022)
