Chinese sayings: 18 (不怒自威)

 

不怒自威

bù nù zì wēi 

“not angry naturally awesome/threatening”

I have unfortunately been blessed with a demeanour that looks angry even when I’m enjoying myself.  So many times I’d been at the computer screen, having a good time all focused on the task in hand, and someone would ask me what I was so angry about.  A lot of Chinese seem to have this body language, too, actually, so maybe it’s a cultural thing.  (However, an ex-student Patsy, who’s English, told me she’d often get told, “Don’t worry, it might never happen,” when she was sitting happily somewhere daydreaming away.)

    This misunderstood body language has had its dramatic effects in the classroom and the exam room.  

    Students will change what they’ve offered in translation purely on the basis of my asking “Why?”, instantly thinking I’ve asked because their version is wrong.  It’s the what-I-call “shake the tree” device in my teaching style, i.e., if they can justify why they’d parsed the sentence a certain way (interpreting a word as a verb rather than as a noun, e.g.), then they can be sure they’d got it right, rather than arriving by hit or miss.  If their tree is weak to start with (they’re just guessing wildly, pinning the tail on the donkey, rather than analysing the sentence based on actually knowing how the Chinese language works), it’d keel over at the slightest shaking.  They need to shake their own tree in real life, as I won’t be there to tell them if they’d been right or wrong.  

    Admittedly, it could be the way I ask “Why?” (too challenging a tone of voice), but one particular oral exam episode showed that I don’t even need to open my mouth.

    It was a final year oral exam, therefore two examiners present.  The other examiner was a colleague from Taiwan, who has smiling eyes even without moving her lips or feeling happy.

    The candidate on the day was presenting his arguments on some given topic (environmental pollution or human rights violation, which are common final year themes).  My colleague and I, seated opposite him, were making notes as we listened to him.  At one point, I looked up at random from my note-taking, not for any particular reason, and my eyes met the candidate’s.  He immediately stopped in mid-flow, and looked very nervously at me.  

    Exam over, I asked him why he’d done it.  He said the look on my face made him think he’d made a mistake (wrong grammar, or wrong usage of language / expression).  I said, “But I didn’t even open my mouth!  And I wasn’t thinking that at the time!  You weren’t saying anything wrong at that point.”  不怒自威 indeed.

    After that, I would remember to keep my eyes down all the time and not make eye contact, or prime myself to smile before I raised my head.

(London, 2000s)

Pidgin English

I was invited to lunch at ex-student Singaporean Linda’s, the other guests being two couples.  

    The conversation got round to the Malay and Indonesian languages being simple in structure with no conjugations, just adding “already” or “not yet” to the verb, rather like in Chinese.  For example:

to eat = makan; 

to have eaten = sudah makan / “already eat”; 

not have eaten yet = belum makan / “not-yet eat”.

    Irish Peter, who works for an oil company that has Filipino workers on their offshore rigs, said Filipinos use “already” a lot in English.  

    One day, the duty manager asked a Filipino worker to go and open a valve.  The Filipino came back and said, “Valve already open”.  

    This sent the duty manager into a bit of a panic, because this could mean: (i) “I’ve now opened it,” but it could also mean: (ii) “It was already open when I went to open it” — in which case, an oil leak situation, therefore serious.  Especially since it was an offshore rig.

How to get your guest(s) to eat more: 01 (London)

The Chinese style of hospitality is to make sure your guests have enough to eat — the host must not be seen to be stingy.  The guests, on their part, must make sure they’re not seen to be greedy, so they must exercise restraint — I’d heard of people who’d actually eat BEFORE going to a dinner party, so that they really cannot eat much.  This is, therefore, the ritual (what I call “a silly game”): the host will press the guests to eat more food, the guests will decline; this will go on for a few times (sometimes even five) before one party surrenders.  It’s an interesting exercise for guessing who’s genuine: in pressing more food onto the guests’ plate / in refusing another helping.

    I’ve always found food tastes better when partaken in company.  (When I’m the guest, there’s also the element of the host being a better cook than I, which is not difficult.)  So, it’s not surprising that I end up eating more than my usual quantity.  (My mouth and stomach do not always work together: if my mouth fancies the food, my stomach gets overruled even when it has no more room.)

    The other element is my abhorrence of waste, so I will clean out the rest of the dish if there’s any threat of it being binned, even when I've had enough already.  This is where some astute friends have worked out how to get me to eat more or take the rest home.

    One of them, ex-student Slovak Martin, would take the dish to the bin, sort of dangle it close to the flipped-up lid as if about to tip the contents into the bin, and look at me with raised eyebrows.  Never failed to help me decide I’d eat that last morsel or take it home.

    Mauritian Colette would cook an extra large portion, then say they don’t eat leftovers, that it’d all go to the food waste recycling bin (therefore not really wasted).  I always succumb.

(London, 2000s)

Chinese sayings: 17 (外厲內荏 / 外厉内荏) (London; Singapore)

外厲內荏 / 外厉内荏

wài lì nèi rěn 

“outside stern inside weak”

I have a reputation for being a strict teacher.  Some students had even called me a Dragon Lady.  Off duty, however, I do a lot of things for them: baby-sitting, gardening, DIY.  I say to people, “In class, I’m the whip-cracker.  Outside class, I’m their slave.”  外厲內荏.

    After I got my LCC (London Chamber of Commerce) Private Secretary Certificate, I applied to a law firm (Boey, Ng and Wan) in downtown Singapore for the post of legal secretary.  

    I was at the time, while waiting for the results of the LCC exam, working as a telex operator in Conoco Singapore, doing the early shift, starting at 6am, so I had to drive to work as there weren’t night buses in those days.  I, therefore, drove to the law firm for the interview after my shift, which was around 2pm — a busy time of the day for road traffic.  With no air conditioning in my car, and being stuck in the snarled-up traffic, fretting about making a bad impression, being late already for just the interview stage, I arrived for my interview all sweaty and nerves jangling.

    It didn’t help at all to find that I was to be interviewed by not one but three lawyers.  It was a firm with three partners, so they all wanted to have a part in the selection process.  The partner whose office it was sat at his desk, the other two flanking him, one standing, one sitting on the edge of the desk.

    I sat down, all hot and flustered, holding my hands together in my lap (which they couldn’t see from the other side of the desk), wringing them to help calm myself down.

    After that, I went for the shorthand dictation and transcription test.  

    Yes, I passed both parts of the interview, and got the job.  A few weeks later, the partners told me how impressed they had been by me at the interview: all cool and calm, collected and confident.  

    Haha, a good example of 外厲內荏, indeed.

(London, 1985–now; Singapore, 1974)

Chinese sayings: 16 (醉翁之意不在酒)

 

醉翁之意不在酒

zuì wēng zhī yì bù zài jiǔ

“drunk old-man ’s intention not in alcohol”

This is from a poem by Sòng dynasty poet Ouyang Xiu / 宋•歐陽修 (1007—1072).  

For those who might be interested, the second part, which is often left out (like in Cockney rhyming slang), is 

在乎山水之間也 / 在乎山水之间也

zài hū shān shuǐ zhī jiān yě

= (his interest is) in the mountains and the waters

    So, he’s not so much interested in the alcohol but the views that he’s drinking the alcohol to.

    I apply this to my giving people presents or helping people with chores.  It’s not so much the actual gift itself but the act of giving that is the pleasure-giving bit.  It makes people feel nice because they’re remembered (when it’s a gift), that other people are caring and supportive (when it’s help offered/rendered).

    The same when I say “thank you” to non-English speakers in their own language.  The effect is particularly remarkable, especially since I look Oriental, therefore not expected to know how to say “thank you” in, e.g., Albanian(/Kosovan), Bulgarian, Kurdish, Romanian, Turkish — just to name a few of the not-so-well-known ones (compared to French, German, Spanish, say).  

    It’s what I call a heart opener: almost invariably, they break into a big smile when they recognise the sounds coming out of this Oriental mouth.  A heart-warming ice breaker.  Makes their day.  And mine.