When China first re-opened up to the outside world in the 80s, foreign companies or businessmen couldn’t just rent a space for the office or rent accommodation outside among the local populace for the employee(s), not even a separate self-contained flat (not that they were actually available at all, anyway). They had to get a hotel suite, with one room as the office, one as the living area.
I heard this story in 1984 about a white British businessman who could speak Chinese (rare in those days), stationed in one of these hotel suite set-ups.
One day, a repair man turned up at his door. Assuming that the white man couldn’t speak Chinese, the Chinese worker pointed at the ceiling light in the office space, indicating that he’d come to fix it.
The Brit thought, “That’s strange, I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it,” but let the man go ahead all the same. He retired to the other room, to get out of the man’s way.
The repair man duly climbed up his ladder, got his tools out, and fiddled around with the ceiling light.
When he saw that the foreigner was safely in the other room, out of visual range, he tapped on the ceiling light fixture, and said, “喂，喂，听得到吗，听得到吗 / wéi, wéi, tīng-de-dào ma, tīng-de-dào ma / hello, hello, can you hear me, can you hear me?”
(Beijing, China, first half of the 80s)
This blog post offers an intriguing glimpse into the early days of China's reopening in the 1980s, told through a simple yet engaging anecdote.
ReplyDeleteThe story is compact, easy to follow, and builds curiosity about the repairman’s intentions.
The context about foreign businessmen having to live and work in hotel suites provides a vivid snapshot of the era.
The inclusion of Mandarin (both characters and pinyin) adds authenticity and immerses the reader in the moment.
This is a fascinating, understated piece that captures a unique historical moment. A collection of such vignettes could make for a great series on cultural encounters in China’s reform era.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to do these comments and feedback.
ReplyDeleteAs for a collection, yes, I'd already begun thinking about it a while ago, when meeting up with old friends started to end up with reminiscences about our experiences. You know you're getting old when your conversations are peppered with: "Do you remember when...?"
I'm self-publishing a series of collections (of stories about various categories), the first being A Collection of Animal Stories, so the stories on this front could go into another collection on my list (running at 13 at the moment...). Just fun stories about cultural behaviour, though, nothing political or controversial (not my style at all).