Out of one's depth: 04 (Chinese person eating pita/pide bread as a first course)

I've been watching a mainland Chinese drama series set in China in the 1930s and 1940s (before, during and after the Japanese Invasion).  

    There is a scene with three of the men in the story eating a Western meal at a restaurant (in Shanghai or Qingdao).  On each one's plate are two slices of bread, a slice of spam, one fried egg, two cross-sections of carrot and some unidentifiable brown thing. One of the men, very successful at running a dyeing factory but who had started life as a beggar and was illiterate, couldn't handle the Western cutlery provided, and asked for chopsticks.

    This reminds me of what I'd witnessed at a soup kitchen meal run by a Catholic church charity.

    The first course was half a pouch of pita/pide flatbread, with dips (tzatziki, hummus and taramasalata) and some salad on the side.

(AI says)

Quote

East Mediterranean flatbreads (like Greek pita, Turkish lavash, pide, and yufka) are traditionally eaten with your hands, not cutlery.  In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dining cultures, flatbread serves as both the food and the "utensil" itself.

Unquote

    I saw a young Chinese (mainland or Hong Kong) man in his mid-/late-20s or early 30s at the next table from mine using his knife to spread the dips on his flatbread, like what one would do with jam or honey.  

    He then proceeded to cut up the flatbread into smaller pieces with his knife and fork, like what one would do with a piece of steak, and deliver each piece to his mouth with his fork, the way one would do it at a Western meal.

(London, 2026)

Out of one's depth: 03 (Malaysian Chinese person at a Japanese shabu shabu meal)

This story was related to me by a then-professor (now emeritus professor) of UCL (University College of London).

    He'd gone out with a group of people for a Japanese shabu shabu meal.  One of them was his computer programmer on his medical physics projects.

    Since the programmer was the only Oriental (from Malaysia) amongst them, the group decided to let him guide them for the meal.  

    I am personally of the opinion that it doesn't necessarily follow that a Chinese person (Malaysian or not) would automatically know anything/much about Japanese food, just because they're both Asian.  Same logic for not expecting a French person to know what Finnish or Norwegian dining entails just because they're all European.  

    Under the circumstances at this meal, however, with all the diners (except the programmer) being British (and maybe even all white), a Chinese person would, therefore, be more likely to know about Japanese food, I guess.

    Shabu shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ) is Japanese hot pot.

    For those who might not know what a hot pot meal entails: 

(AI says)

Quote

A traditional hot pot meal is a highly interactive, communal dining experience that centers around a simmering pot of broth kept boiling at the center of the table.  Rather than being served a pre-cooked dish, diners cook raw ingredients themselves, piece by piece, right in the pot.

What sets shabu-shabu apart from other Asian or regional hot pots (like Chinese hot pot) is its cooking method: instead of putting all the food in the pot to simmer for a while, you submerge a single piece of paper-thin meat into the boiling broth and gently swish it back and forth for just a few seconds to cook it instantly.

Unquote

    The first thing brought up to the table was the broth (for cooking the raw ingredients).  The Malaysian programmer dished out bowlfuls of the broth to the diners to drink.

    By the time the waiter arrived with the raw ingredients, there was no broth left in the pot in the middle of the table...  Oops.

(London, late 1980s)

Good practices: 13 (Storing fresh veg for longer)

This is a good practice I'd picked up from an old woman from Hong Kong.  I later discovered from talking to a few more Chinese people that it's a common practice among them.  Not in my family, though -- I don't know why we didn't do it, although it should be a good practice in the humid tropics, I'd think.

    I was looking after this old woman at the time (some 15[?] years ago now):  visiting her weekly to deliver the fresh veg I'd buy en route for her from a stall in north London that she said was the best value for money; cooking lunch and eating it with her; then giving her massages for her aches and pains; cooking dinner and eating it with her, to keep her company.  A day dedicated to her as a self-volunteered occasional carer.

    Her four children didn't seem to want to spend time with her, let alone have her under their roof, leaving her to live on her own (in her 80s at the time I met her) in a sheltered housing block of flats that costs an arm and a leg in maintenance and service charges, taking her out only very occasionally for a meal, like once or twice a year, according to her.

    The first thing she'd do as soon as I arrived was to whip out newspapers and wrap up the veg -- leafy or root veg.  She didn't even need to put them in the fridge.  They'll stay fresh for longer.

    My analysis:  the newspaper absorbs excess moisture which prevents (or slows down) rotting, yet at the same time keeps enough moisture in, which slows down the drying out.  Storing the veg in a plastic bag keeps the moisture in, which will result in the veg rotting, I'd found from my own mistakes of doing this.

Some Chinese practices: 17 (Mustn't put people to any trouble)

My first professional-interpreter breakfast with the mainland Chinese delegation of four engineers gave me my first glimpse into how a mother of quadruplets might feel (but on a daily basis for the mother).

    We were bivouacked at a posh hotel, a converted old manor house set in lush grounds with oak trees and grazing cows. Very English.

    The breakfast table setting matched the surroundings:  white tablecloth, silver cutlery, silverware sugar bowl.

    I was seated at the head of the table, with two engineers on each side of me.

    Instead of a simple request "please pass the sugar" which is the standard British behaviour, my charges would stand up and help themselves to the sugar bowl (for their hot milk -- the Chinese don't go for cold drinks) at the far end of the table.  They'd stand up, teaspoon in hand, reach across to the bowl, scoop up a spoonful of sugar, and end up leaving a trail of spilt sugar on the way back.

    At the end of the meal, the white table cloth looked like WW3 had just been fought on it.  Cringe.

(Accrington, Lancashire, Northern England, 1980)

Good practices: 12 (Shutting your front door as you leave)

This is one good practice that I'd put in place a few decades ago, to the point of it becoming almost instinctive now.

    If your front door lock is a Yale key lock, rather than a mortice lock, you can just shut and lock the door by pulling it to.

    You can also end up locking yourself out, however, if you haven't got your key on you at the time.

    To ensure that this doesn't happen to me, because I live on my own, I developed the good practice/habit way back to always insert the key into the lock, turning the key in the lock as I pull the door to.

    This also means that the process is practically noiseless -- I hate door slamming. 

    Of course, it's also good practice to leave a spare key with someone trustworthy, preferably a neighbour, but they might not be around for you to fetch the spare key, so it's ultimately still best to make sure you don't lock yourself out at all in the first place.

Out of one's depth: 02 (Chinese person eating rice with a knife)

I got my first professional interpreter assignment in 1979 as a third year BA student.

    A delegation of four mainland Chinese textile industry engineers had come over to learn how to fix minor technical problems with the machinery they'd bought from a British factory.

    (Just a comment on the side about their far-sightedness:  their purchase agreement covered free technical repairs as a warranty.  They decided, however, to come over and learn how to do minor repairs themselves, because getting a British engineer sent over would take too long:  

* they would have to make a long distance phone call for this, with an interpreter in tow; 

* the time difference would make timing the call placement a bit tricky, especially with each side's working hours to consider; 

* the British engineer would have to apply for a visa for China, which would take time to process, then get a plane ticket; 

* he would arrive in China something like 24 hours after he got on the plane.  

They couldn't afford to down tools for all that time while waiting for the expert to get out to them to fix a minor problem.  I was impressed by how forward thinking they'd been.)

    During their training programme over here, the routine was basically:  

* breakfast at the hotel on our own; 

* off to the factory for the training session (dismantling huge textile machines, identifying the problems, fixing them);

* lunch at the factory canteen (with someone from the British side eating with us);

* back to the factory for more training;

* dinner back at our hotel (with someone from the British side eating with us, then post-prandial drinks in the hotel bar).

    For the two meals when a Brit was present, I wouldn't get much eating done, as I'd be interpreting both ways -- while the British host could do some eating while the Chinese side was talking; and vice versa.

    At lunch in the factory canteen one day, I saw one of the three Chinese male engineers trying to pick up some rice on his pate.  

    The cutlery was set out for a Western meal:  knife and fork.

    A cultural practice note here:  the Chinese try as much as possible not to trouble people, so the engineer decided to make do with the knife and fork arrangement that he'd been presented with.

    For some reason, he chose not to use the fork to shovel up the rice.

    Even given that this was 1980, when not many Chinese knew much about things Western, it would still have been more logical to use the fork.

    Not to this poor man, obviously (an engineer to boot).  He pushed his knife into the heap of rice on his plate, ending up with a row of rice grains lined along the edge of his knife, then raised the knife to his mouth, losing most of the rice along the way.

    After following his next few attempts with my eyes while I was interpreting in both directions, I eventually found a gap in the conversation to excuse myself from the table and go and fetch a spoon.

    My fault.  I'd only remembered to ask the British side to provide rice with each meal, but not what the process entails (i.e., the right implements to eat it with).

    A case of 見樹不見林 / 见树不见林 / jiàn shù bù jiàn lín / "see trees not see wood" / not seeing the wood for the trees.

(Accrington, Lancashire, Northern England, 1980)

See also:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2015/10/not-seeing-wood-for-trees-china.html

"Huh??!!" conversations: 10 (Do you have a key?)

I have been helping out various plot tenants on a huge allotment site (176 plots, big and small, with three areas for parking) in Woodford, East London, watering the plants and doing some weeding.

    For those who might not know:  allotments are plots of government-owned land rented out to people by local councils (/ government authorities) for them to plant things -- mainly vegetables, sometimes fruit trees, occasionally flowers.

    The site has a padlocked gate at each end.  Not a snap-on padlock.  One has to insert and turn the key even for locking.

    Quite a number of times, I'd arrive (on foot) at the gate to find people just leaving/arriving in their cars, so I'd offer to lock up after them.  Since I'd be locking up anyway, I might as well save them the trouble of getting out of their cars to lock up once they'd gone through the gate.

    On one such occasion, the owner of a car leaving the site asked me when I said I'd lock up, "Do you have a key?"

    Huh??!!  How else was I supposed to lock up after him?  Was he thinking of having me take his padlock key off him, locking up after he'd driven out of the gate, then walking up to his car to hand his key back to him (with him seated in his car)??

    Anyway, how do I get in in the first place (or out, once I've got in) if I didn't have a key?  Hang around each time on the off chance I'd catch someone arriving or leaving? 

(London, 2026)

Out of one's depth: 01 (American eating chilli crab in Singapore)

American Sally sat next to me on the Jakarta–Singapore flight in January 1974.

    She had spent Xmas in Bali (like me, but our paths hadn't crossed) and was stopping over in Singapore en route back to Taiwan where she was a school nurse at the American School in Tainan (south Taiwan).

    As she'd never been to Singapore before, didn't know anyone there, and hadn't booked her accommodation (this was decades before online bookings), I invited her home to stay and took time out from my secretarial course to show her around Singapore over the following few days.

    One evening, I took her to a seafood dinner with the rest of my family -- as with Chinese meals, one needs a crowd to share the range to get the full benefits.

    One of the dishes was, naturally, chilli crab that Singapore is famous for.  It's crab broken up into chunks, and comes covered in a thick spicy and garlicky sauce (my simplistic description for it as a culinary ignoramus).

    I put a few pieces onto Sally's plate.  Everyone else tucked in.

    Sally sat there, all at sea (ha! word play!).  Eventually, she asked, "How do I go about eating it?"

    For those who need to know how:  

* pick up the crab pieces with your fingers, and suck out as much flesh (and gravy) as you can;

* use the bread cubes provided to wipe up your plate so as not to waste the delicious gravy (and all the money, time and effort that had gone into making it), as well as to minimise what goes into the bin for ecological considerations;

* lick off the surplus gravy that's left on your fingers;

* wipe your fingers (I'm trying to remember if a finger bowl was provided for rinsing your hands).

    My memory of that meal is that Sally didn't eat much of the chilli crab.

    It is a messy process, but there's really no civilised and dainty way of going about it that I can think of.

(Singapore, 1974)

Out of one's depth: 00 (An introduction)

AI definition:

Quote

In English, the phrase "out of one's depth" means to be in a situation that is beyond one's capability, knowledge, or experience.  It describes the feeling of being overwhelmed because a task or conversation is too difficult for you to handle or understand.

Unquote

Cultural practices can be a tricky thing for the uninitiated.

    The most obvious trip-up situations (off the top of my head) would be:

*  Westerners using chopsticks;

*  Chinese people (can't speak for other Orientals) using Western cutlery; 

* non-Muslims eating with their hands at a meal with Muslims (avoiding handling food with their left hand).

    This series is from my own observations.

Good practices: 11 (Whole cloves in cooking)

Cloves (丁香 / dīngxiāng) are a common ingredient in Chinese cooking, especially in dishes like slow-braised meat dishes, called 紅燒 / 红烧 / hóngshāo / "red burn".

    I associate them with toothache, from my childhood experience of using them for short term pain relief, so biting into one in a hongshao dish does not bring pleasant memories.

    One solution is to note how many cloves have gone into that hongshao dish, so that one can fish them out before serving.

    I first came across this method when visiting a couple (Aldo and Ling) back in 1979 or 1980.  For dinner, they'd made a dish using cloves.  Each time they came across a whole clove, they'd put it aside and say aloud, "That's one, which means x left."  Very systematic way of avoiding an explosion of a toothache-association taste in your mouth.

    Another way is to use a small bag (made of muslin or something) just for holding them together, which will make it even easier:  no need to fish out the bag at the end, just let it sit in the stew.

Good practices: 10 (Crossing the road with an elderly person)

It's now been almost two months since I met, and started helping, a 94-year-old woman from a country not far from my place of birth.

    The circumstances of how I'd come to be doing this will be covered in another blog.  What this blog is about is how I've been training her to be more road traffic conscious, to make her less dependent on whoever it is who happens to be with her at the time.  At the moment, that person is me five days/week, but I'm trying to prepare her for the time when I won't be able to be by her side, for whatever reason, or if/when she's on her own, which will be most likely most of the time -- for now anyway, while she's still mobile (she walks faster than I!).

    One of the things I've been doing five days/week since I first met her is taking her to all the soup kitchen places that I know of.  This is to:

* show her where she can eat free meals (thus saving her money, time and effort, which also reduces her stress levels on the financial front);

* let her get extra food in the form of takeaways of the surplus cooked food (I think Health and Safety rules require them to throw away uneaten food; plus they don't have the space to store surplus cooked food, even if they were allowed to, and weekly cumulation would make it unfeasible);

* give her a specific reason for getting out of the house, which is also physical exercise for her, having to make her way to these places;

* give her a change of scene, travelling to new places and meeting new people (even though some of the soup kitchen attendees are rough and aggressive), thus brain exercise as well.

(Another routine is taking her to free energy adjustment healing sessions for her long list of health issues, but that's for another blog.) 

    I first noticed her inattention when I was taking her back to King's Cross station after a free energy adjustment session.  We were standing at a set of traffic lights when people started to cross over when there were no cars immediately in sight (even though the lights were still green for the vehicular traffic), and she simply followed suit.  I pulled her back in time from an oncoming lorry.  I had to remind her repeatedly afterwards to make sure that the pedestrian crossing light was green, rather than blindly following the crowd.

    Subsequent episodes:  simply crossing without looking, be it a quiet back street, or a side road at a junction with a main road.

    I started to stand back at the kerb, and watch what she'd do.

    The first time, she'd assumed I was crossing alongside her, so she walked on (presumably leaving me to check for oncoming traffic).  I had to call out to her to stop and look.

    The next time, she would stop when I stopped (to wait to see what she'd do), and just stand there, without looking up to see why I was stopping.  Again, just blindly following my lead.

    After a few more times of this and my repeated reminders that she should apply the Green Cross Code, she's now learned to look up, look right, then left, then right.  (The Green Cross Code was a UK pedestrian road safety campaign launched in 1970.)

    The significance of her having to learn to look up:  she's since explained that she's mostly looking down while walking along, to make sure she doesn't trip over objects left on the pavement (a sort of fly tipping but on a small scale and on urban streets instead of farmland or out in the countryside), or step on what dog owners let their dogs leave behind.  (The littering problem is quite bad in London.)

(London, 2026)

Good practices: 09 (Going up/down steps with an elderly person)

This is my first time looking after someone as elderly as 94.

    Prior to this, I'd looked after a 92-year-old and an 89-year-old (my then landlord and landlady at Belfiore Lodge in Highbury), and an 84-year-old (my ex-teacher at SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London]).  This one is the oldest to date.

    I'm learning new things all the time these last seven weeks since I first met her and helped to lug her heavy shopping trolley and big plastic bag, both filled with cooked Thai food, back to her home.

    One of those new things is anticipating her falling when going up or down steps at Tube stations.  It's something that came to me from accompanying her every step of the way, a sort of common sense one develops from being immersed in the actual situation.

    When going up a flight of steps, I'd keep behind her, so as to be there to catch her or break her fall should she trip over a step.

    When going down a flight of steps, I'd go ahead of her, to catch her or break her fall should she trip over a step.

(London, 2026)

Dysfunctional communications: 04 (Gary Ward)

 

An appeal for energy adjusters to go and work on someone in hospital was made to the healing charity that I've been involved with.

    The message sent out to the charity's WhatsApp group was brief, saying something like, "Can someone go and give energy adjustment to someone in intensive care?"  

    Then, the information:  "Gary Ward, XYZ Hospital, ABC Road, London".

    I responded with, "Is Gary Ward the name of the patient or the name of the hospital ward?"

    Back came a text from an officer of the London branch of the charity, "You are not allowed to go and do energy adjustment without the permission of the charity."

    Huh??!!  Who said anything about going??  She was so keen to blast people off that she put 2 and 2 together, and came up with 5.  (I say "blast people off" because that's her usual demeanour:  ready to bite one's head off -- not just with her tongue, one look is enough.)

    Reminds me of Dino the dog who was adopted at the French farm:  barking as soon as he heard the other dogs on the farm bark, with no idea what he was supposed to be barking at or about.  Just join in the barking for the hell of it.  A British student of mine who'd lived out in the Far East once said that people there "do like to scold people".

    It's also bad publicity for the charity, as people get put off working with/for them.  Bad mouth can sometimes, if not often (or worse, will always), be quicker to result in a damaging impact or leave a longer lasting negative effect, however good the heart.

(London, 2024)

Dino in blog Aptly named dog:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/01/aptly-named-dog-france.html

Dysfunctional communications: 03 (Why have we been pitched to the front of the queue?)

Dysfunctional:

Quote

In psychology and interpersonal relationships, it specifically refers to a flawed communication pattern that fails to convey information effectively and instead triggers misunderstandings, conflicts, alienation, or psychological harm. This type of communication commonly occurs within dysfunctional families, romantic relationships, or workplace teams.

Unquote

One of the soup kitchen places is run by Mother Teresa nuns who try to get people to attend the pre-dinner service.  Not obligatory, one can still be let in for the meal next door.

    The first time I attended the service, we were led out of the chapel at the end and taken to the front of the queue standing outside the gate.

    I asked aloud of those people who'd attended the service, "Why are we standing at the front of the queue?  Might we not be suspected of queue-jumping?"  (Because things can get ugly.)

    Hong Kong soup kitchen veteran said, "You'll be taken through the gate, then into the canteen for the meal."

    Huh??!!

    I said, "That wasn't what I was asking about.  I was asking why we've been pitched to the front of the queue when these people have already been in the queue.  I don't want them to think we're jumping the queue."

    The soup kitchen veteran said, "The nuns will come and open the gate, they will lead us into the canteen, where we will sit down for the meal."

    Huh??!?!!???  (How do people use their ears???)

    I said, "That wasn't what I was asking."

    The soup kitchen veteran then said, "OK, I'LL SHUT UP THEN!"

    Well, it'll certainly be less perplexing than giving a non sequitur response.

(London, 2026)

How to get a seat on the train (London)

Met a 94-year-old Thai lady early on last month at Ladbroke Grove Tube station.  She had a heavy shopping trolley of food as well as a big plastic bag, also filled, so I escorted her all the way home on the Tube (changing Tube lines along the way) to her front door.

    To help her out financially and to inject some variety into her life, I've since been showing her how to access free meals, with free food to take home:  surplus cooked food from the meals (which would get binned anyway as Health and Safety rules won't let the suppliers store whatever is uneaten), as well as fruit (heavy items like banana and sometimes even a whole pineapple) and veg (potato, carrot), tinned food, etc.  

    One day, I gave her one of my supermarket hessian bags for carrying all that food home, as it's very sturdy.

    It is something like 2ft / 60cm across and 1ft / 45.7cm high, which looks nearly half her size (she's under 5ft / 1.52m tall).  The print on the outside is that of sweetcorn (on the cob), so it's bright yellow and very eye-catching.

    A few days later, she told me that she started noticing a change in commuter reactions.

    Since she acquired this new travel kit, people on the Tube have been offering her a seat much more quickly because of this high visibility, thinking she is carrying a big load.  (It’s mostly empty when she travels alone to these soup kitchen meals.  When it’s full, I'm the one carrying it for her all the way to her station, often to her front door.)

    Yes, yes, as pointed by the friends I've told this story to, people should be offering her a seat anyway full stop.  My blogs, however, are mainly for raising a smile to the reader's face (while I'm sharing observations into everyday life), so the point here is more on how much quicker the huge, bright yellow bag is able to produce results than her looking 94. 

(London, 2026)

PS:  In case you're thinking of using the same trick, remember you'll have to look 94 as well...

Chinese sayings: 58 (絕甘分少 / 绝甘分少)

絕甘分少 / 绝甘分少

jué gān fēn shǎo

"reject sweet share not-plenty"

(AI) Denying oneself delicacies to share the scarce with others.

This saying is about being unselfish.  

    It's from Siman Qian of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD):

    漢代 司馬遷的《報任安書》（又名《報任少卿書》

    汉代 司马迁的《报任安书》（又名《报任少卿书》

    That how I was brought up as a child:  put other people first, offering the food (scarce or not) to other people first (especially if they're older than you), leaving yourself last.

    That is why it riled me so much, back in the late 1990s, to witness the white British then-boyfriend of my Malaysian student (later colleague when I gave her some teaching hours on my evening programme) running his chopsticks through the fried noodle dish to pick out the already-few pieces of squid (expensive and rare) for himself.

    If he'd been trying to fish them out for my student (later colleague), it might not have been so bad, as that would at least be an unselfish act (even though he was trawling the noodles with his used chopsticks).

    So, it was my upbringing that made me see red over his selfishness, more than his poking his used chopsticks among the noodles.

    He had turned up for a class meal on both occasions when he was not a member, being only spare luggage as the boyfriend.  Obviously to take advantage of sitting at a meal of ten dishes, and paying only a tenth of the bill.

    Two students complained to me later that by the time the dishes got to them at the end of the round, there wasn't much food left for them.  

    I'd been seated at the serving end, but passed on each dish every time it arrived, without taking anything, letting the other people at the table have a go first -- such was my upbringing.

  

    The squid-fisher was seated three chairs away on my left, so he was No.4 at the round table of 10.  His bowl was absolutely groaning with food spilling over onto the plate beneath, as he was piling food onto his bowl faster than he could wolf it down.  

    In hindsight (yes, my brain is terribly slow when it comes to possible conflict), I should've taught him a lesson by offering the subsequent dishes in the other direction around the table -- but, knowing the others, they'd have left enough on the plate for everyone to have a share.  Still, it would've left the squid-fisher less food by the time the plate reached him, and they'd have got something for themselves.  And I'd have a nice memory to bring a smile to my face.  Silly me, didn't think of it at the time...

    

    A more recent source of the red flag for me is a Hong Kong woman (in her 70s, no less, therefore old enough to know how to behave) seated at the same table for the soup kitchen meal.  

    Each table has a table monitor (volunteer worker).  Ours (at the Ladies' Table) would come with snacks for us to nibble while waiting for dinner to be served:  biscuits, an Indian snack called Bombay Mix, etc.  Whatever she managed to get from the food bank.  

    One day, I was seated next to the table monitor, so I was the first to be handed the plate of Bombay Mix.  This one had almonds in it, which is rare.  

    My childhood teaching saw me instinctively not taking anything for myself but passing on the plate to the person on the other side of me -- the HK woman.  She brazenly raked off most of the almonds (expensive and rare ingredient) before passing on the plate.  

    When it came back again to us (table of 12), the HK woman polished off the rest of whatever almonds were left.

    The parents of that white British squid-fishing chap and the almond-raking HK woman obviously never taught them to think of other people...

Linguistic False Friends: 05 (Backside) (Pakistan)

 

At the end of the 37-day film shoot (following an American multi-millionaire amateur motorcyclist from Shanghai along the Silk Route/Road to Xinjiang), we crossed over to Pakistan to catch our plane back to London from Islamabad.

    The first night in Pakistan would've been in Gilgit, but a landslide forced us to divert to a different location for the night.

    The next day, as we sat in the long queue of vehicles waiting for the road to be cleared, our driver said to the motorcyclist's girlfriend (who'd come out to join him for that stretch, having been banned from following us on the whole shoot, as it was strictly work), "Memsahib, the water you were drinking last night at the hotel -- it is from the backside of this mountain."

    For those who might not know, "backside" in British English = buttocks / rear end / bum, or 屁股 pìgǔ in Chinese.  To have drunk water from the "backside of a mountain" does not, therefore, conjure up a pleasant image, even if it's only the backside of a mountain.

(Pakistan, 1988)

Linguistic False Friends: 04 (You're not listening) (Pakistan)

 

Listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme one day, I heard the Pakistani interviewee (in Pakistan) saying, when the connection broke:  "You’re not listening."  

    What he meant was, "Can you hear me?" or "You can't hear me."

Dysfunctional communications: 02 (Asking for sage) (London)

I received a text from a Malaysian:  "Can you see if there's any sage on the allotment?"

    I've been helping out a few people on their plots at a large allotment site (176 plots of varying sizes) in east London, weeding and watering.  In return, I get to help myself to the veg and fruit, which I share with friends.

    This Malaysian has been making special requests like, "Can you see if there're any conference pears / Victoria plums?"  It's easy enough for fruit, as it's usually half a dozen or so.  (More than that would be a bit heavy to carry, e.g.)

    The sage request, however, is a different matter, given that it's a herb which can be dried and stored for future use, so she might be wanting 20 or 30 leaves.

    With so little information to go on, and no reply to my text asking for clarification, I went ahead and worked on the most obvious assumption, and picked half a dozen leaves.

    Well, it turned out that she actually wanted the sage not for cooking but for planting, so the six leaves were the wrong offering.  She wanted sprigs of a certain length, with stems of a certain thickness to ensure they'd grow.

    Why on earth didn't she say so in the first place??!!  Just one text spelling it out would've saved a lot of wasted time and effort:  "Can you see if there's any sage on the allotment? If there's any, can I have 5 or 6 sprigs x inches long, with the stems at least the thickness of the finger to ensure healthy growth."

    An equivalent would be asking me, "Can you see if there's any beef at the butcher's?"  (A Tuesday group Mandarin student suggested a first response, "So what?")  What kind of beef:  stewing beef, minced beef, brisket, steak?  If she wants me to get her some, I'll need to know how much: a pound, a kilo?  And so on.  Spelling it out in the first place would save a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.  Pointing this out makes me the baddie.

    This is someone who does not spare time and effort going over the same story repeatedly, sometimes at the same sitting.  I can understand the need to repeat a story if the telling is for letting off steam, but not spelling out the details when one's needs are so specific is simply inefficient communication. 

(London, 2026)

Huh?!? conversations: 09 (When to talk about my summer holiday?) (London)

Last week was the first lesson of a new term of English classes for Hong Kong incomers at the community centre in north London where I've been teaching English as a volunteer for nearly a year now.

    At the end of the 1.5-hour lesson (2:00pm–3:30pm), I set a topic for the students to prep for the next lesson: Talk about your summer break.

    One of the students asked, “Do we talk about our summer before the lesson, during or after?  At 2pm, or before 2pm?”

    I got back to her with, "I must challenge the strange logic in your question.  Who’s going to be there before or after the lesson to listen to your talk?"

    Luckily, she didn't take umbrage at being shown up in front of her classmates, and laughed along with the rest of the class.

(London, 2026)

Colour change for the fire engine (USA)

Michael Boyle was doing his MA in S.E.Asian History at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) when I was doing my BA there.

    We kept in touch (by snail mail) after he graduated and returned to Connecticut.

    He told me one day that he was writing a guide book for Connecticut (with recipes for traditional New England dishes and all that). This entailed driving around to all the different places, looking around, then doing a write-up for each one.

    Travelling around America is not easy without a car, and since he was already driving around the state anyway, I might as well grab the opportunity of catching a lift, so I invited myself over.

    In return, I helped him with taking photos (one of which got used in the guide book), cooking his vegetarian meals (Chinese stir-fry), and typing up his notes (on his IBM electric typewriter) for the publishers to turn into a book -- no self-publishing in those days, or not in the form as we know it today, anyway.

    I started my visit with helping him renovate the apartment upstairs, but that's for another blog.

    It was fantastic timing too, being in New England in autumn with all the harvest (mainly apples, pumpkins and Indian flint corn [multi-coloured kernels]) and the landscape ablaze with colourful trees everywhere.

    Just before my arrival, the authorities (don't know if it was just Connecticut or the whole of America) decided to change the colour of their fire engines from red to bright yellow.

    Apparently, research at the time showed that the yellow colour stands out much more than the red colour, so it'd be quicker for people to spot yellow fire engines dashing to somewhere and give them the right of way.

    I said, "But with all the yellow trees around, a yellow fire engine might not stand out that much! It could be mistaken for a tree."

    Michael's typically-ever-so-quick quip was, "Well, if you were to see a yellow tree coming down the road at you at 100mph, you'd certainly get out of the way FAST!!"

(Connecticut, USA, 1983)

"Huh?!?" attitude: 03 (English speaker about Mandarin) (London)

"English people don't go for rote learning."

    The above is my paraphrase of what an English student of Mandarin said in response to my offering her a learning strategy -- pick a particular problematic sentence (whether it's the word order or the pronunciation), and go through the rest of the week repeating it.

    I've been using my own experience with French numbers to show my students how it's worked for me: when I go up/down the stairs in my block of flats, I count the steps in French, aloud.

    Only problem is: one flight is seven steps, the other is 11, so I'm fluent only up to 11, but I can now do it without having to think.

    The other (and potentially serious) problem is: being extremely clumsy, I'll trip over / walk into / stub my toes on anything, so there's always the risk factor to consider -- don't end up having an accident while trying to practise a problematic sentence.

    This student has been saying, increasingly over the months, how she's unable to get the Chinese language right.

    This is someone who's been doing Mandarin since the 90s (not all of those years, though), used to teach English, is learning Russian at the moment, and already knows French and Spanish. It just goes to show how difficult Mandarin must be for a non-Oriental. I totally sympathise.

    One issue is numbers, especially in listening exercises, which is another of her weaknesses (and of most learners of a foreign language -- from my own experience and from what I've heard).

    One week, she said she couldn't get her head around 十二 / shí èr / "ten two" (for 12) and 二十 / èr shí / "two ten" (for 20) in a listening exercise.

    Another week, she said it was most unhelpful starting the listening exercise with a sentence involving numbers because it fazed her. (The sentence was: "I'd worked in Taipei for two years 1975–1976.") I said one can't tell native speakers in real life how they should start the conversation, so one needs to learn how to cope, which was the point of these exercises.

    When she gave Chinese sentences mirroring the English way of saying things, I said she had to leave her English hat behind and go round repeating Chinese sentences aloud, rather like with songs or tunes. That was when she said, "English people don't go for rote learning."

    I then presented the following to her:

1. English irregular verbs and nouns, e.g., "eat ate eaten" instead of "eat, eated, eated"; "drink drank drunk" instead of "drink drinked drinked"; "child children" instead of "child childs"; "woman women" instead of "woman womans"; "goose geese" instead of "goose gooses" --> she would've had to learn them by rote, I'm sure;
2. song lyrics and tunes --> she would've had to learn them by rote as well, unless she had a photographic memory and could remember a tune and the lyrics after hearing them just once.

    So, my "huh?!?" is about why she says English people don't go for rote learning.  How else had she herself remembered English irregular verbs and nouns, and song lyrics and tunes?  (Yes, she said she does sing.)

    I've checked with another English person (in her early 70s) who used to be a teacher as well.  She said this student might've meant "English people are not taught rote learning at school".

    Hmmm...  Even if the student had meant that, it's still the wrong attitude to take when it comes to learning another language (or anything foreign, e.g., cooking), but I shall leave that for another blog, or this one will get too long.

    My ultimate question is still:  how did she remember irregular verbs and nouns in English, and song lyrics and tunes, if not by rote learning?  It's a puzzle I'd like to find out the answer for.  (I'm not going into things like historical dates and mathematical formulae, because she might say she'd always been bad at those.)

(London, 2026)