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, 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...

(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, 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)

"Huh?!?" conversations: 08 ("1975–1976 is 1.5 years") (London)

Last week for the Tuesday group lesson, I started a listening piece with the line, "我一九七五年到一九七六年在台北工作过两年 / I'd worked in Taipei for two years 1975 to 1976."

    One of the students immediately challenged it: "That's not two years. That's a year and a half."

    Huh?!?

    I would've understood if she'd said it was one year, but how on earth had she arrived at the "half" bit when I didn't say which part of 1975 to which part of 1976? Did my primary school maths lessons miss out on something??

    This being an anarchistic group (more in a separate blog), another student (who has trouble with numbers in Chinese even after 30 years of learning the language*) said, "It's most unhelpful to start a listening piece with a line mentioning numbers."

    I had to point out to her that in real life, one cannot predict how the native speaker will conduct the conversation, so it's all good practice.

    Over the decades of teaching Mandarin, I've had to point out to students that no native speaker will first ask them how much Chinese they'd learned and what textbook(s) they'd used, before entering into the conversation at the appropriate level.

    This is why I try to expose them to real-life obstacles like unknowns (vocab, grammar, speed) -- to a reasonable degree, of course, or they'll be so disheartened they'll just give up.

(London, 2026)

* This is an observation, not a criticism. Numbers are always problematic for learners of any foreign language (myself included):
https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/05/learner-friendly-language-in-some-ways.html.

"Huh?!?" conversations: 07 (Challenging an English name) (London)

For the listening comprehension with the Tuesday group this week, I was telling a story featuring an English friend's experience in an anarchist bookshop in the Angel (a district in north London) in the 80s.

    The friend's name is Guy. One of the students (English, in her 80s) immediately said, "How can a person be called Guy?"

    I replied, "You will have to ask his parents."

    At least she posed the challenge in Chinese, I noted at the time. So maybe I should go and find more material that the students will object to, to make them speak more in Chinese...

    I've been calling this group of students anarchistic (more in a separate blog, see link below), so her challenge was most in character.

    It was also most appropriate that she should've been making the challenge (which I interpret as being done in an anarchistic spirit) about a story set in an anarchist bookshop.

(London, 2026)

The anarchist bookshop: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/anarchists-bookshop.html 

Chinese sayings: 52 (一意孤行): https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/01/chinese-sayings-52.html 

"Huh?!?" conversations: 06 (Non sequitur) (London)

An ex-student from Malaysia who'd moved to Bristol was coming to London for a weekend.

    She suggested meeting up for a S.E.Asian or Chinese meal, so we started looking online, separately, for somewhere central enough.

    Kings Cross showed up with a few, one of which I thought rang a little bell.

    I texted another Malaysian student (let's call her Susan), who's in her early 80s. She'd once told me about some Malaysian or Hong Kong friends taking her to a place near Kings Cross, mentioning that the service was a bit surly and abrupt, which I thought might be the place near Kings Cross I'd seen online. So I thought I'd better check with her, as I didn't want to end up going there and spoiling my outing.

    Texted Susan with: "Ex-student coming over from Bristol and wants to go for a S.E.Asian or Chinese meal. One of the places I've found near Kings Cross is Restaurant xyz. Is this the one you'd told me about a few months back?"

    Back came Susan with, "I can't go, because my son is visiting from abroad."

    Huh?!?

    (Susan had an English education [went to an English-stream school in Malaysia, then came over to the UK in her late teens], which is why she's learning Mandarin with me. So I don't think it was a language problem.)

(London, 2024)

"Huh?!?" attitude: 02 (English speaker about Mandarin) (London)

"I don't see the point of the 把 / bǎ construction."

    (For a quick superficial dip into the 把 bǎ construction, see: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/06/huh-attitude-01-english-speaker-about.html.)

    This came from another student, who had taught English in a few places abroad, including Singapore and China.

    It's surprising not so much because she's been learning Mandarin for over 30 years (not continuously). It's astonishing more because as an Englishwoman with English as her mother tongue and first language, she would have had to wade through the inconsistencies and complications in the English language -- presumably never questioning or protesting about them, just accepting and learning them by rote as they are thrown at her. Yet she queries the point of the 把 / bǎ construction.

    When students ask "why" about a Mandarin linguistic point, my most frequent response is, "You'll have to go back a few centuries and ask the early Chinese. We just have to accept these things as they've been passed down the generations."

    I then went on to give her a few examples in English as a comparison:

* Verbs: Why can't English verbs all simply behave consistently and have an "-ed" added for the past tense right across the board? Why throw a spanner into the works and do "eat, ate" rather than "eat, eated" / "go, went" rather than "go, goed" / "sing, sang" rather than "sing, singed" -- just to give a small handful of examples?

* Nouns: Why can't English nouns all just behave consistently and have an "s" added at the end? Why make life difficult for the learner and do "child, children" rather than "child, childs" / "goose, geese" rather than "goose, gooses" (and yet, just to wrongfoot the learner further, it's "moose, mooses", not "moose, meese") / "man, men" rather than "man, mans", etc.?

    In Chinese, the word for the people of a particular country is simply and consistently the name of the country with "人 rén / human, person" added:

China: 中國人 / 中国人 / Zhōngguó-rén / "China person"

England / Britain: 英國人 / 英国人 / Yīngguó-rén / "England/Britain person"

France: 法國人 / 法国人 / Fǎguó-rén / "France person"

Holland: 荷蘭人 / 荷兰人 / Hélán-rén / "Holland person"

Laos: 老撾人 / 老挝人 / Lǎowō-rén / "Laos person"

Poland: 波蘭人 / 波兰人 / Bōlán-rén / "Poland person"

Singapore: 新加坡人 Xīnjiāpō-rén / "Singapore person"

Spain: 西班牙人 Xībānyá-rén / "Spain person"

but look at the English versions:

China  → Chinese

England/Britain → English/British

France → French

Holland → Dutch

Laos → Laotian

Poland → Polish (but "polish" is a verb and a noun for something else, although it doesn't sound the same)

Singapore → Singaporean

Spain → Spanish

    Africa seems to be the most consistent as a group for the near-universal generic ending in English. Some examples:

(in alphabetical order)

Algeria / Algerian; Egypt / Egyptian; Ethiopia / Ethiopian; Gambia / Gambian; Ghana / Ghanaian; Kenya / Kenyan; Mauritius / Mauritian; Moravia / Moravian; Nigeria / Nigerian; Zimbabwe / Zimbabwean. (Congo is one of the exceptions: not Congoan but Congolese.)

    So, how can an English speaker complain about Mandarin when English is equally hard work for the learner? How can a student say of the language s/he is learning: "I don't see the point of ..."

    (I must say again here that I'm not being defensive on behalf of Mandarin because I'm from that background genetically [in part]. This is a purely pedagogic discussion.)

(London, 2026)

"Huh?!?" attitude: 01 (English speaker about Mandarin) (London)

I had an American private student in the 80s who was in London because her husband got transferred here for a stint of work. She was in her 20s, I think (or early 30s at the most -- I'm very bad with age).

    She was planning to apply to Columbia University for a postgrad in Business Studies. One of the criteria was knowing a second language (just like for the London Business School MBA programme, where I taught Mandarin to the students for a couple of years). As this was the 80s and China was opening up to the outside world after the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), she decided to go for Chinese as that second language.

    The Chinese language is mostly SVO (Subject Verb Object) in structure, e.g., 我喝茶 / wǒ hē chá / I drink tea. This matches English, so lots of English speakers do not have a problem with it.

    One problematic structure for lots of Mandarin learners is the 把 bǎ construction, with the (for Mandarin) unusual word order of S 把-O V (e.g., 我把茶喝了 / wǒ bǎ-chá hē le / I took the tea and drank it).

    This American student struggled with this, and said, "What a stupid language!"

    I was stunned by this attitude: calling a language "stupid" just because she couldn't cope with a construction that does not conveniently match English that she's comfortable with.

    I say "comfortable with" for a reason, because English is not the most consistent of languages, yet English speakers don't object to this, because they grow up speaking it -- what I call the osmosis effect: it all seeps in and stays under the skin, without the speaker noticing it.

    As a lot of my students will know, I'm constantly sympathising, and empathising, with them, calling the Chinese language a monster, which makes them laugh (and feel better about their own struggles), so my feeling shocked about the attitude of this student was not in defence of the language at all, and certainly not because I'm from that cultural background.

    My concern is purely from a pedagogical perspective, which I always explain to the student: "Taking this attitude is counter-productive. Since you've launched into it (learning the language), you have to block out all negative thoughts, or it'll hamper your coming to grips with an already challenging task which you can't do anything about but to devise coping strategies for. Or give up."

    When students say that they're too old or too stupid to learn such a hard language, my immediate response is, "The first thing you should do is try and stop taking that attitude. If you say it often enough, you'll start to believe it -- this way, the battle is lost before you've even started."

    I give the same advice even when I hear people talking about being too old or too stupid to learn anything else.

    Of course, I'm not saying that just thinking that you can become fluent in Chinese or German or French will immediately remove all the obstacles. We have to be realistic and recognise (/acknowledge) that some of us are not cut out for certain things in life, e.g., being an Olympic athlete, or a UN interpreter. Some people are born with a talent for music, some for carpentry, so one has to be aware of one's limitations, it's true.

    This American girl was aiming to do an MBA with Mandarin as her second language. With such an attitude about the language (calling it "stupid"), she wouldn't get very far, I feel... (With learning the language, I mean, not in life, although her attitude would probably also throw a lot of self-created obstacles onto her path through life.)

(London, 1987?)

The nature vs nurture of food: 15 (What is acceptable or not)

(Forewarning to vegetarians:  don't read any further.)

A friend saw a newly made video by a white American going "Inside China's poorest and most drug addicted areas".  She said the children asked the documentary maker at one point if he ate humans, which then started a conversation (via texting) between us on the subject of which cultures do or won't eat what kind of food.

Dog meat:  It's fairly well-known that Korean people eat dog meat.  

    A Hong Kong-born woman I used to know ate dog meat in the southwest of China in the 80s when she was there as a tour guide.  The tourists (all Westerners) noticed her not having dinner with them in the hotel and asked where she would go for her meals if not at the hotel.  When told it was at various local restaurants, they asked if she could take them to one, for the experience.  She agreed, on the condition that they didn't question her choice of food.  At the end of the meal, she asked them for their opinion of the meat dish -- they thought it was delicious.  She then told them it was dog meat.

    I myself have tried it once before in 1975 when my landlord's son came home for a weekend with some cooked in a hongshao [red braising] sauce (light and dark soya, Shaoxing wine, star anise, ginger, garlic, rock sugar, scallion) by a national service camp mate of his.  It was similar to beef in texture and taste, but then hongshao sauce is quite a strong flavour, so any meat cooked in it would probably mainly differ only in the texture.  The hongshao venison served at a small dinner party in London when I was at university also tasted pretty much like beef.  Maybe it's me, not having a discerning palette.

Horse meat:  The French are known for eating horse, but the Brits baulk at the practice.  So, it seems to be purely a subjective approach, because why not horse when they happily go for cow, sheep, goat, pig, poultry?  As with dog meat, it seems to be simply due to the attachment to these two animals (horse and dog) that the Brits don't eat either of them.  And while we're on the subject, it doesn't seem to be a common practice among dog meat eaters to eat cat meat either.

Snails:  I ate snails for the first time in my life in Taipei in 1976 at a French restaurant (therefore posh, since it was European) instead of a Chinese one -- interestingly enough, since the Chinese are known for eating a very wide range of food.  It was expensive, as you can imagine, sold under a fancy name "escargots" and served up as a French dish.

Snake meat:  I've only eaten snake meat once before, back in 1976 in Chiayi (嘉義 Jiāyì) in south Taiwan.  If I hadn't been told, I'd have thought it was firm fish meat.

    I shall not go into some of the squeamish ones that I'd heard about, eaten in various countries / cultures without anyone batting an eyelid.  One of them has recently (in the last decade or so) even made it into health food shops as a health supplement, in powdered form, for its high protein content.

Quick tallying up: 02 (Every bowl of veg for a quid)

The first time I came across this way of doing things was back in 1996 in Brixton, south London.

    A then-student and I were taking Mr Moon there as it's an ethnic area with all sorts of exotic foods, fresh and packaged, which we thought might be fun for him.

    Mr Moon was in London for a year with a group of a dozen or so colleagues from the South Korean Housing Board, learning English and studying the UK's housing policies and practices.  His digs were across the street from the university where I was teaching at the time.

    We ended up in the Brixton open air veg market area around closing up time (4pm'ish).

    As we walked past one of the greengrocers packing up, I heard him say, "One pound, one pound, one pound."  I turned round to find him holding out a weighing scales pan filled with French beans going for £1.  I love French beans, and it was cheap, so I asked my student if he'd like to go halves.  

    After the French beans were poured into our respective rucksacks and we were walking away, I heard the same man say, ""One pound, one pound, one pound."  I turned round to find him holding out the same weighing scales pan now filled with potatoes.  I love potatoes, and my student is Irish, so we went halves.

    Yet another "one pound, one pound, one pound" lot of veg later, we had to stop, because our rucksacks were bursting at the seams (and my knees buckling under the weight -- I was also worried that the bus on the journey home might end up with a puncture).

    Not long after that Brixton experience, I noticed roadside stalls starting to sell veg in big plastic bowls, all going for a quid each.  As with the uniform-price format for the dim sum dishes (https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/06/quick-accounting-01-multiples-of-5.html), just put less in the bowl for the pricier items (e.g., broccoli).

    This makes transactions quicker for both seller and buyer, unlike in the old days when time was spent weighing up the veg, then collecting the relevant sum for each type, not to mention giving change in return (where applicable).

    The downside for the buyer would be if you didn't want or need so much, e.g., if you live alone or are a small eater.  My solution was to take advantage of the cheaper price all the same but share them with friends and students. I used to go to private students for their lessons, loaded up with fruit and veg from these stalls.

    What I'd experienced in Brixton might've been the start of the trend.

    Actually, prior to that, in the mid-80s, a greengrocer's in north London (Gibbers on Seven Sisters Road) was already doing something similar -- selling things off in £1 lots, but in clear plastic bags tied up.  This means extra work for the shop staff, though, whereas the plastic bowl system is less work and quicker for processing on all fronts.

    Both systems involve plastic bags, unfortunately, and not everyone is conscientious about recycling them.

(London, 1980s and 1996–present)

Quick tallying up: 01 (Multiples of 5)

I first saw this happen as a 15-year-old in Singapore having a dim sum meal, which was a fairly new import at the time -- to my consciousness anyway.  

    For those interested, dim sum is a Cantonese cultural practice.  Its proper name is 飲茶 / yum cha [yǐn chá in Mandarin] / "drink tea", for the activity.  The original practice (started during the Qing era) was a social gathering of people (family, friends) over a few cups of tea, usually at the weekend or a festive day.  Because it's not good, health-wise, to have tea on an empty stomach, the tea drinkers would order "snacks" [點心 dim sum / diǎnxīn in Mandarin] in the form of dumplings and other small items of food that are not eaten at a main meal (e.g., spring rolls; steamed or pan-fried stuffed beancurd skin rolls).

    In time, this practice became popular for the eating rather than the tea drinking, and a new concept of dining out was born.  Now you know why Chinese restaurants stop serving dim sum at 5pm -- because it's not considered a proper / main meal.  No one eats those dumplings for dinner.  Not even for a proper meal, really, but acceptable in the day.

    The British equivalent would be eating peanuts, crisps and/or pork scratchings with the alcoholic drink in a pub, because it's not good to drink on an empty stomach -- or maybe it's boring to just drink.  Westerners might not have the same perspective on health issues as the Chinese. 

    At the restaurant I was taken to in Singapore as a teenager, the offerings came on trolleys that perambulated within the restaurant.  The dishes were the same price, which is how the system works so well.  Dishes with more expensive ingredients, e.g., prawn, would have fewer items.

    When you saw that the trolley that came round had what you wanted, you'd indicate your interest. The waiting staff would put it/them on your table, then, on the piece of paper left on your table, record the number of dishes you've taken in the form of a build up of strokes in the character 正 (zhèng / upright, but the reading and meaning are irrelevant here in this context).

    The 正 character is made up of five strokes.  There is a fixed order for writing characters, with the one for 正 being:

1st stroke:  top horizontal (full stroke), written left to right

2nd stroke:  middle vertical (full stroke), written top to bottom

3rd stroke:  middle horizontal (half stroke on the right of the middle vertical), written left to right

4th stroke:  left vertical (half stroke on the left of the middle vertical), written top to bottom

5th (and final) stroke:  bottom horizontal (full stroke), written left to right

    If your first lot is three dishes, the 正 character would be incomplete, with only three strokes written in.

    If your next lot is three dishes again, two of these three dishes would complete the first five-stroke 正 character, with the third dish being the first stroke of the next 正 character.

    The Western equivalent is the system of four vertical lines with the final line written as a horizontal line across.  This is most often seen in films on the wall of a prison cell with the captive person keeping track of how many days have passed.

    The problem with the Western version is that one might write five vertical lines (or three) and it might not be obvious, as they can/might be a bit close together.

    With the 正 character, if there's one stroke missing it'll show up immediately.  (One stroke too many will not happen unless the person is totally illiterate.)  Of course, the final toting up might not see the last 正 fully written out (with five strokes), as diners don't conveniently order/eat in multiples of five.

    So, when it comes to adding up, it'll be x number of fives, plus whatever number of strokes there are in the final incomplete 正, multiplied by unit price of dish.  Bob's your uncle.