Sibling rivalry (Worldwide)

Growing up in Singapore as a child from the Teochew (Cháozhōu 潮州, S.E.China) dialect group, I’d hear derogatory / pejorative remarks made about other dialect groups.  

The Cantonese (S.E.China) put too much oil and salt in their cooking.  

The Hokkiens (from Fújiàn 福建 Province, S.E.China) are uncouth — they apparently have the biggest range and the most vulgar of swear words and phrases, so vulgar I didn’t dare listen, never mind repeat.  

The Hainanese (from Hainan Island, S.E.China) were called “white stomach”, which is a kind of sea fish: it has a white underbelly and floats in the water upside down, white underbelly facing up, thus making it very easy for fishermen to spot and catch them, hence stupid.  

Similarly, there were jokes / comments about the Malays and the Indians.

When I went to work in Taipei, I heard similarly critical comments about three regions (there must be others):  people from Anhui Province (further north of S.E.China, inland westwards from Shanghai) are fierce;  people from Sichuan Province (S.W.China) and Hunan Province (central China) are fiery (because of the hot food they consume) and can outdo anyone in a row.

Coming to London, I came across jokes about (and labels for) the Irish and the Scots, sometimes about northern English people.

When I started going out with a Swiss man, I heard that the Swiss have jokes about the Austrians, and the French have jokes about the Belgians.

It then dawned on me that it’s geographical proximity (and therefore familiarity) that decides who the targets of disparagement would be.  

The Chinese community in Singapore in the 1960s consisted mainly of Hokkiens (the biggest group at the time), the Cantonese, the Teochews, the Hainanese and the Hakkas.  It’s not a coincidence, I think, that they’re all from S.E.China.  There were no derogatory remarks about people from Anhui, Sichuan or Hunan, because we didn’t have them in Singapore at the time.

Ditto the English jokes/comments about the Irish and the Scots.  Ditto the Swiss and French ones.  They’re all neighbours, or close enough.  I have a feeling there’ll be Scandinavian ones about each other. 

I call this “sibling rivalry”.  

It can also be applied to people from the same sex:  in my experience, women tend to be more competitive with (and often, catty about) other women, and men with men, rather than across the sexual divide.

An example from my personal experience: when I started my relationship with the Swiss man, I told a good friend, Bernhard, about it, adding, “And he’s a German speaker, too!”  Bernhard, who’s German, said, “That’s what he thinks.”

Update 271117:  An ex-student’s father, who’s from Tianjin, China, said last night when I told him the Hainanese story: "People in mainland China think people from Hainan are very clever."  Proves my Sibling Rivalry theory, I think — Tianjin in north China is much further from Hainan Island in the south-east, therefore no bitching...

Judge not a book by its cover (Singapore)

When I was in Primary Four (aged 9), we got a new Mandarin teacher, Mrs Leong, from Malaysia.  

In those days in British colonial Singapore, anyone who spoke Chinese, rather than English, would be treated as a second-class citizen.  Such was the pervasive practice at the time, with Singaporeans treating their fellow citizens with contempt (and toadying to white people).

One day, Mrs Leong went to a government department first to get a signature from them, before she could move on to the next department with her main enquiry.  

In the 60s, Hokkien (the S.E.Chinese Fujian dialect) was the Chinese lingua franca (versus Cantonese these days from the influx of Cantonese films from Hong Kong), so between Singapore Chinese, the default language of communication would be Hokkien.

Mrs Leong, herself a native Hokkien speaker anyway, put her request, in Hokkien, to one of the two girls on duty, who then told her brusquely and superciliously, in Hokkien, “OK.  Go and wait over there.”

As Mrs Leong sat and waited, the girl gossiped with her colleague, in Mandarin, about some other girl’s latest boyfriend, filing her nails at the same time.  Ten minutes later, Mrs Leong went up to the counter and asked politely and meekly, still in Hokkien, “Can you please see what’s happened to my request?”  The girl barked, “I told you to wait, didn’t I?  Just go and sit down!”

Another ten minutes later, Mrs Leong asked again, only to be treated in the same way.

Yet another ten minutes went by.  Mrs Leong tried a third time.  This time, after barking at Mrs Leong, the girl then turned to her colleague and said, in Mandarin (thinking Mrs Leong wouldn’t understand it), “Honestly, these people!  They give you a heart attack, I tell you!”

Now, the reason the girl was so dismissive was Mrs Leong using Hokkien (implied: had not done any formal schooling, thus placing her even lower than a Mandarin-speaker), on top of her body language and her modest style of dressing (triggering the girl’s initial visual assessment that she must be a country bumpkin).

As it turned out, however, Mrs Leong had a university degree from the National University of Taiwan, which was — in those days — a notch up from a degree from Malaysia, even one from Singapore.  The Mandarin she spoke was, therefore, without the Singapore / Malaysian accent.  (I’d personally noticed in 1977, after two years away in Taiwan, that Singaporeans — shop assistants, enquiry desk workers, stallholders — would treat me with a lot more courtesy as my Mandarin sounded “posh”, quite different from the local version.)

Mrs Leong had put up with the girl’s appalling manner long enough.  This latest remark by the girl had gone a bit too far.

She said, in “posh” (by Singapore standards) accented Mandarin, “What do you mean, ‘These people’??  What do you mean, ‘Give you a heart attack’??  How dare you?!?  Let me remind you that you are a civil servant, and that your salary comes from my taxes.  I was making a simple request — just getting a signature from your department — yet you made me wait and wait and wait.  Not only that, you spoke to me so rudely each time.  And now you say I give you a heart attack?  HOW DARE YOU?!?  Get me your manager.  I want to make a complaint.”

The girl scooted off to her manager’s office, and returned with the signature in a matter of a few seconds.

(Singapore, 1967)

* See also blog “The smell”:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/07/smell-london.html