You're one of us / 你是自己人 / nǐ shì zìjǐrén (Accrington, England)

    My first interpreting job, as a Year 3 undergrad student, was helping out at a technical training course in Lancashire.

    A team of four mainland Chinese people had come over from 南通 (Nántōng, near Shanghai) to learn how to fix minor breakdowns in the textile machinery they'd purchased from the British company in Accrington.

    Their contract entitled them to free maintenance and repairs from the British side, but they were far-sighted and said they wanted to fix the minor faults themselves, rather than sit around waiting for the British engineer to get out there.  (This entailed a whole chain of actions:  identifying the fault, then making the phone call [with the time difference to negotiate, not to mention finding an interpreter for it] to report the fault for the right engineer to be sent out, then waiting for the engineer to apply for and obtain a visa, buy a plane ticket, then catch the flight out, which would be too much precious time for them to be downing tools and hanging around, unable to do any work.) 

    After the initial introductions were made at the airport upon their arrival, I said to them that I knew nothing about textile machinery, but had bought a dictionary for it, asking them to be patient with me.

    They immediately said, "That's no problem.  We're all engineers, so we'd know what's happening when we see the inside of the machines.  你是自己人 (nǐ shì zìjǐrén / You're one of us), we'll help you out on the technical side, don't worry."

    I was very touched by that, as I was being paid* to do the job.

* £19/day (hourly rates for a telex operator at the time were something like £2/hour)

(Accrington, Lancashire, England, 1979)

Some Chinese practices: 02 (Calling their spouses by surname + job title)

 

The mainland Chinese drama series I've been watching on YouTube, set in the China of 1977–92, features a practice I'd not come across before in Singapore or Taiwan (the only two countries I'd lived in where Chinese is spoken).

    A little linguistic background here:  the Chinese way of addressing someone, especially in a professional context, is to call them by their surname followed by their job title.

    The English language has a few equivalents, e.g., Queen Elizabeth, President Smith (generics in English go up front), but it's a common practice in Chinese and goes right across the whole professional board.

    For example, my students call me 谢老师 Xiè lǎoshī / Teacher Xie (Chinese generics go at the end).  A mainland Chinese colleague used to call me this as well, although he was my colleague, not my student, so it denotes respect and a certain level of formality as well (especially cross gender).

    (Formality vs familiarity:  the Chinese way of doing things, in a nutshell, is the opposite of the American hail-fellow-well-met style which would often be considered a bit too familiar.)

    Against this background of cultural practice, therefore, in the mainland Chinese drama series, set 1979–92, the neighbours address each other by their professional titles.  

    The engineer (who's younger) calls the teacher 庄老师 Zhuāng lǎoshī / Teacher Zhuang, never by his full name, and certainly not by his personal name, even though they get on well.  

    The teacher addresses the engineer as 林工 Lín gōng / Engineer Lin, never by his full or personal name, even though they enjoy an amicable relationship.  (工 gōng / "manual labour" is short for 工程师 gōngchéngshī / "manual-labour journey professional-title-generic" = engineer.)

    The two wives are textile factory workers, so they have no professional title as such.  They are just called by their full names (黄玲 Huang Ling and 宋莹Song Ying) by the other husband.  (I won't go into the variations here, as it'll take up too much space.)

    What is surprising to me is the wives calling their own husbands by the surname + job title format.  (Occasionally, their full names or their personal names.  I don't know how it's decided...)

    I'm not going into familiar reference here, as it gets a bit complicated.  In another blog maybe.

(mainland China, 1979–92)