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 (non-Chinese), a Malaysian 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 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)