Tag Archives: comic

Sorry, I’m new to this! Notices for novice expats?

Posted by expatlingo in cartoon, expat life and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

On my first walk around Mainland China, I should have hung this apologetic public notice on a placard around my neck:

New China Pedestrian Comic

As a new pedestrian in China, I initially looked for official painted crosswalks, waited for the biggest gap in traffic I could see (because no one yielded voluntarily), and then ran across the road at an unpredictably jerky fast-slow pace. A practice no other road-users anticipated and which caused a lot of confusion and honking.

Fortunately, with a little observation, I soon got the knack of stepping out into the traffic-filled roadways, walking at a steady pace, and marveling as the cars predicted my path and opened gaps for me.

Why am I flashing-back to a time I should have notified others of my ‘novice’ status? It’s the fault of this cartoon man’s guilty, sweaty, stupid grin:

New driver notice in Chinese

I pass this ‘new driver’ notice daily in the rear window of a white station wagon here in Hong Kong. He reminds me of my own red-faced — ‘sorry I didn’t realize…!’ — moments.

Thinking back, I can recall several times when a “sorry, I’m new here” notice could have been helpful. Here is but a small sample:

  • Being ‘over-friendly’ during my first weeks of English life and attempting far too much eye-contact with neighbors and semi-strangers.
  • Assuming that check-out clerks would bag my groceries in Holland.
  • Thinking that any Hong Kong Island ‘red’ taxi would happily drive me to the middle of nowhere in the ‘New Territories.’

What about you? What mistakes have you made as a novice expat that could have been softened by an “I’m new to this” notice?

*****

Notes: For those who are hooked on Chinese, I translated the ‘new driver’ sticker into both Cantonese and Mandarin:

新手駕駛: Novice driver (In Cantonese: san1 sau2 gaa3 sai.2 In simplified characters and Mandarin: 新手驾驶, xīn shŏu jià shĭ)

请多包涵: Please bear with me/I feel apologetic! (In Cantonese: cing2 do1 baau1 haam4. In simplified characters and Mandarin: 请多包涵, qĭng duō bāo hán)

Damn smug Canadians … or were they Americans?

Posted by expatlingo in travel and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Queuing up to board a recent flight, I noticed this half of a matched-set couple:

Canadian flag backpackerThe pair of tan, sandal-clad travelers carried black backpacks slung over their shoulders. Onto each backpack they had hand-sewn small, but prominently placed, Canadian flags.

They spoke like Americans, they looked like Americans, but they did not want to be mistaken for actual fat, loud, gun-loving American heathens. They were Canadians* and they wanted everyone to know it.

As an American, if I felt compelled to display an instant-disclaimer, a sewn-on patch like the following would be required:

American backpacker comic

But instead, I’ll just proudly hold my family’s stack of American passports in every immigration line and try to demonstrate through my actions that many of us are not “Ugly Americans.”

*Or perhaps they were Americans who thought they’d receive better treatment from locals and fellow travelers alike, if they were thought to be Canadians. 

Post-script: Having just written this post in the morning, I spent the evening watching Argo, where Americans pose as Canadians to escape post-revolutionary Iran. It appears pretending to be Canadian can be frightfully useful!

Saturday Night Underachiever: skirting Earth Hour and the Sevens

Posted by expatlingo in Hong Kong and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

My body arched as a glass hit the floor and liquid spattered across my back. I’d just finished a bowl of furnace-hot, red-speckled mapo doufu and the feeling was initially refreshing.

Then I heard slurred words of apology mumbled from behind me. The droopy-eyed Hong Kong Seven’s rugby fan had knocked over a glass. It was not water, but red wine that coated my back.

“I’mmmmm ……. reeeeeeaaaaaallllllyyyy sooooorrrrryyyyy. It’ssssss “Greeeeeeeaaaatttttt Waaaaaalllllll”……. so think about hoooooowwwwww haaaarrrd it is to driiiink.”

No use talking to someone quite that plastered, I turned back to my husband and visiting mom. The waitress rushed over some tissues and they helped me dab up the wine.

Leaving the restaurant, I made the odd decision to lead us through Lan Kwai Fong (LKF): the exact area that would be the night’s main destination for many of the over-indulging Seven’s fans. Rounding the corner, this is a slice of what we saw (shake your screen to help visualize the costumed revelers in constant motion):

Rugby Sevens in Lan Kwai Fong

It was the spitting image of the last half of any “Harlem Shake” video!

We wandered through gawking with delight at the (literally) intoxicating atmosphere. At only 9 pm, the many bar patrons already filled the street. Metal police barricades were set up to expedite officer passage as the night wore on. I sympathized with the cops who would soon be dealing with the aftermath of the cheap trays of rainbow-colored, syringe-type vodka shots being sold; the evening could only end with the street awash in Jell-O hued vomit.

Just out of LKF, I suggested we wander to the pedestrian bridge near the IFC and look at the city lights. Arriving, we gazed back at a starkly black cityscape. We had chosen to take in the lights in the middle of “Earth Hour,” the yearly period during which many city buildings turn off their non-essential lights.

Why not hop on the Star Ferry and watch the lights get switched back on at 9:30? We wandered down the pier and while waiting for the next ferry, studied this fitting public service announcement about being an energy saver:

Hong Kong Energy Saver The ferry docked and we walked down the ramp to board. Setting out across Victoria Harbor we realized that most of the lights had been turned on while we stood in the ferry terminal bathed in fluorescent lighting.

Nothing was quite right that night, but somehow it turned into a perfectly amusing evening out in Hong Kong.

My accidental Chinese language partner the telemarketer

Posted by expatlingo in cartoon, languages and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

expatlingo telemarketing comic

Hong Kong telemarketers are like The Terminator: tell them you don’t understand Cantonese (in Cantonese) and they seamlessly apologize and switch instantly to Mandarin!

The first time it happened I wasn’t sure I could believe my ears, but sure enough that sing-song-y Cantonese switched immediately to crisp, sharp Mandarin and the sales pitch marched forward: an unstoppable marketing machine.

While the chance to “pass” as Chinese for a minute is amusing, the entertainment value is wearing thin. Does Hong Kong have a “do not call” list?

The Horror! Of Chinese Mainlanders, right here in Repulse Bay!

Posted by expatlingo in cartoon, Hong Kong and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

expatlingo repulse bay comic

I have discovered a new annoyance: Hong Kong-based Western expats complaining about Mainland Chinese tourists.

This month’s edition of “Southside Magazine,” the English-language magazine catering to residents of southern Hong Kong Island (Stanley, Repulse Bay, Aberdeen, etc), features an article by Carolynne Dear called, “Snap Unhappy: Camera-wielding tourists are turning Repulse Bay into a no-go area for some families.” The article complains about the large numbers of Mainland Chinese tourists visiting Repulse Bay and highlights their interest in photographing blonde children as alarming.

To give you an idea of the flavor of the article:

“[I]n Repulse Bay … past the volleyball nets and beyond the ice-cream shop, the bucolic sounds of the afternoon are drowned out by the rumble of idling engines from coaches lining Beach Road. The air is heady with the stench of diesel and the beach is a mass of camera-wielding tourists.

***

“[B]asic differences in etiquette between mainland China and [Hong Kong] are not winning the tourists many fans. Parking problems aside, one of the biggest complaints from expat residents is the photo-taking of Western children.

The article then quotes several upset expat parents, including this mother:

“Although it’s flattering on one level that people want to take photos of your child, it often feels like an invasion of your privacy, especially when it upsets your children and makes an otherwise pleasant day awkward.

“My children have even been photographed inside the car. We pulled up at lights outside Ocean Park, and a tourist bus pulled up next to us. Suddenly flashbulbs started popping and we realized there was a surge of people on the bus taking pictures of my two children asleep in the back of the car. It was unbelievable.”

It’s all rather over-dramatic and slightly ugly. Privileged white people complaining about Mainland Chinese — who may well have lived through The Great Leap Forward’s epic famine and the Cultural Revolution and who are only allowed to have one child themselves — enjoying a vacation in Hong Kong, a day at the beach, and delighting in your children. The horror!

Yes, I know, strangers take pictures of your children can be annoying (my daughter resorted to hiding her hair and face in a hooded jacket to avoid it in Hangzhou recently), but please don’t be hysterical. You are fortunate. You live in one of the most expensive housing areas in Hong Kong (after The Peak). If you are out in public, people — gasp! even Mainland Chinese people — may talk to you and take pictures.

Thank god, the article concludes with some reasonable thoughts. A teacher originally from Guangdong province says:

“Don’t be too worried… Most tourists are just curious. For the Chinese, taking pictures of children does not have the same sinister connotations that it does for Westerners.”

And similarly sage thoughts are shared from another Western expat:

“[W]hen I have travelled in South America and Asia, I have taken photos of locals. Pictures are just a part of traveling.”

My Cantonese is improving thanks to the NRA

Posted by expatlingo in cartoon, Hong Kong, languages and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

expatlingo nra cantonese comic

Around the time the National Rifle Association (NRA) announced that its solution to the Sandy Hook tragedy is armed guards in every American school, my love for Hong Kong, and its strict gun laws, low crime rate and strong economy, grew tenfold.

In fact, I’ve been inspired by the NRA to re-double my efforts to learn basic, friendly every-day Cantonese.

So over the weekend, I braved the holiday crowds and took a special trip to Hong Kong Island from my home in the New Territories (also know as “Mordor” to the Hong Kong Islanders) to seek out a few more Cantonese study books.

First I checked out Eslite, the three-level Taiwanese books store at Hong Kong’s newest mall, Hysan Place in Causeway Bay. They had a full shelf of Mandarin learning books for English speakers and a grand total of two Cantonese learning books for English speakers, one of which I already own. So I bought the other one: the Lonely Planet Cantonese Phrasebook.

After riding the tram from Causeway Bay to Central, I enjoyed a nice lunch of garlic eggplant and pork dumplings and then visited the two bookstores at the IFC mall in Central: Bookazine and Dymocks. There I found another Cantonese study book, “Interesting Cantonese” by Susanna Ng. More of a list of sentences than a language study book, I bought it because there is simply so little out there. Well, that and because it taught me how to say “ParknShop” and “7Eleven” in Cantonese (Baak Gai and Chat Sahp Yaht) as well as a bunch of Hong Kong place-names.

Cantonese study books

Now I have four books to help me learn Cantonese, plus some Pimsluer language CDs. I could really use a class, but since I live in the aforementioned “Mordor of Hong Kong” that is easier said than done, so I’ll use my books and CDs for a bit.

Despite my newfound enthusiasm, I still secretly feel that studying Cantonese is a practice in futility:

  1. Many (most?) locals speak (some) English. Well, save for the ParknShop clerks and the ladies who collect the rubbish from my house. And those who speak English, answer back in English as this funny video by Norwegian Cantonese teacher Cecilie Gamst Berg illustrates:
  2. There is no standardized system for Romanizing Cantonese (that is, writing it out using the alphabet–like Pinyin for Mandarin). So each book uses a slightly different system to account for sounds and tones.
  3. Bloody traditional characters. Thanks to my previous Mandarin studies I can read a slew of simplified characters. But in Hong Kong they use the traditional characters. Obvious ones that I see every day I know, like 車 for 车, 長 for 长, and 電 for 电. But I often get lost in a maze of strokes when trying to suss out traditional characters. (Don’t hate me Hongkongers, I know you love them.)
  4. Lastly, and related to all of the above, I think native Hongkongers secretly don’t want the rest of use to learn Cantonese. After all, how will they gossip about us and our spotty, untaken-care-of skin then?

Still, I will persist if only to learn enough to be a bit more chatty with the eternally friendly rubbish ladies and to stick it to the NRA. After all, I can have a coveted permanent Hong Kong ID card and “right of abode” in only 6.25 more years.

(What does the comic say? Credit is due to the Wikipedia page, Cantonese profanity, for help with the comic. “仆街”, pronounced “puk1 gaai1″ can mean both “prick” and “drop dead” and “can also be used in daily life under a variety of situations to express annoyance, disgrace or other emotions.” “𨳒” pronounced “diu2″ means “f*ck.” The full phrase roughly means: “Disgraceful prick! F*ck your gun rights!”)

Related posts:

China’s Pearl River Delta = Woe for the Chinese Language Student

Mini-bus language angst

The Retrograde Chinese Lesson (Comic)

Gun-toting, Cantonese hillbillies in the New Territories

“Gangnam Style” medicine, or 20 dancing kids as as my “Personal Jesus”

Posted by expatlingo in cartoon and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Using my Facebook feed as a rough indicator, most Americans spent the week alternating from deep sadness to horrific rage over Newtown. I have been no exception and have fluctuated between tearing when hugging my daughter at the school gate to becoming a fireball of anger upon reading news out of America from certain pro-gun elements (see for example anything related to the Utah congressional delegation refusing to consider a ban on assault weapons).

Then I found my “Personal Jesus”: twenty happy and uninhibited school children dancing to their favorite song.

I spent half-an-hour with these kids playing musical statues as part of the “anything goes” run-up to the school holiday break. The children were already buzzing with pre-Christmas excitement, and the gym teacher putting on “Gangnam Style” sent them over the moon with joy. Watching them prance around the room doing the silly horse dance while all uniformly beaming with unbridled glee was my happiest moment of the year. (Yes, I danced with them, fake rodeo lasso move and all.)

These twenty small children are from a hodgepodge of countries and ethnic backgrounds but they never really seem to notice. They are too young, and too international perhaps, to mind that they all celebrate different holidays, eat different foods and consider different corners of the world to be “home.”

Right now they think a chubby Korean nerd is the best thing going. They don’t understand what happened on the other side of the world in Newtown. They just want to dance.

My deepest gratitude to these children for letting me completely and happily “live in the moment” with them for a small slice of one morning.