Hello! Or as my Mandarin book just told me, "Have you eaten yet today?"
I haven't gotten the hang of saying "hello" in China yet (Mandarin, Cantonese, or otherwise). I still tend to fall back to an american style "hey" (which I know means something else in Cantonese, since there's even a club in Hong Kong called "Hei Hei") which tends to put people off, but I'm still thrown by the two phrases I've picked up:
- Ni Hao (Cantonese: Neigh Ho): Literally "You good", not asked as a question. You need to tack on a "ma" at the end in either language to imply you actually want an answer.
- (don't have the pinyin on me): Have you eaten yet today?
The latter comment is apparently a holdover from some periods of very long famine in Chinese history, and I've been told has fallen into disuse, so I'm not about to whip it out next time I'm lost and asking a person on the street for directions. While I'm probably going to sooner or later get the hang of the first one, I still just jars me when I think of it in psuedo English. "you good". I don't even really like to ask people "how they're doing" in English, preferring things like "word" or "what's up" as openers, and if they want to tell me, they're perfectly free to. I think it ties into my whole heavy distaste for the phrase "good morning". It's morning people. What the f@#k is good about it?
Thoroughly disgusted with technology (see last post if you can digest it), I began reclaiming my stowed-away sense of adventure after crossing through the Lo Wu border checkpoint into Shenzhen, in the Guangdong province of Southern China. I've been to Shenzhen before (if you haven't heard the stories, buy me a beer sometime and we can kick back for a couple hours somewhere), so in some sense it has some familiarity in that I'm not totally disoriented the second I walk through the checkpoint and get out into the semi-fresh air. My initial skills in street bargaining were honed in the Lo Wu shopping center, a massive 4 or 5 story maze nearly attached to the immigration building, chock full of hole in the wall hawkers peddling their wares (though you get used to the shouts of "DVD! DVD! Nolex? Nice Pen? Sir sir! Massage-ee?" when you do a couple of laps around the place). I wasn't up to it then, having hardly slept the last week or so, so I just made a B-line for the GuoMao Metro stop and checked in and passed out at the MyLittleHut hostel as quickly as I could.
(Amy, the hostel keeper, was happy to see me... but that may have more to do with the fact that business is slow now ;) ).
I dove immediately onto the Chinese style rock hard I-guarantee-if-you-sleep-on-your-side-your-arm-will-be-dead-when-you-wake-up style mattress, and passed the bonk out. Sure enough, I woke up with half my body still asleep, but it helps when you know that it's coming.
I assured Amy I'd be staying one more night and made off to wander a little bit in the city, and sort out the rest of junk that was still lingering from work and needed an internet connection. I needed a day to unwind after the madness that is Hong Kong, and here was the opportunity. The bread place was... well, bready. The hand pulled noodles were... hand-pulled. And a brief chat with hostel mate Maya assured me that people were still trying to source components as strongly as ever in China.
I mucked around taking it slow, and passed out again way too early. I rarely control my sleep, so when it comes, I don't fight it. Could you call me a narcoleptic with my single minded passion to seize it when it's available?
The next day after a groggy start and more dead-side-syndrome, I had the energy, so I made for the Lo Wu shopping center. The Tea Lady, an old friend from previous pilgrimages was still at her stall, and we wrangled for a while in my very broken Cantonese and her not so broken English, as we sampled tea after tea and made notes on language in our pocket notebooks. One girl who happened to be working in a stall close by dropped a few pieces of jewelry when she heard me almost get something right in Cantonese. "GuangDongHua?!" she shouted at the tea lady, obviously shocked to hear a Gweilo trying out their language.
"Keui gong!" (he speaks it)
I had to butt in before it got past me, "Hou siu! Hou siu!" (Only a little!)
From a book I just read called "How to Learn Any Language", Barry Farber, a self-confessed linguaphile points out (bad memory paraphrase) that people are generally very happy if you try to learn their language, as long as they get the sense you're trying to give it a go and not just chopping it out any which way you want. He goes on further to point out that this is more common with less "international" style languages, using French as a prime example - if you try to speak French, well, at one point just about everyone was trying to speak French, so it's not terribly impressive to a Frenchperson, especially if you kill the pronunciation. But you go to work in a niche language (he pulls out serbo-croat as his favorite example), he's ended up with being invited to family dinners of strangers and free cab fares, among some of his other tellings. Ok, so the best I've gotten is maybe an extra bag of tea thrown in for free, but hey, you gotta start somewhere...
(In good faith, Barry also HIGHLY advises against learning Cantonese - he's probably right, when all's said and done, considering when I read his footnote in the appendix on it, he pretty much nailed every one of the reasons I'd given for wanting to learn it in the first place and shown their fallacy. But that's not entirely fair either, he does say any language learning is good, guess I'll have to ask him someday..)
I finally left my favorite teashop and went into the throng of Lo Wu proper. I had been noting that in recent times, my shoes were pretty much worn through to the point that they might just spontaneously fall apart at any point. That's about the point when a kid hawking shoes happened to catch me walking by after he shouted out something in Spanish.
I went a full 3 more paces before what just happened hit me. Yup. It was definitely Spanish. I stopped, paused, and then slowly turned around. The action was deliberate enough to completely throw the kid off his usual ramble and pace.
"Did you just say 'zapatos'," I asked him, rather more directly than I intended. I get direct when I'm shocked, it wasn't really his fault.
"Hey sir, shoes, you want shoes? Yes yes, zapa-toes!"
"Za-pa-tozzzzzzzz" I shot back at him.
"Za-pa-tozz" he correctly sounded out.
"Tu hablas espanol?"
"Heehee. No sir. But a little. But you want shoes, you come here."
I slowly glanced down at the disrepair of my footwear. Ok, the kid had spirit, and damned if I know why a Cantonese guy is speaking Spanish, but ok, let's see where this goes.
"You know, I could use a new pair of shoes. These ones are a bit shit."
"Huh sir?"
"DeNG!"
"Oh... hehe.. Guangdonghua... Okok, you come in."
So I went in. We fenced. We bargained. We cajoled. We "my friend!"ed and slapped each other on the back. The kid's sister's were looking on in fine form, watching the dance of lowu canto bargaining take shape. But alas, I think he was the master.
"How many you buy?"
"I think too much money. I can't buy."
"But SIR! Fit is perfect! Good quality, look look!"
"No no, can't afford. I think too much."
"No too much. Very good price."
"I think hou GWAI!"
"Haha.. No, not very expensive. You see. I make you special price. Here, this what I usually charge," as he pounded away at the traditional 4-function large button calculator used in bargaining stalls across Hong Kong and Shenzhen (maybe more!), and tapped in an absurd figure.
I took a look. And just laughed. But if we're acting, I'm going to go for the oscar. Complimenting the chuckle was the perfect nonverbal accompaniment of delicately putting vastly too expensive shoes back into the box from which they came.
"Yup. Hou gwai. Thank you for the fun though."
"SIR! No, I say, I already give you discount."
"I no care discount," (the Chinglish helps in these affairs), "you discount whole thing? No matter! Too much money to discount!"
"Okokokok... this price your price," as he tapped out about 10% off, "but you pay this, you in Heunggong," and slapped the original price plus about 30% on the calculator.
"It's ok. I must be leaving," as I stood up from the chair.
"Okokokok.. You make price. Give me good price, we do deal. I can make more barato."
"BARATO!? Esto no es barato, esto es loco! Tu no sabes la significa de la palabra 'barato'!" (ok, so my spanish is usually a little weak, but I think I got across that he didn't know what the hell 'cheap' meant)
"Hahaha.. no speako spanish. You give me barato price, we make deal."
and on.
and on.
If you're going to have a go at this, you really ought to not be in any particular rush when you're about it.
We riposted. We en garded. We wrangled away and amused the spectators and shopkeeps alike. "Whatever else", they all would later say, "it was worth the price of admission".
Finally, we hit a deal.
"Ok, this is my price," I declared, "I know you can get no trouble with your boss for that."
"Sir! You get me in trouble."
"Ok, but I have to go. Thank you for the fun."
"Ok sir, but I keep the box!"
I laughed. Fair enough, bargaining is about giving, and that box woulda been the first thing that I chucked in the garbage back at the hostel when I put the shoes in my pack away. "Ok, you get the box."
Next thing you know, I was the proud owner of shoes I probably still paid too much for, even considering I got them for 30.76% the price he originally offered them. Ah well, I needed shoes, and my American friends, you'll probably kill me anyway if you found out how far I was nitpicking him down on the damn things.
I took a last stop over at the hostel to say goodbye to Amy, pick up my stuff, and head back to the bus terminal. After a couple of missteps and some very amused bus attendants (after my various attempts to say "which bus go to guangzhou?" I found it, and was sitting on the bus, heading for Guangzhou.
No comments:
Post a Comment