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Our not always easy to understand government seems to be dead set on this incinerator thing. Needing to “spread the pollution around” they want to build a toxin-spewing monster right outside Pui O Beach, assuring us that “there will be no toxic emissions” and that “all the particles will blow over to Cheung Chau.”
What are we to believe?
Having been pushed back and back, it seems the day of doom (the day the funding yes/no will be decided on, but hey, it’s only 18 billion of your money in return for being poisoned) is June 27th. There will be a protest flash mob thing outside Government Headquarters at Tamar, at 2.30 that day.
I think this is not a time for same-coloured T-shirts but for sober attire; suits and dresses, so we don’t look like a bunch of deranged hippies. We must be taken seriously and also get press coverage. So please do come along and notify your journalist friends!
This is how it started. We had dived into an upmarket restaurant because the temperature was dropping fast and it was raining; we just couldn’t bear the thought of another meal with our backs to an open door, huddled around a plastic cup of hot water. We soon got chatting to the geezers at the next table and as one of them was from Guangdong we immediately switched to Cantonese, becoming a kind of majority for a change. (Three against three.) They asked us to eat with them and soon the baijiu (Chinese rice wine) started flowing. P fought against it with all his might – it really is the vilest-tasting, most headache-inducing drink in the world – but was helpless in the face of the mighty force of Chinese Aggressive Hospitality.
One thing is asking people for a sip of wine or two, but Chinese Aggressive Hospitality decrees that there must be one ‘bottoms up!’ every 25 seconds. With the expected result.
That morning I had been on a walk and come across some leisurely swimmers on the freezing river bank. Well, not exactly freezing. They said it was 3 degrees but that was a big fat lie.
It was at least 5.
When I told P about this, a kind of madness overtook him, and he decided to play ‘Hound Dog’ (yes, electric guitar and amplifier; we’ve been busking our way through the province but more about that later) naked on that river bank and jump in afterwards. With the added bonus of a terrible baijiu hangover there was no way he could not do it, really.
He really took one for the team – well, two as I also filmed it. So you see, if he can do that, you too can learn Cantonese in 2013! AND: learning Cantonese, unlike swimming in that black and torpid river in close to zero temperatures, is completely fun, pleasurable and painless. Happy 2013, make it a Canto year!
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I think one of my biggest weaknesses is my temper, or rather that I sometimes can’t control it. I specifically blow my top at government officials and other puffed-up people in uniform, telling me what to do when it makes no sense, (“meh-dem! Tekk kee-ah! Tekk kee-ah!” (madam, take care, take care – there is a floor and it’s fraught with danger!) and I get really angry, perhaps most angry, when people openly state that I’m a total idiot.
Or rather, state that they think I’m a total idiot.
These are “issues” I obviously have to “address,” and therefore I promised myself before last weekend’s trip into the Guangdong hinterland, that no matter how patronising people were towards me, no matter with which frequency they told me that Cantonese was too difficult for me, or told me that I couldn’t eat spicy food because it had chillies, I would just laugh it off instead of getting pissed off.
I managed that to a certain degree; at least I didn’t raise my voice. But I didn’t exactly laugh either.
The main problem with 興寧(Heng Leng) five hours by train north, north-east of Shenzhen, is that although it’s Guangdong province, almost nobody speaks Cantonese. It’s a Hakka town: Established by Hakka for Hakka.
At least people spoke to each other in the local language – not surprisingly Hakka – instead of their mangled version of Mandarin. They could understand a lot of Cantonese though (too bloody right) but as I spoke, I had to suffer through that old scourge of life in Hong Kong: Addressing people in one language and being answered in another – this time garbled Mandarin. It was painful and really put me off my game. I started speaking a half Mando half Canto awful hybrid, often stopping in mid sentence to wonder what I was really saying, and where I was…
So people, if you want to practise Cantonese, stay the hell away from Heng Leng!
Anyway, the train there (apart from – horrors – having no restaurant car) specialises in torturing passengers with a never-ending stream of train staff selling stuff, socks, toothbrushes, stamps and the like, and at 3000 decibel. One guy stood in our carriage for about 30 minutes, screaming out the advantages of some smokers’ toothpaste, 5 cm from my ear.
Anyway, they did have one thing I really wanted: Crazy Light Balls. These were see-through rubber balls with a kind of sensor inside that, when the ball was bounced, started emitting really strong blue and red light rays as well as a glitter-like substance wafting around in it. I wanted it! At 10 yuan, I thought it would be steal. On the way back I wanted to buy another of these balls and couldn’t believe my luck when it, in addition to the light show and glitter, also featured a plastic fish swimming around in there.
"這是魚" (This is a fish) the uniformed woman informed me, pointing to the yellow and orange fish which every single inhabitant on this earth immediately would identify as a fish. I pointed to another ball with a slightly larger, blue and green fish in it."這都是魚嗎？"（Is this also a fish?) knowing full well that mainlanders seldom understand irony; it was more for the benefit of my friend sitting next to me.
“是！是魚!”（Yes! It’s a fish!) she beamed, holding up her thumb in appreciation of the clever foreigner that could put to and two together to such an astonishing degree.
I sank back in depression. (“Depression is anger turned inwards.”)
Safely back in Shenzhen and among Canto speakers, it was time to hit the tailor’s. When I came out of the changing room my friend had disappeared, and before I even moved my eyes to look for her, the tailor started pointing around the corner with wild, exaggerated movements. Your friend! There! There!
OK, cheers,I think I can …
She started pulling my arm, trying to drag me around the corner when I didn’t gallop to be with my fellow whitey fast enough for her liking.
“There! There!”
“Yes, I know. I can see her.” My friend was talking with three fabric-mongers, so I hung back a little, thinking I’d let her do the Canto thing by herself. This wasn’t good enough for my tailor, who rushed up to the group and started pointing at my friend from quite close up.
“Here! Here! This is her!”
“Oh, for Chr… Please. I talked to my friend three minutes ago. I still recognise her.”
I thought I was showing amazing restraint, but do realise that most people spend every day of their lives not losing their temper. Bear in mind that it was my first time, though. Well, maybe the third.
Back at the tailor’s gaff, my shirt was ready to be taken home. The tailor handed it to me in a plastic bag. “Now you can put it in your wheelie-bag,” she explained slowly and clearly, as if dealing with a particularly dense village idiot with Aspberger’s.
No, I didn’t raise my voice! A huge victory for me. But I didn’t laugh either.
