Good Your Head (Chinese For Advanced Learners)

My daylight hours are starting to fill up with Cant-studs (Cantonese students) coming to my house, and of course I have to offer them something for struggling up all those stairs and paying me.

As some of them have lessons at 10am I can’t very well offer them beer, so have to turn to tried and trusted tea. 茶(cha). And when it comes to cha, only the best will do! The best being 鐵觀音(tit gun yam – Iron Buddha), renowned around the world for its bitterness and the way it makes you puke if you drink it on an empty stomach.(Among other things – hallo!)

Yesterday I noticed I was running out of Buddha and went to Shenzhen to stock up. In the tea shop I asked the geezer if he had any packages with normal Chinese characters as I think anything with crippled (simplified) characters looks cheap and fake even if I know what’s in it. After a few minutes’ discussion about Chinese characters he dug out the bag in the photo above. A Hong Kong woman sitting a few feet away sampling tea piped up, in English: “Your Cantonese vewy good.” This is where I am supposed to thank her profusely, also in English. I know that’s how foreigners are supposed to act. But I just kept talking to the guy as we were in the middle off a business transaction.

She repeated her compliment a few times whereupon I asked her in Cantonese where she was from and she answered in English: Hong Kong. The ridiculous spectacle of a blond Norwegian speaking Cantonese with the black-haired HK Chinese person answering in English ensued. If I had a 100th of a cent for each time this has happened, etc.

In the end I had to say “If my Cantonese is so good, why are you talking to me in English?” (如果我廣東話講得咁好，你點解同我講英文？yugo o jungman gong dak gam hou, lei dim gai tong o gong yingman?）She answered, like thousands have before her: “I afrai’ you don’ understand.”

Fortunately this kind of thing happens less often now – not even five times a week. And I almost laugh at it now. A kind of tired, bitter laugh…

And the “Good Your Head” in the title? It’s 好你個頭 (Hou lei go tau – Good Your Piece Head; i.e. Good, my arse!)