What’s so weird about Hong Kong? #02 It’s all Chinese to me
Compared to other Chinese cities, Hong Kong is the most international in nature. One reason being that since the handover from Britain in 1997, the city enjoys the status of a Special Administrative Region of China. English is thus still an official language and many locals speak it fluently.
Nevertheless, every expat will eventually encounter a situation in which the English language can no longer be useful as a way of communication.
Voilà, a few tricky situations that I am constantly encountering here in Hong Kong, due to the language gap.
CANTEEN
If I want to get food at the University canteen, I pick my meal on the menu board while waiting in line. The options are mostly translated in English, so there is no problem choosing what I want to eat. What is more problematic is that most of the ladies and gentlemen at the counter – who hold the access ticket to my food – don’t understand English. Fortunately, we live in times of smartphones, so I am able to take a picture of the Chinese name of my meal on the menu board, show it to the vendor and put down the amount of money that appears on the little screen next to the cash box.
RESTAURANT
In normal restaurants in the city it can be even more difficult, because sometimes there are no translations of menu options at all. Either I just point at the picture in the menu of a meal that seems to correspond to my taste, or if I’m in a group we just order a bit of everything and see what we get.
SHOPPING
If I’m in a shop and see the product that I want, there is no communication problem. It gets more complicated if I want to try to buy Chinese things, as they are often cheaper. But sometimes there is just no way to find out what a package contains, which makes me ending up buying the more expensive, well-known Western one. Corporate branding actually works.
Finally, buying something specific is almost impossible. As the weather gets “chillier” (~20°C) I don’t want to air-dry my hair anymore, so I went to a shopping mall to buy a hairdryer. I went to every single beauty shop, but nobody knew the word “hairdryer,” so I started making crazy moves and noises around my head to imitate a hairdryer. Apparently, my pantomime was unsuccessful, as they kept on sending me to the shampoo section. At the end of the day I still didn’t have a hair dryer.
TAXI
Cab rides can be dodgy as well. To avoid outrageous taxi bills or ending up on the other end of the city, there was no way around learning how to say my address in Chinese. And still, it takes me at least three attempts to say the right pronunciation.
My Chinese university is crazy about informing their students on activities and events. They send at least five mails per day, around 20% of which are in Chinese. I’m sure I miss out on interesting stuff, but there is no way to decode them, so I have no choice but to delete those 20% categorically.
It’s not that I’m completely ignorant. I am really trying to learn the Chinese language. But first, it is quite hard for most non-Asians to achieve the level of knowing the word “hairdryer”. And second, I am learning Putonghua – also called Mandarin, because it is the most commonly spoken dialect of Chinese. Except in Hong Kong area. Here, most people speak Cantonese, a variation of Chinese ten times harder to learn than Mandarin. The challenge continues.