As some of you know, I spent the past summer in Hong Kong. I was there for an internship helping people apply to the UN for refugee status. This will be nothing at all about that experience, although I could write for days about the refugee status determination process and its many faults, especially in Hong Kong. Instead, as I walked through the many food markets, I was reminded of some life lessons that I would like to share.
Before I begin, some background: I’m a white dude who happens to speak Chinese (pretty darn well, if I may say so myself). I’ve lived in Beijing, Taipei and now Hong Kong, and have visited Chinatowns in the US, Canada, Europe and other parts of Asia. These lessons can obviously be learned anywhere, but I’ve got a theme to work with, so if you’ll just indulge me, that’d be grand.
Now, on to the lessons.
Lesson 1: Life is Suffering
Seriously. Life can really suck. Just when you think everything’s going swimmingly, you get caught in some fisher’s net and find yourself suffocating and flopping around in some stall in the blistering Hong Kong heat. Or perhaps you were never born free and have been stuck in cages your entire life, along with all of your friends, and you can’t stand up or anything, and all you do is wait for the butcher to chop off your head and pluck you from here to Tuesday.
So yeah, life sucks. The cool thing about being human is that we have the ability to realize this and to try to change it. Sometimes when you strive for change you might feel like you’re that fish, flopping around on the road, not really achieving anything, but just hang in there and eventually some kindly butcher will pick you up off the road and toss you back onto the tray (if you’re super lucky, you’ll get put back into some water!).
Lesson 2: If You Can’t Beat the Heat, Get Naked
Ok, so, this maybe isn’t really a lesson to learn so much as an observation, but it’s worth noting. Hong Kong is a really hot and humid place, especially in the summer. The way the locals deal with it (apart from escaping to one of the thousands of malls and underground passageways) is to strip down. The number of men who walk around with no shirts on or with their shirts rolled up, exposing their bellies, is mind-numbing. I would say the majority of these men are construction workers, but that’s not a hard fact.
Can you imagine how much better life would be if hot construction workers walked around shirtless? I’d probably get hit by cars staring at them—but I’d surely die happy.
Anyway, now that I think about it, when I lived in Taipei, I used to see this one dude on my street wash his car wearing nothing but his high-waist tighty-whities. He sometimes had on a white t-shirt, but it was always performed in his underwear, pulled up above his navel.
One of the markets I frequented every weekend in Hong Kong featured similarly dressed butchers. They would wear white t-shirts (rolled up, of course), towel around their necks, and light blue shorts that could pass for the kind of boxers my 93-year-old grandfather wears. Despite the potential for disaster, they never seemed to get any blood on their clothes, although they probably got cigarette ashes on the meat they were preparing.
Lesson 3: Never Hesitate to Ask for Help
This might seem like a simple little thing, but it isn’t. Asking for help can be extremely difficult, especially if you don’t speak the same language or the other person is trying to con you. It’s even more difficult when you’re stubborn like me. Walking through the market this summer, I used to linger a bit whenever I saw some tourists try to communicate with the people working the stalls. Many of the fruits found in Chinese markets are just not that common in North America. For example, the Queen Mother, nay, Dowager Empress, of all fruits: the beloved mangosteen.
Seriously. Just look at her. She’s so beautiful, but you’d probably never know how to eat her if the nice dude at the fruit stand didn’t open one up for you to sample.
And this leads me to the final lesson, which is somewhat similar.
Lesson 4: Make an Effort
Honestly. Just do it. Make an effort and you’ll be surprised at the results. This can be applied to so many different situations, but the one that immediately comes to mind from my time this summer is using the local language. People always tell you, especially about Hong Kong, “Oh, don’t worry; everyone speaks English! It used to be a British colony, after all.” The next time someone says that to you, do that person a favor and introduce him/her to the back of your hand. You know why? Because not everyone speaks English and besides, Cantonese is the native language. It never hurts people to try to speak the language.
No matter how crappy you are at a language, people will be delighted you’re making an effort (except for those damned Kébeckers). This is especially true when speaking a Chinese language/dialect/whatever since, in my experience, they all think that only Chinese people can speak Chinese and that it is too difficult for a non-Chinese person to speak. (That’s pure poppycock, by the way).
But yeah. Just try. It’ll make your experience way more enjoyable or at least give you a cute story to tell everyone later about how instead of asking for dumplings you asked to sleep at the restaurant, causing the waitress to giggle uncontrollably. And by cute, I also mean saucy: I know someone who asked his female teacher for her pen but instead asked for her vagina.
Fin.
Photo Credits:
Photo of Bowrington Rd Market in Hong Kong is from bricoleurbanism on Flickr.
Photo of guy with shirt rolled up is from LeeLeFever on Flickr.
Photo of mangosteen from mttsndrs on Flickr.
Photo of cat from psyberartist on Flickr.
