happy new year!
08/01/2010
We went to Target today – we find ourselves there at least once a week – and as I headed past the eyedrops section I spied a petite twenty-something, maybe thirty-something Chinese lady helping a large built new age sixty-something Chinese man. I was about to past them when I noticed that the lady spoke to the man in Mandarin, and the man responded in Cantonese. But they weren’t really communicating – he was looking for something, and she was mostly saying she had difficulty understanding him. She looked up, saw us, and immediately asked, “Do you speak Cantonese?”
We stopped to help. The man sounded like one of those typical middle-managers or small business owners from Hong Kong. He was looking for eyedrops for an eye condition he had. He described what his symptoms were, and I relayed it to the lady (and I don’t know how she was roped in to help, since she obviously didn’t work there), she seemed pretty well informed, especially about eye drops, and she would try and offer suggestions, but he seemed to be looking for something specific.
The lady was mousey-looking, with glasses that covered half her face and a Mandarin accent that was crisp, but not first generation. I’ve met those types, that size, that face, that speech pattern, that accent, those sized glasses. Strangely the other two I know that fit that description are both students at Berkeley.
In the end, the bridge between the two Chinese languages turned out to be English, which was the weird bit. It was easier translating what the lady was trying to put across in Cantonese, than it was for me to translate everything the man said back into English. Mostly because he had a lot to say. Not about his eye condition. But about how the Americans do business, and how he can’t find anything. He merrily went ahead to tell KF in great detail how he could find it in Hong Kong, and what it was, and how he can’t seem to find the equivalent here, not knowing that KF only understood probably 40% of the content.
Anyway, in the end she suggested the lubricating eye drops (the stuff like tears), and after I relayed it and she saw that the dude found KF interesting, she beat a hasty retreat. After he finished his ditty to KF, the guy picked up the product the lady pointed to, thanked us profusely, and went on his way. I bet he’ll be trying his luck in Chinatown tomorrow.
And all I was left thinking on the way back was how wouldn’t have happened back at home. Mostly because of the Mandarin factor. And if that fails, there’s always Hokkien to fall back on.
