Monday 25 June 2012

Teochew culture through the glasses of its language





I mentioned in an early post that there are many Teochew communities abroad (outside of the region in China) - around 10m people!

Several hundreds of thousands of them live in the Chinatown in Paris' 13th arrondissement alone (this is where I grew up), having emigrated there from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos in the 1970s.




Teochew people may be living in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, France, the US, etc, but there is a real identifiable Teochew culture that is passed on from generation to generation.

As a 3rd generation expatriate (my grandparents lived in Teochew, but neither my parents' generation nor mine ever lived or even went there), this is my observation of the Teochew culture through the glasses of its language and use of expressions.






1) Life is hard and bitter

Bitter melon is a vegetable prized by Teochew people despite its aggressively bitter taste.

It looks like a pale knobbly cucumber, and is used in soups (my favourite is soup of bitter melon stuffed with mince pork), omelettes, stir-fries, etc.

When eating with my non-Chinese friends, if we happen to have it on the table, I will feel a slight sense of dread as I watch them put it in their mouth for the first time, and my face will automatically take an empathetic look. Invariably the corners of their mouths will turn down, from the aggressively bitter taste that has no real comparison in any Western cuisine that they or I have ever tasted (maybe raw olives or broad beans still in their pod if you have ever tasted them).

My uncle says that you need to have tasted the bitterness of life to be able to appreciate that vegetable.

I personally liked it from an early age. Clearly I've had a very hard life!




I have always felt that there is indeed a real belief in Teochew culture that life is difficult and that you have to work very hard to survive. And it makes me think of this expression: 'waist like a tortoise' means 'hunchback', the idea that your back has been forced to bend by the heavy burden of hard work. You might say 'he works until his waist is like a tortoise'.








2) Social values

There is a concept that my mum has spent our childhood and our adulthood to date (and most probably for many more years to come) trying to get into our heads: the concept of 'Zuo ren'. Litterally 'to be a person / human'.


Note: I am using mandarin phonetic translation because I am unfamiliar with Teochew phonetic translation and always end up confusing myself when I try.

Sentences I often hear are 'bu hui zuo ren' (one doesn't know how to be a person), referring to people who don't abide by the correct social etiquette, and 'bu shi zhe yang zuo ren' (this is not how you are / behave like a person), referring to someone who has behaved in a way that society will disapprove of.

To me this is a very strong and unforgivable concept, to be able to judge whether someone is worthy of being called a person. If they can't be called a person, then what are they? An animal?




I have wondered for a long time what exact array of criteria make up this concept. I will reserve a more thought through explanation for another time, but for now, here are a few illustrations of what is valued or disapproved of.




'He is so salty astringent':

He is so stingy. The astringent taste of unripe plums or olives makes your tongue dry, it makes you wince a little.


The mental image I get is of someone skinny, shriveled and wrinkled.




'Desiring to be in the limelight':

This is a derogatory adjective used for someone who likes showing off, something that Teochew people disapprove of. Humility is a laudable character trait.




'Eat fast, walk fast; go to sleep late but rise early':

Teochew people are generally very hard workers and acute business minds. They are sometimes called the 'Jews of Asia'.

I guess that might explain why many of my family members are what Western people might call workaholics?






3) Talking with strong colourful expressions that give your imagination (and your stomach) a roller-coaster ride!
As I grew up, my parents were using certain expressions as encouragements or (mainly) threats to ensure that we behaved, and because I had heard those expressions so many times, I only focussed on their purpose but never dissected them to extract their literal meaning.

Until recently, when I was on a business trip with some family members. We hooked up with my uncle's best friend in Hong Kong, and he used some very colourful expressions which I had never heard before.

It took a little while for my Western brain to get over the crudeness of the expressions, but eventually my eyebrows dropped back down to their normal place, I took my hand away from before my mouth and pushed my jaw back up (elements of my usual horrified look), and started to appreciate the art of colourful scatological expressions.



One thing is for sure: the images strike your imagination and you really understand and remember what the person using the expression wants to say!

Warning: it is not for the faint-hearted! You may want to leave it till after your dinner to read...




'Taking your trousers off to fart':

It seems that for Teochew people, when one needs to fart it is unnecessary to take one's trousers off. One only needs to take their trousers off to poo. This refers to an unnecessarily complicated process. 'Faffing around' could be an approximate translation.





'Give someone a smelly fart beforehand':

This uses the idea that a smelly fart is generally the precursor of an activity of the bowel. Isn't this a really stinky way of saying 'preparing someone for some big news'?







'Treating something (said) like a fart':

As this refers to not giving consideration to something said or not listening to, acknowledging or obeying a suggestion, recommendation, order, etc, this has to mean that for Teochew people, farting is an activity that is overlooked in society, and that it is common and acceptable for people to fart in other people's presence.

Hmmmm I think that Chinese people's idea of what falls into the 'tasteful' category is very different to that of the French or the British! What do you reckon?








'Smelly mouth':

This means talking inconsequently or saying the opposite of what you actually believe in your heart, and may be translated by 'you don't mean what you are saying'.


I can't come up with a clever explanation of what this has to do with a smell in your mouth. Maybe that there is a bad smell coming from inside which betrays hidden thoughts?







'Spitting poo and spitting pee':

This is actually a cruder version of our 'talking sh*t'. Except this is not mere talking, it is spitting! Teochew people love strong images!




And to crown it all... one that accompanied much of my childhood...




'Did you grow up eating poo?' (generally uttered by a very angry shouting Chinese parent after you have done something you are really, but really not supposed to do):

This refers to the upbringing rules 'fed' by parents to their children for them to grow up (in maturity vs physically). If you are behaving in an unacceptable way, then you have been badly brought up, or you have been 'fed' unsuitable rules.

Although this rhetorical question always brought me close to tears by how insulting it is and how horrible the image is (who likes being told off by their parents?!), I always thought that saying this also reflects on the parents' responsibility to bring their children up properly...?





No doubt this is another one of the mysteries that I might crack one day in my long quest to bridge the gap between my French and Chinese sides...



Do you know strong colourful expressions that strike the imagination and teach cultural concepts and values effectively?


I would love to hear your thoughts!


















Note:


The title of this post was inspired by 'Through the Language Glass' by Guy Deutscher, a very interesting and clever book about the interaction between language and culture. I hope Mr Deutscher won't mind (if he notices)!
I also used a post from Friends of Station SIN to help me explain some of the expressions.

Sunday 24 June 2012

A Frenchwoman in Greater London



When I recently reached the 10 year-mark of my life in the UK, I looked back at how things evolved from what they were when I first arrived.




I was fresh out of university (to be accurate, a business school in France), had always had top marks and never-ending praises from teachers in English, and had never really spent any significant amount of time in an English-speaking country. Naively, I thought that if I had always been top of the class throughout high school and further education in English, then surely working in the UK was going to be a doddle (even if I didn't know that particular word back then - 'doddle').

So finally here I come to an 'Anglo-Saxon' country from the top of my 21 years old, feeling like I was going to conquer the world.




I arrived in August, to what seemed like a very cold and rainy autumn, with completely unsuitable summer clothing. My commute to work involved a short train journey from Wembley station, and in the sleepiness of the early mornings, as I waited for my trains in the middle of the cold and draughty old station, with damp wind gushing through my bones and all the Asian faces around me (in France, foreign faces are seldom Indian-looking, but rather Chinese or African), I truly wondered whether actually I accidentally took a trip to a strange unknown developing country instead.




Soon I worked out that I really could not understand what people were saying. 'This really isn't like in the American films I have been watching or any of the videos that my English teachers have been using to improve our listening comprehension' I used to think, 'what language are they speaking here?'.

First of all, when I was introduced to people, they were making this strange noise which reminded me of kung fu films, and that was making me jump back in surprise and fear. I later worked out that British people greet each other with an enthusiastic and high-pitched 'Hiya!!' when they are friendly with you.

I asked people to repeat themselves a lot, and in the first month, it didn't matter how many times that was, I still didn't get what they said. I got so frustrated that sometimes, I just walked away.

Many a time, I would have a Scottish, Irish or South African person on the phone, and the conversation was just ridiculous: I could not understand the numbers they were saying - I couldn't decide whether to burst into a hysterical laugh or to cry at how difficult this was.




Although my spoken English was formal and not at all idiomatic, people used to understand me very well. So I would end my phone conversations at work with 'could you confirm what we discussed in a fax please?'

As for a lot of French people, my reading comprehension was miles better than my listening comprehension.

I was very determined to improve very quickly - I simply could not cope with that much frustration for long - and soon my little vocabulary notepad was full of useful words and expressions which I conscientiously memorised and tried to use again.




One of my colleagues was a young and tall rugby player who used to tease me by saying that this is the best country in the world because it is GREAT Britain. I used to overload him with my language questions, to which he would sometimes respond amicably in characteristic English humour 'Bloody foreigner!'. It reminded me to occasionally pause in my continuous and intense quest to conquer the English language to laugh at comical situations and take in the progress I had made.




In Chinese education, your parents tell you that if you work hard enough, you can do anything. And sure enough, after much hard work and persistence through many frustrating and comically ridiculous situations, I started to be able to understand people quite well, express myself in a more idiomatic way, and managed to have fluent conversations at a decent level within 4 or 5 months.




Things stepped up when I had a sentimental relationship with an Englishman. He was a bit of a lad, had left school at 16, yet managed to climb up the corporate echelons through good business skills, and favoured slang and idiomatic expressions to formal words. In our first interactions, I had no idea what he was talking about, even if I understood every word. What on earth does 'doing my head in' mean? Or 'making things up'? Or even 'working things out'?

I learnt to speak like a true native.




A few years later, I found myself in Yorkshire for the majority of the working week, working on projects for my company. It was a step back in my ability to understand people, but by then I was used to having to work hard from an uncomfortable start to reach my goals. I even picked up a slight Northern accent, and when ringing my cousin in London one day, got told that she spent a few seconds wondering 'who is this northern girl ringing me?'




The best milestone was when I first found myself reading books in English seamlessly, without stopping to check the dictionary after every paragraph.




Fast forward to 10+ years after my first arrival. I still learn words and expressions from time to time, although I no longer carry a notepad with me everywhere. Sometimes they are simple words I just never came across in the past. Recently I had to ask my friend's daughter 'what's a stitch?' (I had worked out we were not talking about the sewing or the laughing kind). Funnily, this is probably very revealing of the fact that I hardly ever run!




Mostly I enjoy being able to fully understand what people mean, what they refer to, with all of the nuances that their choice of words and tone express, not just the general meaning.

It makes me able to understand the English culture and to integrate by saying the right things at the right time (or trying at least), respond to a joke appropriately, and build trust with friends and credibility with colleagues.




This will probably sound like self-flattery, and I know that my written English is still far from being perfect, but I would just like to mention that many new people I meet nowadays tell me that they thought I was born or at least raised in the UK. What a wonderful compliment to have for those efforts throughout the years! I feel very proud of that achievement.




From time to time I will have a dumb day where words just don't come in English at all - they are a mixture of French or Chinese. And conversely, when I return to my home town, I sometimes realise that I am constructing sentences in an English way and that it just doesn't sound right in French. My sister usually politely laughs and kindly corrects me.




Learning to speak a foreign language fluently is one of the hardest yet one of the most rewarding endeavours that I have ever engaged in. It has brought a lot of richness in my life, not only the ability to fully understand people in the country I live in, but also the ability to fully integrate in it and to completely feel at home here.




Today I just feel that the UK is my loved and loving, welcoming adopted country.



What is your experience of expatriation?

First things first. Food talk!



Having grown up with French AND Chinese cultures, I am suitably obsessed by food: once I have finished a meal, often I will start planning my next one.




In my mind, days are made up of several chunks of time, separated by meals. Meal times are happy times because you can experience one of the best pleasures in life: eating. And the world is so full of wonderful dishes!

This is the French side of me.




Now to the Chinese side...

My grandparents' experienced hunger in their early lives in China, and recently to my great surprise my grandmother told me that she spent her childhood surviving solely on sweet potatoes. Once she begged her father for a bowl of rice with some soy sauce as a treat. Now this is what I would eat as a student if I had run out of money at the end of the month from too much partying!




Overall this background has stayed deeply ingrained in my family culture in many ways. Although my parents grew up in relative abundance, they never let me waste food as a child - they would threaten us with 'if you don't finish every single rice grain in your bowl, then you will be a beggar when you grow up'.

At family gatherings, meals would be one of the main highlights and would occupy close to half of the conversations at least.

At home my parents would always cook much more than absolutely necessary, and we would never leave the table hungry (actually I often felt like a goose destined to be turned into foie gras and sometimes had to feign a stomach ache to avoid finishing my bowl of food).

If we have guests for dinner, we have to display abundance and quality in food to show that we honour them. Food is used as a communication channel to express respect and love.




In my life as a Franco-Chinese expat in the UK, I have a very strong relationship with food: it occupies my mind for a significant proportion of the day.

I am by no means a great cook, but cooking, especially for other people, provides me with incredible pleasure. Eating, either a new dish at a restaurant or rediscovering a familiar one at home, can still trigger a large flow of - not just saliva, but also - superlatives, along with huge grins on my face and a sensation that everything in the world is just wonderful.






My friends love that I can rustle up some easy but tasty French food for quick casual lunches (a little bit of imagination and you start having many tasty variants of quiches and salads), and also love my Chinese homemade food, dishes taught as a compulsory part of my upbringing by my mother.

And because when I cook, I feel truly relaxed and happy, I just can't think of any better way of cheering myself up on a bleak day than cooking and inviting friends round for a meal or some tea and cake.






I am also very pleased to observe that over the years I have spent living in the UK, the food I have experienced in restaurants has become better and better and better (and it's not just because my food budget in my first years here was much more limited).

Nowadays I would rarely feel that my options are so restricted that I would have to settle for disappointingly mediocre food in bland restaurant chains, and I have had countless wonderful meals in gastropubs.

I am very thankful to Jamie Oliver for opening people's eyes to easy tasty and healthy food, and feel even less inclined to leaving the country when 1) I see how many lovely food-related TV programmes we now have and 2) I increasingly come across British people who are wonderful home cooks and love talking about food!

The food culture here is changing dramatically!!




Although nowadays I feel completely at home living in the leafy English home counties, every so often I will miss foods that I still cannot find that easily in my suburbian village.

'Escargots' (or snails), the soft and tender melt-in-the-mouth small piece of meat in the shell full of garlic and parsley butter (if it's chewy then it's not right).

I sometimes go to London's Chinatown solely to have my fix of roast duck and crispy pork. I like to have them with chili paste, a side dish of Chinese vegetables (pak choi, choi sum, or morning glory are my favourites), lots of rice, and a glass of hot soya milk.

If I haven't been back to Paris for too long, then I will start dreaming of the smell that comes out of the many 'boulangeries' and 'pâtisseries' of the city. The quick cheeky purchase of a chocolate éclair, or simply a 'croissant' or 'pain au chocolat', devoured on the street.

Vietnamese sandwiches (or 'banh mi') from Paris Chinatown, the succulent fattiness of the roast pork meat balanced with sweet grated carrots, crunchy cucumber and fragrant coriander, topped with a little chili sauce wrapped in a tasty French baguette.

The list is endless, but I have to say that Rachel Khoo in her recent TV programme 'The Little Paris Kitchen' did a really good job of showing what the world of food in Paris is about.




Chinese cuisine is full of 'weird and wonderful' foods. You will probably remember the HSBC advert with the dish of giant eel (I'm not even sure that is what it was)?

I came across a food writer who enabled me to understand Chinese food from my French / English brain. Before her, I was always frustrated that I could only talk about Chinese food in Chinese but could never find the right terms in French or English, and therefore could not share certain experiences with my non-Chinese friends.

Fuchsia Dunlop is a British writer who spent years in a (solely Chinese-speaking) Chinese cookery school. She renders the complexity and peculiarities of Chinese food with admirable accuracy and skill. As she describes the umami taste, I can feel my mouth producing exactly the reaction that I previously failed to explain so many times.

Fuchsia Dunlop, the woman who built a bridge between two previously seemingly unreconcilable parts of myself




There are certain proofs that I am not all Chinese. To this day, despite many attempts from my parents to develop the acquired taste in the expensive delicacy that is sea cucumber, I still take a bite and have the same inner dialogue: 'yes, it still looks like a turd, and yes, it still tastes of... well... something like that' (or what I can imagine of it).




There are also certain proofs that I am not all French. I spent the first years in my life being treasured like a little princess by my Chinese grandparents, being the first grandchild that they had to look after. They are originally Teochew, which is a place within the province of Guangdong. Many Teochew people fled the region for Western and South East Asian countries: a high proportion of Singapore Chinese people are Teochew, many live in Thailand, the Chinatown in Paris 13th arrondissement is dominated by the Teochew community, and many other places. In fact, if you type 'Teochew' on YouTube, you find a lot of Teochew communities abroad.

I remember breakfast in my early years was congee (rice porridge), with salted radish omelette, many wonderful pickled vegetables, and sometimes some fried fish. All meals were wonderful Chinese dishes sometimes tinted with Cambodian influence (my grandparents lived in Cambodia for many years).

So when I first went to school, my palate was incompatible with cheese. In fear of being told off by teachers and dinner ladies, I would put a piece in my mouth, and would invariably need to run to the loo once the greasy tangy taste hit my tastebuds.

Years of French school dinners, meals at nice French restaurants, and willingness to be able to join in at Cheese and Wine parties have now made me able to enjoy quite a few cheeses, although still today, if I find a cheeseboard solely composed of brie, goats cheese and blue cheese, I disappointingly have to turn it down, which triggers teasing comments from my friends about how I cannot possibly be French if I don't really like cheese.


What is your experience of foreign food? Any good or bad surprises?



And finally, since I promised in my last post some guidance for any tarte Tatin virgin, here is a link to Raymond Blanc's recipe of this deliciously sticky heavenly experience.



Raymond Blanc's tarte Tatin recipe


You can also try using pears for this recipe, which I much prefer.

I made the mistake of licking the spoon I was using while making the caramel syrup when I made this - ouch!! I would recommend you don't do that.




Bon appétit!

First Blog Post: what's this nouveau blog?

Another new blog??!! What's this one all about then?



Well, I will start by introducing myself.
I am a 30-something woman born in France from Chinese parents, and have spent the last 10 years of my life in the UK (you know, it's always the same story, you think you will spend 2 years in the UK to add an experience abroad onto your CV, and 5 to 10 years later, you're still here! Good old Blighty!).
I had a Chinese upbringing - has anyone read 'Battlehymn of a Tiger Mother'? -, spent my teens in state secondary education in Paris then in the French elite business school education, and spent my twenties working in the English corporate world.


This means I have lived across several cultures for most of my life, and I still find myself surprised, perplexed, fascinated by how much words, expressions, and behaviours show that how we act and what we say and how we say it derives from a specific culture that we belong to.
Do you know how many French words there are in the culinary lexical field? (a lot!) And how many synonyms of 'drunk' in English? (although in reality the French drink more than the English).


If you have left the country where you grew up for a significant period of time, or if your parents come from a different country, you will probably be able to relate if I say that I have often felt like a black sheep in the middle of a happily grazing beautifully white-wool herd.
But the ability to draw from resources from more than one culture and language brings about a real richness in one's comprehension of the world and ability to communicate with others. (Of course, sometimes things get complicated, and what it does brings about is richness in confusion and frustration!)


This is what I would like to explore in this blog - how we live across several cultures, the surprises and richness that it brings, but also the frustrations and comical situations that you can end up in.


Happy reading!