CHANGE THE SUBJECT!

One of the most infuriatingly irritating things in the world is the totally unmalicious innocent question to which a safe and affirmative answer is expected. The people asking have no idea how off base it is, or how otherwise than they think the response will turn out to be.

One of those questions is "Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?"

The answer is always: "No, I damned-well did not!"

What they wanted was happy chirping.

In order to avoid that as much as possible, I shall not be visiting any of my usual haunts till sometime next week. Don't want to get constantly reminded of the fact that I didn't have any Thanksgiving whatsoever, and that I spent all day by myself obsessing over it.



Something else which, though perfectly innocent, highlights a reality entirely opposed to expectation is "huh, you must have lots of Chinese friends?"

Often the person responsible for that utterance is a Chinese person, who believes that my social life must explain my ability to speak Cantonese and read the menu.

It doesn't. Not even close. I went to movie theatres in Chinatown a lot during the eighties, and I collect (and obsessively study) dictionaries and language reference books. So, self-taught.
And I like to eat.

I actually have almost no Chinese friends.


People for whom the primary language is any version of Chinese tend not to become close to white people. For one thing, there are always the differences of culture and expectation that function as stumbling blocks, for another, white people who speak any version of Chinese are always queer fish, with one or more crucial screws loose. We're just too damned unpredictable, and in social contexts where a cast-iron predictability of behaviour is expected, we are the leaden balls.

Chinese Americans, if English is their primary language, are no better.
Their ability to understand any version of Chinese at all is narrowed down to what their parents and kinfolk speak, and often they cannot form complex sentences but respond in English.
Not knowing how to read and write Chinese beyond a first or second grade level at best, the honky's cleverness at reading Chinese is both intensely irritating and painfully embarrassing to them, as well as eccentric, and rather too much like a glib show-offy parlour trick.
They resent the implied familiarity.

Chinese Americans also have a horrible tendency to cringe and wince whenever Whitey speaks Chinese, and then get bitterly pissed when the waitress looks at them with an expression that says "hah, this stupid pale monkey knows food and our written language better than you do, AND he actually sounds like he might have been in Hong Kong or Taiwan, whereas YOU had to ask whether we have something THAT IS CLEARLY POSTED ON THE WALL, and very evidently don't eat Chinese food often, or even associate with your own kind!"

Other than cringe-inducing tendencies, there is precious little that we might have in common. Or nothing at all. Being able to butcher the same foreign language is probably not enough for any kind of friendship.
But plenty of reason to just not socialize.


NEI GE GUHHHH-FEN...?

Even worse is the implication "your mistress / wife must be Chinese."

No, my EX-girlfriend was of Chinese ancestry, but 100% American. We never spoke Chinese with each other. If anything, I know more Chinese (and Dutch, German, Swedish, Arabic, Urdu, Indonesian, Yiddish, and even French) than her.

If ANY version of Chinese (or Dutch, German, Swedish, Arabic, Urdu, Indonesian, Yiddish, and French) had been her primary language, we never would've gotten close. There would've been nothing else in common.
Too many cultural and expectational differences, and so very few acceptable social frameworks or contexts.

One cannot and should not date a person who thinks in Chinese.

There are just too damned many stumbling blocks, entirely besides the Mercedes Benz fetish, Hello Kitty, and the absolute requirement that the male in the equation must have attributes that his potential in-laws can boast the crap out of. Especially if he is not Chinese.
Or even of Chinese ancestry.


NI NEI GE HAO, POK KAI!

Not a single one of my friends uses Cantonese on a daily basis.

The foreign language that is most likely to be heard is Dutch, followed by some version of Hebrew as a not very close second, with something Slavic as an extremely distant third.

My Dutch is fluent. I can understand German, and whack my way through Swedish (and Danish) newspaper articles if I really have to.
The ability to communicate in Arabic was never impressive, and I've lost nearly all of it.
Urdu, Indonesian, and Yiddish just don't crop up very often.

French occasionally proves useful. But only to make snide asides about a third party. Which even the most avid Francophile would admit is hardly a profound thing.


THE SOLITARY VICE

So, what was the most Thanksgivingish thing I did yesterday?

Well, I gloated over my Peterson pipes, smoked several bowls of flake, and went down to Chinatown at tea-time for a tasty pastry and some hot milk-tea (一箇叉燒酥同埋一杯港式奶茶).

After that I wandered around for a bit with a Peterson pipe in my mouth, being invisible.

Then I went home.



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