CHINESE WOMEN LAUGHING?

There are times when I do not know what my Facebook friends are thinking. Or if in fact they are actually thinking. Sometimes it seems like I've linked up with a computer intelligence trying to pass for human, clever algorithms and all, desperately generating "code" that looks like "speech".
Non-organic synapse firing.
Random sparks.

Consider the odd response underneath a recent Facebook posting wherein I vented about being laughed at (that's "at", not "with", "at") by cigar smokers while trying to enjoy a pipe at the only indoor smoking establishment in San Francisco.


"Chinese women laughing at you behind your back is better?"


A reader who shall remain nameless, who also knows that I go down to Chinatown a lot (pastries, milk tea, rice stick noodle soup, bittermelon and chicken over rice, roast duck, siu mai, congee, et mult altres) for refreshment, people watching, a bit of chit-chat in Cantonese, and a pipeful or two of tobacco during the day, reacted by posting "Chinese women laughing at you behind your back is better?".

What the heck, Jack? What does that even mean? And what the holy hand grenade of Antioch are you insinuating?

I'm sorry, your bizarre statement makes no sense.

Were you trying to be funny?


"Chinese women laughing at you behind your back is better?"


Jack, I'm not sure how much understanding you have of Cantonese people. And it's a fair guess that your ability to understand spoken Cantonese is near-zilch.
Similarly, your exposure to and social experience with them is also probably limited. Not entirely non-existent, because there are a fair number of them even in your neck of the woods.
But virtually insignificant.

我識講廣東話，識寫中文添。你呢？

The other thing is, being treated well to one's face is ALWAYS infinitely better than having a bunch of cigar-huffing yutzes openly laugh at one. Always. There's something brash and crude about most cigar-smokers, and a large proportion of them are arrogant blisters, often rather ignorant or blinkered, and quite stunningly incapable of complicated thoughts.
Their vocabulary is frequently limited to sports terms.

A pipesmoker is consequently at a disadvantage.

Anyone lucid is considered eccentric.


"Chinese women laughing at you behind your back is better?"


Why do you think that they are laughing? Do you presume that for all reasonably intelligent people there is something intrinsically risible or amusing about me? Is it my behaviour?
Maybe my huge white battle-axe nose and those big round eyes?
What makes you think that they are laughing at me?

Or are you one of those types who just know that Chinese folks always laugh at or sneer at Caucasians? Do you mistrust the Chinese? Are they always talking about you in that incomprehensible language of theirs?
Do you feel in your very bones that they are different from us?
Is there something they are deliberately not telling you?
Are you convinced that they are secretive?


Well alrighty then! If that's the case, then yes, Jack, they are laughing at us. At you and people like you in particular. And they're plotting to do something to you. Something horrendous!


It's still in the planning stages. Once they found out I spoke Cantonese, they made me swear on a stack of fried eggrolls not to tell you.
When it happens, please pretend it's all a surprise.
Never let on that you know.
Soon, Jack.

Soon.




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