PLEASE COME AGAIN!

Recently at the long centre table of one of my favourite bakeries in Chinatown an elderly Mandarin-speaking woman sat down. Now, my Mandarin is so limited as to be nearly useless, and the staff, though capable of conversation in Mandarin, were busy. Many customers were buying mooncakes. Few were sitting down.
So she sat silently by herself.

Perhaps she spent her day in Chinatown because she was lonely? Certainly shop signs in familiar writing, and people who looked like her fellow-Chinese, even if their language was mostly unintelligible, could be a comforting and familiar thing? Maybe she was someone's widowed mother, brought over so that she wouldn't live alone. Well, she probably was someone's mother, as she bought enough baked goods for three or four other people. Plus scallions and vegetables.
But she stayed a long time. I think the atmosphere appealed to her.


When you don't speak Cantonese, and English is beyond you, San Francisco is a different place. There are others who go to the bakeries in Chinatown for similar reasons, including several Burmese, Sino-Burmese, and the odd Filipino. Plus two elderly gentlemen who speak severely accented Mandarin with each other and the staff, though I know one of them is more fluent in Shanghainese.

I go there because I am a peculiar fellow. A curious person, a cheapskate, and fond of pastries. People watching and listening in, discreetly.
But for many others, it's the centre of their social life.
Mostly old people, Chinese.

My Cantonese is good enough for very casual conversation.

This time I wished that I also spoke Mandarin.

How sad to sit alone.



In late afternoon the wind picks up, and it turns colder.
You should come inside, and enjoy a refreshment.
We might not talk, but you are welcome here.



AFTER THOUGHT

It may be easier for elderly Chinese folks to become lonely than for odd middle aged Caucasians such as myself. We're more used to having no family around us, and our kinfolks being distant. Plus singularity is often our natural state. Judging from the crowd at the bakery, they need people around them, and they miss the company of people whose language sounds familiar.

Sometimes one doesn't fully adapt to a new environment.

Elderly: 老 ('lou'), 老年嘅 ('lou nin ge'), 耆 ('kei').
Lonely: 孤伶伶 ('gu ling ling'), 孤寡嘅 ('gu gwaa ge'), 寞 ('mok').
Old age: 高齡 ('gou ling').
Solitariness: 仃 ('ding'), 寞寞啲 ('mok mok dik').
Widowed: 寡 ('gwaa').
Widow: 寡婦 ('gwaa fu').
Widower: 鰥 ('gwaan').
Alone: 獨自 ('duk ji').
Helplessly alone: 孤苦零丁 ('gu fu ling ding').
To live alone: 單身住 ('daan san jyu'), 孤伶伶 ('gu ling ling'), 獨居 ('duk sat'), 孤單 ('gu daan').
Widows, widowers, orphans, and childless people: 鰥寡孤獨 ('gwaan gwaa gu duk').

Hermit: 獨家村 ('duk gaa chyun'); and circumlocutorily, 深居簡出者 ('sam geui gaan chuet che'), 東山客 ('tung saan haak').




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