YIN TAU LOU: PIPE DUDE

Are white women ever "auntie"? Usually only if they're blood kin. Or elderly drag queens. Or live in Asian societies. The term "auntie" is properly used for women of your parents' generation to whom you are not related, but who are more familiar to you than "missus". Closer, like older family members.
In any case, they are the people whom you address as "ma'am".
So, older Asian women, usually.
One must be respectful.

The difference between oneself and one's parent's generation grows conversationally less as one grows older. I used to call ladies over twenty five years older "auntie", now it's often people barely a few years senior. The woman who does her daily repeat walk up and down the block outside my building every morning when I leave for my first pipe smoke of the day is, clearly, an "auntie". "Pistachio ice-cream hue hat auntie". 開心果色嘅帽阿姨 ('hoi sam gwo sik ge mo ah-yi'). Though in actuality I would never call her that long term to her face, because 開心果 ('hoi sam gwo'; pistachio) is not very respectful; it also means 'an amusing person'. And I've actually never addressed her as 阿姨 ('ah yi') either. We've said good morning (早晨 'jou san'), or waved, whenever we're out at the same time.

From which you can deduce that I still think of myself as a younger man. Still spry and full of piss and vinegar, comparable to a sprightly young fellow, why, I am still very liberal, and can dance!

Which, if I were to mention it to my apartment mate, would elicit peals of laughter. She's always thought of me as the crotchety old fart.
Or sometimes as "tobacco stink white man".
With respect, of course.

[She's dissing me right now. Describing me, in the voice of one of the stuffed creatures, as "like an elderly waiter, you do what you can, creak creak creak, I'm sorry, how's your great grandson?"]

First pipe today. One of my favourite smokes.

I am not "uncle". So ONLY if you are a teenager can you address me as "ah sook" (阿叔). Repeat: spry, liberal, in theory capable of dancing.
烟斗佬 ('yin tau lou'; "pipe dude") is okay.


Grey beard? NO! That is "silver blonde"!


All of y'all can kindly stop laughing now.


See, all of us whiter people develop that handsome silveriness early on (late twenties), and we've never heard of Clairol hair dye or Grecian formula. Whereas many seriously senior female persons of Chinese ancestry will colour their hair black so that they will not get telephone sales calls from burial societies, insurance scams, or botox injecting plastic surgery sag lift spas trying to convince them of the essential nature of their vanity services.
You know, like Caucasian women in their late thirties do.
Surely you've seen the "Real Housewives"?
Those ladies are still young.
They just look antique.




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