Sunday, July 10, 2005
Asian Women and Communication
I’ve lived here over a year now and I’m one that has a habit of observing the surroundings. Of course the observing priority is usually some young, cute, petite, long-haired Asian girl. The one thing that has stood out is that Asian women change over the years. The teenage girls all act cute and shy and seem to have a habit of holding hands or walking arm in arm with each other. I don’t think this has anything to do with sexual preferences; it just seems to be what they do. You see young couples and the girl always seems to be sweet, cuddly, and docile. There’s a gradual transformation you see though with couples as they get older. Asian men after 60 I don’t think are allowed to talk anymore, and by that time they are always walking several steps behind the woman. And believe me those elderly Matriarchs of the Asian families are no longer shy, sweet, cuddly, or docile. Somehow during the intervening years she has now become the one wearing the pants in the household and makes it rather apparent.
I much more often now run into the situation of having to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English. It’s amazing though how two people who don’t speak the same language can on a basic level get an idea across. My earliest memory of this was when I was pretty young and a couple of kids I met I think only spoke Spanish. We still communicated well enough to play as kids play and even to understand we had both seen the same movie, Escape to Witch Mountain. My biggest problem now is usually ordering food around here and somehow NO sesame seeds translates to EXTRA sesame seeds in all Asian languages. Sometimes it’s from people asking directions on the street. This I’ve always thought odd because I just don’t think of myself as looking to be a good prospect to ask in the first place. It usually somehow works out, like if they imitate the theme from Jaws I’ll know to point them to the dried shark fin dealer nearby. Today a Chinese woman cornered me in the hallway. I know she was Chinese because that’s one of the four words she knew, those being no, English, Chinese, and TV. Our cable has been out since about 11:00 this morning, so I knew right away what her problem was, but couldn’t find enough English words she knew to make her understand everyone had the same problem. She was pretty distressed, but perked up again when she realized I would follow her to her apartment. There I found out she knew another English word, thank-you, when I took my shoes off at the front door. I really have no clue which ones this is important too, I only know by experience if you wander into someone’s house it IS important too, it’s evidently equivalent to slapping them as they get pretty upset. She takes me to the bedroom where the Matriarch is in bed and hands me the remote control for the TV. I’m not sure exactly how, but through enough gesticulations I finally made her realize that her TV, my TV, and everybody’s TV was the same way. At that point she was happy again, rattled off the explanation to the Matriarch, and I made my escape picking up my shoes on the way out.
I much more often now run into the situation of having to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English. It’s amazing though how two people who don’t speak the same language can on a basic level get an idea across. My earliest memory of this was when I was pretty young and a couple of kids I met I think only spoke Spanish. We still communicated well enough to play as kids play and even to understand we had both seen the same movie, Escape to Witch Mountain. My biggest problem now is usually ordering food around here and somehow NO sesame seeds translates to EXTRA sesame seeds in all Asian languages. Sometimes it’s from people asking directions on the street. This I’ve always thought odd because I just don’t think of myself as looking to be a good prospect to ask in the first place. It usually somehow works out, like if they imitate the theme from Jaws I’ll know to point them to the dried shark fin dealer nearby. Today a Chinese woman cornered me in the hallway. I know she was Chinese because that’s one of the four words she knew, those being no, English, Chinese, and TV. Our cable has been out since about 11:00 this morning, so I knew right away what her problem was, but couldn’t find enough English words she knew to make her understand everyone had the same problem. She was pretty distressed, but perked up again when she realized I would follow her to her apartment. There I found out she knew another English word, thank-you, when I took my shoes off at the front door. I really have no clue which ones this is important too, I only know by experience if you wander into someone’s house it IS important too, it’s evidently equivalent to slapping them as they get pretty upset. She takes me to the bedroom where the Matriarch is in bed and hands me the remote control for the TV. I’m not sure exactly how, but through enough gesticulations I finally made her realize that her TV, my TV, and everybody’s TV was the same way. At that point she was happy again, rattled off the explanation to the Matriarch, and I made my escape picking up my shoes on the way out.
