Ngoi Gwok Yan
Posted by dm at 1/4/2007 12:52 PM and is filed under Food,hk culture,Travel,long hair,soho central hong kong 
"But I don't think that foreigners would like to read your blog. It will be too difficult for them to understand. Cantonese is very, very difficult for a foreigner to learn."
It's Leung, calling me from somewhere in the bowels of the MTR on his way to Tsuen Kwan O. Yesterday I told him about Learning Cantonese and gave him the website address. Now he's reporting back to me on his findings, and even over the roar of the train I can tell from his tone of voice he's trying to advise me gently that I've launched a slightly mad, overly-idealistic campaign whose chances of ever succeeding are dubious at best.
This is Longhair speaking. The lone Trotskyite in Hong Kong's legislature.
I'm not discouraged because by now I'm used to the way Cantonese react to a foreigner trying to come to grips with their language and culture. A foreigner who, indeed, has a head-over-heels crush on it. I won't go on about it here because the encounters between Cantonese language students and native speakers are well-documented in other students' blogs, and also by me in articles like this one and this one.
Basically the reactions fall into two categories: well-meaning (if overly-effusive and polite) praise at your willingness to throw yourself into what they consider a hopeless task. Or a finger-wagging, "Why don't you study Mandarin so you can speak good Chinese?"
And then people will switch the conversation to English.
That's why Hong Kong is often a frustrating place for a wanting-know-speak-Cantonese-language ge outside-country-person.
外國人
"Foreigner", in Cantonese is ngoi gwok yan--or literally, "Outside Country Person". But "outside" is a slippery concept in Hong Kong, a city of immigrants where almost everybody, Westerners as well as ethnic Chinese, has roots someplace beyond the boundaries of the city. "Ngoi gwok" also gets messy and politically charged in another way, since it involves the word gwok, country. Does that gwok mean country as in nation, or country as in heritage? Is a Taiwanese in Hong Kong a ngoi gwok yan?
In everyday speech, heritage seems to trump politics. The phrase ngoi gwok yan generally is used interchangeably with sai yan (west person) as a more polite way of referring to a Westerner than the slangy, somewhat pejorative gwailo.
So in daily speech, a Hong Konger like my friend Tim (who was born and raised in Hong Kong of Anglo-British parents) is a ngoi gwok yan. And my friend Joyce, with Hong Kong-born parents, who grew up in the U.S. and is bilingual but English-dominant (she can't read Chinese and speaks and writes in colloquial American) is called a "Hong Kong person". But what about Tiffany, English-speaking, born in HK, whose mom is Hong Kong Cantonese and whose dad is Anglo-Australian?
The confusion about what a ngoi gwok yan is, and what language that yan ought to be speaking makes for some hilarious theater sometimes. Last night I went out to dinner with a couple of friends of a friend who were visiting Hong Kong from New York. Stephanie and Candace are both in their forties, hip (they work in fashion), extremely well-traveled, sophisticated foodies--the perfect tourist demographic to really appreciate this city's delights. The Hong Kong tourism board's shopping-paradise-Disneyland propaganda completely misses the mark for travelers like these, who are in search of some Hong Kong soul. So, even though I was kind of tired, I revved up and got into my Discover Cool Hong Kong tour guide mode.
First, I took the out of towners on a walk through incense-choked alleys and down snakelike stone staircases from Central to Sheung Wan. Candace loved the gaai sih, the open air Central food market that's one of the best in the world, and was incredulous that the HK government might be thinking about shutting it down someday for "urban renewal". I told her about the recent Star Ferry debacle and she looked stricken. "They're replacing it with a highway and a shopping mall?"
Finally, we reached Sheung Hing, that famous old Chiu Chow place on Queen's Road West. It was perfect. The restaurant was packed, and the headwaiter suitably brusque and grumpy in that almost cinematic Hong Kong way. I asked him, in Cantonese, if he had a table for three.
"No room! No room!" he shouted in English, waving his hands in the air and hustling us out to the sidewalk.
He ran off down the sidewalk to the other branch of Sheung Hing--the restaurant occupies two un-attached storefronts, each with a separate kitchen, and the staff spends all night rushing along the sidewalk, hustling hot dishes back and forth from one kitchen to the other. When the headwaiter made the return trip I corralled him again and asked, again in Cantonese, if there was any chance of getting a table and how long it would take.
This time, finally, he responded in his native language. "Dang dang hah." Wait a while.
But he wasn't speaking at me. He was speaking straight at Stephanie.
Stephanie's a native New Yorker. But her parents emigrated there from the Toisan area of Guangdong province. She looks Cantonese, although she can't speak it--just some Mandarin from school, and some Toisan-wah from home.
But to the waiter, Stephanie's Chinese face made her the Designated Cantonese Driver in our group. I'd talk to the waiter in Cantonese, he'd look away and direct his comment in Stephanie's direction. It's the inverse of what often happens in America and England, when overseas born or and/or educated Asians have to contend with strangers speaking to them loudly and slowly--as if the listener doesn't understand his or her own first language.
Like I said, hou fuk jaap. Really confusing. But I like confusing.
In the end, the three of us didn't have to wait on the sidewalk very long. After about five minutes, the headwaiter opened a rickety folding table, crammed it into the vestibule of the restaurant, and set down an extra stool so we could all squeeze in. We ordered the famous Chiu Chow dishes, of course, the steamed cold giant crab and the incomparable goose braised in sauce, lo seui ngo....
鹵水, or lo seui is made with soy sauce and other herbs and spices--even tangerine peel I think--that's been slow cooked for hours and hours, and then the leftover gets re-used to make the next batch so it gradually grows more tasty and subtle. The goose gets slow-cooked in it along with strips of tofu, they absorb the flavor of the sauce, and the end product is sublime. You could die happy eating this. I think I prefer this Chiu Chow style of goose preparation to the traditional Cantonese roasting method that you find at restaurants like the well-known Yung Kee.
My friend Ah Lan makes lo seui, and one of these days I will take her up on her offer to teach me how to do it. Until then I'll have to go to Sheung Hing (or if you know a better place please tell me!) to enjoy a Hong Kong treat that is, for this ngoi gwok yan, something really ngoi sai gaai. Out of this world.
It's Leung, calling me from somewhere in the bowels of the MTR on his way to Tsuen Kwan O. Yesterday I told him about Learning Cantonese and gave him the website address. Now he's reporting back to me on his findings, and even over the roar of the train I can tell from his tone of voice he's trying to advise me gently that I've launched a slightly mad, overly-idealistic campaign whose chances of ever succeeding are dubious at best.
This is Longhair speaking. The lone Trotskyite in Hong Kong's legislature.
I'm not discouraged because by now I'm used to the way Cantonese react to a foreigner trying to come to grips with their language and culture. A foreigner who, indeed, has a head-over-heels crush on it. I won't go on about it here because the encounters between Cantonese language students and native speakers are well-documented in other students' blogs, and also by me in articles like this one and this one.
Basically the reactions fall into two categories: well-meaning (if overly-effusive and polite) praise at your willingness to throw yourself into what they consider a hopeless task. Or a finger-wagging, "Why don't you study Mandarin so you can speak good Chinese?"
And then people will switch the conversation to English.
That's why Hong Kong is often a frustrating place for a wanting-know-speak-Cantonese-language ge outside-country-person.
外國人
"Foreigner", in Cantonese is ngoi gwok yan--or literally, "Outside Country Person". But "outside" is a slippery concept in Hong Kong, a city of immigrants where almost everybody, Westerners as well as ethnic Chinese, has roots someplace beyond the boundaries of the city. "Ngoi gwok" also gets messy and politically charged in another way, since it involves the word gwok, country. Does that gwok mean country as in nation, or country as in heritage? Is a Taiwanese in Hong Kong a ngoi gwok yan?
In everyday speech, heritage seems to trump politics. The phrase ngoi gwok yan generally is used interchangeably with sai yan (west person) as a more polite way of referring to a Westerner than the slangy, somewhat pejorative gwailo.
So in daily speech, a Hong Konger like my friend Tim (who was born and raised in Hong Kong of Anglo-British parents) is a ngoi gwok yan. And my friend Joyce, with Hong Kong-born parents, who grew up in the U.S. and is bilingual but English-dominant (she can't read Chinese and speaks and writes in colloquial American) is called a "Hong Kong person". But what about Tiffany, English-speaking, born in HK, whose mom is Hong Kong Cantonese and whose dad is Anglo-Australian?
The confusion about what a ngoi gwok yan is, and what language that yan ought to be speaking makes for some hilarious theater sometimes. Last night I went out to dinner with a couple of friends of a friend who were visiting Hong Kong from New York. Stephanie and Candace are both in their forties, hip (they work in fashion), extremely well-traveled, sophisticated foodies--the perfect tourist demographic to really appreciate this city's delights. The Hong Kong tourism board's shopping-paradise-Disneyland propaganda completely misses the mark for travelers like these, who are in search of some Hong Kong soul. So, even though I was kind of tired, I revved up and got into my Discover Cool Hong Kong tour guide mode.
First, I took the out of towners on a walk through incense-choked alleys and down snakelike stone staircases from Central to Sheung Wan. Candace loved the gaai sih, the open air Central food market that's one of the best in the world, and was incredulous that the HK government might be thinking about shutting it down someday for "urban renewal". I told her about the recent Star Ferry debacle and she looked stricken. "They're replacing it with a highway and a shopping mall?"
Finally, we reached Sheung Hing, that famous old Chiu Chow place on Queen's Road West. It was perfect. The restaurant was packed, and the headwaiter suitably brusque and grumpy in that almost cinematic Hong Kong way. I asked him, in Cantonese, if he had a table for three.
"No room! No room!" he shouted in English, waving his hands in the air and hustling us out to the sidewalk.
He ran off down the sidewalk to the other branch of Sheung Hing--the restaurant occupies two un-attached storefronts, each with a separate kitchen, and the staff spends all night rushing along the sidewalk, hustling hot dishes back and forth from one kitchen to the other. When the headwaiter made the return trip I corralled him again and asked, again in Cantonese, if there was any chance of getting a table and how long it would take.
This time, finally, he responded in his native language. "Dang dang hah." Wait a while.
But he wasn't speaking at me. He was speaking straight at Stephanie.
Stephanie's a native New Yorker. But her parents emigrated there from the Toisan area of Guangdong province. She looks Cantonese, although she can't speak it--just some Mandarin from school, and some Toisan-wah from home.
But to the waiter, Stephanie's Chinese face made her the Designated Cantonese Driver in our group. I'd talk to the waiter in Cantonese, he'd look away and direct his comment in Stephanie's direction. It's the inverse of what often happens in America and England, when overseas born or and/or educated Asians have to contend with strangers speaking to them loudly and slowly--as if the listener doesn't understand his or her own first language.
Like I said, hou fuk jaap. Really confusing. But I like confusing.
In the end, the three of us didn't have to wait on the sidewalk very long. After about five minutes, the headwaiter opened a rickety folding table, crammed it into the vestibule of the restaurant, and set down an extra stool so we could all squeeze in. We ordered the famous Chiu Chow dishes, of course, the steamed cold giant crab and the incomparable goose braised in sauce, lo seui ngo....
鹵水, or lo seui is made with soy sauce and other herbs and spices--even tangerine peel I think--that's been slow cooked for hours and hours, and then the leftover gets re-used to make the next batch so it gradually grows more tasty and subtle. The goose gets slow-cooked in it along with strips of tofu, they absorb the flavor of the sauce, and the end product is sublime. You could die happy eating this. I think I prefer this Chiu Chow style of goose preparation to the traditional Cantonese roasting method that you find at restaurants like the well-known Yung Kee.
My friend Ah Lan makes lo seui, and one of these days I will take her up on her offer to teach me how to do it. Until then I'll have to go to Sheung Hing (or if you know a better place please tell me!) to enjoy a Hong Kong treat that is, for this ngoi gwok yan, something really ngoi sai gaai. Out of this world.
I enjoy your website and I am a 外國人.
I live in the NT and have noticed that people are more willing to speak Cantonese w/ me than in HK Island or down-town Kowloon.
What really amuses HK people (I've found) is buying typically Cantonese things like pomelo leaves for bathing at Chinese New Year.
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This post really hits the mark for me. There was a time when my Cantonese was really top-notch, and yet even at my most fluent, it was hard to keep educated HKers from switching to English. Face, I guess.
So it was always gratifying to chat up someone in the NTs, or people like your gun lei or cabbie. Many times these people would even skip the "wah" stage (I can't believe you speak Cantonese, etc.) and just talk to you like a normal person. That was always most gratifying.
Also, you ever notice how some, especially older, people have a difficult time naming their own language? I remember loads of poh-po's saying "wah lei gam lek sik gong nidi wah" who would then go on to stumble...it was as if they couldn't say guang dong wah because we were in HK, not Guangdong, and jung man didn't make sense either, so they would just stumble for a while before settling on "baak wah" or "bun deih wah" or my personal favorite "ngoh yih gaa tung leih gong gan nidi wah"
fuhk jaap indeed!
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I have a theory about this which I'll tell in a story form sometime later!
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I've begun a lot of conversations in Cantonese and gone on for a while, only to have them forcibly switched to bad English (regardless that the switch made communication less efficient) when I couldn't understand mumbled slang phrases or rapid-fire, ostentatious use of chengyu. (Of course, you can always be a complete bastard and employ the same tactics in reverse, stuffing your English with regionalisms and Latinate words, then pounce on them and force them to switch back to Cantonese when they express confusion at something you say).
Anyway, this didn't strike me as "accommodation" (HKers' usual explanation for why they speak English to foreigners); rather as an assertion of ethnic boundaries. On the other hand, I see HKers try to use Cantonese with South Asians all the time and only accommodate w/English when there's a clear communication failure, despite the fact that some surveys show 60% of S. Asians can't speak Cantonese at all (Ming Pao article or my translation). So I don't think the insistence on use of English by HK Chinese is solely attributable to an ethnic-marking strategy or statistical discrimination either ...
N8Ma: "Also, you ever notice how some, especially older, people have a difficult time naming their own language? ... it was as if they couldn't say guang dong wah because we were in HK, not Guangdong"
Not just an HK thing; I've noticed the exact same phenomenon in GZ even with middle-aged people. It's similar to the way lots of autonyms for ethnic groups just translate as "the people"; average folks never had any need to be more specific than that, up until the age of mass migrations (both domestic and international), when language and descent became salient points in distinguishing "us" from "them".
Even standard written language has a similar phenomenon: the word 我國, which invariably means "China" (and is non-productive when used by foreigners, though I've read Malaysian Chinese writers who use it to mean Malaysia).
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I am a native Hongkonger and I find your articles fascinating. Thanks for your website. It is a great way for cross-cultural exchanges.
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You know, Japan is the same. When my mainland girlfriend and I (white Canadian) went to a hot spring, we had a triangle conversation with an attendant; I would speak Japanese, the attendant would reply in Japanese to my baffled girlfriend who was looking at me for guidance, while I continued to look and speak at the attendant.
Right now, though, I'm glad that (most) people speak English, because my Cantonese vocabulary of numbers and asking where something is sure as hell is no help at the moment.
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I am cantonese and I spent 8 years in the US for college and work in the 90s. When I first arrived in the States, I was very shy about my spoken English. As a result, every time before I speak to Americans in the dormitory I would do a little 'rehearsal' in my head before I say it out. But as I get to know them better, sometimes I would unknowingly speak Cantonese to them in the burst of the moment. I think, subconsciously, 'cantonese=friends/family'. After moving back to Hong Kong in 2000, my work requires me to deal with Mainland Chinese engineers. I had no formal training in Mandarin. I have to 'learn-as-I-go'. Again, I have to do the 'rehearsal' in my head before speaking to them. Sometimes I would speak 'English' to them when I didn't have time to 'rehearse', even though they won't understand a word I said. This case must be "Foreigner=English"...
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That is fascinating! It fits with something odd that I've experienced, too. My Spanish is fluent. But I don't use it much in Hong Kong, partly because I don't meet a lot of Spanish speakers here, and partly because I'm focused on Cantonese as a second language.
But last year I went to Buenos Aires. And for the first couple of days, until my Spanish got back into the groove, I would find myself searching my brain for a word in Spanish, and having the Cantonese word pop out of my mouth instead!
For instance, instead of responding to people with "Si, si.." I would unconsciously say, "Haih a!...Haih a!"
Things straightened themselves out after a few days. But I think you are right, and that our brain has some subconscous filing system that puts "mother tongue" in one place, and "other tongue" in another.
I really should read more linguistics. They probably have this all sorted out already.
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I had a similar experience traveling in France after having lived in Taiwan for a year - I would start answering or speaking in Mandarin.
But, when I first started studying Mandarin in college, the first few weeks French kept popping out.
This led me to think that there is a "foreign language" section of my brain and the most recent foreign language takes up the front part of it.
So, bun-sir, I suspect that if you keep up w/ the Mandarin as your "second language" for a few more years and then start to have to use another language, Mandarin will start popping out.
But, I am no expert on neuro-linguistics, it's just a theory I came up with.
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Hello Daisann,
This is a great post with a perfect blend of insights on the Cantonese language and culture, plus food. And I just love the food picture.
As a person of Chiu Chow heritage, I love Chiu Chow dishes - e.g. oyster omelette, and lo seui goose/ngo. In Canada, I have to settle for lo seui ducks (Cantonese spelling?). And none of the Calgarian restaurants does it well.
With respect to Long Hair's comment, I think he may have assumed that your blog is going to teach foreigners (Ngoi Gwok Yan) Cantonese the way Hong Kong students got their Chinese drilled into their heads. That would be very difficult and may be boring too. In contrast, you are only writing about a few Cantonese words at a time everyday. And you are mixing in with all the fun cultural references/observations and food. And all these make it fun to read.
Cheers,
Kempton
P.S. Your link for Yung Kee was almost in the right format (somehow you had your own web link in front of the Yung Kee www link). Your links for your two older articles were correctly formated.
P.P.S. For the fun of it, I am going to email you a Chinese article I wrote for a local Chinese free newspaper. It talks about the phenomena of YouTube and blogging.
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Hi Kempton. Thanks for the heads up about the link--will go fix it. Sometimes this blog software does wonky things, like add my web address in front of the linked address.
Is it possible to post a link to your article in the comments section so that everybody can access it?
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If you click on the word Kempton which is shown as the writer of his comment, it will bring you to Kempton's blog.
I am from Toronto, Canada and have many "gwailo" colleagues who live in Hong-Konger-packed wards of the city. Some love to learn Cantonese and they all accept "gwailo" as the colloguial way of (most) Hong-Kongers addressing them. Nothing personal nor offensive in this term for the X-generations anyway. :)
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Maybe I'm clutching at straws or trying to draw a long bow, but perhaps the local HK response to gweilos learning Cantonese is similar to a somewhat common attitude I've encountered in HK locals to gweilos learning traditional southern Chinese gung fu. Outside of work, this is my major passtime in HK and so comes up in "nice to meet you/what do you do?" conversation from time to time, particularly with my (Australian born by HK parents) fiance's relatives. The most common response I get is "You play gung fu? Very good!" [almost always these exact words], followed by the local HKer giving me advice about gung fu/the history of my particular style etc. In the case of people who have backgrounds in gung fu, this is very welcome. However, the overwhelming majority have a background of perhaps a few months of training while in primary school, if that, plus watching Wong Fei Hung and wu xia dramas. I end up on the receiving end of a discourse of cobbled together information of basic (or irrelevant) gung fu knowledge which is presented in an unintentionally condescending manner. Well, at least I feel that it is condescending, although I'm well used to it and listen a patient and polite manner, as I might just learn something. In many cases, I think there is an unconscious assumption of "how could the gweilo know more about this aspect of Chinese culture [whether it's language or gung fu] than me, a Chinese?". In any case, the intention is always well meaning and I do not take any offense.
In terms of speaking Cantonese to locals, my experiences vary. In some cases (particularly with female shop assistants for some reason), I get "the gweilo speaks Cantonese" giggles (or else I'm mispronouncing and saying something stupid). However, in other situations when I speak Cantonese, I tend to get a little more Cantonese back than I can handle and have to switch back to English.
Thanks for this great blog.
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