Candied Carrots, Cantonese Counting and Foot Faux Pas

     The Belchers Bay Park Longevity, Health, Culture and Language Group has had a new member these last few days. That's me.  And that's my name for them, by the way.  The openness and friendliness of the people gathered there and their English-speaking abilities have drawn me in.  I also like the variety of Chinese and generic exercises they do for maintaining flexibility and balance.  I especially enjoy looking at the faces of the very tiny, smiling, adorable ancient women who are there working on keeping their moving parts moving.  The aura of that sort of determination is energizing.  

     Just before Mr. Lee started the exercises, one of the older women came by offering a treat from a bag.  It looked like small chunks of dried papaya and pineapple, the kind that's made with extra sugar, which I'm not crazy about.  I thought about the scene in Gweilo, where the British admiral gives young Martin Booth an important piece of advice when he first arrived in Hong Kong:  if someone offers you food, you must graciously accept it.  The Cantonese have a reputation for eating anything that moves, so for heaven's sake, I was getting off way easy here.  I chose the orange treat, as did a few others around me.  As I nibbled, they discussed what it was among themselves and then translated for me:  carrot, dried and coated in sugar.  A special Chinese New Year treat.  How about that!  Maybe the white treat was sugar-coated turnip.  Anyway it was very nice of this woman to bring this treat and offer it to me.

     A couple days ago I started writing out the phonetic spellings for a few Cantonese words on an index card, a cheat sheet to carry in my pocket.  On the way over to the park this morning I was busy checking my card and mumbling numbers...yat, yih, saahm, seih, ng...the number for 5, ng, is unusual for me to pronounce.  It's like the ng sound in "sing", but with closed lips, just buzzed nasally.  I know this because I asked a few people after class yesterday, who were eager to help me.  This is so much better than using an online pronouncing tool that can't show you how to close your mouth to say "ng", I thought at the time.  The reason I was working on my numbers on the way over to the park is that people count out loud during exercises, anywhere from 10 to 40, as they're doing holds or repetitions.  So this is a great opportunity for me to practice counting in Cantonese. The people around me were amused and perhaps pleased that I was trying to count along with them.
     Some of the people in the park were perhaps not very pleased, though, at my faux pas on the Walking Tiles.  The last few mornings I've taken a short cut in the park, walking through a 20x20' partially enclosed area with a pebbly composite material underfoot.  Today as I was leaving the park I again walked through, but this time noticed that a woman was walking stockingfoot over the chestnut-sized pebbles.  Oops, I thought, ignorant foreigner commits another blunder.  Once outside the enclosure I slowed down enough to notice the sign that the Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Department had posted outside the area with all the rules for using the Walking Tiles, things like staying away if you have athlete's foot or if you have a loss of feeling in your feet due to diabetes.  Nowhere did it say "no shoes", because I suppose it's assumed that you're smart enough to recognize Walking Tiles when you see them.  (I did read the list of Hong Kong Cultural Don'ts in our Lonely Planet guide, all 6 of them, and Walking Tiles weren't mentioned.)  I'll have to ask around about the benefits of using these Walking Tiles.