Howard Cheng: When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME

For me, travelling is about exploring the world and finding out more about how people around the world live. Whenever I travel, I try to learn at least a couple of phrases of the local language – making sure as a bare minimum that I know how to say, “Excuse me, do you speak English please?” Whilst I am not saying everyone should do this, I think there is something to be said for not assuming everyone speaks English – or in the case of my story here, Mandarin. Let me take you with me to a recent trip to Lapland, enjoying the cold Arctic winter with temperatures of around -20°C, minding my own business writing postcards by a shop. Oblivious to details of what was going on around me, I could make out someone near me speaking Mandarin, but then I was rudely interrupted by a hand waving in my face. Looking up, I saw a group of Chinese people looming over me firing questions at me in Mandarin.

Whilst I can speak some Mandarin and probably survive on my level of Mandarin knowledge if I were in Taiwan or China , I am by no means fluent. I looked at them bemused, trying to work out what they were saying when I was suddenly hit with a pointed and indignantly toned question: 「 你不會說中文？你不是中國人嗎？」, translating to something along the lines of: “You don’t speak Chinese? Aren’t you a Chinese person?”. I continued to look at them puzzled, not because I didn’t understand their slowed and scornful inflection, but because I just did not understand why they would sound so irate that they wrongly assumed I would be able or comfortable to speak Mandarin back to them. And then they asked me in English, in that same tone, if I were Chinese, and I instinctively said, “No, I’m from the UK.”

My apprehension formed somewhat by my experience of being threatened by pro-Beijing supporters in London whilst I was covering a protest by pro-democracy supporters of Hong Kong and the pro-Beijing counter-protest, where I was surrounded by three of four pro-Beijing counter-protesters demanding I speak Mandarin to them, and now having been at the end of this group’s somewhat irate sounding question at to my nationality, I started worrying whether I was now in for one of those infamous ultra-nationalistic rants about how I should be Chinese blah blah blah. Luckily the situation did not materialise in the way I had feared, and they asked their question in English, and went on their way. They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but how wrong that adage is – the same thing happened to me with another group of Chinese people around 10 minutes afterwards!

I can understand, if I were in Taiwan or China, why people may think I am comfortable or fluent at speaking Mandarin, even if such assumptions may be wrong. But to assume that everyone who looks East Asian outside of East Asia speaks Mandarin was something quite perplexing to me. Why would they assume I am Chinese – could I not have been Korean? Japanese? Vietnamese? It is not only the assumption which bugged me, but why would they aggressively ask, “Aren’t you a Chinese person?” as if not being Chinese is a mortal sin.

I have nothing against people who speak Mandarin. Although not fluent, I am proficient enough in shopping-related phrases in Mandarin to convince a shopkeep in Beijing to sell their wares to me at the price for locals rather than the labelled price for foreigners. But it was the assumption which stumped me.

So I decided, upon returning to London, I would try a little experiment. I went to a tourist attraction in London, and if some Chinese visitors were in my way, I would politely say, “sumimasen” (Japanese for “excuse me”), and “arigatou gozaimasu” (Japanese for “thank you”) when they moved out the way. If looks could kill, then I would have died a thousand deaths: I got some of the most dirty looks I have ever seen from the Chinese tourists when I spoke Japanese to them. If you ever needed a reason not to assume someone speaks a certain language, or if someone were from a certain country, then this would be it. Not to mention the myriad of cultural sensitivities relating to various East Asian identities such as assuming Taiwanese people are Chinese, or Chinese people are Japanese.

As the saying goes: “When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.”