Expat Diaries: Sign Language

If I had lost in translation moments in Singapore, that was nothing compared to Hong Kong, where more locals don’t speak English.

In Singapore, the locals have multiple races, so it’s more normal for them to speak English. Sure, majority of them are Chinese so maybe 50% of the time, strangers talked to me in Mandarin (much to the amusement of my local Chinese friends), but here in Hong Kong, strangers speak Cantonese to me maybe 95% of the time. 

Sometimes it’s easy enough to get by, like when I have to buy something. I just point to whatever it is I want to buy, they type out the price on a calculator, I nod my head and pay. That’s how I bought my hydrangea from a sweet little old lady who hummed a tune while she packed my purchase.

There are moments, however, that are not quite so easy. Like that time I tried to throw out a coffee table at our floor’s designated trash area. My friend Jeff had left it for me, but I decided that I didn’t need it and would rather buy a desk instead. 

Anyway, my building’s guard caught me and told me that I wasn’t supposed to dump large items there and had to dispose of them a few blocks away.

She didn’t speak English so she told me all this using a mixture of Cantonese, sign language, and Google Maps. Somehow I managed to understand.

How? Context.

My Singaporean friends always used to tease that I secretly understood Mandarin because I often understood them even when they were not speaking English. My only secret is that I’m good at understanding non-words, like body language and context clues. But words? Not so much, actually. I’ve always been bad at picking up new language.

Anyway, back to my building’s guard story. She led me downstairs where she helped me get a push cart and we went back up to load the offending table on it, so I could roll it towards the direction she had pointed.

I wasn’t super sure where to go, exactly, she had pointed vaguely to a building in the distance. So when I saw a couple of ladies emptying a giant trash can, I thought, hey, maybe this is the place. So I asked them. Luckily they spoke English. Turns out it wasn’t the place; they laughed at my mistake.

I wheeled on, and finally found it – it was this big warehouse-type of place where all the garbage went. I dumped the table and wheeled the push cart back. 

When I got back to my building, the guard met me at the door. She cried out “Very good! Very good!” enthusiastically while clapping her hands and doing the thumbs-up sign. 👍🏼

Since then, she lights up whenever she sees me. And that, kids, is the story of how you make friends even if you don’t understand each other.

P.S. I guess this counts as another one of my funny furniture adventures.