Tuesday 25 January 2011

Silent in Seattle...or not

Chinese Whispers used to be a game where a message gets whispered down a line until it reaches the end, mangled into something amusing.
I imagine the game still exists, but called something else.

I'm sure it must have been so-named because, for the Chinese, it is rude to whisper, so in order to be polite, you have to shout. Apparently, even if you're standing facing a long line of houses, ranting about how glad you are that you, a Mainland Chinese person, didn't buy one of these houses because they're full of Chinese people, as long as you shout it, it's not rude.
If you stop before another row of houses and bang on about how this is low-income housing, but you saw a Mercedes outside of one the other day, so long as it's at full volume, again - not rude at all.
Thus, since you're not being rude, you might as well share your opinion about the Chinese people who come over, buy two houses, have a million dollars in their bank account and still get money from the government on account of their having no income.

So what could possibly stop this swathe of verbal destruction? Imagine a crescendo of incoherence directed at a government who should both ban smoking, yet stop telling people where they can and can't do it? Who should both legalise and ban pot smoking?

The answer is - another dog-walker, one from Hong Kong. The stand-off, whilst the three dogs sniff around each other, unaware of the political static up above, culminates in a last stab at Chinese mountain people who give their children ridiculous names.
Then exit stage left, leaving me in a loop of misunderstanding.

'Have you been in Seattle?'
'No, we don't go to....n'mind....we only go at the weekend,'
'So, you were in Seattle,'
'No, and....only at the weekend,'
'You long time in Seattle?'
'Er, ok.'
Sigh.

Half an hour ago, before the insults began, there was a shouted phone convo in English. The shouting makes it difficult to keep a polite enough distance not to hear. A bottle of Tequila had been re-gifted, a win-win. The original gift had clearly been one of the high quality, expensive bottles that was well-received by the re-giftee and not understood to be such by the re-gifter.

Life in the loud lane.

2 comments:

Sleepy said...

So me shouting at The Empress Ming about all the filth she perpetrates may not be having the effect I expected?!

Schneewittchen said...

It does seem to still go on. Try whispering and see whether you get a result :)