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"That's 'fried rice', you plick!"-Uncle Benny, Lethal Weapon 4
Ahh… Sleep. I was mercilessly yanked from its refuge into the tangible world of the waking. Damn bloody telephone! It's 9am on a Saturday! Who on earth would be calling me? After getting barely three hours of sleep, I wasn't particularly amused… Impressed? Maybe. Whoever has the nerve to call me at this time of the day is going to be targeted by a hell of a practical joke… when I'm more alert anyway. So I reach up for the phone that sits by my bedside. Damn! The (cordless phone) receiver is not there. So I shake my head and look around the bed. It's somewhere nearby; it always is. I manage to find it by the third escrutiating ring, press the "talk" button, and lift it to my ear.
"Hello?" I uttered in a groggy, pathetic voice.I barely tolerate morning weekend calls from my friends. I'm terse with phone solicitors. If you don't bother to speak the language… Well, let's just say that my patience grows even thinner. At times like these I really wish there was a "electric shock" button on the phone. I'll have to settle for hoping that the shock of my abruptness sends this parasitic leech into cardiac arrest. [well, technically, do leeches have hearts?] Okay, maybe not cardiac arrest, but something not necessarily harmful but incredibly painful will do quite nicely. I was a psych minor after all; I firmly believe in operant conditioning.
"[male voice uttering something in Mandarin (Chinese)]"
"Uhmm… WHAT?!"
"Aahh… Do you speak Chinese?", in a thick Asian accent.
"What country are we in?!"
"Aahh… You don't speak Chinese?"
"I speak English; apparently we both speak English. What do you want?"
"I was wondering if you'd be interested in our long distance savings…"
"[Click]…"
That was months ago. I had almost forgotten about it. Almost.
One of my friends had once noted that my rants aren't really rants. That is to say that I'm not always ranting about something. Oftentimes, what I list as rants are simply events that happened or observations about life. It's a forum for me to have a bit of a voice among all the madness that goes on in my life. Not this time… this one is really a rant.
If you have read my profile, you may remember that I'm trilingual. Well, I suppose that's a matter of perspective. I would like to think that I have a fairly good command of the English language. I can speak, read, and write in Spanish. I certainly struggle through some of my Spanish (as my friend, Lino could easily attest to), but I can normally deal with it. And then there's Cantonese. Cantonese is a Chinese dialect. Cantonese is a language in which I can only speak. This may not make much sense to many of you, but try to read and write a language with a two thousand letter alphabet (which is about the minimum if you want to communicate). I can speak it well enough to communicate with my mom and most other folks who speak Cantonese. I can even watch movies. Okay, so to be trilingual, I have to be fluent in three languages. And to be fluent, I have to be able to express myself readily. It is a matter of perspective.
Note: I know there are going to be the mass of you Chinese folks out there that will declare that the Chinese language is Mandarin, and that Cantonese is merely another dialect. What I have to say to that is… Sorry, just because the Chinese government took over Hong Kong (in 1997, where Cantonese is spoken), and then declared that "Mandarin will now be spoken here", doesn't undo years of history. Culturally, they're both equally important. Politically, the Chinese government would declare Mandarin as the Chinese language (which sounds a little like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four-ish to me). Then again, it also declares Taiwan, which has its own government, as a Chinese territory; so in my book, it is delusional anyway. Cantonese and Mandarin are both dialects of Chinese, okay? Deal!
I also got an interesting piece of snail mail a couple of weeks
ago. It was a solicitation for me to switch long distance companies. Yeah,
I know… you're thinking, "So what? I get those all the time!" Let me
elaborate. I open up this letter from GTE Long Distance, and enclosed I
find a pamphlet and a letter. I've included a (partial) picture of each
one for those of you who are curious. It would appear as though they want
me to join one of two long distance plans, one titled "GTE Talk to the
World Plan," the other titled "GTE NationWide Saver". The reason I'm
saying "it would appear" is because these were the only
words in either document in English (well, except for the address, the logo,
trademarks, etc.). [Why would I lie about a thing like that?]
Did they include any other English documentation with this letter? No. [Also let me point out that the letter is one sided, which means that GTE could have easily printed a similar letter in English on the reverse side.]
Does anyone else have problems with this? I mean, for obvious reasons, I don't subscribe to any Chinese periodicals or magazines. I have never requested any Chinese literature in my life. I go to Chinese restaurants and read the English description of the dishes. There's a reason for all this. I can't read the bloody language. Okay, I lied (kind of), I subscribe to A.Magazine, but that's an Asian-American magazine, and I'd be willing to bet that this is more likely to antagonize Asian-Americans than anything else. It certainly antagonized me.
You know, never in my life have I written a letter complaining about anything. [Yes, smartass… stop laughing!] Seriously. Sitting down and writing a letter always seemed like too much of an effort for me. I mean, I don't want to sound apathetic, but what is one person's opinion going to do to affect a company's business practice? Well, I'm happy to report that I've changed my ways. I've written my first letter to the xenophobic "Group Manager, International & Ethnic Marketing". Outlining basically my sentiments here… that I found this business practice distasteful, at best, and probably much closer to insulting. I won't bore you with the details of the letter. In the interest of fairness, if/when I get a response from GTE, I will post the response (along with my original letter). Stay Tuned.
Now, technically, I found GTE's behavior as somewhat excusable. At least, I did at first. Why? Having grown up in the Chinese community in South Florida, I understand much of the mindset that goes on. It doesn't for a moment mean that I either endorse it or even pretend to tolerate much of it, but let's just say that I've become a bit desensitized to the whole silliness. Now I'm going to embark upon some uncharted territory in my writing. In the interest of trying to justify GTE's despicable marketing practice, I'll try to demonstrate how truly dysfunctional many Chinese folk can be. I'm sure that this won't win me "Brownie points" in the community, but you know… I have stopped caring about their opinion many years ago.
In the interest of simplification, most Chinese folks in the states will fall into one of two groups. First, you have the Chinese-Americans, commonly known as ABC's (American Born Chinese). Then, you have the more traditional Chinese, commonly known as FOB's or JOB's (Fresh off Boat / Just off Boat). I'm one of the former. For the interest of clarity, I'll refer to each group as ABC's and JOB's, although I'm not saying that I condone the either the stereotypes or labels. Typically, each group holds each other in contempt. In the extreme cases, you'll find ABC's who go through extreme bouts of self hatred, some of whom go as far as getting eye surgery to round out the slant of their eyes. For the JOB's, you'll find people who have neglected to learn English over the course of decades, ones who cannot utter much more than a simple "Hello" or "Good Morning". Realistically, most people will fall somewhere in between, but there's always a bit of animosity between the two groups. The dividing line is drawn between the arguments "losing your culture" and "adapting to life in this country". So to start, the Chinese community (here in the states) is divided between these two groups. Like I said… dysfunctional.
Also, many Chinese folk are, in general, egocentric. I know what you're going to say… "Which culture isn't egocentric?" I have some examples that even many Chinese folks haven't thought about. The Chinese name for the United States is pronounced roughly Mei Guo. It literally means beautiful country. You're probably thinking… "How could the name for China be worse?" The Chinese name for China is pronounced Zhong Guo. It literally means Center Country. What could possibly be more egocentric than that? Furthermore, Chinese folk (living here in the states) call non-Chinese (American) folk Gwai Lou; it is the common term used. Although this literally means ghost people (no joke), it is the common term for foreigner. Let's examine this again, Chinese folks have the nerve to call Americans foreigners while living here in the states. I also find that practice a bit egocentric… don't you? To me, this also seems dysfunctional.
So at this point, it is fairly obvious that the more traditional Chinese folk are going to be a bit xenophobic. Remember when I said that I found GTE's marketing tactic somewhat excusable? I'm getting to that.
Let's picture this, you, an English speaker, are living in Hong Kong. You get a letter in the mail about a long distance calling plan. It is written in English, which you may find to be a nice touch since you are an English speaker. Now, I would imagine that, living in Hong Kong, you probably would feel indifferent that a similar letter written in Chinese was also included in the envelope. Well, it is not the same for some Chinese folk. These JOB's, even if they are living here in the states, will actually prefer getting a letter that is only addressed to Chinese readers rather than getting a letter that is addressed to both Chinese and English readers. It reinforces the ideas that they need not learn the language to live here in the states and that there will always be someone who will cater to them. Unfortunately, statistically it probably makes sense, particularly when you take into account that it is precisely them who would be more inclined to call overseas.
Despite the fact that I understand the statistics, I still find this practice on the edge of nauseating. I suppose the question I have for the GTE marketing folks is this… I know that you're going to get your fair amount of business by targeting the JOB's with Chinese only solicitations. However, have you done the market research on how many people of other cultures and how many Chinese-Americans you're going to alienate? Maybe you believe that most people will simply ignore a letter addressed to them written in a foreign language… Maybe you believe that Chinese-Americans, who understand the culture and receive this solicitation, will simply turn a scornful eye and throw it away… Maybe you believe that you have not managed to peeve someone enough to have him make his displeasure public…
Think again.
December 13, 1999