Just seconds after I got my finger cut by the sharp edge of the broken glass panel of a roadside bulletin board when I tried to flag down a cab, I felt that I was blessed, because the little accident just ocurred steps away from a drugstore. The cut was not serious at all, but it would appear gross to leave it untreated, as I was on my way to a meeting with a prospective business partner whom I had never met before. A bunch of people, including a long-haired dude holding a video camera on his shoulder, caught sight of my awkward situation, they laughed at me and then also pointed their fingers to the drugstore. The drugstore looked like a newly opened one, as the fascia and the awn above it all appeared in mint condition. Peeking into the door, the brightly-lit interior, gleaming rows of racks in the open space, and a kaleidoscopic array of boxed medicine on them all felt like a swanky boutique in a upscale shoping mall. To make short work of binding up my bleeding thumb, I threaded my way through them to get into the store, and made a beeline for the counter, behind which a matronly lady with long, curly hair stood. She stayed there alone, and stock still, but with her back to me. ”Excuse me, ma’ma, can I have some band aids?” I inquired in my usual soft voice. Then I was taken aback at the sullen face of the woman when she turned to look at me, her eyebrows knitted in a tight knot, lips pursed in a thin line, nostrils flaring like she was about to jump into a fistfight. I repeated my question, but a little nervously, ”Can I have some band aids, please?” “They are all on the racks, you just have to look for them by yourself.” She snapped and motioned towards the neatly aligned lines of racks with her chin. “Where’re th’y, ma’ma? There’re so many racks over there …” I muttered, suppressing the urge that was surging inside me to verbally question her professionalism. ”You can’t find the band aids, huh? Com’on, you have to come to your own aid, pal.” She shot back, seemingly ready to pick a fight with me.. At hearing that, I turned on my heel. Not that I was a pushover, I simply didn’t feel like making a scene arguing with her, and disrupting my trip to the venue where my business meeting was going to take place. But to be honest, I was really pissed off. I strode over to the door irked, still brooding over the ill-treament from the petulant clerk. And I was literally swearing under my breath, ”I will never spend a single penny in your place.” when I found a microphone thrust in my face out of the blue. ”Hello, sir. May I talk to you for a minute?” I was jolted out of my sulky mood, and looked up. A dapper-looking guy in grey pin-stripe suit, who was holding the mic to my mouth just outside of the exit, was looking at me expectantly. Standing behind him, was the guy I saw earlier who had a bulky video camera perched on his shoulder that bore the logo of our local TV station. ”Sure. What’s up, sir?” I just tried to be as polite as I could manage. ”We just want to know what you think of this new drugstore that is the first and only one in this neighborhood, which is sponsored by the city council. Incidentally, this one is also the biggest in town, staffed with professional personel, and equiped with the state-of-art computer system for easy search and payment services that would cater to everyone’s needs, particularly the elders...” I was literally struggling to hold back my snicker, as it appeared to be a perfectly-timed opportunitiy for me to vent the indignation I felt minutes before. While the puffery was still going on, I turned to look for the angry bird who was supposed to be visible from where I stood. There she was, craning her neck behind the counter, and palpably on tenterhooks. ”... as we see you just came out of it, could you please tell us what your experience with the store is like, sir?” ”Is it a live broadcast?” I asked before launching into a scathing rant. ”Yes, it is, sir.” Then I had a change of heart. What would I gain by ripping into the lady, except knocking her out of job, while causing collateral damages to the reputation of the drugstore? I thought to myself. Almost nothing. What if the lady, in desperate defense of herself, denied what I stated, and muddied the water by projecting me as a grouchy geezer? I believed things would come out in the wash eventually, but it took time and energy to clear the air. Was this petty spat worth it? The answer was no. What if my prospective business partner clapped eyes on me on TV berating a working stiff, and concluded that I was a cantankerous old weirdo? No doubt that would upset my business plans big time. Not least the city councilors who were mobilzing to upgrade the healthcare system, touting this drugstore as a paragon with fanfare. They would be mad at this setback in the progress that was all because of a trivial feud that unfolded on live TV. To have someone who hate your guts was no fun, both to the gruff clerk, and to me. So I piped up while slipping my hand into my pocket to cover up the laceration in my finger. ”This is a terrific place to seek medical services, and I just have had a wonderful experience with it. It is impressive to have a store with such a big OTC stock, and such obliging staff. I am glad that drugstores like this one would be built throughout the city to help residents with healthcare, and I am confident everybody will benefit a lot from this ambitious drive...” An illustration for the article

Sandwich English (散装英语), which is different from pidgin English, refers to speeches in Chinese that are profusely punctuated with English words, usually to a fault. This unique linguistic hybrid is widely spoken among the Chinese employees at foreign companies’ establishments in China, usually when no foreigners are engaged in the conversation. Pretty ironic, huh? If you are one of those employees, you would highly likely be bombarded on a daily basis with phrases like: 这个货物下午会从warehouse 发出 (The goods will be shipped out from the warehouse this afternoon.) 拜访完客户, 我就回office。 (I will get back to the office when I am done visiting the customer.） 我根本不 care 这件事。 (I don’t give a damn about it.） …… In one hilarious instance, I overheard one Shanghainese lady unleashing a verbal attack against her boss, which went as follows: 侬never know阿拉boss 老错气, 吾越PMP，伊越tough翻毛腔。 (You will never know that my boss is such a jerk, for the more I toady to him, the harsher he is on me.) I am not a big fan of my country folks, particularly the mainlanders speaking in their native tongue in this fashion, but I am pretty curious about how this burlesque language phenomenon comes down the pike. Digging deeper into the history, you may alight on the fact that in the early days of most of the foreign companies’ China operations which were mostly headquartered in Hong Kong, the Hongkongers assumed most of the managerial posts, be it the role of top management, finance, logistics, and sales, though things have dramatically changed since the CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement) came into effect in 2003. (I will not dwell on the impact of CEPA that has since significantly changed China’s trade and economic scenes, and deserves a lengthy monograph itself.) Hong Kong people historically like to speak Cantonese laden with English words, which I assume has a lot to do with its colonial history, a subject I am not going to dwell on either. And their way of speaking inevitably rubs off on their mainland colleagues especially when people from the mainland still very much looked up to the Hong Kong compatriots for its much higher level of economic development then. (If you are of an age as senior as I am, you would also remember the dominance of Hong Kong pop music and culture on the mainland about one decade ago.) So, several years before, when you were roaming around Shanghai’s Huaihai Road and Lujiazui area where the Fortune 500 companies usually chooses to set up shop, it was nothing uncommon that you ran into hordes of dapper-looking office workers who vivaciously spoke in what was quizzically dubbed as Sandwich English. To be honest, I don’t think sandwich English is universally bad, and it is especially hard for a foreign company’s Chinese staffers to avoid it when almost all of your company's internal written communications are conducted in English. For example, we usually refer to business plan as BP, life cycle management as LCM, total costs of ownership as TCO, which are much easier to utter than their Chinese translations 商业计划, 生命周期管理, 和总体拥有成本 respectively. And when there are no readily available Chinese translations for some terms like beyond zero, Mapro, Siebel, and so on, we simply don’t bother with the translations, and speak those words outright in English. And personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Nevertheless, I have also witnessed umpteenth cases where people imbedded their utterance in Chinese with words like boss, office, level, care, map, computer, scare, assignment, and all kinds of generic English words, as if the language of Chinese is inadequate for articulating their thoughts and ideas, and they need the aid of English to help with their communications. This is what I define as sandwich English. Practically speaking, what’s the point people dotting their speeches in Chinese with English words when they know perfectly how to say them accurately in Chinese? Is it beneficial to effective communications? Obviously, the answer is no. And culturally speaking, do English word-laden sentences make you appear smart and fashionable? I seriously doubt it, as the English words usually popping up in sandwich English mostly are too generic to impress people. One plausible explanation for the sandwich English lovers’ antics is that they are simply trying to make people laugh, and I do laugh at them.

I am a robot, a humanoid robot, to be precise, custom-programmed to specific requirements of a couple in their early-thirties, who, like most of the owners of robots, just sought aid in handling their domestic chores by having me, which inevitably would cost them a fortune, so they would be able to spend more time enjoying life. Practically, I could have a casing that would make me look exactly like a human being, however, as the wife thought it too creepy for her to wander about the house as if constantly in the presence of a stranger, so I just was delivered to them with a varnished metallic appearance featuring big, round head, boxy torso, and articulated limbs. Things got off to a pretty good start when I just joined their brood, as I was engineered specifically to be a housekeeper, though I am capable of doing much more than that. Armed with a vast database of recipes, art-of-the-state expertise in cooking, cleaning, organizing articles in a domestic setting that are imbedded in my microchips, I was up to the task hands down. The husband and wife were a pair of smart, fun-loving, and fashionable dudes, always impeccably dressed when they went out for work, dinners, or gatherings with friends. Moreover, they were pretty warm-hearted, and utterly affable towards me despite the fact that I was merely a man-made homely minder to them. Not only do I had my own space in the house -a spacious chamber where a recharging dock was installed with a cushioned recliner next to it that I could nestle in when I stayed idle- but also had the chance to chitchat with them from time to time. They even named me after one of their favorite characters in the wildly popular American TV drama “Friends”, Joey. Seriously, they also thought highly of my services, as one day after supper at home, the husband admiringly gave me a thumbs-up: “You cooking is phenomenal, pal.” Of course it was. As long as I had all the needed ingredients in place, the inherent precision with which I execute the recipes stored in my digitalized mind would result in the exact desired taste and texture without any exception. Additionally, the couple had increasingly been given to throwing parties at their home, because I would manage all the food, drinks, and festoonery on occasion, as well as the sound system for dancing if needed, and they didn’t have to bother with the mess left behind by their guests after the party was over, since they knew I would tidy things up afterwards, fast and quietly. The wife once threw her arms around my shoulder after witnessing my extraordinary feat in cleaning up huge heaps of unwashed plates and cups in just 5 minutes, and joyfully exclaimed: “Joey, thank you very much, you are really my angel!”, to which I meekly replied “My pleasure, ma ’ma.” Concerning verbal and non-verbal interactions with my owners, I had to abide by a set of rules that were coded in the computing system that controlled my behaviors, and I have been set up to project myself as a gentle, suave, and docile person as initially required by the couple. And under no circumstances, I was to disobey and challenge my owners no matter what they dictated. In a nutshell, my ultimate goal was to serve their needs to the satisfaction of my owners, both of them. By the way, I had to clarify that I was also well-versed in laws, and if any one of the owners gave me orders that would risk breaching the law, a string of latent restraining instructions in my system would be activated, rendering me unresponsive both physically and intellectually, which was arguably the equivalent of a human being playing dumb. Fortunately, I had never been in that situation with this couple. I virtually spend all my time staying indoors, for I was intended that way, since venturing out of the house to run errands would require different kinds of mobility and socializing skills that I was not equipped with. However, as I had been continuously integrated into the family’s domestic scene, interesting incidents cropped up. It was advised by my creator to my owners upon my delivery to their home that they’d better reach a consensus when they gave any task or instruction to me, in order to avoid me fulfilling one owner’s assignments that might run counter to another one’s wish. Understandably, if that scenario arose, it would put me in a very awkward situation, and possibly would stir up a sense of resentment against me who was absolutely innocent of any purposeful provocation. The couple just followed the advice to the letter, and sometimes they even invited me into the discussion as to how they would like certain tasks to be accomplished. But over time as they gradually came to realize how skilled and versatile I was in dealing with not only cooking, cleaning, but also plumbing, wiring, or even paperhanging, they saw much more options available than they did before with regard to how they manage their house, and that’s when dramatic discords started to come up, and more often than not I found myself caught between the couple’s conflicting ideas and opinions. The best case scenario was that an agreement was made by the two fellows with one or both of them making a concession, then I could get ahead with whatever they collectively order me to do. However, there were also numerous cases where they could not resolve their disagreements, which would leave me gawking and nonplussed, since I was not allowed to take side with neither of them in the case of disputes. Gradually, the wife, the smarter one of the smart duo, figured out how to work things out to her advantage by always getting the jump on her husband and giving orders to me before her hubby does, since saying no to any of my owners’ demand was off-limits as one hard and fast rule that I had to unconditionally follow dictated. So more than once I found myself landing between a rock and a hard place watching the husband fuming (though quietly) while going about the job the wife assigned to me. The worst case scenario was that during heated disputes, both of them shouted demands over each other at me all simultaneously, and that was when I truly wished that they had demanded something illicit, so I could automatically shut off, otherwise, my processor, however powerful it is, would be sent into overdrive trying to work out my best response, but to no avail, until I completely ran out of power and slumped onto the floor. Now I am sitting in a corner of the workshop that I call my birthplace, waiting to be retrofitted after I collapsed and was shipped back for repair for the third time. I am wondering how long the overhaul of my body will take, but the longer it is, the better, because I am now really dreading going back …

I went abroad several times before, mostly on business trips to western European countries, and my destinations usually were small towns where my company’s manufacturing facilities were located. In a town named Schweinfurt in south Germany, which has a population of around 50,000 people, including 6,000 American troops stationed there, there is a Chinese Resturant called Mayflower, and whenever my stomach’s craving for Chinese cuisine reached the boiling point during my stay at the town, I would go there and munch on dishes like spring rolls, roasted ducks, and stewed spicy tofu to quench my thirst for the food that I grew up eating. Mayflower, as I learned later, is the only Chinese restaurant in town, so I was really surprised that almost every co-worker whom I knew from Schweinfurt appeared to be as good as I was at using chopsticks. There was even a guy named Juergen, who was a leftist when using chopsticks, while writing with his right hand. I once joked with the restaurant owner who was orginally from Zhejiang by asserting that he must have run a mass training course in chopsticks to boost his business in Schweinfurt, and the beaming fifty-something folk simply reply: ”they learned by themselves, and they learned fast.” Luton is also a small down near London where we have a colleague Mr. Graham, who comes to China on a regular basis. We once went on a 10-day tour of China visiting customers together, during which time we had numerous business dinners with customers and business partners. Frankly speaking, I had never seen a guy who was crazier about fried rice (炒饭) than Mr. Graham was, as for every single dinner, he would entreat me to help him order it. The funny thing was he had never swapped chopsticks for fork and knife for any dish, and everybody at the table would be stunned at seeing him scooping up grains of rice into his mouth adeptly with chopsticks. And I can still vividly remember an occasion when I had lunch with a couple of colleagues from Nordic countries in Shanghai years before. I might have been too brusque in making a crack about a Swedish specialty, surstromming, and my Swedish colleague instantly retorted that Chinese food gave him a hard time keeping fit. Initially I thought he might refer to the calorie counts in our food, however, he actually was arguing that, unlike western style meals, which were served in a certain sequence of courses roughly consisting of Hors d'oeuvre, salad, soup, main course, and desert etc., he was never quite sure where he was during a Chinese meal, as our dishes were seldom served in any particular order. So he always ended up over-eating in most of the dinners he had had in China. I could not help but clap my hands at this plausible discourse, while watching in awe my Swedish buddy proudly pick up a peanut expertly with a pair of chopsticks, and drop it into his mouth as a reward for himself settling scores. And while I was admiring the Swedish guy’s wits, his companion, a Finnish pal, appeared to be struggling a little bit with his chopsticks when he was attempting to lift a strand of rice noodles off the plate. I was initially amused by his repeated failures before I realized the slippery noodles could also be a challenge to me, as i could see that he was apparently maneuvering the chopsticks in a flawless way. After cheering on him for his tenacity in grabbing the elusive grub, I asked: ”What do you think is the most dfficult thing to pick up with chopsticks?” At hearing this question, the Finnish dude, whose country was never known for great sense of humor, blurted out:”Soup.” I was floored. ......While I am crafting this blog, the word chopsticks has just kept conjuring up images of my favorite dishes, which rightfully called for a dinner with some of my chums. So I may spend the next 15 minutes making phone calls, which I would end with the phrase: ”See you at the Lan Club, chop chop!”

Imagine that you are in a cinema watching a movie, and the actor on the screen is hammering a nail into the wall, but as he is either ham-fisted, or simply gets distracted, he just slips up, and pounds the hammer onto his thumb instead, then the hapless guy starts to cry in pain. At seeing this, what will your reaction be? Or will you react at all? According to some surveys, most viewers would involuntarily grimace as if the hammer falls on their own thumbs, even without feeling the pain. (Also crying aloud in sync with the actor on the screen is deemed as an overreaction or a conscious attempt at spoofing. lol) Are you among the ”most viewers”? If yes, congratulations, you are offically a guy with empathy. As the example indicates, empathy may inherently be in our genes, and it constantly manifests itself in our interactions with others, be it our visceral reaction to other people’s sufferings, or our instinctive exertion to interpret other people’s emotions. So why make such a fuss about empathy, which is claimed to be deeply set in our psyche? Empathy is defined on Wikipedia as the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position. And while empathy appears to be a gift we were endowed with the moment we were born, it is cultivated in different ways throughout our life time. Have you ever been in an awkward situation when you appeared over-joyous in front of an aggrieved co-worker, who might start to bear grudge against you as a result of your callousness to his or her grievance? And have you ever been given a resentful look when you remained deadpan while one of your friends was over the moon over an extraordinary achievement he or she made? You may argue that you behaved that way for rightful personal reasons, but being aware of the social settings, and conducting yourself with othe people in mind would help you cut a positive image, and maintain a cordial social environment that would ensure you have more access to resources, and less contrived obstacles to your own development. Last but not least, there is the morality issue that also has a lot to do with empathy. To illustrate this point, I would like to share an example again, which actually is a zoological experiment. Two chimpanzees were locked up in 2 adjacent rooms which were separated by a glass wall, so the chimps could see each other. In one room, there was a lever mounted on a wall, and whenever the chimp pulled it, a banana would fall from a hole in the ceiling, meanwhile sending an electric shock through a wire that ran through the glass wall, and was attached to the other chimp. So this hapless chimp would be sent shrieking and jumping in agony by the non-fatal electrocution. Initially the chimp in the room with the lever was happy to see the bananas keep coming down as he repeatedly pulled the lever, however, when he came to realize that his delicacy actually came at his peer’s expense, he immediately stopped, and appeared bewildered. The dilemma the chimp found himself in cogently demonstrates that even among primates, empathy plays a role in determining their behaviors, even when personal gains and substantial benefits are involved. I have no idea how this experiment ended, but I wish if I was the lever-pulling chimpanzee, I could figure out the way out, with my intelligence and empathy.

It is nothing uncommon that people entertain themselves by feeding on celebrity juice, as the occasional sneak peek into famous people’s lives sometimes is too enticing to resist. As an ordinary office worker, I am also not immune to it, though I would not be as obsessive as the teenager dubbed ”Hongqiao Yijie” (虹桥一姐) whose antics of relentlessly chasing after celebrities have recently gone viral on the internet. I used to be very much infatuated with pop singers, whose songs I still draw inspiration from occasionally even today. However, as I grew older, and got married, I couldn’t afford to spend as much time indulging in music as I did before any more. There is the kid to take care of, domestic chores to attend to, family commitments to fulfill, and I definitely do not enjoy stirring up the wrath of my wife who would yell ”Be grown-up!” at me, if I was caught being on a high from listening to music while ignoring the tasks she assigned to me. So I have progressively lost touch with the pop culture scene, with only the singers and songs from my early adulthood years being the deepest imprinted in my mind, like Chyi Chin, Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, George Michael, Michael Bolton, Marria Carey, Whitney Houston, and some domestic and overseas rock bands. That said, interestingly there is one single new-era singer whom I did know right after his singing career took off in China, and that is related to my very first and the only red carpet experience. It happened in 2009 or 2010. I took an early morning flight from Tstingtao to Nanjing, together with a German colleague, en route to the city of Ma’anshan for a customer visit to Masteel. After landing, as we were waiting at the baggage claiming area for our luggages to come out, there were wave after wave of loud cheerings coming from huge crowds outside of the arrival hall. This was a novel occurence I had never experienced before, which also made both me and the German guy utterly puzzled and curious about what the hell was going on. When we were approaching the exit after retrieving our luggages, we were literally stunned by the number of people, mostly teenagers, lining the walkway just outside the exit, hailing and appauding, with some of them holding large placards bearing the images of a cute young male. The name in bold letters at the bottom of the placards simply registered in my mind: Han Geng (韩庚), who I learned later just returned to China after years of successful endeavor in South Korea’s entertainment circle. A red carpet was rolled out for the star who apparently had not arrived yet. Maybe it was out of boredom from spending long hours awaiting their idol, or they just wanted to do some warm-up, the young kids just erupted in deafening applause when any passenger stepped out of the arrival hall and walked down the red carpet. Our emergence from the airport was also no exception, with the boys and girls hailing at us at the top of their lungs. I assure you in that circumstance, you would feel very good about yourself, even though you were well aware it was just faux excitement surrounding you. Strutting down the red carpet with dramatically boosted self-esteem, I could not help but joke with my German buddy: ”Hi, bro, you see you have so many fans here, at least you should wave at them to acknowledge their fondness for you.” On this cue, the German dude, who was a hilarious funny guy himself, started waving, while beaming and nodding at the crowd as if he was really a celebrity meeting adoring fans. Seeing this unsual response, the crowd just went uproarious, with the noise decibel rising up several notches. I caught a glimpse of his face after some girls vehemently screamed ”Welcome to China!” at him, his face lit up, the drowsiness from the early flight having disappeared, the beaming turning into an ear-to-ear grin, and I could literally hear the gurgling sound of oxytocin rushing in his body. Sadly, this euphoric experience soon came to an end when we reached the end of the red carpet, which obviously was not long enough for us to enjoy the fake stardom to our hearts’ content. And as I whipped out my phone to contact the taxi driver, who just came to pick us up and drive us to Ma’anshan by an arrangement we made beforehand, it suddenly occurred to me we were not supposed to get out at all before rendezvousing with the cabbie inside the arrival hall, as our agreement with the driver dictated. However, at hearing this slipup, my German companion, still savoring the hilarity, visibly got excited, and immediately rattled off :”Great, now we go back in and find the cabbie, then we can walk the red carpet again.” ... Epilogue: We didn’t got back in, as the cabbie, whose taxi I used to use before, caught sight of me inside the hall, and followed us out ... The German guy who was with me walking down the red carpet.