I was wondering, when you call and talk to papa/mama, and speak to them in english, do you tell them before hand that you are not a gweilo? lol. I've read some reports where the HGs were surprised to see an asian when they opened the door, and had to call papa/mama to confirm because they were expecting a gweilo based on the phone call.

just say you're back in hong kong visiting relatives with family and looking to have some fun. they will know you're asian that way.

You can also text message or say your are an overseas Chinese. You have to learn how to say it in Chinese or learn how to type it in Pinyin.

It's something like "huá qiáo" but I am not exactly sure.

If you are planning to continue to mongering in China, I strongly suggest you taking a course in Mandarin/Cantonese, especially if you are ethic Chinese.

[ Last edited by  Weelock at 21-3-2010 17:43 ]

When the girls opened the door expecting a gweilo but saw you instead, were they happy or sad?  I am just curious.  

If they were happy, then you don't need to bother with telling the pps/mms that you are asian.


If they were sad, then you better tell them clearly "I am ABC!"  or "I am Chinese".

[ Last edited by  doghead at 22-3-2010 00:27 ]

The real question is do they treat you better or worse if you are asian?  Certain rates apply to asians while the more expensive rate has been known to be asked of non-asian.  Do the pps/mms quote you a higher rate if you call them up in english than if you called them up in chinese?

why would the pps/mms charge a higher rate when the punter is calling about a girl he saw on the db which clearly states the price?  Is there a secret asian price I don't know that can only be accessed if I found the 'easter egg' (secret goody usually hidden in video games)?  

I am a non-Chinese speaking Asian fellow, and I have had no issues with contacting Papasans for HGs.  Because in general, I have not been able to communicate with the girls, I don't really know if they were suprised by my appearance.

FWIW, I once had this Chinese lady (in the US) who was quite a conversationalist .  One of her pet peeves was dealing with all the ABC guys (of which I am one myself) who can't speak a lick of any Chinese language.  Calling them 'dummies' at one point.  I can't really say I disagree with her all that much.  I didn't speak any Cantonese growing up (only a bit of Toishanese, and none really after junior high) and forced myself to learn Cantonese in college.  Pretty easy actually.

The culture in a Chinese community can be quite strange when it comes to languages.

If you are in China, the community expects you to speak standard Mandarin.  
If you are in N. Taiwan, Mandarin is expected, in S. Taiwan, Taiwanese is expected.  
If you are in HK, Cantonese is expected.  
If you are in Singapore, Singlish (combination of Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, English) is expected.

As an overseas Chinese it is tough to explain to the ppl of these countries that Chinese (whatever version) is not my 1st language.  English is.  They expect me to be speaking Chinese as soon as I was born and I could only do so for the 1st word "wah".  

But really as you can see above, which Chinese dialect was I expected to know at birth?  They expect the 'correct' Chinese language to have been programmed into my DNA by my parents when they conceived me.

Wow...I'm  very surprised you said it was easy learning cantonese ? ??

Sorry to be off-topic bizzyb, with your permission I want to ask something to Jesun.

JeSun, I heard there are 9 tones in cantonese compare to 4 tones in mandarin.
I'm even more put off to learn chinese because of these tones than because of the chinese scripture.
I have a very bad listening skill which makes learning languages difficult to me. I've been learning english for a few years and I still have a lot of trouble to understand native speakers. So, I cannot imagine I could learn a language like chinese or other asian languages where tone is very important for understanding.

I would like to learn mandarin and thai, but both use tones. I'm put off, because I will have much more trouble than learning english wich is a pain in the neck to understand even though there's no tones issue.

So my question is: JeSun, where you able to learn cantonese easily because you where familiar with a chinese dialect and tones (you mentionned Toishanese, which I guess is a dialect) or did you see non-asian learners (who are not familiar with tones) having the same learning success as you ?

[ Last edited by  conqueror77 at 29-3-2010 16:54 ]

no question Cantonese was easier because I already knew Toishanese.  I would go as far as saying that if you don't know any Chinese, you're much better off learning Mandarin because of the fewer tones.  In reality, Cantonese probably only has about 5 or 6 tones that you really care about.  Tones 6-9 are somewhat indistinguishable.

I would say that I was "successful" at being fluent for 3 reasons, reasons which may or may not be all that "accessible" to non-Chinese speaking Asians 1) lived in Singapore, KL and HK for a while because of work, 2) watched a shitload of HK movies once I got out of grad school circa late-80's.  There's a thought out there that if you're fully able to understand Stephen Chow and his movies (his earlier ones pre-1997), you'll be fluent in no time, because he stretches the Cantonese language like few others can; and 3) the SO is fluent.

Don't worry about the English stuff.  My kid and I talk about all kinds of things like sports, Pokemon, chess, science, etc. and the SO still has a hard time figuring out what we're talking about.  And she's a arbitrator/judge, of all things.  Point is, English, like other rich languages, has many sublanguages depending on subject.