Hong Kong to Guangzhou

I’m just back from a trip to Hong Kong and China. I visit both places every couple of years or so but this was the first time in many years I travelled overland from one to the other. Taking the train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou was my first introduction to China back in the 1980s. At that time Hong Kong was busy, bustling, dynamic, efficient and fascinating, if a little cold-hearted. It still has the world’s most spectacular skyline.

But other Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore are perhaps just as busy, and in some ways their infrastructure is more modern. On the other hand Hong Kong seems more humane these days, with many citizens concerned about justice, democracy and ecology, not just about making money.

As for Guangzhou, arriving there in the 1980s was like going back in time, its old-fashioned shops and buildings somehow peaceful, despite the crowds, its population moving around by bicycle or very old, slow buses.

Nowadays it is a modern metropolis with an extensive underground railway. The skyline seen from a trip on the river was different even from the last river trip I took there just four years ago.

Every time I go to China I am struck by the increasing numbers of people who speak English, especially those who do so extremely well. I was attending an international conference so it was not so surprising to find many presentations by Chinese academics in excellent English, some of them not even needing to refer to their notes.

But I also found more and more people in railways stations and shops able to speak English quite fluently.


On the fast modern train back to Shenzhen – a huge, Mandarin-speaking city on the border with Hong Kong that was a Cantonese-speaking village in the 1980s – I was having difficulty conversing with the passenger next to me in Mandarin and a young student opposite us translated without any effort whatsoever. Of course Guangzhou is not typical of China as a whole, but while smaller towns may be different, according to my experience this growth in English is certainly to be found in other large cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

In contrast, the use of English doesn’t seem to have changed much in Hong Kong. Visually it looks like a bilingual city, with signage, public notices and transport information in Chinese and English. And there has always been an elite for whom English is a first language. But the majority of Hong Kong’s population get by very well in Cantonese only, and if they need another language it is more likely to be Mandarin than English nowadays. If you want Chinese food - and there is a lot of it - you are unlikely to find an English menu except in restaurants frequented by tourists.

The growth of English in China and its apparent stagnation in Hong Kong provide evidence that political colonisation does not necessarily lead to language colonisation. As in neighbouring Macao, where very few people ever spoke the language of their Portuguese colonisers, few people in Hong Kong needed English in order to prosper economically or culturally under the British authorities. Even though English has long been a compulsory subject at school, many of the people who read it well enough are not at all confident in speaking. Personally, I found it much easier to understand the ticket seller's English explanations at Guangzhou East Railway Station than those of her counterpart at Hong Kong's Hong Hom Station.

In fact at the conference I attended there was a presentation about Hong Kong doctors who have to give evidence in court. The Hong Kong legal system operates in both Cantonese and English and witnesses are asked to choose which they prefer. Many expert witnesses such as doctors and scientists choose to speak in English as this is the language they did their medical training in. But while they may be able to read complex medical English texts, many of them have difficulty understanding quite basic spoken English when asked questions by lawyers.

It will probably be many years before a higher percentage of Mainland Chinese than Hong Kong Chinese speak English, but it seems likely to happen sooner or later.

Chinese teachers for Britain

The British Education Minister recently announced plans to spend £11 million to bring maths teachers over from China to teach in UK schools. She hopes that the Chinese, who will be recruited among English-speaking schoolteachers in Shanghai, will be able to stop the decline in maths skills among British children.

According to the last survey by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2010, children in the Shanghai region of China ranked highest in the world for maths, and also topped the list for science and reading. British kids have fallen to 28 (out of 65 countries) in maths and 25th in reading, although they do better at science, coming 16th. Five Asian countries or regions (Shanghai, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan) were in the top ten countries overall, with Finland coming 3rd, Canada 6th and New Zealand 10th.

The plan to employ Chinese teachers has brought a mixed response in Britain. One or two people have questioned whether the teachers will speak good enough English to teach in Britain. But far more people worry that the teachers will not be able to pass on their skills simply because British children are not as well disciplined as Chinese youngsters and will not listen to what their teachers tell them. Many British people feel that the decline in maths and reading skills is a sign of the general decline in the education system because of teachers not being strict enough.

However, some Britons have also questioned whether Chinese education is as good as it is generally considered to be. For one thing, the PISA survey concentrates on Shanghai, not on the whole of China. China’s largest city is its wealthiest too, and its best educated and most competitive. Further, more than half of Shanghai's children come from poorer migrant families and do not participate in the PISA survey. Another criticism is that Chinese education is based on memorisation rather than analysis and creativity, which means that students get good results in exams but may not be so good at solving real problems when they start to work. On the other hand, many people point out that traditional discipline and emphasis on memorisation and exams were exactly the kind of educational methods that used to be employed in British schools – when standards are assumed to have been higher.

The report reminded me of a plan, a few years ago, for American state schools to teach children Mandarin so that the US would be more competitive. Critics of the plan said it would be a waste of money as it was unlikely many Americans would learn to speak Mandarin as well as the Chinese were learning to speak English. They felt it would be better to spend the money on improving maths skills.

Interestingly, at a time when more westerners are conscious of a decline in local school performance in comparison with China, many Chinese are beginning to question their own education system and comparing it unfavourably with western models. In an article in The Observer two months ago ("Chinese schooling wins praise - but not from nation's parents or educators"), one Beijing mother said she was envious of British schoolchildren who were taught to discover things on their own rather than simply be coached for exams. Lao Kaishing, a professor at Beijing Normal University, said Chinese schools had limited resources and put them all into improving children's exam scores rather than into raising their problem-solving abilities or interpersonal skills.

I cannot help wondering whether the way language is taught is the key to the differences between Chinese and British education. UK schoolkids start writing stories and essays when very young. They make a lot of spelling mistakes - and continue to do so even when older - but they become pretty good at expressing themselves. Chinese kids, needing to learn thousands of characters, have less time for free expression because of all the rote learning they have to do.

Anyway, it seems to me that each culture could learn from the other when it comes to education, so interest in how things are done elsewhere can only be a good thing.

Gaijin, laowai, farang and mat salleh

The other day I was pleased to spot a new restaurant in Tokyo near where I am working since there aren’t too many choices for eating there in the evening – but was immediately disappointed by a sign saying it was off limits to foreigners. Whether trying to be encouraging or humourous I’m not sure, but my colleague commented: Don’t worry, it probably doesn’t mean you!



No Foreigners signs are not unusual in Japan, especially outside bars or in advertisements for apartments to rent. The only law specifically prohibiting racial discrimination is an international one that Japan signed up to in 1995: The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. There is some doubt about whether it has much force, especially since many Japanese laws, such as gender-equality legislation, require people to ‘make efforts’ without punishing them if they don’t. However, it was used successfully in 1999 to obtain compensation for a Brazilian woman who had been refused entry to a shop with a No Foreigners poster on the door. In web forums participated in by foreigners living in Japan, many people express shock at these bans, although some are sympathetic to bar-owners and apartment-owners wanting to avoid the possibility of foreigners getting aggressively drunk or having noisy parties at night and failing to dispose of their rubbish properly.

Replying to a Youtube complaint by Meaphe about her difficulty in finding an apartment, for example, Gimmeaflakeman and Tomoko advise her that it is ‘nothing personal’ and that there are many places that do rent to foreigners – some that rent only to foreigners, indeed.



Debates about whether foreigners should expect the same rules against discrimination in Japan as they have in their own countries, and whether it is better to be openly discriminatory rather secretly so, are interesting, but in this blog on language around Asia I want to concentrate on various words for ‘foreigner’ and what they seem to mean.



Gaijin (外人 – literally ‘outside person’) is one of the first words foreigners learn in Japan. When gaijin were rare, many of them got annoyed to hear this word constantly called out. The old lady who ran the public bathhouse I used when I lived in a provincial city used to address me as gaijin-san whenever she wanted to tell me off for not drying myself off properly as I stood in front of her naked and steamy. In most of Japan today no one notices gaijin much, and most non-Japanese don’t seem to mind the term. However, Arudou Debito, an American-born naturalised Japanese whose campaigns include a lawsuit against a Hokkaido bathhouse that banned all foreigners after having trouble with foreign seamen, believes the term is harmful because of the simplistic way it divides the world between Japanese and everyone else. He uses the example of a group of Japanese tourists he heard in Italy referring to locals – rather than themselves – as gaijin.

My own feeling is that for most Japanese, gaijin are Europeans or North Americans, especially white ones. Asians and Africans are more likely to be called gaikokujin (外国人=outside country person), which sounds more formal but to my ears is less friendly.



This distinction has a parallel in China, where the formal word (also 外国人=wàiguórén) is heard less often by white people than 老外(lǎowài = old outsider). Depending on the context, lǎo can mark respect (老师= old teacher), disrespect (老东西=old fool) or nothing much at all (老虎= a tiger regardless of age), and thus there are frequent discussions about whether lǎowài is acceptable. Like gaijin in Japan, many lǎowài in China use the local term about themselves and prefer it to the suspiciously sweet wàiguópéngyou (外国朋友= foreign friends). Dark-skinned foreigners are more likely to be called (黑人= black person).


Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese have a longer experience of living alongside Europeans than do mainlanders and have a variety of words for them. In Singapore, where the biggest first language is Hokkien, white people are most commonly referred to as angmo (红毛= red hair) and opinion is divided as to whether it is harmless or insulting. The Cantonese term gweilo (ghost man) is considered racist by many people in both Singapore and Hong Kong. I was reprimanded for saying it by an Italian long-term resident of Hong Kong who finds it typifies the deep racial divisions there. Singapore-based blogger Aussie Pete suggests its use in a sports game in Australia would lead to a player being suspended. Yet I often hear foreigners themselves using it. Is it because they don’t know its historical associations, coming in to being when there was great hostility against Europeans? Or is it that by making fun of it they make it less harmful, just as gay people in the 1990s started to use the previously insulting word ‘queer’ about themselves?



The term farang is also used by many farang in Thailand. Its origin may be the same as the word for Frenchman. Like gaijin and lǎowài it refers mostly to white people and there is disagreement about whether it is harmful. Mat salleh, which somehow got transformed from the name of a rebel leader who killed a lot of white colonialists into a name for white people themselves, is generally regarded by both locals and foreigners in Malaysia as harmless and even affectionate. One contributor to a web forum commented that it doesn’t sound so affectionate when referring to noisy, drunken foreigners, however. The same could be said for farang and indeed most of these terms: it depends on what is in the mind of the person who says the word and the one who hears it at the time. I had never thought that Indon was anything more than an abbreviation for Indonesian, for example, until I used it in a text message to an Indonesian friend. He was upset because it is often used by Malaysians to insult Indonesians and there had recently been tension between the two countries.



There will always be terms to group people who are different from ourselves, and sometimes they will be used innocently or affectionately, and sometimes maliciously. Gaijin, lǎowài, farang and mat salleh can be considered part of the English of Asia since they are words used by both foreigners and locals in the English spoken there, but clearly they have a range of meanings and should not be used without some thought. There has always been racism around the world, but when white people start complaining about racism in Asia there must be many Asians who think about the old days when European colonialists put up signs in Shanghai parks saying ‘No dogs or Chinese’. Indeed, Debito didn’t get much sympathy from the largely Chinese and Korean audience when he complained on Japanese TV about discrimination against white people (including white people with Japanese citizenship) in the Hokkaido bathhouse.

As for that sign at the new restaurant in Tokyo, it is interesting that it is in Chinese and Korean, as well as ungrammatical English. Just like the landlady I visited about renting an apartment with a No Foreigners sign, I suspect my colleague was trying to tell me that it does not mean ‘your kind of foreigner’. But I think it will be better if I don’t try to find out what kind of 'foreigner' it does mean.

English Vinglish

Last week, during a night flight from one side of Asia to the other, I was beginning to get annoyed by all the announcements preventing me from sleeping. I realise that certain things have to be announced, such as reminders about seat belts when the air gets bumpy, but I don’t feel the pilot needs to give us all those details about the model of the plane, our altitude and average speed, all the countries we will fly over etc. And I’m sure the flight attendants don’t have to announce the opening and closing of duty-free sales and how to join the airline’s loyalty programme so many times. Since most flights use three languages – those of the departure and arrival points plus English – all these announcements seem to take ages. At such times I even find myself thinking ‘Maybe they should just do them once, briefly - and in English only!’ Unable to sleep, I looked through the films that were being shown. And I found one that reminded me that ‘English only’ is really no solution.

English Vinglish is the first film directed by Gauri Shinde, wife of well-known Indian movie director R. Balki. She also wrote the screenplay and has said the story represents an apology to her mother, who sent her children to English-medium schools so as to give them social and economic advantages but was sometimes laughed at by those very children because of her own poor English. A comedy with a serious message, the film centres on Shashi, a beautiful housewife (played by superstar Sridevi Kapoor) living in India and her middle class family. Her husband conducts business in English. Her daughter, Sapna, attends a posh English-medium school. Even her small son speaks English. But Shashi hardly understands it. She speaks to them in Hindi and they reply in Hindi or in Hinglish, while speaking English among themselves. Her husband is kind but patronising, viewing the catering that she does outside the house as a hobby rather than a serious business.

Sapna makes fun of her mother’s mistakes in English and uses the language to keep her teenage life secret. When her mother is visiting her school, Sapna intervenes in a conversation with a friend’s mother so that she won’t notice Shashi's lack of English. But we can see the anxiety on Shashi’s face when the woman invites her to visit her home.

Then there is a phone call from Shashi’s sister, who has lived in New York for many years. Her daughter is marrying an American boy and the whole family are invited. Shashi is to come to America first to help with the wedding arrangements. While happy for her niece, she is terrified of travelling alone to a foreign country. All her worst fears come true when she goes into the centre of New York for the first time, tries to buy something to eat and drink at a busy café, and is mocked by the rude and impatient waitress.

The turning point in the story is when Shashi sees an advert promising to teach English in only three weeks – which is how long she has before her family arrives for the wedding. She starts secretly attending the classes, learning how to ride the subway and get around the city on her own. The class includes a Pakistani taxi driver who says he needs English to get a better job and find a wife; an Indian software engineer who is made fun of at his workplace; and a French cook who falls madly in love with Shashi. She turns out to be the hardest-working student and is very sad when she discovers she won’t be able to take her final exam because it clashes with the wedding – one of many conflicts in the story between her need to educate herself and her desire to look after her family. But in the end the students and the teacher all come to the wedding. To her family’s amazement, Shashi gives a touching speech for her niece in slow but competent English and her teacher announces that she has passed the course with distinction. Her daughter and husband feel ashamed about how they have undervalued her and the film ends with a grand song and dance number – this is Bollywood, after all.

This could easily have been just the story of a woman’s efforts to ‘improve’ herself. Instead, the director makes it clear that we should never assume that being successful is the same thing as knowing English. From the start it is clear that Shashi is very talented. As well as her famous cooking she entertains her son with dance impressions. In English she is shy and hesitant, but given the chance to cook, or to dance, she shines. At school, Sapna’s friend’s mother finds her charming, and when she meets Sapna’s teacher, he is the one who feels ashamed: Shashi apologetically asks if they can talk in Hindi. After all, it is the national language in a country where fluent English speakers are a small, if influential, minority.) But he is from the non-Hindi south and speaks it poorly, and Shashi has to help him with his grammar. When she is being interviewed for her visa at the US consulate, an American official asks her how she will manage in America with such poor English - but his colleague points out that the American manages well enough in India without speaking Hindi.

In New York too we see that English is not everything. The teacher of the English class does not appear to be a very knowledgeable character. In a conversation after class, the students conclude that they are probably smarter than the people they work for – except for their poor English. We also see the Hindi speakers getting a chance to turn the tables on the English speakers when they gently tease the niece’s American boyfriend. Finally, when the family is flying back to India, Shashi asks the flight attendant, in confident English, if she can have a newspaper. A Hindi newspaper. I find it rather interesting that one of India's biggest stars was chosen for this relatively small movie, but perhaps Sridevi herself could see its importance. A native Tamil speaker, she has acted in Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. And now English too - which, it turns out, she speaks much more fluently in real life than the character she plays in English Vinglish.

Technical support

Last month I wrote about call centres. One of the jobs many call centre employees have is to provide technical support for people who can’t assemble or operate some product. In many cases they are providing English-language support for consumers who have bought products made in Asia. China now dominates the production of all kinds of electronic equipment and this has generated a huge demand for technical translators, with English the language most needed. But the English instructions that come with products are often baffling (“For safety reasons do not put the air-conditioning in the chicken”) as well as sometimes being entertaining (“Please to insert card in your mother’s board.”).

As a general rule, translation should be done from a foreign language into the translator’s own language, but the rapid pace of Chinese economic growth, and the lack of English-speakers learning Chinese (in comparison with Chinese learning English) means that mostof the English translation is done by Chinese, and some if it is not very good. Of course this is not just a Chinese problem. Not so long ago I was staying at a hotel in Nagoya and the instructions for using the TV were: It is able to be seeing of the program of the favorite by pushing ground D button and pushing the channel button in the TV operation part when switching from the room theater to the TV screen. This was clearly produced using translation software and somehow I worked it out. In fact I should add that I generally find both the English and the Japanese instructions for Japanese products much better than their British or American ones. I should also mention that my mother, who did not learn to use a computer until she was 70, found the advice she received from a call centre based in India extremely clear.

Of course translation software, such as Googletranslate, has improved greatly. But just like an old-fashioned dictionary, it has to be used carefully and intelligently, and is likely to lead to disastrous results if used by someone who doesn’t know the language they are attempting to translate at all. Asia’s achievements in both hardware and software production seem all the more impressive when we consider the language barriers that have had to be overcome. Much of the technology in use today was originally developed by scientists working in English.

The first modern computers (Iowa State University’s Atanasoff and the University of Pennsylvania’s ENIAC) were built in the United States. Briton Tim Berners-Lee has been credited with inventing the worldwide web. The first text message was sent in the UK. A lot of technology has also been developed by scientists who were not native English-speakers yet worked mainly in that language. Thus the generation of Asians that started to use personal computers in the 1980s or send text messages in the 1990s tended to do so in English. But now Asians lead the world in both software and hardware production.

English and the educational arms race

Almost all Asian universities demand some English proficiency. Despite its ambivalent feelings towards English since independence from Britain, Myanmar makes English one of three subjects required to get into university. In Indonesia both public and private universities set English tests, whatever candidates intend to study. Since all Singaporean state schools teach in English, students coming from China take a year of English as a university entrance requirement, even though most of their Singaporean teachers will be Mandarin speakers. And nearly all Japanese university entrants take a test in English – even though they may not need to take one in maths or Japanese language. Many countries continue to make English study obligatory after university entrance. Most of India’s 272 universities not only have required courses in the language but use it as their main medium of instruction. Uzbekistan allows students to choose among English, German or French, but increasing numbers of institutions – including Tashkent University’s departments of Economics, Management, International Relations and Science – have made English compulsory. In the University of Laos, levels of English are still generally low, but students have a strong incentive to learn it since a lot of the material in their library is in that language, having been donated by international aid development agencies.

While English has long been the main tertiary medium in former British and American colonies, English-medium programmes are increasing in Japan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and other countries where the language has no official status. This seems to be a global, rather than an Asian, trend, with over 1500 master’s degrees now being taught in English in non-anglophone countries around the world. But motives for teaching in English vary widely, from lack of materials or teachers in local languages, through desire to increase the number of foreign students, to the need to raise international ranking. Recently, Kabul University announced its intention to teach all subjects in English as soon as practicable, but it is suspected that the main aim is not to further its ambitions to be regarded as “the Cambridge of Afghanistan” so much as to find a neutral tongue and avoid antagonisms that have developed during the country’s policy of using both Dari and Pashtun. Behind most of the initiatives to go ‘international’ through English, however, lies economics. A few decades ago only a tiny elite could dream of going to an overseas university. Indeed when I was a graduate student at London’s highly multicultural School of Oriental and Asian Studies, I had the feeling that many of the Asian and African students there already knew each other because they had been sent to the same schools in Britain and America by their wealthy families. But nowadays overseas education is a possibility for more people.

Global university league tables have been published by the London-based Times Education Supplement (TES), the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) group (which used to collaborate with TEX, and by Shanghai ‘s Jiao Tong University, Many prospective students study them furiously to see how their local institutions compare internationally. According to British linguist David Graddol there is now an “educational arms race.” QS and Jiao Tong do not always agree, but both have a disproportionate number of English-speaking institutions in their upper rankings. This has naturally led some people to claim there is a bias toward the English language, and even toward Anglo-Saxon patterns of education, in these university rankings. Whatever the truth of this, it is notable that universities in many parts of Asia, are moving up through these rankings. In 2012 QS ranked the University of Hong Kong at 23 and the National University of Singapore at 25 in the world. Both are English-medium. But the universities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Seoul, which teach very few courses in English. followed them closely in the rankings.

Some languages are more equal than others

恭喜发财and Happy Year of the Rabbit！


While in Beijing recently I read an article in The China Daily about the dissatisfaction of people who had trained to become teachers of Chinese as a foreign language. A few weeks ago I described Chinese as ‘the other world language’, with over 30 million people learning it around the world and the Chinese government promoting its soft power through language and culture classes at a rapidly growing number of Confucius Institutes. And yet this article claimed that the great majority of people qualified to teach the language to foreigners in China end up doing other jobs, such as doing deskwork in government offices or translating for private companies. The main reason seems to be low pay.


In this occasional blog, based on experiences travelling, working and studying around Asia, I try to emphasise my view that not only all varieties of English, but also all languages, are equally important and valid. However, sometimes I read something or talk to someone and wonder if my view is too idealistic or romantic.


According to the China Daily piece, newly qualified teachers of Chinese can expect to earn only 30 to 40 yuan (about $5) per hour, compared with thosese qualified to teach English, who can get 120 yuan. Despite the apparent boom in demand for the language, the economic value of Chinese thus seems to be only a quarter of that of English! The situation of one qualified teacher is especially poignant: he was earning about 40 yuan an hour to teach Chinese while paying 200 yuan per hour to learn English – from a teacher who was probably less qualified than him.



Of course the value of a language can never be reduced merely to how much money it is worth, but we can guess that the main problem for these teachers is that there are simply far more people in China needing English than Chinese. In a country where speaking Chinese is a matter of course, and where the number of foreigners is still relatively small, this is a matter of simple arithmetic. However, the value of English is augmented by the fact that English-speakers in China, whether they are foreign or Chinese, and whether they use the language as a first, second or foreign language, are generally wealthier than non-English-speakers. The noticeboards in the clubs and community halls of areas of Beijing where foreigners and wealthier Chinese live are targeted by maids, cooks, child-minders, drivers and many other people anxious to advertise their English skills in order to get jobs with a better salary than they could expect from working for people who never use English.



The situation in the rest of Asia is not so different. Whether we like it or not, the fact is that English skills command better salaries than other languages. Some countries, such as Malaysia, have tried to redress this imbalance by requiring government employees to have qualifications in an Asian language; but the result is that many graduates with good English skills ignore the public sector and get jobs in the better-paid private sector.

We cannot assume that English will continue to have the most economic power, however. If the number of people learning the language continues to grow as it has done, some day sooner or later it is likely that most people around the world will speak the language, at least to some extent. Knowing English will become a matter of course. When that happens, it will be the languages that people know in addition to English that will attract the higher salaries. But that day may still be quite far away.

The other world language

All around Asia there seems to be an irreversible expansion in the use of English. Even corners of the continent that resist Anglo-Saxon-dominated capitalism are not immune. North Korea’s national news agency, Naenara, regularly publishes articles in English in order to reach a wider audience. English is used for propaganda on the banners displayed at international sports matches in Pyongyang. However, we should be cautious about assuming that the growth of English is inevitable.

For one thing, the language gap between Asia’s influential, affluent elite and its urban and especially rural poor remains huge. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, has middle-class areas where families use English more than any other language, but it has far more areas where children get very little schooling at all, let alone in English. While every child in Seoul studies English, there is a big contrast between some wealthy suburbs south of the river (Kangnam), where there is an English-language kindergarten on almost every street, and the older, poorer Kangbok districts to the north where it can be hard to find a shopkeeper or taxi-driver who understand even a few words of English. English-language skills are often cited to explain the rapid modernisation of India’s economy, but it must be remembered that perhaps no more than 4% of the population can use the language proficiently.

For another, as British linguist David Graddol points out, while English continues to grow as a second language, the proportion of the world’s population speaking it as a first language is actually falling. Hindi and Arabic speakers are increasing faster. Chinese has far more first-language speakers, and while population growth in China is slowing, the number of non-Chinese learning Mandarin is exploding.

It has been estimated that over 30 million people are currently studying Chinese. South Koreans are especially enthusiastic, aware that their country now does more trade with China than America. But Mandarin-learners are also growing in the UK, where there are now over 80 secondary schools teaching the language. At Hawkesdown House, a private school in an affluent part of London, four-year-olds are learn it. Some British parents even hire Mandarin-speaking nannies for their children. Still greater interest can be found in Australia and New Zealand, where courses for European languages and even Japanese struggle to compete. America is not known for its enthusiasm for foreign languages, but the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently considered allocating $1.3 billion for Chinese language and culture classes in public schools.



The strongest motivation for studying the language is economic, of course. The economies of China and several of its neighbours consistently outperform the EU and US. Recently the Asian Development Bank predicted that less than 1.25% of East Asians will be living below the poverty line by 2020. The world has never seen a manufacturing expansion like the one occurring in China now, and it seems everyone wants a piece of the action. Aware of the economic and also cultural advantages to be gained from global interest in their language, the Chinese government has set up Confucius Institutes around the world. The first opened in Seoul in 2004, and there are now nearly 300.

The number of Britons studying in China has grown since 2004 from 650 to 1400. Many have business or other professional qualifications and feel that adding Chinese language skills will give them an edge over competitors. Concerned about the possibility of foreign businessmen taking jobs from its own citizens, China’s Securities Regulatory Commission now requires high-ranking executives in the financial services sector to take a government test requiring a good standard of written and spoken Chinese.



While the expansion of China’s economy looks unstoppable, it is difficult to say whether current interest in its language will continue to expand. Over 200 million people are studying English in China, and it is likely that far more of them will become proficient in the language than the number of Americans and Britons who will become fluent in Chinese. The International Herald Tribune suggested that rather than pour dollars into learning Chinese, US high schools would do better to concentrate on improving maths skills, which are now below the standard of schools in China.

Police policies

The first time I got into trouble with the police in Japan was about two years after I’d started living there and already spoke the language fairly well. I’d borrowed a friend’s car but hadn’t been able to return it before going away on a 3-day skiing trip, so I parked it in a quiet suburban street. When I returned I found lots of plastic tags tied to the car’s wing-mirrors. In some countries, when you park a car illegally they clamp the wheel or tow the vehicle away. In Japan they just clamp your mirror, believing that drivers will be embarrassed into paying their fine immediately. I am not easily embarrassed. But I didn’t want to cause my friend any trouble. So I phoned to say I would go straight to the police. “Just be very apologetic, “ she advised me. “And don’t speak Japanese!”

When I arrived, a huge cop led me into a small room with bars on the windows. So it was easy to feel apologetic. However, since he didn’t seem to speak English, it was hard for me to avoid using Japanese. But I decided to speak it as badly as possible. The big cop told me I had committed a very serious offence and the fine would be heavy. Then he looked up and changed to English. “Hmm, seem you not live in Japan so long. Maybe not understand Japanese customs. Ok, just go. But next time no parking.” I have often wondered how much I would have had to pay if I had spoken in fluent Japanese.


I realise some foreigners don’t get treated so kindly (especially if they are from Asia or Africa). But I’ve heard many tales from English-speaking friends about how they escaped trouble – as long as they didn’t use Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean, or whatever the language of the place they were in. Perhaps it is because the police are busy and don’t want to go through the embarrassment of explaining things in English unless a serious crime is involved.


While most Asian police officers hardly speak English, I have come across several exceptions, such as a very fluent young Tokyo cop who came to investigate when my New Zealand colleague had his apartment burgled, and a Bangkok friend who had to study English, often with foreign instructors, in order to enter the commando force there.


And then there are the tourist police. Countries whose economies rely heavily on tourism, such as Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand, have special police forces to deal with crimes against (or sometimes by) tourists, and they have to be fluent in English.

Thailand’s Thammasat University has produced a textbook entitled English for Tourist Police. Its chapters, which include Giving Directions (“Make a left turn.”) and Complaining and Showing Sympathy (“Oh that’s too bad!”), give an idea of what situations Thai police expect to encounter when dealing with foreigners. A section on robbery has a story of a foreigner being given whisky with sleeping pills in it; another is about getting refunds from jewelery shops who overcharge tourists.

China made English lessons compulsory for officers in Beijing during the Olympics. It even produced a 252-page book: Olympic Security English. This has the usual sections on traffic accident, thefts and lost passports, but seems to hold the view that foreign men are likely like to get drunk and molest local women. It is full of expressions such as: “Please blow into the intoxiliser” and “Don’t take too many liberties with the waitress”.

Engrish

On my very first visit to Japan I stayed at a small hotel in central Tokyo with a sign on the door warning: Swindlers dangling with our guests around our hotel at night have no relations with us. Beware and do not be cheated by their skillful enticement. This made me quite nervous when I ventured outside into the night. Especially when a group of noisy drunken men started shouting and waving.

I woke the next morning with a terrible hangover after spending half the night drinking with these guys. Perhaps Japan was not such a dangerous place after all. That warning sign now seemed funny rather frightening, giving advice about grime prevention rather than crime prevention. I wasn't worried in the least about the batter toast with harm that the breakfast menu offered me. I realised I had entered a world of Engrish – language that kind of looks like English but somehow is not.

Over the years I've often wondered if it is acceptable to make fun of the strange English I see all over Asia, from Burmese signs warning me against umbrellaring to Malaysian foodstalls selling bugger. After all, many English speakers don't even try to use another language. And should I tell my female student the meaning of the Boyaholic shirt that she wears? Before the Olympics, Beijing launched a campaign to correct mistakes on English signs. Several foreigners volunteered to help so that tourists wouldn't make fun of China's English. But some foreign residents of the city resented these attempts to spoil their amusement at advertisements for immorality pills or signs in restaurants warning of landslide areas.

Whether or not we think it is OK to laugh at Engrish, it can be instructive to work out how it occurs. Sometimes it is the result of a spelling error, such as fruits shoot ('fruit short cake', which is quite popular in Japan, though very different from what the Americans and British call 'shortcake').

Some Engrish needs a little more time to work out. The cream pain I see at my local bakery is not an instrument of torture but a kind of bread ('pain' in French, which sounds similar to the Japanese word pan).

One tyre-shop in Beijing invites customers to use a pick foetus machine. This seems completely bizarre until we realise that the Chinese character above "foetus" is 胎, which is used in combination with some characters to mean 'foetus' but with others to mean 'tyre'.

I was also puzzled by the sign on the side of a shuttle bus run by Ritsumeikan, a prestigious university in Kyoto, which said Univemeikan Ritsurisity. Until I realised that the sign-painter, who presumably did not speak any English, must have had four strips of print – Ritsu, meikan, Unive and rsity – and managed to paste them in the wrong order. Sometimes a simple error is all the more striking for being surrounded by overly formal or poetical language, such as a label on a box at Tabei Airport that says Unforceful discard box for dangerous items ('unforceful' usually means 'weak' or 'feeble', not 'voluntary') or a Tokyo boutique sign that raises our expectations about gifts that transcend man and woman only to let us down with basic grammatical errors.

Some people actually make money out of Engrish. The website www.engrish.com, for example, not only collects pictures of Engrish from around Asia, but sells T-shirts with it printed on them. But Asians may be starting to get their own back now that so many English-speakers get themselves tattooed with 'Chinese' or 'Japanese' words that turn out to mean things like Girl Vegetable. Meanwhyile the fashion company Ichikoo (www.ichikoo.com) has started selling shirts asking お電気ですか。 (Are you electricity?) and declaring自由の洗濯!　(Freedom of washing!).