Chan Is Missing

Uh, Hilton, please?

Here's a game I play.

1,000, 2,000, 3,000.

Hey, uh, what's a good place to eat in Chinatown?

Under three seconds.

That question comes up under three seconds 90% of the time.

I usually give them my routine

on the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese food

and get a good tip.

Hey, what are you doing? What are you doing here?

- You said you weren't gonna come. - Hey, who invited you?

You invited me.

I didn't invite you. I invited you and you took it back.

- Hey. Hitting me like that. - Hubba hubba.

- How about a beer, huh? - What about a beer?

- It's in the refrigerator. - Get it yourself.

I'll get it myself.

You know where it is. You've been here enough.

Thought you guys weren't gonna eat at home.

- Yeah. I was gonna take... - Yeah?

My mother and sister out. We were gonna go to the Golden Lantern.

- But see, Mo Yi's from Taiwan. - Good thing I didn't go there.

And Gum Sing, you know? All the communists eat there.

So we decided to just eat at home.

And at home we have this US-certified food here, you know.

Chicken.

The cow's ear, the herb skunk.

Hey, don't eat that mushroom. That's from China.

Hey, this is from Iowa.

- Go ahead. - From Des Moines, Iowa, man.

I won't wave a PRC flag around here, you know.

What do you mean, PRC flag around here?

Hey, hey. What kinda Chinese Chinese are you, huh?

PRC, huh?

Taiwan, pro-Taiwan?

- Richmond District? - What's this thing?

Oakland Hill, Wah? Huh?

- Ho Chi Minh. Yay, yay, yay. - Yay. Yay, Yay-

Oh, flags. Talking about flags. Guess what happened.

- You went to Flag Brothers. - No.

- Guess who called me today. - Who called today?

- Who? Who? - Gary. You remember Gary?

- Gary Lang, the one with the Porsche? - He called me five times. Yeah.

- I think he like you, huh? - I Wish he did.

-Anyway, Gary called to tell me - -Probably scare him away, you know.

No, no. He told me he was gonna sue the city for the hotel tax

because he thought that was a misuse of funds

- for the flag-waving business. - Oh, that.

Gary is really afraid of his Taiwan competitor.

So he wants him to look bad, you know,

- the guy that's running for supervisor. - Isn't Gary running with Taiwan support?

- No. - Huh?

He jumped on the commie bandwagon, you know.

- Commie bandwagon. - That new Chinese money that's coming in.

- Who's running on a Taiwan - -He's a commie-lover now.

I know. This guy named Le Kaung Ging,

- I think. - Le Kaung Ging.

- Hey, guess what. - What?

This guy Paul's running too. You know, Paul, the neuter candidate?

I mean, the Chinese-American candidate. Remember him?

You know what's gonna happen with all these guys going like that.

The voters are gonna be herded in there by all those organizers,

except they're gonna vote for Bernie Lee from the Castro District.

The gay candidate? We're gonna have a gay judge.

- Chinatown gonna end up with a gay sup. - Everyone would love it.

What's that do?

- Huh? - Huh?

- This? - He's always doing that to me.

- Huh? What? No. Chester, huh? - Yeah.

- It's my nephew's. - What's your nephew's?

It's my nephew's piano. I'm learning about music.

- It sounds just like you. - St. Mary's. St. Mary's drill.

Last week, my nephew Steve and I decided to get a cab license

so we can be our own boss.

We had to sublease the license from an independent owner in Chinatown.

My niece Amy and my friend Chan Hung helped set up the deal.

The thing was that Chan Hung had to take cash to go finalize everything.

Steve felt uneasy about that,

but Amy and I convinced him that it would be okay.

But I'm a little worried about Chan Hung. We haven't seen him for two days.

This morning, when Steve and I were having breakfast at Chester's,

a woman showed up looking for Chan Hung.

It was about a car accident he was in.

You see, I'm doing a paper on the legal implications

of cross-cultural misunderstandings,

and Mr. Chan's case is a perfect example of what I'm trying to expose here.

You see, the policeman and Mr. Chan

had completely different culturally-related assumptions

about what kind of communication about communication each one was using.

For instance, the policeman, in an English-speaking mode,

asked a direct factual question.

They're interested in facts, and that's all.

Asked, "Did you stop at the stop sign?"

Expected a yes or no answer, simple yes or no answer.

Mr. Chan, however, rather than giving him a yes or no answer,

began to go into his past driving record, how good it was,

the number of years he'd been in the States, all the people he knew,

trying to relate different events, or objects or situations

to what was happening then, to the action at hand.

Now, this is very typical, as I'm sure you know, of most Chinese speakers:

trying to relate possibly unrelated objects,

or seemingly unrelated objects, to the matter at hand.

The Chinese try to relate points

or events or objects that they feel are pertinent to the situation,

which may not, to anyone else, seem directly relevant at the time.

At any rate, at this the policeman became rather impatient,

restated the question, "Did you or did you not stop at the stop sign?"

In a rather hostile tone, which in turn flustered Mr. Chan,

which caused him to hesitate answering the question,

which further enraged the policeman so that he asked the question again,

"You didn't stop at the stop sign, did you?" in a negative tone,

to which Mr. Chan automatically answered, "No."

Now to any native speaker of English,

"No" would mean, "No, I didn't stop at the stop sign."

However, to Mr. Chan, "No, I didn't stop at the stop sign"

was not "No, I didn't stop at the stop sign."

It was "No, I didn't not stop at the stop sign."

In other words, "Yes, I did stop at the stop sign."

Do you see what I'm saying?

He was, uh...

correct in the Chinese because the answer has to match the truth of the action.

However, English speakers, native American English speakers,

tend to work more from a grammatical mode.

Well, to put it in layman's language,

English language emphasizes the relationship

between grammatical structures.

And the Chinese language tends to emphasize the relationship

between the listener, the speaker, and the action involved.

At any rate, Mr. Chan has to appear in court

so we can get this all straightened out, so he can explain everything,

- and he missed his court date. - Wait a minute.

When does he have to appear in court?

Our court date was last week. That's why I'm trying to find him.

- He wasn't there last week. - He didn't tell us about that.

Have you seen him? Do you know where I can get a hold of him?

I've gotta make another appointment. We've gotta get -

Chan Hung wouldn't run away because of the car accident,

but I have a strong feeling something might have happened to him.

We've decided to go look for him after work.

Chan Hung wasn't home.

You know, I went down to the Great Star Theater,

saw this Chinese version of Saturday Night Fever, you

Except the beginning song went, you know,

"You can tell by the way I use my wok, I'm a Chinese cook, I'm a Chinese cook."

Hey, you want another beer?

Steve's joke reminded me of someone Chan Hung talks about a lot,

the cook at Golden Dragon who wears a Samurai Night Fever T-shirt,

drinks milk, chain smokes, and sings...

all while he's cooking up five orders of sweet and sour pork.

What's the next order?

Three orders of sweet and sour pork.

That's the only thing the tourists know how to order.

Sweet and sour pork.

Come on.

I smell this and my stomach turns. Where's my milk?

Milk, milk, please!

Come on.

Kitchen work is not for humans.

A barber goes round and round the chair like a merry-go-round.

A foreign student works as a cook and goes round and round

a frying wok.

Come on. Forget about it.

What about, uh, bok choy?

Oh. I want something with beef in it. Um, do you have something with beef in it?

What about -

No. That's too heavy. That's too heavy for lunch, Ma.

- Oh. - What about fish?

Yeah. Fish. Yeah.

Yeah, that rock cod sounds good.

This is the wrong food. I didn't order this.

Uh...

He's working downstairs in the kitchen. Do you want to see him?

- Yeah. - Okay. Just go through there and go down.

That was a long time ago. That's a good one.

But the thing is that...

- What's... - He's leaking gas.

- Leaking what? - Gas!

Not together. I didn't do it.

Chan was in college.

He studied aeronautics engineering.

He was always first in his class.

I came in 45th, and there were only 46 in the class.

But he couldn't find a job after he graduated.

Nobody wanted to hire him.

American companies don't want Chinese engineers.

They just want us to make egg rolls, sweet and sour pork, wont on soup.

Five wont on soup.

Next time these Americans want wont on soup...

you're gonna go, "We don't have wont on soup."

We have wont on spelled backwards, "Not now."

The funny thing was, the other day he's busing a table,

and there came these friends of his, colleagues of his from Taiwan,

visiting the United States in San Francisco.

The minute he saw those friends,

he rushed from the back door and never came back in.

Chinese people always want to save face.

Ah.

You know, the problem is, I think this guy has too much pride.

Too much pride.

Thursday. I'll talk to you later. Okay?