HK Street Market!
No, not the street markets - although I do love strolling along them buying my groceries each day - but what you can actually witness in this photo.
Can you see it? No???
OK, let me explain: you see how the Foreign Devil-Lady is buying fruit? And although you can't see it here, she's asking questions of the fruit seller standing next to her! In English!!! "What are these?" "Where do you get them?" "What do they taste like?" "How are they grown?" and he's answering her in harsh choppy monosyllables! "Papaya!" "Indonesia!" "Sweet!" "Mango!" "Taiwan!" "Organic!".
There's a reason for that: HE DOESN'T SPEAK ENGLISH!!!
But the lady alongside him does!
This is what always happens in HK. You start talking in English, and the nearest random bi-lingual passerby just stops and translates for the uni-lingual Cantonese speaker.
When I saw the nice English lady here stop to look at the fruit, I stopped too and just waited with my camera at the ready, knowing what was about to happen. And yup, that's how it went down!!!
Gweilo-Ma ("Foreign Devil-Lady") asked a question and the nice winsy little lady passerby stopped and repeated the question in Cantonese, and the man answered as best he could, just single struggled-for word from a very limited vocabulary!
And nice bi-lingual lady waited until the entire transaction was over before going on her way, and Gweilo-Ma didn't even notice it was happening.
Nice, huh! Gosh, it makes me MELT just thinking about it. And doesn't it make you just love Hong Kong too?
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