On my way home today, in the monorail, I stood in front of two gals. One of them chinese, quite tomboy-ish, and another, a mat salleh (a caucasian). What stood out was that, both of them were conversing in mandarin, and man, they were not only conversing in mandarin, those were China accented mandarin! I'm impressed. There you have it, a caucasian gal, with her bluish eyes, blonde hair, fairly freckled-face, speaking my supposingly native language, because, by all means traditional, I rarely come across such scenarios here in KL. Well, maybe it's a common trend in China, in bigger city places like Beijing, or Shanghai, where quite a large number of expatriats live. For all you know, they not only speak mandarin, they also read and write perfect chinese! And that calls for a session of pressure to people who's as half-banana as I am. Hmm... I'm already starting to feel ashamed of myself [*pout*].
** Disclaimer
1. The Malaysian-ised term 'banana' refers to a chinese who doesn’t speak, read and write chinese.
2. A half-banana (or semi-banana), in my terms, speaks chinese, but doesn't write or read the language.
Recently I am impressed too with the locals around me, they could be any races besides Chinese, yet they speak very fluent Mandarin or even Chinese dialects! I find especially the non-Chinese here appreciate the environment they are brought up, they know Chinese is getting important and they learn it, whereas seeing the non-Chinese in my own country, don't even bother to pick up some basic, and also seeing their chances to learn is never lesser than the people here, how sad.
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