Thursday, June 26, 2008

Ha Ha Ha

I was reading a blog of a French lived in China and one of his remarks was just excellent. He observed that Chinese (in China) like to laugh and those laughs are actually quite fake. Here is an extract from his post:

"Au telephone en decrochant " ah c est toi Wang ? HA HA HA- tu vas bien ? AH HA HA , tu veux me voire aujourd hui HA HA HA je peux pas AH HA HA"

Translation: (In picking up the phone) Ah is it you Wong? HA HA HA - how are you doing? HA HA HA, you want to see me today? HA HA HA but I don't want AH HA HA

"Pendant le repas , accompagnes chacune de tes phrases par un "HA HA HA", n'hesite pas a etre tres tres bruyant."

Translation: During the meal, follow each of your sentence by a HA HA HA, do not hesitate to be very loud."

You can read his entire post here.

I found his observation funny but at the same time a bit shock. Of course I don't know a lot of Chinese from China, but out of the 10 that I know, only one laugh all the time but not as frequent as illustrated in his examples. And that just bcos this friend has a cheerful personality.

If a French decides to follow this rule and laugh HA HA HA at the end of every sentence, people might think that he is xiao (crazy in Hokkien). Ha Ha Ha.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:15 AM

    Hi Bee Ean,

    China is such a big country and regional cultural differences vary hugely. This also vary hugely depending on education level and age.

    I think his description is apt for a 40-50 year old small business man from Beijing / Guang Zhou.

    None of the 20-30 something I meet in UK behave in that way :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. i tried doing that... cannot lah... is it even possible?

    ReplyDelete
  3. casper,

    So you have met people like this? This French guy must have stayed in an area that full of 40-50 years old people then.

    zewt,

    It seems that casper knows some of them so it must be possible.

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  4. Anonymous10:39 AM

    I think it is a cultural difference. I have seen and met certain Chinese from China who do that. They aren't fake ... it's just the way they are.

    ReplyDelete