Intercultural Communication

A few years back, my family and I travelled to Hong Kong for a holiday. From observation, the people in Hong Kong spoke mainly in Cantonese dialect and since my family members were able to communicate in Cantonese, we did not have many difficulties in communication. However, the experience we had there was not a very pleasant one.

Once, I passed by a gift shop to get some presents for my friends. The female shopkeeper was busy with her work and didn’t notice me. In order to get her attention, I started to wave to her and called her “xiao jie” which meant “miss” in Chinese. She glanced at me, clearly noticed by presence, but continued to ignore me and pack her merchandise. I was pretty angry with her for behavior and attitude, so I called for her even louder. The shopkeeper stomped towards me and told me to get out of her shop and she did not want to sell things to me. I was very surprised at her action but decided not to pursue the matter further since I was not familiar with the place.

In the evening, my parents and I went to a restaurant for some Chinese food. The meal was delicious but we could not finish the food and decided to call for “ta bao” which means “takeaway” in Chinese. The waiter scolded us for not being polite to them. We were quite puzzled at the way he treated us.

It was only after we returned back to Singapore that a friend told us that we should not have used the phases “xiao jie” and “ta bao” because it meant “prostitute” and “packed dead body” respectively. After this incident, I understood the importance of understanding other cultural beliefs and even their language before we interact with them. In addition, being aware of other cultural differences and complexity allowed us to overcome miscommunication problem and increased cultural sensitivity, especially in the way we speak.