96 - Little Green Mangoes

On the way back from Sandimen today I stopped by the side of the road to buy some of the little green mangoes that a lady sat there on a stool was selling out of a large black basket. She was not alone in selling the ear-sized fruit, on my way to the mountains I'd seen various families with large and small stalls, some holding huge piles of mangoes. Having not seen any mangoes this year, I decided to get some, even though the little green variety is far from my favourite.

As it turned out, my decision to buy my mangoes from the little old lady sat by herself by the side of the road brought some difficulttues. She didn't speak a word of Chinese and my Taiwanese is extremely limited. The phrase "It's delicious!" (which is one of the few I know) would have come in handy if she were offering tasters, but she wasn't so I made use of one of the other phrases I know: "I don't understand", which was useful for letting her know that I didn't understand but hardly advanced our conversation.

This encounter was one of the very few I've had in Pingtung where a lack of Taiwanese skills has prevented me from communicating. Before I moved down here my Taipei friends asked me if I realised that no one would speak Chinese. They were wrong. There are epeople in Pingtung City who don't speak any Chinese, but they're generally around seventy years old, like the lady selling the mangoes. They are also in the minority, as far as I can tell. As it happens, seventy year old  Pingtungians with no Chinese skills rarely seek me out for conversation, so my lack of Taiwanese skills doesn't present an obstacle.

In this case I had envisioned a lovely conversation full of lovely smiles and lovely agreements about the loveliness of magoes. This couldn't happen. Instead we motioned our way through. I noticed that she spoke out of one side of her mouth. Like an idiot I kept asking her if she could speak Chinese. We weighed out one 斤 which is equal to half a kilo. I asked if this were sixty Taiwanese dollars, making a fist with my thumb and little finger sticking out, she held up five fingers and I gave her fifty. Still asking in Chinese I pointed to the house she sat outside and asked if it was hers, which of course it was. I asked if the tree she was sat beneath produced the mangoes I'd just bought and she told me it was.