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By Dewi Anggraeni

"You cannot speak Cantonese, ah? How come?" was one of the
questions frequently thrown at Dinah whenever she was in Hong
Kong.

She had tried to explain that she was Indonesian and had yet
to learn Chinese.

"Ha, you Chinese, but no speak Chinese!" was the usual reply,
loaded with accusation, completely ignoring her explanation. Some
even went as far as pointing out how remiss her parents had been.

To more sympathetic interlocutors she sometimes revealed that
she had mixed parentage, and that her mother was of Chinese
descent, but to those who reacted aggressively to her inability
to speak Cantonese, she would just raise her eyebrows and shrug
off the tension with whatever sense of humor she had left.

In reality, Dinah had tried to learn Mandarin. Her teacher had
praised her for her unusual flair for language. She had absorbed
the lessons with ease and had had no problems with diction.

Dinah could utter a phrase almost faultlessly even without
understanding the meaning. At home she would often bore and
irritate her brothers uttering words and occasionally coughing in
Mandarin, when she wanted to disguise the fact that she had
exhausted her vocabulary.

That was before her first visit to Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong she soon discovered that the ability to say words
in Mandarin with near-perfect diction, backed up by a vocabulary
easily fitted into a matchbox, posed unexpected problems for her.

As soon as she asked a well-rehearsed question, instead of
giving the prescribed short and definite reply, her interlocutor
would immediately regale her, it seemed, with the Sam Pek Eng Tay
saga, leaving her shrinking smaller and smaller into a tight
ball, completely paralyzed with guilt and embarrassment for her
inability to understand what was said.

Then she was faced with a dilemma. Should she confess that she
did not understand a word said, she would be taken for a slow-
witted nut. If she pretended that she understood every word, the
lie would soon be discovered when she could not react according
to the instructions presumably given.

In any case the result would be just as humiliating.

Dinah knew that her only saving grace would be to learn
Mandarin or Cantonese super fast, in order to speak like a native
speaker, as she would be expected to be. However this option was
impracticable because she did not have the time to do just that,
so she gave up completely and resorted to speaking only English
when she was in Hong Kong.

This time she was in Hong Kong with some Australian friends.
They agreed that they should visit Shenzhen on the South China
border.

They asked the hotel concierge for advice, and were told that
the visa application in town would take at least 24 hours to
process.

"On the other hand," the concierge added, "if you only want to
go for the day, you may want to apply on the border, which is
what many day tourists do."

The following day they left the hotel relatively early and
took a taxi to Hong Hum station. As soon as they stepped into the
building they felt handicapped for not speaking Cantonese or
understanding Chinese characters.

At this stage the only phrases Dinah could remember were, "My
left eye is stinging. Do you have a useful ointment for it?" in
Mandarin, so she humbly asked her Australian friends to conduct
all enquiries necessary while she looked on, a distance away,
literally playing a dumb brunette.

After several wrong moves to inappropriate counters, they
finally bought tickets to Lo Wu.

It was nearly eleven o'clock when they reached Lo Wu. The
force of the stampede pushed everyone in one direction only:
forward. Then luck, no doubt, allowed them to veer to the line in
front of the counter with the word "FOREIGN VISITORS" above it.

After queuing for what seemed an inordinate length of time,
they reached the counter, only to be told that they needed to
obtain a visa first.

"You don't issue visas here?" they asked, astonished.

"Not here. Upstairs."

Upstairs, they quickly found the appropriate office but queues
were moving very slowly. Some people were busy looking for pens
to borrow, because there were none available on the table near
the door where forms were to be filled out.

Noon came and went and Dinah and her friends were still in the
queue.

Finally they arrived at the counter. Her friends went first,
and each was given a visa almost immediately. But when Dinah's
turn came, the official looked at her application form then
pointed to the corner where she had written down her usual
occupation.

"What this?" he asked stiffly.

"Writer," Dinah replied.

He appeared to mumble the word after her, then rose to speak
to another official. They were immediately absorbed in a sotto
voce but animated exchange, then the other official spoke to
Dinah in Mandarin.

When he saw that Dinah was unable to respond in the language,
he looked slightly annoyed. He said something to the one holding
her form and passport, who promptly disappeared from view,
leaving her aghast at seeing her passport taken away.

They tried to work out what had caused the official alarm.

The Chinese had a thing about writers? Surely not. Didn't they
want their tourist areas written about? Didn't they want to show
the world they were now discarding their iron curtains? Were they
annoyed she would not speak Chinese? Surely she had not been the
only Chinese-looking person unable to speak the language.

Some twenty minutes later a woman official appeared with
Dinah's form and passport.

"We cannot give you a visa here," she said officiously,

"You must go back to Hong Kong and apply there!"

When asked why, she said, "To apply for a visa here, you need
to have a Hong Kong ID, and you do not have one!" she said, in a
curiously accusing tone.

None of her friends had any Hong Kong ID either. One of them
came to the counter and said, "Wait a minute. I was given a visa,
yet I don't have a Hong Kong ID. Why the difference?"

The woman official turned to him, and with a glare and a
raised voice, announced, "We don't have to tell you the reason.
You just have to go back to Hong Kong and apply there!"

To which her friend said, "I already got a visa, we're talking
about my companion here. And you told us just now she couldn't
get a visa because she didn't have a Hong Kong ID, which is not a
real reason."

The woman official became vicious. Her eyes turned red, and
she repeated angrily, "We do not have to tell you the reason!"

Then probably for good measure, she added, "Many Chinese
people are refused visa to go to Australia, are they told the
reasons?"

Dinah wanted to say they were not immigration officials so no
use asking them, when suddenly the absurdity of the whole thing
hit her. It was common knowledge that some countries were wary of
mainland Chinese applying for tourist visas, because a great
number of them would quickly go underground and become illegal
immigrants, causing social and political headaches for the
respective country's authorities. Did they seriously believe that
Dinah would overstay her visa and become an illegal immigrant in
mainland China?

At this stage her friends had become so annoyed by the
official's arrogance and rudeness that they decided to cancel
their trip to China despite having obtained their visas.

"What about the hundred dollar fees that you've paid? Couldn't
you have them reimbursed?" Dinah asked her friends, feeling
guilty for being the cause of the problem.

"Arh! If I spend another minute here I'm going to be sick!"
one of them said angrily, then taking her by the arm, marched out
of the office, followed by the others.

Dinah followed her friends unthinkingly, to one office after
another, to gain re-entry to Hong Kong. She was still deciding
what she was feeling, apart from extreme annoyance and
frustration.

When a uniformed official stopped them at a gate where they
were going, Dinah replied, still angry, "Out! What d'you think?"

The official asked to see their passports.

Dinah whipped out her passport from her bag, saying, "Here!
Have a good look at it! I've been refused a visa and told a lie
as well!"

The official looked pointedly at her, then said, "Madam, don't
be angry with me. You were refused a visa and told a lie in
China. You are now back in Hong Kong. Not the same."

As if choreographed, Dinah and her friends turned around,
trying to spot the invisible border behind them.

On the train back to Hong Hum, Dinah turned to her friends and
said, "That's it. I've drawn the curtain shut."

Seeing incomprehension on her friends' faces, she continued,
"If I had felt any links at all to China, I've lost them. I don't
want to be associated with that stupid arrogant immigration
official! You yourself said that the whole thing made you sick."

"Gosh, don't over-react, Dinah,' her friends tried to calm
her, "she was only a stupid, petty official, who hides her
pettiness behind her uniform. China is a great deal more than
that twit!"

Dinah did not answer. She knew her friends were right, but
deep down she also felt that it would be a long time before she
would feel the desire to try again, to visit China. Would she
feel differently if she had no connections at all with China? Did
she feel, even very slightly, a rejection beyond the bureaucratic
kind? She did not know the answer.