How do people decide what language to start speaking to me in?  I’m really curious because I get English about 80% of the time, Cantonese 15% of the time, and Mandarin 5% of the time.  The only Mandarin I hear is from mainlanders who don’t know Cantonese and about 95% of the Cantonese I hear comes from average locals.  However, nearly all of the service people I’ve run into have spoken to me in English before I ever open my mouth.  This goes for ticketers, waiters and waitresses, and even the people selling their goods at the market.  Basically anyone with extensive experience dealing with tourists can easily tell I have a Western background, pretty much immediately.

So the question is, how?  I still can’t figure it out.  Is it the way I dress?  The way I walk?  The way I… you know, I really can’t think of any other reasons.  Whatever it is, I must have it blazing across my forehead, screaming something like: “I’m not really Asian!”  The accuracy with which these people do it is pretty amazing at times.  At first I thought that maybe it was just their general approach to strangers, but I was standing in line and the two girls in front of me each got a “xie xie” (thank you in Mandarin) whereas I got a “thank you” upon passing.  Is it because my hair is not permed?  (Those girls both had wavy-ish hair that is a light brown, much like so many others.)  Then I thought maybe it was because I had my map out sometimes, but there are plenty of visitors from both Chinese and English-speaking areas, so that shouldn’t distinguish me.

I remember the same phenomenon happened when I went back to China as a kid.  I was told that the way I held myself was different.  I wonder if the same holds in Hong Kong, so many years later.  Do I still walk with too much confidence?  Is my skin still too tan?  (I’m the palest I’ve been in the past decade!)  What am I doing to exude this Western air?!  It’s still a mystery to me, and maybe it always will be.