We’re shaking up our longstanding Pop Cantonese series by inviting author Eva Wong Yi to offer her take on distinctly Cantonese expressions. Wong is known for her Chinese-language short stories, including the collections Ways to Love in a Crowded City (擠迫之城的戀愛方法) and The Four Seasons of Lam Yip (林葉的四季).
Across Hong Kong, more and more shops have been converted into unmanned rooms filled with claw machines, each containing various goodies to lure customers into throwing in coin after coin. Some say the abundance of these claw machine stations is a recession indicator, but to me, it helps me get my quick fix of dopamine when I feel unbearably down.
A while ago, after visiting a terminally ill friend, I was too depressed to resist the row of colourful, well-lit claw machines in a mall I was passing through. Each promised a boost of happy brain chemicals if I were to just feed it a few tokens worth HK$2 each, in hopes of catching a toy probably worth less than HK$2. A handful of tokens later, I found myself holding 4 tiny cat keychains, a pink skeleton plushie, a couple of gold trinkets that are definitely not real gold, and a couple of auspiciously shaped objects that claim to contain two milligrams of 999 gold each.
Even though two milligrams of gold was worth only HK$2.03, based on gold prices of the day, I appreciated the auspicious element of the hollow gold yuanbao that reads 招財 (ziu1 coi4, attracting wealth), and the gold phone sticker in the shape of a bowl of rice that reads 有米 (jau5 mai5, loaded with rice). After all, I’m too culturally Chinese to resist a blessing of great wealth, regardless of how likely it is for the blessing to come true. Besides, jau5 mai5 is such a Cantonese phrase that it delights me to see it engraved in gold.
Phrases in different languages used to discuss wealth or a lack of it are always culturally colourful. Cantonese is no exception. Rice is a particularly common motif evoked in Cantonese to discuss wealth, possibly because rice has long been a staple food, and having a large stockpile of rice used to be a sign of abundance and stability in the agricultural society of the past. The expression of jau5 mai5 as a way of saying someone is loaded is still commonly used today, even hilariously appeared in the Cantonese subtitles of the DC superhero movie Justice League in 2017: when the Flash (played by Ezra Miller) asked Batman (played by Ben Affleck) what his superpower was, Batman the billionaire said, “I’m rich,” in English. The Cantonese subtitles were translated as 我超有米 (ngo5 ciu1 jau5 mai5): ”I’m extremely loaded with rice.”
There are plenty of extensions of the rice-equals-wealth analogy in Cantonese. Employers or clients are often called 米飯班主 (mai5 faan6 baan1 zyu2), or “the boss that gives us rice”; one should therefore keep them happy for the money’s sake. Saying that someone’s not interested in a job that pays too little can be described as 大雞唔食細米 (daai6 gai1 m4 sik6 sai3 mai5): “the big chicken doesn’t care to peck at the small rice grains,” which conjures up the image of a chicken too proud to lower their head for something beneath their financial ambition.
Of course, life has plenty of ups and downs, and when someone’s down on their luck, they might meet someone who happened to 斷人米路 (tyun5 jan4 mai5 lou6), literally meaning to cut off someone’s path to obtaining rice, and metaphorically meaning destroying their livelihood. In that case, the person might end up having to 乞米 (hat1 mai5) — beg for rice.
As a freelancer, I’m blessed that I haven’t had to hat1 mai5 in my line of work, but I did literally get on my knees to retrieve my 2mg gold rice bowl sticker when it rolled under the claw machine. It wasn’t the monetary value of the gold or the auspicious blessing of imaginary wealth that got me to stick my hand into the pile of dust bunnies: at that moment of intense grief, I desperately needed a little glimmer of joy. Gold being used to make creative shapes always made me giggle. The gold rice bowl sticker reminds me of the golden cocktail buns, sausage buns and pineapple buns I’ve seen in the windows of a major jeweller, and of a time when my friend was still healthy and energetic and would joke with me about these funny gold items.
As I looked at my gold sticker that promised wealth, my only wish was that money could indeed buy health. Oh, the amount of rice and gold I’d give in a heartbeat if I could buy my friend’s health.
Note: Cantonese romanisation in this article is based on the jyutping system, which uses numbers to correspond to the six main tones in Cantonese.