A doctor friend of mine was in a Chinese restaurant the other day – odd really, as he’d just got back after three years in Hong Kong – anyway, he noticed how well the waiter spoke English. Eventually he asked if the waiter would translate something that had been bothering him for a while. Before my friend had left Hong Kong, one of his patients, a polio victim permanently ensconced in an iron lung, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, had died. The only person to witness the event had been a trainee nurse who had been changing his pillow. She had heard the patient – Foo Wan Lung – say something that sounded like… ‘Aah sor, cho tsing fah tsung tse. My friend asked the waiter if he would translate it into English for him. “Ah yes, I not really sure of dialect, forgive me if I make mistake, but it sound like – Nurse, you’re standing on my oxygen pipe!”