Hello and goodbye are the same in sign language for Cantonese – it’s a friendly wave. The sign for love in Hong Kong is arms crossed over the chest.
Lau Lai-fong, the president of the Hong Kong Association of the Deaf, does a rubbing motion with the flat of her right hand over the fist of her left. That’s love in sign language in Japan.
Lau is hearing impaired, so not completely deaf. When she walks down a street she can hear if there is heavy construction work going on, but not if someone calls out to her. At 42, she’s been linked to the association since she was seven.
Her father, a retired government worker who is also hearing impaired, helped found the association at a time when there were precious few facilities for deaf people.
These days, Lau says through sign interpreter Mindy Lai Man-chung, Hong Kong could still do with far more understanding of hearing-impaired people and many more sign language interpreters and facilities for deaf students. It’s for her unstinting work with the association and advocacy work that she has been nominated for the Spirit of Hong Kong Awards.
“There’s about 9,200 hearing impaired people in Hong Kong,” says Lau, “not including those coming in from the mainland. But there are only 10 sign-language interpreters like Mindy who can translate from Chinese because there’s no money available to support people to learn how to sign.”
So while four groups, like her association, provide training, there are no government grants to support it. Also, when hearing-impaired students continue on to university, they can only lip read, which can lead to misinterpretation.