Learning Chinese
In the past ten days or so, from walking around the monuments in
Beijing, to buying train tickets, to roaming around Shanghai and
bicycling through Sozhou, I’ve begun to develop an understanding and
appreciation for this part of China, the people, the chaos, the
development, and life out here. While my observations and experiences
here could fill reams of pages, the most striking thing has been how
quickly I’ve picked up the important phrases required to get along here.
When moving out of the touristy realm, finding a place where you can
order from an English menu, or look at pictures and point, can be
difficult. Luckily, the mates I’m traveling with have a working
knowledge of Chinese, as well as a Mandarin phrase book. However,
sometimes even that’s not enough, so tonight I had to walk around the
restaurant and point to dishes that looked attractive and then had
one of the owners who knew about ten words in English, confirm
whether they were chicken, pork or beef, and meat, and not intestines
or abdomens or other interesting body parts that are relished in this
part of the world.
In summer, words you learn very quickly end up related to drink- My
favorite phrase is asking for a bottle of cold beer (bing ping
pijou), and then changing the ‘pijou’ to ‘shwey’ and getting ice cold
water anywhere.
You begin to recognize some Chinese characters, like the symbols for
entry and exit, or more interestingly, the sign for Internet, which
is two crosses in a box. I was pretty excited to make the discovery
today that the sign meant “net”, by seeing it used in a tourist sign
for some place that had a net… I thought that was pretty neat.
I’ve really had a wonderful experience in China, and have tons of
experiences to share. Will share them, as well as post my pictures
very shortly… Its a fascinating country, and I’ve seen so little of
it.
