Chinese Lessons

I've been taking Chinese lessons for about 7 months now which is far better progress than my 2 weeks of Russian lessons.

My teacher is from a school that was designed for teaching Chinese to foreigners like myself, so the lessons are catered to covering typical foreigner activities.  For example, they tell you early on how to say 'Where is McDonalds?'  or 'Where is Starbucks?'   I was embarrassed for us Westerners to realize this was so important to our lives in Beijing that it had to be included in the curriculum.  But, maybe not surprised.

I did receive a surprise one day though.  In the second or third lesson I was reading out a list of words that I didn't know with the intent of simply learning pronunciation.  As I went through each word he told me the meaning....

Shuiguo - fruit
wubai - five hundred
xiaojie - prostitute!

This school found it was necessary that all foreigners learned how to pronounce prostitute in perfect Chinese.  That was even before learning about McDonalds! 

Most lessons were pretty standard after that.  I tried my hardest to do my homework in between lessons and after I finished the first book of material, which put me at slightly above not knowing anything, I had to write an exam.  This exam was not too difficult.  I had to fill in the blanks, fix bad sentences, put the proper tones on words, etc.  I got the results back the following week and he told me I got a 95%!  I sat back in my chair, folded my arms over my chest and nodded my head proudly. 'Not bad' I said.  He replied with 'yes, it's ok'.  I joked and said 'only ok?' with a smile.  He looked directly at me, straight face...'yes, only ok'. well, my arms dropped with my pride and I sat up straight.  This guy doesn't mess around

Ping Pong

I was invited the other day to my first inter-office ping pong match the other day.  We have a break room large enough to hold a ping pong table and it's a great way to spend a coffee break.  However, I've stayed far away as my ping pong skills are terrible even in Canada.  In China, I was sure to be ridiculed. 

I watched a couple of matches between some coworkers and the stereotype is true!  They were damn good at ping pong.  I thought about sneaking off and leaving the room but they noticed so they ended their game and told me it was my turn. 

I pleaded with them explaining that I was a terrible at ping pong.  I said I was so bad I probably couldn't beat a child.  Well, sitting behind us in the corner of the room...was, in fact, a child.  One of the coworkers had his daughter there visiting her father at work until her mother could come pick her up.  The group thought this was perfect, my chance to be on a more even playing field.

They called the little girl up who was about 6 or 7 years old.  She took the ping pong paddle from her father and stood at the end of the table. After some encouragement I finally picked up my paddle and looked across at my competition.  This girl's head barely reached over the table top, her nose was running and her over-sized glasses kept sliding off her face but her stare was menacing. 

I figured I had a choice to either actually play against this girl, potentially win but come off as a jerk, or do the gracious thing, let her win and deal with the post game insults.  I made my choice...

This girl was going down!  I played my heart out, this was my Olympics.  Canada vs. China.  In the end, I destroyed her...by 2 points.  I was out of breath and sweating but she was pretty calm.  I tried to joke it off and thanked the girl for the game, told her that I got lucky.. but on the inside I was fist pumping like crazy and saying 'Take that you miniature human being!'

All in all, it was a good day but I don't think I'll be invited to play ping pong again anytime soon.

Impressing the Chinese

For my first story...

I’ve once again mastered ordering a sub at subway as I did in Russia. Sometimes I tend to impress the workers behind the counter since they expect me not to know Chinese and they usually address me in English. 

 

The same happened this time when I was needing a quick meal on my way home from the gym.  I stopped at  Subway that was in an area that catered to westerners so most employees will speak enough English to accommodate. 

They greeted with me ‘hello, what would you like?’

 

I answered back in Chinese ‘Ni Hao, Wo yao yi ge Shucai’  (A vegetarian sub)

 

From then the usual subway back and forth questions took place in Chinese.  I chose the cheese, got him to toast it, added all the proper veggies and some mustard.  When he asked if I wanted anything else I added on a drink and a couple cookies.  Finally, the last step I asked to get it for takeaway or ‘Da-zo’. 

 

After the bag was all packed up and I was ready to leave he said something to me in Chinese.  I didn’t catch it and it was out of the realm of a regular sub ordering procedure.  I asked him to repeat it one more time and I stared at him blankly as I was trying to re-run the words he just said through my mind.  I still couldn’t come up with what he was saying.  In case it was something important I stopped and told him I didn’t understand. 

 

He then switches to English and says to me  ‘I was saying you speak Chinese very well’.      Oh, crap. 

 

After that he turned to his colleague, said something quickly in Chinese and they laughed.  I didn’t need to hear what he said to understand that one.  ;)

Re-starting in China

I’ve been in Beijing for almost 11 months now.  I had stopped writing new blog entries quite a while before I left Russia so it was very hard to find a new starting point.  I didn’t know whether I should get everyone caught up to my life as it is now from where it was or just start from scratch. 

 

I decided it’s easier just to start from now and move forward from here.  Most likely I’ll write about some things from the past as I go, we’ll see how it plays out. 

I hope I can keep it up.