6 months learning Chinese just to see my friends' face

stephbaillie

May 22, 2010, 06:19 PM posted in General Discussion

... when they'll realize that I am able to speak (a little) chinese.

Here is the plan: me and three school buddies (we've known each other for, hem, over thirty years) decided to come to Shanghai for the expo. We made that decision last fall. So I was looking for something fun, a surprise. Then I thought about it. I guess by now you know. I stealthily started studying Chinese six months ago. We are going to Shanghai before mid June, and here what I am planning to do. First I'll just follow along for the first day. Then, when time come to have dinner or a drink or be together some place, I'll probably start a conversation with the waiter or something like that. This requires courage, as I am hoping that whoever I am going to talk to will understand me and reciprocally. But the motivating part is to imagine the look on my friends face when they'll hear me swapping conversation in Mandarin. It's really 6 months of work for thirty seconds of hilarity. Actually, not really, because those 6 months were not "work" but more a great learning experience which I plan on continuing when I'm back in France, and as regards hilarity, I've caught myself many times grinning in anticipation.

Obviously, I'll have to post again to share the results, how it happened (around the 12th or so). Wish me luck :-)

Steph

changye

May 22, 2010, 11:05 PM

Is there a chance that the other two guys have the same secret plan? hehe I feel your plan will go well as you have a very good motivation. I hope you'll keep learning Chinese after your trip to China. I look forward to reading your report on outcome. Good luck!

pretzellogic

July 18, 2010, 02:26 AM

Good to get the update. Watch out for them learning more Chinese than you behind your back.

bodawei

May 23, 2010, 02:36 AM

Remember that your friends will be impressed even if you are saying to the waiter 'I'm sorry I didn't understand anything you said, please say that again more slowly'. Your friends (assuming away Changye's scenario - he obviously watches too many movies) will be impressed hearing the Chinese, not by what you say. This should be fun. :)

changye

May 23, 2010, 07:15 AM

Hi stephbaillie

Actually, bodawei's advice is very important. Furthermore, I would recommend that you purposely speak Chinese slowly (or even a little clumsily) before a waitress in China even if you can speak some phrases very frequently. Otherwise, you might be hit by machine gun barrage of native Chinese in front of your friends.

jen_not_jenny

May 24, 2010, 07:29 AM

I love this plan. I personally would never be able to carry something like this off.

May I offer a suggestion? Choose your language partner carefully. Many, many educated Chinese in Shanghai speak English quite well, and are quite likely to reply to you in English, no matter what language you speak. This is usually done with the very best of intentions, but would throw a serious monkey wrench in the execution of your plan.

I suggest taxi drivers and shopkeepers (in really, really local shops) as potential language partners. Elderly people are great, too, but may be a bit harder to understand because of (possible) thick accents.

Perhaps you should also check out the Shanghainese lessons recently launched! A few phrases of the local dialect will not only shock your friends, but really impress the locals too!

Be sure to keep us posted!!

xiaophil

“I suggest taxi drivers and shopkeepers (in really, really local shops) as potential language partners.“

I agree with this, but would like to add more. The older the person gets, the less standard their pronunciation could be, and the less likely they will be able to understand your meaning if you pronounce incorrectly. I would say that ages 30 to 45 are the safest bet. Any younger, they might just want to practice English (as mentioned above).

I suggest learning this sentence:

即使我中文说得非常差，求你还是用中文回答。

Even if my Chinese is horrible, I beg you to still reply in Chinese.

It's a bit long, but I bet it would do the trick.

xiao_liang

May 24, 2010, 07:53 AM

Oh, good luck! It's one of my favourite things to see people's faces when they realise you can speak chinese. Even if (in my case), I'm only saying "对不起。。。我就会说一点儿。。" :-)

bababardwan

May 22, 2010, 11:28 PM

yeah,I love this plan too. I'd love to be a fly on the wall. Yep,you must report back now.I'm sure it will go well.Good luck :)

jen_not_jenny

June 18, 2010, 09:40 AM

OK, so it's mid-June now...stephbaillie, where are you?

hkboy

June 18, 2010, 11:58 AM

Well, that was her one and only post. Maybe she just has her nose to the grindstone - studying and not posting. I hope she comes back and tells us a little how she is getting along.

RJ

Actually hkboy, Steph is a guy. He's just French (sorry, I couldn't resist). This was not a good idea, and it probably ended badly. Chinese is not that easy and there is a huge list of things that could go wrong. I would say there is a 90% chance that he ended up branded for life by his 3 friends, as the guy who "thinks" he can speak Chinese. Very dangerous. but very entertaining for his friends. You dont learn Chinese in 6 months and the Chinese never cooperate with such games. They would much rather put you in your place. I suspect this is why he has'nt been back but Steph you are welcome to prove me wrong. If it went better than that you are a lucky fellow and I congratulate you.

hkboy

whoops, well I did do a faux pas. I still like the thought of his plan and it seemed to create a lot of interest.

Come on Steph, give us an update.

RJ

yea and I wasnt trying to be mean, I just know how fickle and humbling a gal the Chinese language can be. (at least for me) I hope he got away with it, and I hope he returns soon to finish the story.

pretzellogic

anybody sending Stephbaillie a private message?

RJ

done

hkboy

RJ?

stephbaillie

July 17, 2010, 08:30 PM

Sorry, sorry, sorry!

I was in China for a little less than three weeks, and while I was there, I stayed away from online activity. I was THERE, I was in China, so I was really immersing myself into it, from Pudong to Puxi to Beijing, to the great wall to Changde. What a trip! I will get back to that later.

Then, when I came back to France, I had a lot of things to do, which, I my line of work means five countries in two weeks. Then back home, I moved to a new apartment, then when I got settled, I went to the CP site, and to my amazement, found all the responses I had generated. I was doubly amazed as I had never seen that this discussion was at the bottom of my page (never thought about scrolling!) and also because there were a lot of responses. On the one hand, I felt bad as I kind of let everyone down, and on the other hand, I felt great, because I realized my idea had generated some interest.

So, I shall now tell it all.

The Story. Me and my three friends had flown from Nice to Frankfurt and then on to Shanghaï. So by the time we arrived at our hotel in Pudong, we had been traveling for over sixteen hours. We had our rooms booked but they were not on the same floor, so we asked if they could fix that, and the hotel clerk said it could be done but we had to wait half an hour or so. So my friends went to get a drink in the lobby. When I joined them, they had already ordered, and I thought “now is the time! If I don’t do it now, I’m never going to do it”. So, as we were sipping our drinks, I raked my tired brain trying to remember phrases from “newbie: paying the bill” aso. Then I took the plunge.

Not very confident, and with an American accent (dunno why, since I am basically French), I uttered (sorry, tones omitted, my keyboard is rebellious to tones, :-): “xiaojie, wo lai fu qien. Women shi faguoren. Wo pengyou bu zhidao wo xuexi zhongwen. Ta xianzai hen chayi”. In case I totally misspelled this, I said: Miss, I am going to pay for this. We are from France. My friends do not know that I study Chinese. They are now very surprised.

The girl looked at me also with a surprised look, but seemed to understand most of it, she just turned to one of her colleagues who apparently translated my Chinese into Chinese and her face lit up with a big grin and off she went to get the bill. The message had gone through. Victory!

Meanwhile, my friends were surprised indeed. Shortly after I started speaking, one of them said “I do not believe this, he speaks Japanese!”. He was obviously tired. The second one said “is there an armory nearby, I need to go and commit suicide!”. The third one did not say anything, he was busy filming the whole thing. So one of these days, I should be able to show the proof of this story.

Then, I turned to my friends who were kind of staring at me. “Six months, I have been studying Chinese for six months, just to see your faces at this very second. I must say it was well worth the price!”. Of course we had a great laugh and I gave them all the details of how I was looking for something that would surprise them. I guess I was spot on.

The Take Away. The real take away is that, even though in Shanghaï many people have enough command of the English language to conduct their business, a few extra words in Chinese totally change the nature of the relationship. Riding cabs, we could find out whether our destination was “far not far” or in restaurants, we could have some interesting info on what we were eating. In negotiating, counting and “ni kai wanxiao!” was a great help, aso. My conclusion is that life is even more colorful in China if you can speak a little Chinese. Also, I learned a lot more words and expressions, I also learned about being careful with tones, and now I am getting into reading. Very exciting!

The Magic. I cannot pinpoint the exact reason, but my friends kept telling me that I looked at home in China. I wondered what they meant, except that I could only tell that I felt really comfortable in all situations. Then a friend sent me an email, and told me to visit some colleagues. So I should be teaching management at the Normal University of Shanghaï early next year (I am typing this with fingers crossed). There are many other magic things (we all know that magic does not exist ;-) that happened to me in China, but this post is already too long, let’s just say that I see wonderful opportunities there, and I know how essential it is now for the western world to get to understand and connect on a deeper level with China and vice versa, so if I may contribute, however small my contribution, I want to do it.

The Opening: I am going back there next week for three weeks (I almost feel like saying “I am coming back”).

And again, sorry for my silence and thanks for your interest.

Let us know what happens.