Why bother?

Corbett | August 22, 2007 8:31 PM

Sometimes I have to ask myself why bother to learn the language since speaking Chinese usually leads to more confusion than not.

For example...

Today I dropped off some dry cleaning, and on the way back passed a place called "Jack Hut", a HK style bubble tea milk shake joint. If you've been to HK, you'll know, if not, just suffice to say they sell a bunch of tea and shakes.

The colorful sign outside shows a juicy foamy looking strawberry shake with a strawberry on top. Sounds good. I enter and ask the guy, "So what kind of fruit you have today?"

"We don't have fruit."
Hmmm, I point up to the menu, taking a different tactic. "The fourth item there says Fruit Milk Shake (lit. guo nai xi). What 'guo' is that supposed to be then?"
"It's fruit."
"So I'll have a fruit milk shake."
"No fruit."
Ok, taking another tactic. "So do you have item four? The Fruit Milk Shake?"
"Yes."
"But it's not fruit?"
"No."

Now I know we're getting somewhere.

"If guo is not guo, then what is a guo nai xi?"
"It's guo nai" (nai = milk)
"So it's fruit milk, right? But not fruit?"
"Yes."
"Ah, I get it. So 'guo nai xi' is not 'guo nai xi', but 'guo nai' pause 'xi'.
"Yes."
He seems happy that I understand now. We are on the same planet finally.

Like an idiot it didn't occur to me that it was fruit flavored milk, rather than a fruit milkshake. Now I got it.

"Ok, if that's the case, I'll have a milk tea."

I will leave it to you to decide if it was milk tea or milk flavored tea that I ended up drinking.

Category: Mr. Asia

Comments (3)

Comments

cyn

August 24, 2007 11:47 PM

haha!great story!
i'm sure your madarin
is much better than mine.
are you living in china now?

Sunny

August 25, 2007 7:48 AM

My bet is you drank....coffee. :)

corbett

August 25, 2007 10:59 AM

Thanks, I spend a majority of my time in China these days, and I ended up with a milk flavored milk tea. :)

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3q2u is written by Corbett Wall, and is really just a window into my quirky little world. It's also a way for me to exercise my thoughts and make random comments outside of cultural, language, or business barriers.

3q2u is an acronym which if said in Chinese and Japanese sounds like "Thank you to you!" Dumb but easy to remember. More >>

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