English issues in China

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:16 pm

I had to find the time to post what happened last Friday in a business meeting with some Chinese supplier in their office.

After the initial tea ceremony and business card swapping and after having understood that the English level was quite low, I decided to take it easy and start with a basic ice breaking question.

So I asked: "How is business going in these days?"

The three of them steared at me with a puzzled look on their face, and proceeded in a 10 minutes long discussion, with head shaking and more weird looks in my directions.
One of them than took a paper and a pen and started to make a list of points. I thought that maybe business was not going so good and that probably the question raised a series of point regarding their supply to us.

After completing the list the guy proceeded to to talk to me:

"Dear friend, Mr. Wu comes everyday by car because he lives far from the office, except on Tuesday because he went to the factory.
Me and Mr. Zhou live very near to office so we come everyday by walking or by bicycle, but last 2 days we come with the company car because it was heavy rain.

But why do you care about this?"

It was a very long meeting........

ScottL · Post by **ScottL** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:27 pm

You could take the time to learn some Chinese or hire someone to translate a bit. It's infinitely amusing once you understand what is being said and what is being misinterpretted, speaking from experience. To this day I don't let on in general interactions that I understand Mandarin unless its absolutely rquired so I can have a good chuckle.

Or you can feign ignorance and say something goofy in an "attempt" to say something nice. Many times I've said "I am a foreign devil" as a greeting to people. They look confused and then laugh.

choff · Post by **choff** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:37 pm

Then there's the story of the guy that walked into Ole Olson's Chinese Restaurant. He asked the Chinese owner how he wound up with a Scandinavian name for his establishment and the owner replied in flawless English, that on his Citizenship card his name is listed as Ole Olson.

When asked how this came to be, he replied that while waiting in line at Immigration, the officer asked the guy in front of him his name and he replied, 'Ole Olson.' When the officer then came to him and asked his name he replied, 'Sam Ting.'

KitemanSA · Post by **KitemanSA** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 9:17 pm

I love that joke, but I heard it totally the opposite way around. It was a Pole who's name was Sam Ting because he miraculously (or unfortunately) followed someone else with the exact same long, unpronounsable Polish name as he had. After ~1/2 an hour of talking and correction and rewiting and erasing to get the guy's name right, it became "Sam's" turn. So when he was asked he siad with a great smile and pointing to the prior guy, "Sam Ting"! and they would! not! change it!

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:24 pm

An interesting couiple of stories, the great-grandfather on my dad's side, who was the first to emmigrate and bring the family here around the turn of the 19th/20th IIRC, was fluent enough, he added an extra "e" on out last name so that the English speakers would pronounce it properly.

Around the same time someone on my mom's side coming through didn't know much, and when he told the guy at Ellis Island his name, the guy just wrote down "Fresh," which did indeed become the surname. I understand a lot of that was happening--unpronounceable foreign names became something odd like that.

Ivy Matt · Post by **Ivy Matt** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:30 pm

I wonder how old the three were—or at least the one with the best English. My guess is that, failing to understand the meaning of "How is X going?", they fell back on the lessons they learned in school:

"How do you go to school every day?"

"I go to school by car."
"I go to school by bike."
"I go to school by bus."