China, Ting bu Dong...

Language barrier never really be my issue, I always believe that we all can smile in every languages on earth, so it won’t be a big deal eii :D And it’s kinda surprised me that actually my Chinese is not as bad as I thought all this time. Well it’s because mostly mainland Chinese’s English is way worse than my Chinese, I met lots of Chinese that really doesn’t know any words in English, even pretty common words like taxi and toilet. But it doesn’t stop them lending hands to some lost foreigners. A teen girl called her friend to ask for direction cos she didn’t know where’s the address I’m heading to, an auntie walked me and my friends cos she didn’t know how to explain the way getting to our destination, so did an uncle, a security guard and many more. No wonder they say Chengdu is the most laid back big city in China, you can tell by the people, they have more time to relax, to mingle with each other and to help others. And of course they still have time to smile back at you.

The first embarrassing experience was simply because I didn’t know what’s the Chinese characters for Man and Woman, I ended up ran into man’s toilet and saw a mid-age man pooping, blame the public toilet that never has door!

One thing I learnt from queuing at the train station was never queue in the same line with foreigners. It’s really hard to get a right train ticket if you don’t know any Chinese, and big chance you’ll get stuck behind those foreigners. I survived from knowing only several lines like: What time? How much? And of course my magic word ‘Ing zhuo’ means hard seater, which is the cheapest class of the train. There’s no hope the announcement board will help bout schedule and time-table, cos it’s all in Chinese characters, not even in pinyin!!

Timetable at train station

As a Chinese myself, everybody thought I’m a local, so my most overused word was Ting Bu Dong, means I don’t understand, I said that word everyday! But that’s an advantage for me, they were tend to be more friendly after found out that I’m a foreigner.  A friend that did the trip couple of years ago, also said the same thing, she needed to pretend didn’t know Chinese at all to get some attention, though she can speak perfectly and even read the characters. And Caucasians attract even more attention, every Caucasians that took hard seater in train, were offered to move into sleeper class by adding some little money to the guard :S

19 hours of hard seater from Kunming to Guilin

Spotting English words in public area has its own excitement, if not put smile on your face. it’s like they translate the words using Google translator. I remember at Guilin’s bus terminal they used ‘Export’ instead of ‘Exit’, and at Shangri-La bus terminal, there’s a line that said passengers without ticket should not pass that door, but the line they used was way too hilarious that took me minutes to get the meaning. This is what I meant I don’t mean to mock at all, it happens everywhere, including in Indonesia, and I even appreciate their effort to put some English words for me to understand. That’s what they called Chinglish anyway, I also learnt that ‘Long time no see’ is actually Chinglish popularized by Bruce Lee, translated literally from the Chinese ‘Hau Jiu Bu Jian’ And some other words like ‘No See, No go’ that means I’ll keep waiting, I won’t leave if you’re not coming, pfft…

Overall, I’ve been treated like a long lost sister, especially once they found out that my grandparents were originally came from Fujian province of China. And surprisingly all of them ever heard of Indonesia, maybe because we used to be big rival in Badminton :p