I had a funny encounter today.
When I was handing out fliers promoting Earth Hour 2012 so a pair of middle-aged, respectable-looking office men on the pavement and blabbing to them about how I was a volunteer and please support Earth Hour blah blah blah, they replied to me:
“我们是中国人,我们不。。。懂。”
At this point I was kind of like half suspicious, because I didn´t hear the Chinese accent and he took some time to remember the word 懂, but for the sake of professionalism (and showing off, maybe) I replied to them:
“你们是中国人?这是世界的。。。”
At this moment the traffic light turned green and they crossed the road while I was trying to figure out how to say "Earth Hour" in Chinese (世界的小时?哈哈). They probably said something or laughed or something like that because afterwards my volunteer friends said "They are Vietnamese, and they were just joking with you", and from then my suspicion was confirmed.
Funny encounter, you may say, but there are some points worth taking note of:
- First of all, my Chinese "switch" is definitely not "usable", yet. If those people were pretending to be English or Americans or Singaporeans or some citizenship that speaks English, I would have knocked it out of the park lol.
- Secondly, er I don't really know what the second point is, I guess now I'm just wondering what those 2 thought about me or the situation. They messed with the wrong person... Hahaha OK not really because my Chinese was super broken anyway.
Surprises come to you when you least expect them. :)
When I was handing out fliers promoting Earth Hour 2012 so a pair of middle-aged, respectable-looking office men on the pavement and blabbing to them about how I was a volunteer and please support Earth Hour blah blah blah, they replied to me:
“我们是中国人,我们不。。。懂。”
At this point I was kind of like half suspicious, because I didn´t hear the Chinese accent and he took some time to remember the word 懂, but for the sake of professionalism (and showing off, maybe) I replied to them:
“你们是中国人?这是世界的。。。”
At this moment the traffic light turned green and they crossed the road while I was trying to figure out how to say "Earth Hour" in Chinese (世界的小时?哈哈). They probably said something or laughed or something like that because afterwards my volunteer friends said "They are Vietnamese, and they were just joking with you", and from then my suspicion was confirmed.
Funny encounter, you may say, but there are some points worth taking note of:
- First of all, my Chinese "switch" is definitely not "usable", yet. If those people were pretending to be English or Americans or Singaporeans or some citizenship that speaks English, I would have knocked it out of the park lol.
- Secondly, er I don't really know what the second point is, I guess now I'm just wondering what those 2 thought about me or the situation. They messed with the wrong person... Hahaha OK not really because my Chinese was super broken anyway.
Surprises come to you when you least expect them. :)
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