After my disastrous French lesson last night, I put things right, in a way, this morning. I was walking down my block by one of the many Chinese restaurants and saw something familiar in the window. I popped in and asked the Chinese lady behind the counter in French if she spoke English. She shook her head "no" in a way that seemed to say "no, stupid, why would I?". What the heck, I held up two fingers and took a shot:
Wo yao er char siew bao. (I want two barbecue pork buns.)
"Bao?" She smiled, turned to the steamer and snagged two of the buns and began to wrap them up. I couldn't believe it worked, I was kinda shocked. There was a grizzled, shrunken man sitting off to the side who looked just as surprised. After paying, I thanked her in Mandarin: "tsieh-tsieh", took my buns straight home and devoured em. They weren't as well-made as the ones in Singapore, but they were sweet nonetheless. Later, I talked to Ping-Ping and learned that the sentence is wrong - there are two number systems - one for counting and one for requesting quantities. I'd used the counting one I learned playing Mahjong. Good thing I had two fingers up when I ordered.
2 comments:
Obviously all the Mandarin classes you have been taking helped, Smartie!
Am sure you were beaming when you got your order. Now that you are actively learning French and Mandarin, you have me all stressed out. Looks like I better start practicing some French before you get disgusted by my bobo-ness... Stres.. Why do you have to be such a Smartie?
I am no smartie, ask my French teacher. She was sweating trying to keep up one hour of conversation with me, the deaf-mute.
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