If there is one thing that really stands out for us here, it's the language barrier. We've traveled to many countries across Asia, but in both Beijing and Shanghai we've noticed that without knowing some basic Mandarin, it can be quite an adventure each day. During our pre-visit, I picked up a few words -- and by few, I mean two. Now that we've been here for a little over a week, I think we've added maybe three more words to our vocabulary. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the Chinese language, but its very tonal. This means that if our voice goes up or down when we say a sound, it can change the meaning of the word completely, or someone will have no idea what we're saying.
What gives us hope is the number of expats that we've met who have been able to pick up the language by either hiring a tutor, or attending classes. We'll probably hire a tutor for Nate since he has a busy work schedule, and beginning February, I'll be enrolling in full-time classes at the local university near our home. From what I've been told, each semester is 16 weeks long and classes are 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, followed by an additional 3-4 hours a day of studying. After 2 semesters, I should be conversationally fluent. If you're wondering what I'm doing until then...I'm mentally preparing to be a student again. =)
It's not all charades. Usually the larger hotels have staff that can speak English so we can usually ask them to translate to the taxi drivers, and if we have a hard time communicating to our driver, Cai Kang, as he only knows limited English, we have an iPhone app that translates addresses into Chinese characters. So far, we've gotten places without an issue.
As you all know, Nate and I love our food and eating everything we possibly can everywhere we go is what we do best. Sure, there are also plenty of restaurants that have both Chinese and English on their menus so we can usually figure out what we want but you know Nate and I...we also love the hole in the wall restaurants where we can eat the really local foods! Here's the menu (we think it was the menu) from Wu Yue Ren Jia (吴越人家), a restaurant we tried out the other night...
We sat there and starred at each other for a few minutes, then looked around at what other people were eating. Hmmm...maybe we can point! The waitress came over and realized we had no idea what to do so handed us a picture menu. We attempted to point and order, apparently still not ordering correctly because she pulled out her phone, pulled up a translation app and then showed me the screen. Well, sorry Google fans -- Google translate is not completely accurate so a few more minutes of charades and our ordering was complete!
Success! Yummy soup noodles with a side of pork in chili oil and pork ribs.
~ Trisha