{"id":56,"date":"2010-04-27T13:26:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T19:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/laowaiteacher.wordpress.com\/?p=56"},"modified":"2010-04-27T13:26:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T19:26:18","slug":"it-isnt-all-foreign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/2010\/04\/27\/it-isnt-all-foreign\/","title":{"rendered":"It Isn’t All Foreign"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Wandering through the heart of any larger city in China offers a westerner quite a number of surprises. \u00a0We expect to see something less modern, less western because of our pre-conceived ideas about what China should be like. \u00a0When we come upon KFC or Macdonalds, we were totally surprised, surprised enough to take these photos to send home. \u00a0It seems that there are KFCs and Macdonalds all over the place – no different than back at home. \u00a0We noted Pizza Hut doing a thriving business as well.<\/p>\n

Some FTs we got to know in Changzhou rarely ate anywhere else as they needed this visual connection back to their home country. \u00a0What they had thought was Chinese food back in America and Canada had little to no resemblance to what they got to experience once they landed in China. \u00a0The shock was so disappointing that they soon avoided eating normal Chinese food as much as possible. \u00a0Of course, that only served to isolate these FTs even more than the inability to speak any Chinese.<\/p>\n

That said, here are a few bits of Chinese that are useful if only to let the local people know that you respect them and their language. \u00a0Avoiding learning even a few basic expressions does communicate a message to these local people of\u00a0ethnocentrism, a condescending attitude on the FTs part that says “I am too superior to you to waste my time learning the language of an inferior people.” \u00a0You don’t want to go there.<\/p>\n

Last day I introduced the expression for hello – N\u012d H\u0103o<\/a>. \u00a0If you click on the Chinese word, you will be able to hear it spoken. \u00a0Of course, once you’ve listened to the expression as many times as you want, don’t forget to click back to this page. \u00a0 To ask someone “How are you?” \u00a0all you do is add the expression “m\u01ce” – “N\u012d h\u0103o m\u01ce?” \u00a0The usual response is: “W\u01d2\u00a0h\u0115n h\u0103o, n\u012d\u00a0ne?” – \u00a0“I’m very fine, and you?” \u00a0Now, for a bit of extra – Chinese characters: \u00a0N\u012d h\u0103o > \u4f60 \u597d; “N\u012d h\u0103o m\u01ce? > \u4f60 \u597d \u5417; W\u01d2\u00a0h\u0115n h\u0103o, n\u012d\u00a0ne? > \u6211 \u5f88 \u597d\uff0c \u4f60 \u5462\uff1f<\/p>\n

Enough for now. \u00a0I don’t know if this is useful for you. \u00a0What I do know is that it is useful for me as I prepare to return to China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wandering through the heart of any larger city in China offers a westerner quite a number of surprises. \u00a0We expect to see something less modern, less western because of our pre-conceived ideas about what China should be like. \u00a0When we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}