A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
One of the surprising things about China (I say from my vast experience of two days) is that I really don't understand a single thing here. Sure, I knew about the whole Mandarin characters thing going on, but I really thought they'd have more signs translated into English, or at least into Pinyan, the roman-alphabet phonetic version of Chinese. I was so wrong. Maybe one in a thousand signs is translated, including a curious little eatery in the middle of nowhere called the "Enjoyment in Farmyard Restaurant". So I do a lot of guessing as we roll down the road. I'm especially curious about the signs that have a series of Chinese characters followed by an exclamation point. Important notice? Advertisement? I may never know.

The other thing is that no one speaks English here. Seriously, the only people I've come across who had more than 20 words of English were our hotel clerks and the guy at the border who was trying to scam me into changing my money on the black market. I had to explain to him that the concept of "black market" would imply that he should be offering me a better rate than the bank down the street.

There's really no reason for them to speak English, I guess. It's a huge city, but it's not exactly in the most cosmopolitan area of China, and I've only seen a handful of westerners since I arrived, mostly at my hotel. Clearly I got spoiled in those countries where everyone under 30 wants to practice their English. It's my turn to adapt, which is quite a challenge since my Chinese vocabulary consists solely of "hello" and "thank you". Everything else is hand motions and pointing at my guidebook. I spent all day today with a Korean university professor who is living in China for a few months. He never said it straight out, but he clearly implied I was insane and couldn't believe I had undertaken this trip with no language skills. I look forward to proving him wrong.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 6:27 AM