Be Careful What You Ask For...

As anyone knows who has tried to learn a foreign language and then use it to communicate with native speakers, it’s easy to make a mistake and end up saying something you don’t mean. It frequently happens in my classes. These things even happen in the same language every once in a while. For example, if a British person wants an eraser, they will ask you for a ‘rubber.’ It can be difficult to explain to my students, especially the younger, more impressionable ones, why this may not be appropriate when speaking to an American. Well, something similar to this happened in class the other day and that got me thinking about whether or not I had run into a similar situation. I thought for a while and then it all came back to me…

I went to a popular nightclub that was reopening in Wuxi after it had closed down for unknown reasons before I arrived. Another club had been shut down in the same time period after a drug raid, though I can’t be sure that the two closings were related. On a side note, I should mention that the other club hasn’t reopened, probably because it’s owner was supposedly executed after being arrested on the drug charges. China doesn’t screw around when it deals with crime. Anyway, a couple of friends and I went to go check it out. This was clearly not my idea as I don’t really like clubs, but the other guys wanted to see what it was like, so I went along for the ride.

We arrived to find the place packed and the music so loud that I had to put my hands up near my ears not so much to drown out the music, which would have been impossible even if I was wearing earplugs and standing several blocks away, but more to keep my eardrums from flying out of my head. We were approached by an older woman who tried to make small talk with us, which was difficult since we didn’t know that much Chinese at the time and because we may as well have been trying to have this chat inside a running jet engine, were such a thing possible.

We soon correctly guessed that she was there to sort of introduce us to the club, but mostly to try to get us to buy drinks. We weren’t averse to this since we had planned on having a couple of drinks while we were looking the place over. She asked us something using a term that we thought she was using to refer to a waitress. It can be used to mean something like ‘Miss’ as in ‘Miss So-and So.’ As it turns out, it can also mean ‘prostitute.’ You can see how this might prove to be confusing.

Anyway, like I said, we thought she meant she would go get a waitress, so I nodded my approval. She went off somewhere and while she did, my friends headed to the bathroom. When she returned, she brought about four girls with her, none of whom looked like they were about to take my drink order. I thought, “What the…? This isn’t what I asked f— ohhhh, I see what I’ve done here.”

Surprisingly, I did actually know about the second meaning of the words, but I thought it mostly applied in northern China. To be fair, the bargirls here aren’t really prostitutes and are a bit different from the girls who sit in the places at the side of the street. Their basic purpose is to get customers to buy them drinks, thereby generating business for the bar. At the end of the night, it’s up to them. They can leave by themselves or with the customer. For this reason, we tend to refer to these places as ‘dirty bars.’

However, this was a popular club, not a bar in a back alley, so this turn of events was quite surprising. Since they were expecting three guys, I now found myself surrounded by three or four good-looking women who were trying to get me to buy them a drink. As I had a girlfriend at the time, this turn of events was also somewhat frustrating. The rather unique situation I now found myself in soon turned awkward (really, who didn’t see that coming?) when it became clear that I was unwilling to buy them a drink. For one thing, even if I tried to be polite and buy a drink, it would look bad if I bought just one of them a drink, so I would have had to drop a significant amount of cash to cover all of them. Then there’s the fact that I refuse to pay to have a conversation with someone. There are plenty of people who will talk to me for free, so why pay?

I had to think of a way to extricate myself from this situation without insulting anyone and without losing any dignity. So I used a technique that has come in handy in several situations. Most Chinese people just assume that I don’t know any Chinese, which means that I can get away with things that a normal Chinese person never could. I can blatantly disobey rules, quickly end a conversation with someone who’s annoying me, or wander into restricted areas with a few magical words. I just say, “I don’t understand” in Chinese and they usually back off, figuring I’m just another stupid foreigner and I don’t know any better. The fact that we might as well have been trying to talk during a rock concert being held on the deck of an aircraft carrier only strengthened my position.

I deployed this strategy successfully for a few minutes, trying to avoid some questions (mostly the ones that I legitimately didn’t understand) while still answering a few in order to keep them around long enough for my buddies to come back. Finally they got back and were also slightly puzzled as to why there were so many club girls there when we thought we were just asking for a waitress. I explained what I thought had happened. They were a little annoyed as well since they’d both been in China long enough to know those girls were just there to get drinks off us and then run off as soon as our wallets ran dry.

If we had lots of money, maybe things would have been different, but to be honest, teachers are at the bottom of the foreigner pecking order here and the Chinese girls know it. If a man who looks about 50 and a man in his 20s are sitting at a bar, there’s a 90% chance that the older man will be approached by a girl first. Guys, consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to watch as a beautiful girl walks away from you to go chat with some old, overweight bald guy instead.

Anyway, the other guys decided we should hang around for a bit, so they bought a couple of the girls drinks. I refrained for the reasons mentioned above and because buying random bargirls drinks, regardless of your lack of intentions, is not the kind of news you’d like to get back to your girlfriend. It didn’t take long for the girls to figure out that we didn’t plan to spend a whole lot of money there, so they left fairly quickly.

In conclusion, the lesson for today is that when learning a foreign language, you should learn the most important things first. Forget “take me to the airport” or “how much is that?” If you don’t set your priorities right, you could seriously offend someone or, as in this case, you could end up with a bunch of quasi-hookers at your table.