Tiara in Transit

While waiting for my train at the Beijing West Train station, a group of Mongolean children aged between 4-10yrs old befriended me. They were so friendly and cute and spoke really good engrish. I took the opportunity to learn some Chinese words, and have since been applying them in my day to day communication with the locals.

Walking into the chemist to find a brace to support my sprained left wrist
T – hand on wrist, ‘wrist, pain (pain face), want keep straight’ straight hand motion.

Serving lady – looks and finds hair band.

T – ‘No’ shakes head vigorously, bends wrist ‘NO’ shakes head, makes wrist and hand straight and wraps other hand around wrist ‘YES’ vigourous nodding.

Serving lady – ‘ ahh’, brightens and points finger to the sky (universal sign language for ‘I’ve got an idea’), brings me wrapping cloth to strap around my wrist – not quite the brace but it will have to do.

T – ‘ XiaXia’ (Thankyou) ‘ Huoche’ (‘goodbye’, pronounced ‘Hua Chur’)

Serving lady – makes ‘choo choo’ train sound.

This is how I discovered that all this time in Xian when I thought I was saying ‘goodbye‘ to people, I was actually saying ‘train’

T – XiaXia (Thank you), ‘Huoche’ (Train) waves hand

For the record, ‘Zai Jian’ is how you say goodbye.