Monday 22 October 2012

Day Five

We met with our friends the original Blue Funnel Sailors for lunch and learnt some Chinese. They originally came from the countryside in China so it is sort of Mandarin but not quite.

We learnt how to say, "Hello how are you", "Thank you" "Alright now" and "Goodbye". This actually took a lot longer than you would think. The spaces between the words are very important.

I said "Hello how are you"? back to the gentlemen and they didn't have a clue what I was saying. By the end of lunch I got it right. "Stop saying hello all the time, it is bad to say that all the time, it is like saying - hey wake up"

The owner of the restaurant came over to clear the table, "Thank you" I said in Chinese, she looked a bit bemused.

"She doesn't understand you"
"Thank you" I said in Chinese once more but with meaning
"No she doesn't understand you because she is Cantonese"

This led to a discussion about Mao and how big China is and how people speak English in Wales, Scotland and Ireland but in China Mao could not understand people and introduced Mandarin so that there was one language and all the children had to learn Mandarin. Very interesting. They taught us how to say thank you in Cantonese.

We sorted out the photographs to start drawing the sailors.




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