language

A German client asked me worriedly last week: "Will I survive China without speaking Chinese?" I told him about the time I watched a Swedish tourist order dinner at a busy Chengdu restaurant entirely through charades. He pointed at a neighbour's bowl, held up two fingers, and gave a thumbs up. The waiter nodded, came back ten minutes with the exact same dish, and the guy ate it happily. You don't need Chinese to travel China. But you do need three things: 1. Google Translate with Chinese downloaded offline. Point camera at menu, get translation. Not perfect, but good enough. 2. Pleco dictionary for when Translate fails. The handwriting input is a lifesaver for single characters. 3. A willingness to be wrong. You'll point at the wrong menu item, order something unexpected, and discover your new favourite dish. That's not a mistake — that's the experience. The three phrases I make every client learn: 谢谢 (thank you), 多少钱 (how much), and 这个 (this one — accompanied by pointing). With those three, you can handle 90% of daily interactions. My client survived. Thrived, actually. Ate his way through three cities without a single English menu.