Around lunch time I strolled around looking for a place to eat. Although I'm technically in the so-called "expat" zone everything is still very much in Chinese amongst the modern architecture. Every restaurant venue I peered into through the windows had only menus in Chinese and were minimal on pictues. Hmm.. I saw two easy options (1) a Subway sandwich shop, and (2) a Chinese pastry store. In an effort to reduce my carb intake (thanks jp!) and not revert to western sandwiches (such as in Singapore when we had prata instead of McD's for breakfast), I told myself to just pick a Chinese place for lunch and give it a try!
So I chose this friendly looking restaurant and got a seat (easy enough!). But then the waitress placed a menu down which was completely in Chinese. I know how to read 'rice,' 'congee,' 'beef,' and 'chicken,' but nothing on this menu included these items! Anxiety? Yes! Thankfully I found a take-out menu with photos by the front and was able to point my way into an order by saying 'noodles' in mandarin. Result = Successful! I ended up ordering a beef noodle soup with vegetables and this side circle bun thing with chives and egg inside.
There is someting completely scary about being in a city where I can't communicate, read, or write in Chinese. Even sitting on that 13 hour flight and being engulfed by the Mandarin speakers was a mini preview of what the summer will look like. My family speaks Cantonese but not Mandarin, which are completely different to me. Yesterday my driver and I had a part-Mandarin-Cantonese-English-written Chinese conversation, it worked! Although if I'm going to survive this summer I'll need more than that. Therefore, goal #1 "to learn Mandarin"
Note: I'd like to post photos but I can't seem to access those buttons. Blogspot is banned here but I've been able to find a proxy to get limited accsss. Does anyone know?
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