The other side of lao wai

Last night, Zorro, David and I went to dinner at the Korean pizza place, and we saw other foreigners! It’s always really exciting to meet foreigners in Yantai, especially outside of Jackie’s or Cape Of Storms. I can go days or weeks without seeing a foreigner who doesn’t work with me. David (who’s now blogging at Dave Vs. China) greeted them with “HELLO, LAO WAI!”. They nodded and smiled at this, while I laughed hysterically, like the socially warped nerd that I am.

We sat at our table, ordered, and we were going to draw lots for who had to approach the other foreigners, but since they were two fairly handsome guys around my age, it wasn’t hard to convince me to go talk to them. They’ve here for work, at a large German-owned Yantai company. They’ve been here for a week, and I really love when people tell me they’ve been in China for a shorter time that I have — it makes me feel like Marco Polo or Columbus or at the very least, one of the TalkTalkChina guys. I started to introduce myself, and I pointed over to David and Zorro.

“Yeah, we have a little Chinaman who goes around with us too, but he’s home right now.” one of them said.

“Um, that’s not out translator, that’s our friend Zorro.” I said, “He’s American. He works with us. I have to go now.”

This entry was posted in Yantai and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

0 Responses to The other side of lao wai

  1. The Humanaught says:

    Hey Meg… not to be my pedantical self, but it’s lao wai (??), not lao wei (old danger?). Damn phonics eh? I can’t count how many times I’ve asked someone:
    “?????”
    (you cai cai ma?/got vegetable vegetable?)
    instead of:
    “?????”
    (you tai tai ma?/got a wife?)

    or the other way around… both resulting in rather confused looks from cab drivers and vegetable venders respectively.

  2. Mary Ann says:

    How disapointing that the other folks were so backward.

  3. Meg says:

    Haha Ryan you’re so right!

    I kind of want to delate your comment so I don’t look like a moron….

Leave a Reply to Mary Ann Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *