Mandarin Monday: A Story Only China Expats Will Mingbai

This post was reposted from smalltownlaowai.com. You can find the original article here. If you don't know what the incorporated pinyin terms are in the this story but would like to learn, access the rest of our guides to learning Mandarin here, which should help to get you off on the right foot.

The other day, I was buying some ershou furniture from a guy across town but I knew it was going to be a lot of mafan to get it back to my xiaoqu. All I’ve got is a little diandongche and there’s no way I can fit a guizi on it, even though I bet a lot of bendiren could do it, mei wenti. Anyway, first I tried using DiDi to book a mianbaoche, but you can only get kuaiches or chuzuches, so I had to think of something else. I don’t know any mianbaoche drivers here yet, so I thought about sending something out on WeChat to ask some of my laowai pengyou if they could recommend someone.

I was at school and happened to stop by the waiban. There’s this one laoshi there who is super nenggan so I thought about asking her for help. It’s just that she’s also always hen mang so I hate to mafan her. Plus, since her English is not great and my putonghua is only mamahuhu, we often don’t communicate well. But I decided to ask her to bangmang and I’m so glad I did. She called a guy and DUANG! Just like that, it was all anpai’d. I really couldn’t follow what she said on the phone because they were using tuhua or some kind of fangyan, which is another reason I feel like a bendan half the time when I try to talk to people here.

She explained that the driver would need some kind of fapiao or fangxingtiao to show the baoan at the other guy’s xiaoqu or they wouldn’t let them out the menkou. I texted the guy right away, and thankfully, he has lived in China a long time, so he knew all about that and had it zhunbei’d.

So, that night, the mianbaoche arrived right on schedule, which was amazing considering it was gaofengqi and, well, TIC, right? I had warned the baoan they were coming, so they let them park right at my danyuan which is way more fangbian than where they’d have to park otherwise. The driver had brought along another guy and they carried the guizi and other dongxi up my stairs on their backs. Wasai! These guys are so lihai! I could never do that. I considered giving them an extra tip for all the xinku, but I know it’s not the xiguan here. So, I just paid the fei and said xie xie. Then I sent a few thank you stickers to the waiban laoshi on WeChat. Chenggong le!

(P.S. I know there’s a lot more of you who aren’t China expats but will still be great at reading this. Shout out to my huaqiao, S’pore, Malaysian, Chinese-anything, and English-speaking dalu friends la!)

Mandarin Monday is a weekly column where – similar to our Mandarin Month series earlier this year – we help you improve your Chinese by detailing fun and practical phrases and characters. 

Image courtesy of Small Town Laowai