Fúwùyuán, èrshí

One of the most frustrating things about learning the Chinese language is how some things sound similar to others.

I went out to dinner with Chase the other night, mostly to keep him company, and we went to the Muslim restaurant around the corner.

He waved at our waitress and he ordered his 6 lamb skewers and some pita. When he finished, he decided that what he really needed was two more. He yelled across the restaurant (in China, you always yell at your waiter. In the US, this would result in spit in your food. Here, it just gets you prompt service.) And ordered 2 more (or so he thought).

What he really did was order TWENTY more because er shi (twenty) sounds an awful lot like er ge or something to that effect which means two more. When the waitress tried to clarify we just stared at her blankly as we often do and he repeated his order.

We waited for what seemed like forever, especially since he was only ordering two kabobs and when they finally came out we just laughed and laughed because only a stupid American would order twenty lamb skewers on top of the six he had already eaten and then proceed to eat all of them.

If only I spoke Chinese.