Unaware that chinese is being spoken

[Lu]

Recently I was waiting outside a restaurant for a friend. We were going to attend a Chinese event in said restaurant. A young Chinese man walked to the restaurant and tried to get in through the wrong door. 是这个门, I called to him. He did a quick nod to me and walked to the right door, then did a double take, looked at me again and said, in English: 'You can speak Chinese?' Yes, I thought, but clearly not well enough for you to speak it to me. 'No,' I said, 'I'm just pretending.' He did not get the joke, he was just confused. I thought it was hilarious though.

[Demonic_Duck]

I don't mind too much when people praise my Chinese in English.

 

It's when they praise my Chinese in Chinese, but talking about me in the third person to bystanders as if I wouldn't be able to understand if they told me directly. That gets my goat.

[li3wei1]

'No,' I said, 'I'm just pretending.'

 

brilliant!

 

A friend in Taiwan was sick and tired of all the 'wow, you managed to learn Chinese even though you're a foreigner' comments. One day a child asked her "Why did you learn Chinese?", and she replied "I'm too stupid to learn English".

[Lu]

One day a child asked her "Why did you learn Chinese?", and she replied "I'm too stupid to learn English".

I like that. I assume the joke went straight over the kid's head, but at least your friend must have found it pretty funny.

[tysond]

I still get a kick out of leaving Beijing and having people go crazy because I can speak Chinese, read some characters and use chopsticks.  

But I'm glad that in Beijing it's barely commented on, and I am often assumed to speak Chinese.

It gets exhausting to be the first foreigner people have ever met who speaks Chinese.

 

Unless.... unless I'm with my wife, because she's Asian, and so people always assume she must be Chinese or at least able to speak Chinese.  

And they then assume that I cannot. 

[ChTTay]

I was travelling around with a Canadian-Chinese guy whose parents were from Guangdong. He only spoke Cantonese which wasn't useful at the time. Anyway, it was hilarious seeing local peoples reactions when they'd speak to him in Chinese, he would just kind of go 'eugh' and turn to me, then I'd respond (I'm white). Often, even though i'd reply to them, they would take what i'd said, then give their response to him a few more times before it finally sunk in he wasn't giving anything back. Then eventually they'd ask me if he was Chinese or not or why he wasn't speaking. Sometimes they'd still look at us suspiciously, as if they expected him to suddenly break out his Chinese skills eventually. In a restaurant this really surly waitress was refusing to listen to me and kept waiting for him to speak, I told her he only spoke Cantonese and she did the biggest roll of her eyes I've ever seen anyone do.

[drencrom]

While in Las Vegas last year, I heard someone knocking at my door.  Thinking it was the maid, I opened the door to find a Chinese woman standing there.  She was at the wrong room, and I directed her down the hallway where her group was staying (I had seen them previously around the hotel).  She didn't bat an eye at the fact that a completely random laowai could speak Chinese.  She just thanked me and went on her way.  

[Flickserve]

 

While in Las Vegas last year, I heard someone knocking at my door.  Thinking it was the maid, I opened the door to find a Chinese woman standing there.  She was at the wrong room, and I directed her down the hallway where her group was staying (I had seen them previously around the hotel).  She didn't bat an eye at the fact that a completely random laowai could speak Chinese.  She just thanked me and went on her way.

Are you sure she was looking for the group?

[drencrom]

Har har har, she was a little old for that!