Things the West could learn from China

8. Chinese work really hard to understand foreigners

Let me give a perfect example of this. Last month, an American friend of mine wanted to meet me for dinner at a Western BBQ restaurant. He didn't know the name of the cross street where he'd recently moved to. However, I got on Yahoo Maps and located it. It was a rather long Chinese name, but, to the best of my ability, I memorized it so I could instruct the taxi driver where to go. I got a taxi in no more than 5 minutes (at 7 p.m. which is kind of like a miracle here; HA!). I told the driver the cross streets where I wanted to go. He 'got it' right away. When we were getting close, I called and told my friend to stand in front of the KFC that he'd told me about previously. I told him exactly where to stand even though I'd never seen the place before. I told the driver, "Wo de pengyou; KFC". Then I pointed towards the back seat. Then I told him the other destination where we would go after we picked up my friend. I didn't want to have to get another taxi so I thought I'd give it a try. The driver understood exactly what I wanted to do even though I could only speak a few words of Chinese and he spoke no English. What I saw in his face was, he tried and listened very closely to understand what I wanted.

 

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