Jokes

A favorite topic when in china is mistakes that Chinese language students make when learning to speaking Chinese. Mostly because of the the large number of homophones in Chinese, it is easy to slip up. And I've made more than a few funny ones.

I was ordering soup called pai gu mian which, which means (I think)"rib noodle soup", but I said pi gu mian, which means "ass noodle soup". I find the waiters rarely laugh, although other people in the restaurant do, and somehow I figure out later what I said from my translators or friends. When in a restaurant and you want the check, most people yell for the waiter "lao ban(3rd tone)", but when I said it the other day, I said "lao ban (4th tone)", which means old wife (or partner), what people say to each other when they've been married for a long time.

The same day I was speaking to some of my friends about what I am going to do over the summer break. I said, what I thought was, my wife and I will be in Beijing, but I said "gan" not "gen" and up saying "I am going to f*#k my wife in Beijing".