Hot pot and language learning

Jacob Redding — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:19:38 +0000

You often learn languages in the most common of places. This evening Diana and I went out to our local hotpot restaurant (火锅饭店). The meal started off as normal except that I can now fully understand when the waiter/waitress (who, I'm pretty sure, are also the owners) ask if we want a spicy sauce or not (I get the spicy). That in itself is pretty cool but today I was also able to ask what another customer ordered. It looked good and I wanted some.

What made the evening even better, though, was towards the end of our meal when two older men sat down next to us. Their look was stereotypical Chinese businessman (rugged skin, dark suit, cigarette) and their accent was noticeably Beijing. Beijing accents are riddled with the sound of Rs and everything seems to be muddled together, that is until you've listened to it for a while. I could only understand about 5% or less of what they were saying but it was enough for me to (a) hear the "correct" pronunciation of certain words that I did know and (b) to learn new words based on context (of course I could be wrong about those new words).

For me having those two gentleman sit next to me what like a language learning treat and I eavesdropped as long as I could. Maybe someday I'll actually be able to talk with them and ask about the crazy business schemes they have.

The other item that made the dining experience truly "Chinese" was the fact that we were able to catch a glance of the "chef"*/dishwasher. He was passing dishes and washing dishes with a cigarette hanging from his lip.

China is not a smoke-free restaurant country. Quite the contrary.

*: At hot pot everything is given to you raw. You cook it yourself in a pot of spiced/flavored boiling water. Thus the chef doesn't do much else other than cut up raw vegetables and meats.