Having spent 2 months traveling in China, by the end of our trip we’d still only managed to pick up around 5 words: Hello = “Ni hao”, Thank you = “Xiexie”, Rice = “Mifan” and Vegetables = “Shucai”. This is simply the phonetically spelt words and we haven’t even included the accents that accompany them which play such an important role in how a word is pronounced!
But anyway we’re not here to give you a lesson in Chinese grammar! What we would like to do however is talk about how we managed to travel China without being able to speak or understand the language.Eating out in China!
Having had the experience of eating out in Japan we knew China was on a similar level when it comes to attitudes towards vegetarian cuisine. Not that Helen is a complete vegetarian, as she does eat fish thankfully, but if you are a strict vegetarian then trying to communicate this in restaurants is near impossible as 95% of everything is prepared in some kind of meat or fish based broth.
By David & Helen (to be continued)
