Duibuqi... ting bu dong...

So I've begun to flex my Chinese muscles and are finding them sadly weak. Luckily, the above phrase is like a foreigner's best friend: "I'm sorry... I don't understand." It comes in handy because once you show someone a deeper understanding of the language than hello and thank you, there is a huge chance they will then assume too much and launch into what they must think are very easy questions (based on the expectant look and the way they just repeat it over and over thinking you'll get it the 2nd or 3rd time they say it) but are actually way above my level. The moment you have to break out the "ting bu dong" there's an immediate mutual feeling of disappointment that the conversation has gone as deep as it can and we won't be able to volunteer any more information to each other. Every now and then, though, the conversation goes just the right way and the Beijing accent isn't quite so thick and there's no ting bu dong-ing and both sides leave the conversation feeling accomplished. Well, I do anyway.

This happens for me most often with taxi drivers. I've retained enough vocabulary that I can get in and explain where I want to go, what it's near, which direction it's in, etc. Just now I got in the cab, gave the destination and the driver was like, that's over this way, right? And I incorrectly said it was the other way. After like a minute I realized it, apologized and explained it's only my 2nd day here. This got me a very kind compliment on my Chinese speaking skills and then led to the typical but brief discussion about where I'm from, where/when I studied and some more compliments. Luckily, the driver got a phone call right then that ended the conversation because I'm fairly sure I couldn't have talked about anything of interest after that and would have shattered the illusion of this savvy foreigner with an excellent grasp of the language. Ok, they probably didn't think that of me anyway but it's certainly how I felt getting out of that cab.