WE SPEAK CHINESE : 我们说中文 (final)
Once I was an exchange student in China, I have to be able to survive in the surrounding where not many people know English. What I have done is studying Chinese with the local people, in order to be able to buy things by myself, and not to be exploited by the sellers.
Today I comeback with the shopping lesson and also I will acknowledge you how to have a good time shopping in China.
When you want to go shopping 购物 (gòu wù) or 逛逛 (guàng guang), for most of the time you will go to the shopping mall 商场 (shāng chăng), or sometimes you can go to the night market, AKA the fair 集市 (jí shì). In Chinese, if you want to say “I want to go shopping at the shopping mall.” you can say “我要去商场购物。” (wŏ yào qù shāng chăng gòu wù。) In Chinese structure, the sentence will be
Sub. + V. + Place + in order to do sth.
我 ＋ 要去 ＋ 商场 ＋ 购物。
I want to go to the shopping mall in order to shopping.
It is a little bit different from English and Thai that the structure will mostly be
Sub. + V. + at (place)
I want to go shopping at the shopping mall.
When you arrived at the shopping mall you may find that there are so many floors, if you want to find the shop you can search for the floor or 层 (céng) or 楼 (lóu). For example, second floor = 二层 or 二楼.
And when you find the shop, the most important thing shopaholics would looking for is the word SALE or 打折 (dă zhé)! BUT! In Chinese they have different way to understand! Be careful when you see the tag 8折, it means 20% discount not 80% So do not be confused with the number!
If you want to try on the shirt you can say 我可以试穿吗？(wŏ kéyĭ shì chuān ma?) or 我可以试一试吗？wŏ kéyĭ shì yí shì ma?
So the word 可以 (kéyĭ) means CAN in the sense that, “Is it possible?”
The word 试 (shì) means TRY, and the sentence means “Can I try on?”
The word 穿 (chuān) is to wear (cloth), e.g. 穿衣服 (chuān yīfu) to wear cloth
Tips for the shopaholics, if you go to the market or the fair where the price of clothes is not written down, you should be aware that the price might not stable. If you are foreigner, you must ask for the discount as much as you can, because they might up the price too hight. Some objects are overprice when they are sold to the foreigner. If you can speak Chinese fluently or a little bit, you may speak to the shop keeper or the owner in Chinese, they will give a warm welcome for you and they will not try to get any benefit from you. Trust me!
This is an example in the red box it said 20% off, and you can see the 8 number with the word 折 in Chinese
Now I will suggest the places where Chinese people always go to shopping in some cities.
The first city is Beijing, the most famous place to go shopping is Wang Fu Jing 王府井 which located near The Forbidden City, Beijing Palace Museum.
Wang Fu Jing
The next one is Qianmen Main Street Mall, which located near The Forbidden City too (different direction). The last one I want to suggest is 798 Art District, this place is very unique and beautiful, it is the place where contains many types of art. The second city is Shanghai, it is another city that famous in trade and business. But there is a very unique shopping street called Yuyuan Old Street, where you must go in the early evening before it gets too crowded because lots of tourists will visit this place. The last city is Guangzhou, Shangxiajiu Street and Beijing Road are two famous shopping area, where you can find clothing, tourist souvenirs and jewellery. Comparing there two shopping area the price of things in Shangxiajiu Street is less expensive than Beijing Road, we can bargain prices down more than in Beijing Road.
So this is some tips and some example in Chinese for this week, I’ll come back next week with new story. So please stay tuned and let’s see what will be told in my story ;)