By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: This ever happen to you?
So I'm leaving my apartment the other day and I walked for about 1o mins and noticed this new old guy on the sidewalk with this ancient foot operated knife or blade sharpener thing.....this guy looked like an extra from a Chinese Ming dynasty sitcom. I asked him how much per knife and he said 2rmb each....seems ok to me so I went back to place and got my knifes, I had about 10 big sized knifes. I'm carrying the knives about 5 in each hand....I got about 5 minutes walking and realized that walking down the street with 10 knives in my hands might seem suspicious but the area I live is quite nice and not so crowded with foot traffic so I thought I would be ok.....well I was wrong...coming down the road was a police car and he started to slow up when he seen me and then stopped in the road and look at me like a kitten fresh out the clothes dryer.....he looked scared and confused. After about 5 seconds of just staring at me he asked what I was doing in Chinese then in chinglish, So i answered in broken Chinese but what I said it wrong and he still had confused look on his face. So I put down all the knives but one and start doing these charades and pretending to sharpen knives to explain to him...which probably looked more nefarious....you know this foreigner air sharpening knives while smiling awkwardly...then it dawned on me...just use the translator on my phone...so I did and showed him the translation and both got a good laugh. Anyway just thought that was a funny situation to be in.
Story type evens - no.
Sudden realisation that after 10 minutes of trying to make myself understood, I should have just used the translator on the phone... too many times to count!
Yes, many awkward things happened to me ... here's one from 10-months ago:
http://answers.echinacities.com/question/did-you-ever-steal-something-po...
I was napping, not laughing. That much-o!
Another 'day&time', I had to be carried out of the huge hospital completely drunk in Jixian, Hebei, after the first&last oral English class with Hospital's leader, neurosurgeon by profession. How many people do you know who LEFT Hospital drunk and they aren't MDs?
Don't get me started ....my China is full of it!
Story type evens - no.
Sudden realisation that after 10 minutes of trying to make myself understood, I should have just used the translator on the phone... too many times to count!
Knowing Chinese cops, I'm more surprised he even cared at all LMBO
This shit is legit... they know the olden days of the knife sharpener....
These guys are going extinct but it is an ancient Chinese tradition.
You should just be happy that you got this kind of experience because in about 5-10 years further this will be a dead tradition and very few foreigners will have experienced this.
nzteacher80:
I sharpen knives for my Chinese friends. They are amazed. Foreigners have so many talents. I can say nihao and use chopsticks too.