Who would've thought knowing Chinese would've been useful in Sierra Leone. Even more curious is who would've thought the only sugar factory in all of Sierra Leone is operated by a Chinese family. Anyhow, after looking up some business jargon on Google Translate and mentally rehearsing some of the things I might say, I think I managed to undergo a small business conversation in Chinese. And to top it off, I got a free sprite. We'll see if he really understood what I said after I see the result next week.
Also, before I would get really annoyed when people said "Ni Hao" or "Ching Chung" to me in the streets, and I would pretend I didn't speak Chinese, but then I realized sometimes it's a lot better to pretend I didn't speak English so that people would stop bothering me. So then when people kept on bother me, I would just break into Chinese. It really works!
yes, i think speaking in chinese would work as well. i was chatting with some singaporeans about how french people don't like it when foreigners can't speak french. one of the guys said that the way around it is to speak in chinese first and then ask politely in french if they speak english. works every time
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