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China Elevator Stories
“Zdravstvuyte! Do you speak Russian?”
I’m greeted in Russian at a market in Siping.
23/05/2016
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
One day, while I’m at the local vegetable market, a Chinese seller in his 40s greets me with: “Zdravstvuyte!”
I reply in Chinese: “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
He repeats: “Zdravstvuyte! Do you speak Russian?”
I tell him: “I don’t. I’m not Russian.”
He then says: “Zdravstvuyte! Kak dela?”
I explain: “Maybe if you tried Northeastern Chinese dialect, I’d understand more.”
He continues, practicing his Russian on me: “Kak dela?”
Lately, I’ve been greeted a lot in Russian by people in Siping, so now I can understand “Hello, how are you?” in Russian (which, I admit, is the extent of my knowledge of the language).
Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation?
This is part of the series ‘Conversations with Locals in China,’ where I share conversations with Chinese people on my blog.