Green hat

Chinese is a difficult language to master. It has it's own writing in characters, almost no grammar and short pronunciations according to tones. These tones are for foreigners probably the most difficult part.

Chinese always make jokes about how "long noses" foreigners make mistakes concerning the right tone.

In Mandarin there are 4 tones and in Cantonese even up to 8 so if you don't have a musical ear it's kind of difficult to grasp.

A few years ago I made a mistake that I still remember very clearly.I was looking for an Internet bar in Beijing. And asked a lady in the street, as I asked it she frowned on me, but understood my mistake and told me where I could find an Internet shop.

Later I asked a friend of mine what mistake I made.

In Chinese Internet bar/shop is pronounced "Wang ba" 网吧 wǎng​ba, pronounced in a bit of a singing tone going up and down.

Now there is a word very similar this this: "Wang ba" 王八 wáng​bā , which is pronounced with a slightly different tone. The meaning is different as well. In Chinese it means tortoise, but it has a very negative connotation to it. The tortoise can refer to a man whose wife is cheating in him. But he is as slow as a tortoise and doesn't realise it.

So luckily I asked a women where I could find a "Wang ba" and not a man. Asking a man could have got me into problems if he would have taken it the wrong way, because this is one of the worst insults in China.

Just as a tortoise refers to a man whose spouse is cheating on him. There is also an item referring to this. A green hat! You will never find any green coloured hats in China, because of this bad reference. If you are visiting a Chinese friend, please don't offer him a green, it would be a great insult to him.

Cultural differences are just so interesting, aren't they!