Chinese For Dummies (72 page)

Here are some other communication tools you may want to use:

chá diànhuà hàomǎbù
查电话号码簿
(
查電話號碼簿
) (chah dyan-hwah how-mah-boo) (
look a number up in a phone book
)

dǎ diànhuà
打电话
(
打電話
) (dah dyan-hwah) (
to make a phone call
)

diànhuà hàomǎ
电话号码
(
電話號碼
) (dyan-hwah how-mah) (
telephone number
)

diànhuàkǎ
电话卡
(
電話卡
) (dyan-hwah-kah) (
phone card
)

If you're like me, you need to ask plenty of basic questions before you figure out what you're doing with a telephone overseas. Here are a few questions that may come in handy:

Běnshì diànhuà shōufèi duōshǎo qián?
本市电话收费多少钱
? (
本市電話收費多少錢
?)
(bun-shir dyan-hwah show-fay dwaw-shaow chyan?) (
How much is a local phone call?
)

Zài nǎr kéyǐ dǎ diànhuà?
在哪儿可以打电话
? (
在哪兒可以打電話
?) (dzye nar kuh-yee dah dyan-hwah?) (
Where can I make a call?
)

Zěnme dǎ diànhuà?
怎么打电话
? (
怎麼打電話
?)
(dzummuh dah dyan-hwah?) (
How can I place a phone call?
)

Going Mobile with a Cellphone

The majority of folks in the world don't have telephones in their homes. Can you imagine? That goes for mainland China as well, where almost a quarter of humanity resides. You can find phones everywhere in Taiwan, however, as well as in Singapore and Hong Kong. In big cities across the globe, you're apt to see a million people (sometimes literally millions in places like Shanghai) on the street with their
shǒujī
手机
(
手機
)
(show-jee) (
cellphone
) in tow . . . or, rather, in hand, right next to their
zuǐbā
嘴巴
(dzway-bah) (
mouth
), yakking away. It's the preferred mode of communication these days, so most people you meet have a
shǒujī hàomǎ
手机号码
(
手機號碼
)
(show-jee how-mah) (
cellphone number
).

Although the more well-known cellphone brands have tried to make their marks on the vast Chinese market of cellphone users, home-grown brands such as TCL and Ningbo Bird corner the market on their home turf nowadays.

Cellphones have become so wildly popular that even as recently as 1998, more than 10,000 phones were confiscated in northern China after officials discovered that members of high government used them as bribes or gifts for friends and family. The phones even became the subject of a government anti-corruption campaign.

Making a Phone Call

Wéi?
喂
(
餵
)
(way?) (
Hello?
). You hear this word spoken in the second (or rising) tone a lot on the other end of the line when you make a phone call. It's kind of like testing the waters to see if someone is there. You can reply with the same word in the fourth (or falling) tone so you sound like you're making a statement, or you can just get right to asking whether the person you want to speak with is in at the moment. (For more about the four tones, refer to
Chapter 1
.)

A phrase you may hear on the other end of the line in mainland China is
Nǐ nǎr?
你哪儿
? (
你哪兒
?)
(nee nar?) (Literally:
Where are you?
). It asks what
dānwèi
单位
(
單位
) (dahn-way) (
work unit
) you're attached to. After these first little questions, you may finally be ready to ask for the person you intended to call in the first place.

For decades after the Communist rule took over mainland China in 1949, all Chinese people were assigned a
dānwèi,
which pretty much regulated every aspect of their lives — from where they lived to when they married and even when they had children. Even though that particular system has largely fallen by the wayside, asking about a person's
dānwèi
is still pretty common when answering the phone.