Learn the phrases to use at an internet cafe
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| All right guys, one of the most convenient things in China is internet cafes. In most of the west, if I don’t have a computer, I can’t get on the internet. I’ve never been able to find the internet café in America but in China, there is one on every corner. You go anywhere and you ask to find the internet café and you will be able to find one in at most 5 minutes. The problem is, people in the internet café do not speak English, nobody. Internet cafes are usually just sort of a large dark room in the basement with a whole bunch of computers lined up next to each other. They are smoky, they are dirty, they are smelly, they are loud but like I said, they are really useful. So what do you do when you get to the internet café? First, how do you find the internet café? Let’s start with the word for internet café. 网吧(wǎng bā) is third tone, the falling rising tone and then first tone, the flat tone 网吧(wǎng bā), one more time guys 网吧(wǎng bā) |
| , literally means net or web like a Tennis net or a spider’s web but now it’s come to basically mean the internet. In the past, people said something 因特网(yīn tè wǎng) but people don’t say that anymore, they just say 网(wǎng). So 网吧(wǎng bā), 吧(bā) just means bar. To say drinking bar, you know a bar where you’d have some drinks, you’d say 酒吧(jiǔ bā), 酒(jiǔ) is third tone, the falling rising tone and that means alcohol, 酒吧(jiǔ bā) but we are not going over that now. You are going to have that in some bonus lesson. Now we are talking about survival phrases, survival guys! Just survival! Now of course, the sign for the 网吧(wǎng bā) is going to be in Chinese. So stop by our website or press the center button on your iPod twice and you will see the character so you can recognize them when you are walking around the streets. So now you’ve found the place and you get inside and you are not totally deterred by the smell of smoke and the people yelling counterstrike commands at each other from across the room. In the front of the 网吧(wǎng bā) before you can go sit down at a computer, there will be somebody standing at a desk. You go to this desk and you don’t even really need to say anything. All you need to do is present 10 quay, 10 Yuan. This is a deposit. I am not even totally sure what the deposit is for but you always give them 10 Yuan and then when you are done, they give you the change. They are about 3 Yuan per hour, so that’s about $0.35 I guess, about $0.35 per hour. They may ask you to show you a passport or some other kind of identification but they will probably be able to say passport in English, so you don’t need to know that. And if they really can’t say it, they probably won’t care that much and they will just let you go in anyway. Many times in China if your communication is failing, the person in charge will just let you go by because they don’t want to bother. Often they will assign you a number for which computer you will be at though sometimes they will let you just choose the computer. It’s probably about 50-50. They will give you a ticket. On the ticket will be a password and maybe the number of the computer you are supposed to use. If there are two numbers on your tickets, you can bet that the longer number is your password and the shorter number is the number of the computer you’ve been assigned to probably something like 23 or 74, a two digit number is probably the number of the computer you are going to be assigned to. If there is just one long, maybe 6 digit number, that’s probably just your password. You go, you sit down on your chair and you just plug that password into whatever field there is open on the computer screen. This sounds simple but a lot of times, it doesn’t work. A lot of times, it’s confusing. You know, I’ve been to a lot of internet cafes and yet sometimes I get to a new one, I don’t know what to do. So to solve this problem, you ask an attendant walking around in between the rows of computers, there are always usually young men, 18 year old, 17 year olds usually with glasses, walking around, smoking cigarettes and you just come to them and they will help you with any problem you happen to have. They know the computers inside and out. The only problem might be if you are on an English website, then they might not quite understand but in order to ask these people for help, you need to know how to ask for help. So here is the phrase for asking for help. 请帮我(Qǐng bāng wǒ.). One more time, 请帮我(Qǐng bāng wǒ.). The tones for this are third tone 请(qǐng) the falling rising tone, 请(qǐng) then first tone, 帮(bāng) one more time 帮(bāng) and then third tone again 我(wǒ) one last time 我(wǒ), 请帮我(Qǐng bāng wǒ.) this is the simplest way to say please help me. Literally it means please 请(qǐng), 帮(bāng) to help and 我(wǒ) me. Please help me. You come to them, you show them your ticket and you say 请帮我(Qǐng bāng wǒ.) Totally simple. They will look at it, they won’t know what problem you have immediately but they come over to your computer and they should be able to recognize what’s going on. They will plug in your password for you and this is totally normal. Chinese people also sometimes need the attendant to plug in the password and then you are free to surf the web and of course, everything is going to be in Chinese, the names of the programs are going to be in Chinese, everything is in Chinese but if you’ve used Windows before, you should be able to recognize everything. Everything should be on the desktop. I’ve never had to open a folder. So the Explore icon should be pretty prominent. You just double click on that and you are ready to go. Have fun guys. |
| All right, to close our today’s lesson, we’d like you to practice what we’ve just learned. I will provide you with the English equivalent of a phrase and you are responsible for shouting it out loud. You will have a few seconds before I give you the answer. So 加油(Jiā yóu!) Internet café 网吧(wǎng bā). Please help me 请帮我(Qǐng bāng wǒ.). |
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