Korean Student Goes Viral After Ordering Food in Chinese

Ordering food in another language can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t speak it that well, wouldn’t you agree?

A Korean man put that to the test in a 10-second video showing him trying to order food in a hotpot restaurant… in Mandarin. 

Mastering the tones is crucial in Chinese, as one misspoken tone can mean something entirely different from what you had intended to say.

Obviously it didn’t take long for this video to circulate around the internet and become a viral sensation among Chinese netizens. 

You can see him placing an order for “beansprout mushrooms” and “chicken egg’s little brother”, much to the confusion of his dining partner and the waiter.

But what he was really trying to say is:

Enoki mushrooms 金针菇 (jīn zhēn gū), not "beansprout mushrooms". 

Quail egg 鹌鹑蛋 (ān chún dàn), not "chicken egg's little brother”.

As the waiter walked away, the Korean man shouted ecstatically: "He understood me! He's got a smart brain!"

The video has gotten over hundreds of thousands of likes on Douyin and left Chinese netizens bursting out laughing.

Some Weibo users reposted the video and got over 150,000 likes and used a hashtag in Chinese that translates to “How hard it is for foreigners to speak Chinese.”

The man in the video is a Korean student named Shin who came to China three years ago and said that he is learning a few words of Mandarin such as quail eggs, which were still too hard for him to remember. 

He said: "The more I learn, the harder it gets".

Both his friends and he love Chongqing style hotpot so much, in fact, that he could eat hotpot all day long whenever he visits the city. Unfortunately for him, hotpot in Suzhou, where he lives, is more expensive than down south.

Shin didn’t expect his video to go viral on Weibo and Douyin, some of China’s most popular social platforms.

Do you find it hard to order food at restaurants in China?

Video:

Source: Weibo/ pear video

Editor: Crystal Huang

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