Before my blushes fade, I thought I should share this story with you. The week before last my beloved Sam came to Shanghai to visit me (for those out of the loop, we're back together). I took a taxi to the airport to meet him and could hardly sit still because I was so excited. The drive out to the airport was almost an hour and despite my best efforts, I could not manage to string a sentence together in Chinese or English.
After 40 minutes or so we started to reach airport territory - I could see that the road forked in two up ahead. The driver asked me whether he should take the left or the right road. I figured this had something to do with going to arrivals or departures. "OK" I thought, "I need to say 'arrivals'", I racked my brains but the word wouldn't come. We were getting closer and closer to the fork in the road and the driver was starting to look worried. I decided that forming a sentence would help the right word appear in my mind - so I set about saying "my boyfriend arrives at 3:30". The word for arrives is "dadao" but I am never too sure about the tones, sitting in the taxi I couldn't remember the "dao" part but I knew it was "da-something". So, I confidently told the driver "wo de nan peng you da fei ji san dian ban", which translates as....
....wait for it....
"my boyfriend masturbates at 3:30"
Yes, a true clanger. As soon as the words had some out of my mouth I understood what I'd said and spent the next 15 minutes blushing furiously and apologising over and over again. Thankfully, the driver didn't take offence (although he also did not seem amused) and I got arrivals on time. I don't think I'll ever forget the word for "arrive" ever again!
