Many people write that the Chinese have no word for "no". Of course, this is not strictly true because every language needs a way of saying "no"! I shall now demonstrate the beauty of the Chinese language and the complexity of Chinese negation, as the Chinese just have lots of ways of saying no!
Yesterday, I went to a train ticket booking office to buy two tickets to Harbin in the North of China. The city holds an annual ice festival and my friend and I are very excited about heading up there to brave the -40 temperatures and slide our way around. I got to the front of train ticket queue with the usual pushing and shoving that comes in a culture that doesn't have a culture of queueing, and proudly whipped out "two sleeper tickets to Harbin please, 22nd Jan - and make it snappy". OK, so there was no making it snappy, but if there were such a phrase, I would have said it. The lady behind the counter peered over her glasses and said "No".
I asked "No what?"
She replied "No"
I asked again "No what? No tickets? No I can't have any? No there aren't any? No what?"
Again "No"
And then a customer behind me shoved me out of the way, and the lady sold him some tickets. No "no" for him!
The fuse of my temper had been lit. I queued again, and when I got the front, I asked again what kind of "no" she meant. There are a handful of ways of saying no - they all have slightly different meanings. For example, saying that there are none is a different "no" to the "no" that means you don't want something. The "no" I was getting was a contextless general "bu" that just kind of means "no" - but it needs other words to help it on it's way to tell you exactly what kind of "no".
The lady let out a long slow breath and accompanied with the look of death (known in Nottingham as a 'feisty' - but pronounced 'faisty') and said very calmly through gritted teeth "NO". That was all the context I needed.
She then told me again I was causing trouble. But asked me to come back again today...perhaps to cause one of her colleagues some trouble?!
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