On Monday I noticed a guy putting up a sign for a new Chinese dumpling place about a block away from my house. Yesterday I noticed they had a now open sign in the window. It's on my way home from work, so tonight I stopped by to try it out. Since I love dumping and pan fried pork buns, I've made sure to learn those characters and was able to order both in Chinese off the chinese side of the menu. Stunned the pants of the serving girl who was then was more than happy to listen to my terrible mandarin as I very badly explained why I was learning (and then half the staff came over to listen).

It's the first time I've really been able to read something actually useful in a real setting, and the first time I've had a conversation* without my wife there "helping". It's really hard not to be self concious about speaking because I know I suck, but every time I get up the balls to actually do it, its great.

Anyway just thought I'd share! Thanks heaps skritter for teaching me how to order pan friend pork minibuns, food of the gods!

congrats, your victory is by no means small. what are those characters, by the way? When your mandarin gets really good and people insist on ignoring you and speaking to your wife you can tell your wife in mandarin what you want to tell them and have her repeat it verbatim to the waitress. “请告诉她 。 。 。"
(At least that's always been my fantasy. )

Nice! That's awesome. Menus are no joke. I bet those characters will be extra memorable for you now.

There's an excellent Chinese place near me that sells all sorts of crazy dishes, and I keep trying to order the sea cucumber in Chinese. (I had to use Pleco to look up the characters, so I cheated a bit.) They don't blink, just say they don't have it today. Such high standards for being surprised at foreigners speaking Chinese--I love it.

@kaysik, like the others have said, menus in Chinese are quite a challenge. I'm still picking up new characters all the time from menus - for instance, this week I added 炖 (dun4, stew) to my skritter words.

This topic makes me think back to how many times I ordered "field chicken" before learning that 田鸡 is frog.

Congratulations, Kaysik!!
What you have just done is my goal. Would you mind letting us know what is your number-of-characters score, roughly? I am at 580 myself. So, ...yeah.

Ha, ha, Chris!! I bet it tasted like chicken anyway, right?

@podster: Made that post from my wife's laptop, no chinese input. Now I'm back on my machine I give you:

生煎包 - pan friend pork buns - http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_E0QNjRwnIak/S_9Dvii5HCI/AAAAAAAACmU/P35TrZnflzU/s1600/DSC_6699.jpg

小笼包 - soup filled pork dumplings - http://blog.angelaleowgray.com/images/070128-1.jpg

Also nice solution with the wife talking problem - I'll have to remember that when I'm capable of it :P


@allisonting: The two I ordered I've specifically memorised them. Since I love both those foods I made sure to learn them.

To be fair I didn't READ the menu in the fullest sense of the word of course. I know the meats （牛肉，猪肉， 鸡肉）, and I know a couple of other dish types like dumpling and friend rice (水饺 and 炒饭）. If you mix up those combinations together I could give a decent stab at quite a few items. And of course the specific ones I learnt by heart. Maybe 10 dishs out of the 50 avaliable I'd be confident in knowning what would arrive, with another 20 where it would have the right meat. Lots of room for imporvement, but its a damn site better than the zero I used to know hehe.

In total I'm only at about 300 characters so half yours - the important thing is not so much the number but the content.

My next mission is to read the english side of the menu, finding crispy skin chicen and then learn the characters for it!

I LOVE 生煎包!

Good work Kaysik.

Reading menus is actually EXCELLENT practice, for instance, you get to practice daily, or for me, three times a day. Meats are the easiest place to start and generally if the meat is not directly said, its then pork. Slowly you can build your vocab with Noodles, Rice noodles, Fried rice noodles, chicken noodles, glass noodles, and hundreds of other characters. It all builds on itself and Chinese menus are SO much better organized than English ones.

Also, my gf knows better than to order for me now. If I can't pronounce something I always ask her before the waitress arrives. If I mess up she assist me. Now I don't have the problem anymore and can order off most any menu alone now. (unless its a rare restaurant with new food) I find it most fun ordering in western restaurants in Chinese especially since the waitress are trained to speak English to me. I've had to learn many state, cities and countries as well as western food's names in Chinese to do that though.

Honestly, I kinda miss not being able to read the menu. Before I just ordered randomly and would see what I got for the price, that's not for everyone though.

Good luck on your studies and it sounds like you are making great progress!

Reading menus gives me a new perspective on Chinese. Here is an excellent example:

I had learned 琢 *磨* (zhuo2 mo2, to ponder) and *姑* 娘 (gu1 niang, girl) from my textbooks.

I had already knew the word for my favorite mushroom - mo2gu, but I didn't know the characters. And then on a restaurant menu menu I saw *蘑* *菇*. Not exactly like the mo2 from ponder, not exactly like the gu1 from girl, but I knew it was mo2gu, and therefore mushroom.

The more you learn characters, the more they reinforce each other. And the easier it is to look at two characters you've never seen before, and know what the word is.

@atdlouis I agree, a new perspective and occasionally a history lesson on reason for the name of the dish.

To me, menu's are strong argument in support of learning individual characters along with words. I think there are few resources that could ever prepare you to read one, better than being comfortable with those crazy ambiguous single character definitions.

While we're at it I'll throw out my favorite local dish 博山酥锅!

Speaking of small victories, I just got an e-mail from one of my students which ends with:

"Oh yeah, one more thing, the way you pronounce my last name is Fang is absolutely correct, im really surprised you got that right...lol, you are the first white person who did it..."

Congrats, Dependable!

Dear menu / single character study fans,
yeah, I think reading a menu is one step away from studying classical poetry ;)
At least "eight treasures rice" has the word rice in it. I'm still not sure about "Buddha jumps over the wall"

Menu/food Chinese was my first real Chinese :) Now I can converse on a few other topics as well but food remains a favorite!