A very basic experience in every day life is getting a cab. Its pretty simple. You hail an empty cab, you tell the driver where you want to go, and he goes there.
And then there's the cab experience for an anglophone in Beijing. Here is a conversation I had when I tried to go from the Friendship Hotel, after picking up my friend Molly, to the Furama Xpress Hotel.
Me: Ni hao, ni zhi bu zhi dao Fu Yi Shi Sheng jiu dian zai nar? (Do you know where the Furama hotel is?)
Driver: Shen me? (What?)
Me: Fu - Yi - Shi - Sheng? (Me saying the name slowly)
Driver: J$FLJ(!jjj10i928h2kjjso1-0 (Driver saying something totally incomprehensible)
Me: Shen me? (what?) Jiu dian...(hotel)
Driver: (mutters something incomprehensible)
Me: Uh, wo zou le. (Um, I'm gonna go now)
Basically if I don't have the name of the place I want to go written down, or can't pronounce it perfectly, there is no guarantee that I can get there. I can't yet give directions well, and even if I knew the Chinese name of the hotel, which I did, I still sometimes butcher the pronunciation. I eventually managed to get to the hotel by telling the driver to go to Peking University's West Gate (which is near there), then pointing out the hotel. Even this was a struggle, as Molly's constant deflating laughter attested to. Basically I'm terrified every time I'm forced to get a cab.
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