Wu bai wan.
While I was waiting to cross 解放路 yesterday, I was serenaded by music coming from the branch of 东方电器 on that corner.The shop sells white goods and often plays music, but yesterday, the lyrics caught my ear and unless I was much mistaken, the singer was rendering the English “You buy one” as “Wu bai wan”. I’m not sure whether this was being prefaced by some attempt to produce “Why don’t” because I could hear a “wai”, but nothing which sounded like “don’t”.
This afternoon I needed to buy water from the shop at the main gate. The grounds staff have been doing quite a bit of watering and when the hose pipes are at full pressure, I’ll go bouncing over them. As I passed across the lane between the ponds, there was some girl on one of those bikes with really small wheels. She approached the hose pipe which was lying across the path with some caution, hit it, and stopped dead, which sent her off the seat. Even if she had been going a bit faster, I’m not sure she could’ve ridden over the hose pipe. I might’ve tried to do a wheelie, but then again, I wouldn’t be seen dead riding such a ridiculous bike.