I'm off to China!

Heading to the airport in two hours for my trip to Beijing. Because the Eid holiday starts today this will likely be one of the busiest times at the airport this year - so I'm giving myself 3 1/2 hours to check in and board.

I took some time today to review my Lonely Planet guide to Beijing and they had a bunch of phrases at the back for people to say if they need to get key info across in Mandarin. So I tried it out on a Chinese coworker (Singaporean actually) to make sure that I had the pronounciations correct. It was great doing this because I discovered:

-- the english sayings in the Lonely Planet are not phonetic;
-- Chinese people cannot understand a word that I say in Mandarin; and
-- Saying things from the guidebook is a great way to get Chinese people to laugh hysterically, which should be useful to break the ice at parties.

For example, one of the words Lonely Planet lists as 'bushi'. How would you proounce that reading from the book? Bu-shi is my guess. How is the word really pronounced?

bu-suh

So why the %@$&@# does the guide say bushi ??! This was repeated with most of the words I tried - my colleague had no clue why the book translated them this way, but laughed and laughed at my attempts to say them.

Also, from the limited phrases given in the guidebook it appears Lonely Planet readers are generally concerned with things like:

"use the meter please"
"where does this bus go?"
"where is the nearest gay nightclub?"

but the guide is silent on "where is the toilet?" or words like "left" "right" or "down the street two blocks". Apparantly it is much more vital for Lonely Planet readers to find gay nightlife than a washroom. (I don't even want to think about why - is that even legal in China?)

Anyway looks like I'll stick to English as much as possble. See ya in 10 days!