food ordering and money

[goldie]

hi, i teach adults beginners Mandarin and our topic this term is food, drink and shopping. i just realised that i can only think of how to get the attention of a waitress and not a waiter. i would say xiaojie for a waitress, but not xiansheng for a waiter, so what should i use instead?

also, i'm familiar with Taiwan money but not RMB, so are there any links to the cost of things in China and what are the common ways of referring to the cost of things?

please help as i need to be fully up to date on this by wednesday, thanks in advance.

[geraldc]

I've been warned about some waitresses not liking the term xiaojie anymore as it's also a term for prostitutes (can't remember where I heard it though..)

Fuwuyuan is a pretty safe term though.

For money it's kuai.

[goldie]

i'm surprised that xiaojie can also mean prostitute, i've never heard of that. i guess like you say 'fuwuyuan' is a good substitute. i know the term is kuai for money, i meant is it like Taiwan where there is no smaller denomination, eg, liang kuai, 55 kuai, 159 kuai, 1159 kuai and so on, or is it 1 kuai 5 mao, does China still use the 'mao' and 'fen'? how does it work?

[gougou]

Mao and fen are both still used, but you'll rarely encounter fen outside of a supermarket. And as far as I recall, I have never needed mao in a restaurant either, the bills always comes out to a clean yuan-amount.

[roddy]

Loads of people seem to have 'heard' or 'read' that xiaojie (and also tongzhi) should be avoided for their implications, but I've yet to hear of anyone who has either a) been slapped by a waitress or B) been disappointed by having a food order taken in a brothel. You hear Chinese people use xiaojie all the time, and tongzhi is often used as 'comrade' - although now almost always in a jokey tone between friends, very rarely do I hear the term used seriously. Previous topic

You can use xiansheng for male waiters, but fuwuyuan is perhaps the easy gender-neutral option.

[kudra]

If it's a small proprietor run place, then I seem to remember the terms

lao2ban3 ( lao3 ban3)

and

lao2banniang2

I might be mis-remembering tones.

I thought this was roughly boss.

Ok checking mandarin tools

老闆 老板 lǎo bǎn /boss/business proprietor/

Hey, wa dya know!

Might be a Taiwan thing from the early 80's so better check with

current native speakers. Or let them chime in.

[geraldc]

A couple more waiter terms are 伙記 and 企台, but I think they're only in Cantonese

[skylee]

It is 企堂 ...

[stephanhodges]

Dimsum (from mandarin tools) lists three terms for waiter: 服务员 (fú wù yuán), 跑堂儿的 (pǎo tangr2 de) and 侍者 (shì zhē)

ABC (via Wenlin) lists :

侍者 shìzhě; 服务员 fúwùyuán,. 茶房 cháfang; 店小二 diànxiǎo'èr; 跑堂的 pǎotángde; 侍应生[-應-] shìyìngshēng; ; 堂倌 tángguān

I'm guessing that 店小二 actually is more the sense of "proprietor", but are all the others OK? Would they have different usages / situations?

[roddy]

Apart from fuwuyuan, they all look fairly antiquitated to me, and I've never heard them in use, apart from 小二 which is (if I remember correctly) is largely a Beijing term you can use if you are in a 老北京-type restaurant and the waiters have white cloths slung over their shoulder.

Roddy

[stephanhodges]

Thanks. That's often the main problem with dictionaries, of course. No real context for usage

[confucius]

Here is a sample of restaurant vocabulary from my Chinese lessons for English speakers which you can find on my homepage at virtualtourist.com:

Rice = Me Fawn

Corn = You Me

Vegetables = Shoe Sigh

Pork = Jew Row

Sea Cucumber = High Shun

Fish Head = You Toe

Beer = Pee Joe

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/46443/

[笨笨德]

yeah there is nothing wrong with 小姐, unless you are winking, grunting like a gorrila and drooling at the same time...

i would be more careful with 老闆娘 as it implies the person is somewhat older... the boss at my local pub, was none to impressed when i whipped it out one night... so i just call her 小姐 now even though she is older than me... seems to flatter her no end...

have fun...

[semantic nuance]

well, in Taiwan, xiaojie does have the implication of 'prostitute' when you use it in certain occasions. Sometimes, when a male lodges in a hotel or inn,some hotels or inns will offer some service, such as '叫小姐' (to arrange a call-girl for male customer) which is of course illegal but still exists. Sentence like this can be '要不要叫小姐?'

Otherwise, xiaojie just means 'Miss' when you address to female. As for the title of the owner of the shop, a female owner or a male owner can be called 老闆 , while a female owner or a male owner's wife is called 老闆娘. It's not necessary that 老闆娘 is older than miss in this case. Many young ladies do run businesses.

小姐 is basically used when you're not sure if the lady you're talking to is married or not. It's safer to address her as 小姐. No one would be happy if you address someone who's not married as '太太'. So, generally in Taiwan, if you use this term xiojie in a right tone, scarcely will anyone connect it to 'prostitude'.

goldie, you can use xiangsheng for a waiter, or you can use 服務生 too. When you want to call out a waiter, 服務員 is a bit strange when used in spoken language. You can use it in a written form, but rarely will it be applied in spoken language. You'll hear people say: 服務生, 麻煩結帳 instead of 服務員, 麻煩結帳.

[geraldc]

It is 企堂 ...

I did a search on yahoo and there are some other people who use 企台 in the context of waiter. Is it a mistake, or another term?

[imron]

Dimsum (from mandarin tools) lists three terms for waiter: 服务员 (fú wù yuán), 跑堂儿的 (pǎo tangr2 de) and 侍者 (shì zhē)

侍者 should be shìzhě and not shì zhē. I did a quick check, and while Adsotrans also appears to use the incorrect tones, my 现代汉语词典, Oxford dictionary and as you pointed out the ABC dictionary all list it as shìzhě.

[semantic nuance]

Quote:

Dimsum (from mandarin tools) lists three terms for waiter: 服务员 (fú wù yuán), 跑堂儿的 (pǎo tangr2 de) and 侍者 (shì zhē)

I don't know if these terms are still being used in maindland china, but in Taiwan, people of course can know these terms when they read newspapers or novels, etc. In daily life when you finish your meal and would like to pay the money in a restaurant, you won't use these terms at all. Normally, people will say:

1. " 先生(小姐), 我要買單"

2. " 服務生, 我要買單."

You won't use '服務員 (跑堂的, 侍者), 我要買單" unless you want some comical effect.

[Lu]

Fuwuyuan sounds very normal to me, I've heard it used tons of times, in restaurants. To me, Fuwusheng sounds a bit shumianyu.

I never heard of anyone getting slapped for calling the waitress a xiaojie, either, but I think I did hear of waitresses not being to happy about that. I think that was in Xi'an or something.

I'm often a bit wary of saying Laoban(niang), how can I be sure that person is really the boss.

The other day I heard a TW man address the waiter in a bar as shuai4 ge1. And the waiter came and wasn't the least bit surprised to be called that.

[goldie]

thanks Semantic and Lu. I think fuwusheng and fuwuyuan are prob interchangable. the first may be more common in taiwan. as for shuai ge, was it a gay place? if a girl said it she would sound like she was trying to chat up the waiter and if a guy says it, go figure! funny.

[semantic nuance]

In fact, 帥哥or 美女 are just used to address to people in a comical way. They're actually variations of mister and miss when you call someone. I guess no one will feel upset to be flattered in a comical way.