Plans Failed? Know “泡汤 ( pàotāng)” to Express That Feeling!

Plans Foiled? "泡汤 (pàotāng)"!
"泡汤 (pàotāng)"? Pick Yourself Up and Move Ahead!

Our lives are filled with hopes and dreams. Unfortunately, part of our life experience is to watch those hopes dashed to pieces! On a positive note, we can learn from heartbreak and approach our future challenges with more wisdom and experience in our next effort.

As a Mandarin Chinese student, I'm always faced with challenges and doubts. Here's my story:

I took my first Chinese class during my junior year of college. Over the next 12 months I crammed Chinese at school and learned from books and tapes in my spare time. Before going into the workforce, I decided to travel to China for one month after graduating from college. I was confident that I'd "hit the ground running" and be conversing with Mandarin speakers on the streets of Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. As it turns out, I hadn't learned the tones of Mandarin properly. No one understood me. At a restaurant, I thought I was ordering dumplings "水饺 (shuǐjiǎo)" but actually I was ordering sleep "睡觉 (shuìjiào)" . My plans for landing in China and speaking Chinese with locals were destroyed!

Later on, as my Chinese improved, I learned a word to describe this heartbreak: "泡汤 (pàotāng)".

"泡汤 (pàotāng)" can be discouraging, but we can learn from it and pull ourselves back up! After my expectations of speaking Chinese in China were "泡汤 (pàotāng)", I decided to take a few online classes with native teachers back in the U.S. and am now a student here in China and will soon take my HSK Level 4 proficiency test in Mandarin.

Where does "泡汤 (pàotāng)" come from; what does it mean? Click "Read more" to check the answers.

If you stay in China for a while, you will come to find that many Chinese people use English names. The amounts of Jacks and Lisas you meet will be an endless stream, despite their Chinese names all being very different. Many might ask, why are they using English names instead of their real names? Some might even assume Chinese people are acting pretentious. In reality, using an English name can be quite useful for a person's career. Especially, for people working within internet or high-tech fields.

Equality is extremely important for people working in these fields and so is keeping a culture of equality in the workplace. This means that even interns should be able to call the CEO by his name. This company culture follows companies such as Facebook and Google, who emphasis the importance of a happy workplace. In Chinese, usually a person is called by their last name and title, such as the president being called "X 总 (X zǒng) President X." Switching to English names loses all this formality, and the president merely becomes Sam or some other English names.

Nowadays, many Chinese people recognize this kind of company culture and support it. They know it can make the lines between ranks in the workplace disappear and allow people to have closer connections with people of other ranks. Yet in Chinese, there is a natural ranking and for someone to call their superior by their Chinese name would feel very awkward and out of place. For example, my friend's boss is named "小丽 (xiǎolì)" where "小 (xiǎo)" means "little." Her boss is much older than her and she can't get herself to call her boss that name, it feels too disrespectful. Yet, calling her boss Lisa is quite easy for her.

Read more articles about Chinese culture:
Understand 人情 (rénqíng)? Prepare for an Easy Life in China
Get a Chinese Name