If your level of spoken Chinese is low, responding to phone calls can be a pretty stressful experience. And while a simple “Wei nihao. Hao de” will usually get you through a waimai delivery, this won’t suffice when your mobile phone service provider, bank, gas company, or pretty much anyone else comes a-calling.
One strategy that I use to manage phone calls like these, is to use the Reply with SMS function on my phone. If an unknown call comes in, I simply swipe up and select an automatic response in Chinese: “对不起，我的中文不好。请给我发短信” Duìbùqǐ, wǒ de zhōngwén bù hǎo. Qǐng gěi wǒ fā duǎnxìn. “Sorry, my Chinese is not good. Please text me.” Sure enough, a few seconds later I’ll get a text message that I can copy-paste into a translation app and continue the conversation that way. This is also a good way to deter telemarketers, who will simply give up when they realize they can’t talk you into anything.
The Reply with SMS function is a quick easy way to manage difficult phone calls
A quick poll around the beijingkids office reveals that this function is available on pretty much every single model of phone you could imagine, including iPhone, Samsung, One Plus, Lenovo, Xiaomi, and more.
To set up an Automatic SMS reply on your phone simply;
- Open Settings on your phone
- Navigate to the ‘Phone‘ or ‘Calls‘ category
- Look for something like ‘Quick decline messages‘ or ‘Reply with SMS‘
- Activate the function
- Create a new automatic reply, copy-pasting 对不起，我的中文不好。请给我发短信 or whatever you prefer
- Deploy your new message at will!
You could create a few different Chinese auto-responses for different circumstances, but if your Chinese reading level is not very high, it may be difficult to remember which is which in the spur of the moment.
Do you have any other useful Chinese communication hacks? Share them in the comments!
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Images: Kelly Sikkema (via Unsplash)/beijingkids, Anna Pellegrin Hartley
