There are certain FT's who can speak Chinese, but pretend they can write hanzi also. I can't read or write hanzi. I once hired a 22 year old private Chinese woman teacher ( no everyone, I didn't sleep with her ) in Nanning who tried to teach me. She was cute and tried hard, I just feel she lacked experience.
There are also foreigners who pretend to be proficient in pinyin, although many are not. I studied it for a long time and stlll make mistakes. For example, "hen duo chien", instead of "hen duo qian" , mistakes like that.

I will tell you though the foreigners in China I really detest: Those know all laowai with Chinese wives who claim to be "experts" on everything in China, but who can't even speak simple Chinese. Those who need their wife to translate everything. Those who can't even get a taxi by themselves and give directions. Those who can't order dishes in a restaurant. They will say , "I will just point to the picture in my wife is not there". Often there is no picture. And then when the waitress asks them if they want the steak "rare, medium, well done", they don't know. Or if they want a dish very spicy or non-spicy.

Often I have been near a group of laowai in a place and they ask me to translate. I tell them I'm not a translator. Don't be lazy, and learn some of the language FFS if you want to live in a non-English speaking country. And not out of respect for the locals BTW, it just makes it easier for laowai if they can speak Chinese.

Excellent post Silverboy, once again touching on a few issues that I can relate to.

Yeah, I used to often make that age-old mistake of accidentally trying to type the French word for dog too. Q's just tend to f**k with English speakers in general because we naturally expect to see a 'u' after it.

As for me, I'm terrible at writing Hanzi with a pen, but can read (at least a fair bit) and type with pinyin input. Not that my Chinese is great or anything (I'd even say it is shit), but I have also met Laowais that pretend to be better than they really are.

I also have to tell people that I'm not really a translator too. A guy who is more of a linguistics expert like Turnoi might be able to explain this kind of thing far better than me, but being able to speak a language and translate between languages professionally are two different things. If my Chinese was actually good enough to translate professionally, I would have became a professional interpretor or something, earning loads more money, not teaching English! (Being a translator one day is a little dream of mine though). This issue can be a pain in the arse, because it stops you wanting to befriend newer laowais because they expect you to translate everything perfectly, they call you at unreasonable times expecting you to be able to help them out with any kind of situation whatsoever and you feel guilty, when you can't help them.

However, I do have one good laowai friend who doesn't speak Chinese as well as me yet, but has a good attitude and will normally try. When we go out for dinner, I will sometimes tell Chinese people around us a joke, that I can't speak Chinese and tell them that his Chinese is better than mine and let him order stuff. Instead of getting pissed off, he gets on with it and keeps improving.

And as for the shitc**t laowais out there, I have news for you: pointing and saying "这个！(Zhege)， 这个！ and yi ge Pee-Jew (一瓶啤酒 - Yi ping pi jiu spoken really badly) does not equate to fluent Chinese! I know of shit Laowai teachers that always want to go to mediocre Lanzhou lamian restaurants for lunch. Why? 1.) It is cheap, obviously 2.) They always have pictures! -Congratulations, you now know what the indignity and shame of complete illiteracy as an adult feels like, motherf**ker! That better motivate you to learn some Chinese, right?

However, I'll confess that I struggle with ordering steak in China, because I rarely eat steak in China because 1.) the poor quality meat 2.) the excessive use of tenderiser and 3.) they always drown it in black pepper sauce without asking you first. Therefore, that means I am not so familiar with the whole idea of ordering steaks by numbers, like 3分熟，５分熟，　７分熟, etc.　 I know that there are words for rare, medium etc but everybody seems to expect a number. As for the spice issue, don't you get irritated by those that expect you not to want spicy food because you are a foreigner. Sometimes, I deliberately ask them to add a bit of extra chilli to make sure that they aren't secretly toning it down for me.

Anyway, is it just me or are a lot of private female Chinese tutors quite young, cute, hot, speak English fluently, but are actually useless at teaching Chinese? Me and mate even had these kind of teachers approach us in a bar and start drinking and flirting with us before handing out business cards. I swear down that some of these fake-whore teachers always ask you the same question to supposedly test your level of Chinese "What's the difference between 一点 (yidian) and 有点？ (youdian)". I thought they'd mix it up a bit more, but every teacher seems to use that very same question. My mate had a trial lesson with her, said it was terrible but would still bang it though.

F**k me, it seems that Chinese businessmen run their Chinese language training centres and tutoring agencies just as bad as their English language training centres. Sex sells. When I previously did some work at a training centre, they got a really beautiful female Russian student in to teach part-time. There was an huge increase in hormonal Chinese teenage boys booking classes. So naturally, the management loved her. Her accent was very sexy, but it just wasn't the accent of a native speaker to say the least, lol. Shame she dropped out of her course because she didn't like the city.

Recently, met another one of these hot pretend Chinese teachers at a party, got chatting to me about Chinese lessons in a way that I wouldn't say is professional either, got chatting with her, because it was a party and I wasn't trying to get a Chinese lesson, I was trying to get my d**k wet, let's be honest. Found that she is merely just a locally based student doing a linguistics masters, that isn't exactly trained to teach in any way. For f**k's sake, I don't go offering private tutored English classes as my chat-up line to Chinese girls in bars, my work stays at work, I don't take my work outside. Don't know why, but this kind of thing actually made me lose interest in her. What's she going to do, keep me pleasured sexually to ensure that I keep paying extortionate tuition fees or something? (Actually, most likely just tease me to continuously give me the impression that I might have a chance of getting with her, if I book classes).

Another guy I know of was spending at least a third of his teaching salary on Chinese lessons yet learning nothing. The arrogant twat thought he was learning something because he had a 'Chinese teacher', yet seem confused by the fact that Chinese people can usually understand what I say, but just have fun laughing at him, trying excessively hard to speak Chinese with no success.

I saw some of his teachers that he continuously switched over time, who worked privately and weren't affiliated with a school. Sure they were just normal, average looking girls (probably not pretty enough to get hired?) that could speak good English, looking for a foreign boyfriend. We complain about dirty old foreign men coming over as sex tourists, using teaching jobs to access students. These girls are doing it in reverse, they are just probably using foreign guys to buy them coffee at Starbucks and pay for their dinner or something. So, some of us foreigners teaching over here are getting screwed over as both employees and customers! How about that!

As for me, I've never hired a Chinese tutor. But if I do, I need an ugly old female teacher or a male teacher, I've got to actually get a teacher for educational purposes right? After all, if you really just want to pay for sex, a prostitute is cheaper than a private Chinese tutor. Hell, at some of the higher class places, I'm sure they'd wear a naughty teacher or schoolgirl costume, if you asked nicely.