Pick Up A Weirdo - Portugal is important to Chinese

I came to Beijing to spend some holidays with my family, who came to visit me, and look what I found in our hostel.

Yep, there were only two pillows and both from Portuguese speaking countries, Portugal and Brazil. Chinese love flags, but usually the most common are UK and US.

Obviously, this is all a coincidence, but I never did tell you the episode when my roommate and I were in mandarin class trying to find out how to say the Chinese names for our countries, Portugal and Spain.

We were using this app that kinda saves our lives in a lot of situations, Pleco, and we discovered our countries:

The assistant translator at the time, overheard our conversation and explained te meaning of the name: the first characters mean grape, grapes, and the last one ivory. He added that Spain had no meaning because it was just a country, Portugal was important to Chinese.

Well, after so many months of being mistaken for Spanish. Being mocked by my classmates and my constant tantrums saying “Portuguese is not Spanish!” And even being nicknamed Consuela, the Brazilian speaking Spanish girl”. I must say this was a victory. I turned to my roommate and said: “Ah! You’re just a country, chinese don’t care about you.”

I still love spanish people though!