Don't pull the wool over the eyes of foreigners.
Posted by Jonah Lopin on Sun, Mar 01, 2009 @ 12:37 PM
There's a Chinese word 蒙 [meng1] that means "cheat", "deceive", or "pull the wool over the eyes of".
A good phrase to know if you have a sense of humor and are going to be negotiating with any Chinese people is:
别蒙老外!
The first word is pronounced bie2 and it means "don't". Second word is meng1. Third word is lao3, which means old, and the forth word is wai4, which means outside or foreign. The last two words together mean "foreigner".
So in sum total, the phrase bie2 meng1 lao3wai4 means "do not pull the wool over the eyes of foreigners."
If you get the tone right you'll definitely get a laugh.
Make sure you don't get menged by telling Chinese people bie2 meng1 lao3wai4!!!