330 To Guess

What did you have for lunch today? Jesse Edbrooke guesses what ShaoLan had for lunch! One of the benefits of this word is that it’s extremely useful for playing some games. In fact, when you first meet Chinese people, something they often like to do for fun is to ask you to guess their age (if in doubt, guess young)! It’s a good way to break the ice and start a friendly conversation. Jesse remembers a time meeting some students from Taiwan in the UK for the first time when they asked him to guess where they were from and he guessed their exact hometown in one. It was the start of a long friendship!

The Chinese word for “guess” is 猜, which interestingly includes the “dog” radical because, in ancient China, the dog was seen as a suspicious animal, always sniffing around and generally being suspicious! As well as meaning “guess,” it can also mean “to think” or “to suspect.”