Before I left for China, I bought a Lonely Planet guide to China from the mid-1990s. The guide said, half seriously and half tongue-in-cheek, that the most commonly heard phrase in China is "mei you", "don't have". As in, "Do you have this in a different size?" "Mei you".
By far, the most commonly heard phrase now is "Wei", the word for "hello" on the phone. Everyone has a cell phone and everywhere you walk you hear "Wei?", "wei?", "WEI!?".
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