Never Fails

So this actually happened back in February, but I forgot to add it to the blog until now.

I was getting dressed in the locker room at the gym one day, and a man came up to me and asked, in English, "Are you American?" to which I responded, "Yes I am."

Then he asked me in English, "How long you in China?"

At that point I responded to him in Chinese, "Wo shi qu nian shi yue lai de" ("I arrived last year in October")

However, after I said this, he looked like he didn't understand me, which made me start worrying: Did I say a wrong word? Did I use the wrong tone?

Anyways, I said it again, in Chinese, a bit more slowly and deliberately, to make sure that I said it correctly, but he still didn't seem to understand me.

At that point I asked him, "Wo shuo cuo le ma?" meaning "Did I say it incorrectly?"

He looked as if he still didn't understand me, and when I was about to say something again, he said to me in English, "I don't know much Chinese, I am Japanese."

Apparently he was just a Japanese businessman doing business in Huzhou. :$