HOW TO ORDER PIZZA HUT DELIVERY IN CHINA!!! - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

euronatura · #1 07-15-2009, 03:55 AM

PART 1

OK, I am sick of pizza, and I do not like Chinese food, especially the type cooked here in Shenzhen, and I wanted some sort of pasta or something. So I already know that the English downstairs at reception is for *****, so, I think, hey, I am going to check out the website of Pizza Hut in China. Which is www.pizzahut.com.cn

I know that I cannot read Chinese or anything, but I think that if I click one by one on all the buttons, sooner or later I will get to the menu. And since it is pizza hut, for sure they will have pictures of the plates, even though this is a no-no according to Gordon Ramsey.

OK, so this is my thought process. I do it. And I finally find the menu on this website. I am clicking here and there, which I finally find out is what is appetizers, pizza, pasta and other things. Anyway, finally got what I wanted, they even had it written in English, the name of the dish, so I write this down on my piece of paper.

MIND YOU THIS IS ALREADY LIKE 15 MINUTES OF MY PUSHING BUTTONS ON THE WEBSITE.

Anyway, I write down the name in English as shown on the website, did not even attempt to copy the Chinese characters, but I also write down the specific website address for each dish that I want. Mind you, my logic here is that I write this all down, NOTE, the name in English and also the specific website address for each dish that shows on the website address up at the top of internet explorer and the plan is to go to reception and ask them to order this for me for delivery, that they use their computer and pull up the specific web address for each dish so that they can see it in Chinese.

Anyway, this is what I do, have it all ready, after 15 minutes of pushing the buttons on the website to find out what I want, then I go to reception. I ask if they help me by calling pizza hut and ordering what I have written down, on the piece of paper in my hand, and I show them the piece of paper, and I explain that I have the website address of each dish that I want, if that they open internet explorer and go to the websites that I have listed, they will see in Chinese what I want. OK.

euronatura · #2 07-15-2009, 03:56 AM

PART 2

So this is what happens from that moment on………………………….

1) The girl looks at me and grabs the piece of paper and makes a photocopy of it and gives me the photocopy along with the original. I am looking at her like she is stupid, she is.
2) I explain once again what I want, she then tells me, ohhhh, I need to speak to my manager, at least that is what I get from the broken English.
3) She goes and talks to the manager.
4) Manager comes over to me and tells me in broken English, that the business center is on the 7th floor.
5) OK, time note here, already spent 15 minutes in the room looking for what I want to eat. Now I am downstairs already for 7 minutes trying to make them understand what I want – time now 22 minutes
6) So back to the manager now. After she tells me that the business center is on the 7th floor, I guess she said this cause she saw that I had web address on the piece of paper. I explain, yes I can go to the 7th floor, but from previous experience, no one in the business center even speaks the broken English spoken here.
7) I continue to explain that what I want is for someone here that can look at the dishes that I want on the internet, and then do me the favor of calling pizza hut to order it for me and have them deliver what I want.
8) She finally gets me, so we now walk over to the manager’s desk in the lobby.
9) Time 27 minutes and counting.
10) Note, I have the specific website address written on the paper, but she ignores that, and googles pizza hut. She finds the address and clicks on it, it goes to the home page, note, remember this, the same page that I went to when I googled it, www.pizzahut.com.cn .
11) Now mind you, I already spent some 15 minutes just clicking away trying to find the menu and the dishes that I want, I do not remember what buttons they were, that is why I wrote down the specific web addresses of the dishes.
12) I try to explain this, no good, she did not comprehend, I showed the specific web addresses again but to no avail does she understand, and I cannot type it in cause I cannot go behind the desk to touch the computer.
13) Ok, so there I ask for the menu screen, thinking, OK she can read Chinese, she can then click directly on the button for the menu.
14) She does not understand me, so she goes to a translator page that she has on the computer and I write out on a piece of paper “menu” for her, so she types that in, and voila! Up pops the Chinese word for menu. Now she gets it.
15) So there she finds the menu page. Now there are also lots of buttons there and I do not remember which was which, so there we start clicking away.
16) Time 33 minutes at this moment……..
17) Ok, so we find what I want, I order two dishes of BBQ Beef Kabobs South American Style and some shrimp appetizer thingy, mind you I have over half an hour invested here and I am hungry. Now what they mean by south American style, not sure, but hell, has to be better than the f&^king food that they have here at the hotel. Note, already had a bad experience with room service in the morning where I ordered two scrambled eggs, and they sent me a dozen.
18) OK, now she is sitting there looking at me and tells me to call. I say once again, I cannot call, I do not speak Chinese. At this moment, I am thinking, what in the f&^k does this girl think why I am here????? Just to have her surf the net with me and look at pictures of food? Anyway, NEXT STEP……
19) OK, so I explain again, she gets it. She then tells me she does not have the number and starts searching on the internet for the number to call pizza hut. At which time, I tell her how can she not have the number? There is a 3 foot by 2 foot sign at the entrance to the elevators, that is from pizza hut, the number is there large enough, even for me to see it without my glasses. Anyway, I go write down the number and bring it back to her.
20) Time now – f&^k, I already lost concept of time. This was now a f*&king challenge AND A GOAL!!!!!
21) OK, she is about to call, but I remember and had a mental note, to ask for salt and pepper, cause I tell you the Chinese may believe in MSG, but salt, that is a different matter. Here there must be a f*&king shortage between the billion plus chinese, that there is never salt used in cooking or anything… So I ask her to ask them to send along packets of salt and pepper with the order.
22) Once again, the stupid look. After trying to explain salt and pepper, even doing the hand movements like I was eating and pretending to put salt and pepper on my food. I must have looked like an idiot, and given this girls intelligence and just hanging with me surfing the net, she must of thought that I am crazy….. Anyway, so I decide to write it down. Now note, I first write down “salt” and then underneath “pepper.” Like two separate things. She is still looking at me as if she just smoked half a kilo of pot.
23) So she finally thinks, I guess, ahhhh the translator on the computer. She opens it up again…. She then types in saltpepper, all together. Mind you, once again, I wrote it first salt and then pepper, but underneath the word salt. Not together. Anyway, after I show her that it is two different words, she finally just types in salt. HER EYES OPEN UP!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH, she says.
24) OK, from there you would think, two different things, and the first one was salt, obviously, the next is pepper…… You are wrong. She types that in and gets her reply. To which, she then turns around and speaks in Chinese to the girl behind her. I guess it is a strange request to ask for salt and pepper in China. I guess they just think that with the amount of MSG that they use, that this is not needed. Either that or she was referring to my hand movements before and wondering if I had palsy….. OK, but onto the next step
25) OK, time to call……….
26) She does, calls the toll free number and begins to order what I want. The call was fast, did not understand a thing, but I thought, hey she finally got it and did something fast…..WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
27) Anyway, as I was saying, the call was quite fast, I was impressed. Well, she hung up and in broken English tells me that they do not have that food at pizza hut.
28) That is where I sat there looking at her like I smoked a kilo of pot.
29) Come on, what the f*&k was I doing for the past god knows how long???? I did before and she did after, go to the pizza hut website in China…. Anyway, after some time lost here and there exchanging looks and trying to communicate, she pulls up another website address. I guess one that they gave her on the phone. Either that, or maybe she already knew that the website for Pizza Hut in China is different than what comes up when you google it, or she has used the website before and knows that is the correct website to use to order delivery. I do not know… But, here we go again, back to square one.
30) Time to search the menu pages and see what I want based on the picture. You remember, that thing that I did originally like an hour before??????
31) OK, got it, some soup, some bread and a pasta dish.
32) She calls again, goes thru all the motions of ordering again. I remind her about the salt and the pepper, remember the salt and the pepper?
33) She stops ordering and tells me that they do not have salt. Once again, my look of a kilo of pot…. So I just say, OK, that is fine, I will go to the restaurant here and find some salt. My thinking, there is a restaurant here there has to be salt somewhere. I will hunt some down while waiting for my food.
34) She hangs up. I ask her to confirm that she gave them my room number. Her time to look at me like she smoked the pot……… In the end, she did not order the food cause they did not have any salt.
35) I tell her that yes I wanted the food and she then says, AHH OK, you can look for and get salt out of the restaurant here. F&^KING DUHHHHHHHHHHH….. What did I just say a 10 minutes ago………..
36) So she finally orders the food.
37) I thank her and walk away and go straight to the restaurant, since the service here is not the best, I am walking around looking here and there and I finally find some salt, I grab the shaker and start running to the elevators, be it that I do not get caught and try to explain to the restaurant staff, that absolutely speaks no English, why I want some salt……
38) 40 minutes later, food arrives.
39) The pasta, tastes like Chinese noodles with some bull***** Chinese sauce, note, no salt used in the cooking, thankfully I was quick enough in my sprint to the elevator to have some salt with me. The bread, could have been better.
40) Have not gotten to the soup yet, cause when I started to eat, a supplier called me to tell that they were downstairs and that they had the new sample that I requested in the morning with them to give to me.

So in short, this is how your find what you want, you order and eat pizza hut in China.

I CANNOT WAIT TIL TOMORROW WHEN I ASK FOR MCDONALDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

R Leo · #3 07-15-2009, 07:14 AM

If you hate China so much, WTF don't you go home?

865sp300e · #4 07-15-2009, 09:54 AM

I admire your determination but that is a lot of effort for what you knew would be a lousy meal.

Kuan · #5 07-15-2009, 10:31 AM

So WTF are you doing there? You should at least learn a little Chinese if you're going to be there for any amount of time.

tbomachines · #6 07-15-2009, 11:09 AM

You should invest in a pocket translator. I feel bad for the poor girl at the front desk.

R Leo · #7 07-15-2009, 11:56 AM

We ate at a Pizza Hut in Shanghai and just pointed at a picture of the food we wanted; it was mediocre like a lot of the Chinese food we ate excepting the Peking Duck at the Hyatt in Beijing, hot pot in Chongqing and a huge feast in one night in Shanghai.

The 'no air-conditioning' aspect of a lot of restaurants was a little tough but hey, you're in China.

MTI · #8 07-15-2009, 01:12 PM

Imagine Chinese tourists coming to the US and ordering . . . Chinese take out.

More likely than not, they'd find someone that was bi-lingual (maybe not Mandarin).

Gurkha · #9 07-15-2009, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by R Leo

We ate at a Pizza Hut in Shanghai and just pointed at a picture of the food we wanted; it was mediocre like a lot of the Chinese food we ate excepting the Peking Duck at the Hyatt in Beijing, hot pot in Chongqing and a huge feast in one night in Shanghai.

The 'no air-conditioning' aspect of a lot of restaurants was a little tough but hey, you're in China.

You must have gone to the typical tourist joints serving watered down bland Chinese, the local ones are damn good, I was there last year on a teaching assignment and it was an excellent experience apart from Hong Kong and in certain aspects of authentic flavors, even better.

TheDon · #10 07-15-2009, 02:41 PM

well he's in Shenzhen which is an industrial area of China... maybe... I dont know.. business

lol

Hatterasguy · #11 07-15-2009, 04:19 PM

You need to make friends with a local who speaks english!

MTI · #12 07-15-2009, 05:22 PM

A couple months ago, a travel magazine sent 3 non-Russian speaking writers to Moscow, one had an iPhone, one a Blackberry and the other had no technology assist. They were assigned various tasks, such as find a pharmacy at midnight, get to a museum, find a restaurant that served a specific local dish . . .

Guess Who Won?

Ara T. · #13 07-15-2009, 05:45 PM

Can't believe you're eating that crap when there's some good real Chinese food to be had.

mgburg · #14 07-16-2009, 01:40 AM

You must be a maniac at "Sherades" at parties!!!