Chinese at Restaurant, Thu, Aug 9, 2007.

08/09/2007. 859. There was a coupon ad for a new Chinese buffet restaurant included in a coupon mailer package.

The restaurant is only a few minutes away, not in my neighborhood, but in a nearby commercial district, so I decided to have late supper there.

I took in my "restaurant book bag," and sat at a booth. I got my first plate of food before putting anything out. All I got out at first was a recent Liahona magazine, and the same issue in the Chinese edition.

The Chinese edition caught the eye of the waitress when she came to take away a plate and refill my drink, but she didn't say anything. The next time she came by she looked at it again, and I asked if she like to read in Chinese. She said yes. I asked where she was from and she named a city in mainland China, so I got out a Simplified Chinese edition of the Book of Mormon, an English Book of Mormon, and a bilingual English/Simplified Chinese New Testament.

She quickly flipped through both copies of the Book of Mormon and the bilingual New Testament. It took a while to get across that they were free and that I wanted to give them to her, but I finally remembered the Chinese words I had been taught, "gay nee" for "give you", and "mien fay" for "free" or "no money."

She was very interested, and accepted all the material (both copies of the Book of Mormon, the bilingual New Testament and both magazines). After leaving my table, she browsed it more in depth, checking out the list of chapels and the pass-along cards, and apparently spoke with one of the other employees about it.

As I walked past the waitress station to/from the buffet tables, I thought I saw some other bilingual ESL material, so she probably picked up on the ESL nature and is already eager to improve her English reading. Anyway, she seemed pretty happy and excited about the material, and the religious nature didn't turn her off at all.