Avoid Awkward Phone Calls With the 'Reply With SMS' Function

Anna Pellegrin Hartley | May 28, 2020 8:30 am | 2 comments | 449 reads

If your level of spoken Chinese is low, responding to phone calls can be a pretty stressful experience. And while a simple “Wei nihao. Hao de” will usually get you through a waimai delivery, this won’t suffice when your mobile phone service provider, bank, gas company, or pretty much anyone else comes a-calling.

One strategy that I use to manage phone calls like these, is to use the Reply with SMS function on my phone. If an unknown call comes in, I simply swipe up and select an automatic response in Chinese: "对不起，我的中文不好。请给我发短信。 " duìbùqǐ, wǒ de zhōngwén bù hǎo. Qǐng gěi wǒ fā duǎnxìn. "Sorry, my Chinese is not good. Please text me." Sure enough, a few seconds later I’ll get a text message that I can copy-paste into a translation app and continue the conversation that way. This is also a good way to deter telemarketers, who will simply give up when they realize they can’t talk you into anything.

A quick poll around the beijingkids office reveals that this function is available on pretty much every single model of phone you could imagine, including iPhone, Samsung, One Plus, Lenovo, Xiaomi, and more.

To set up an Automatic SMS reply on your phone simply:

  1. Open Settings on your phone
  2. Navigate to the 'Phone' or 'Calls' category
  3. Look for something like 'Quick decline messages' or 'Reply with SMS'
  4. Activate the function
  5. Create a new automatic reply, copy-pasting 对不起，我的中文不好。请给我发短信。 or whatever you prefer
  6. Deploy your new message at will!

You could create a few different Chinese auto-responses for different circumstances, but if your Chinese reading level is not very high, it may be difficult to remember which is which in the spur of the moment.

Do you have any other useful Chinese communication hacks? Share them in the comments below!

READ: Getting Your Beijing Residency Permit Health Check Has Never Been So Easy

This article originally appeared on our sister site beijingkids.

Images: Kelly Sikkema (via Unsplash)/beijingkids, Anna Pellegrin Hartley

Comments

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Re: Avoid Awkward Phone Calls With the 'Reply With SMS' Function
Posted May 29, 2020 2:21pm by CatPilgrim
(Reply to a previous comment)

I heard that the beijinger was preparing a new blog series "Giovanni Martini's Top 10 Toilet Habits", can anyone confirm?

Giovanni Martini wrote:

jknotts wrote:

Giovanni Martini wrote:

How about that! And to think, all these years I've been cowering behind the sofa every time there's a knock on the door or a ring on the phone. Bellowing, "我不在! 我不在! And Dave's not here either!" And now come to find there's this little app that's as handy as silk-sheet butt-wipe. I bet it comes in handy in case Richard Ammerman comes tooling by in his slightly dinged gondola.



Always pegged you for more of a bidet guy, but silk sheets makes sense too.

I feel little creeped out by the news that my bathroom habits are a topic of your freetime musings. Might I suggest developing a social media addiction instead?

Re: Avoid Awkward Phone Calls With the 'Reply With SMS' Function
Posted May 29, 2020 9:46am by jknotts
(Reply to a previous comment)

Giovanni Martini wrote:

How about that! And to think, all these years I've been cowering behind the sofa every time there's a knock on the door or a ring on the phone. Bellowing, "我不在! 我不在! And Dave's not here either!" And now come to find there's this little app that's as handy as silk-sheet butt-wipe. I bet it comes in handy in case Richard Ammerman comes tooling by in his slightly dinged gondola.



Always pegged you for more of a bidet guy, but silk sheets makes sense too.