I thanked them, lied that I'd return, and ascended to Wangfujing. They didn't know where Lao She's house was, either. Or maybe they did. My mangled pronunciation of his name gave them little to work with. Mandarin uses one of four tones for each character.
Tones are extremely important to everyone except foreign students and people from Sichuan .
I tried all 16. The boys just fretted and looked extremely relieved when I finally left. I'd like to see a transcript of what they heard.