I hear don't understand

You may have read my title and thought “what terrible grammar she has! She's going to be teaching English!?!” Don't worry, my English is not that terrible! However, my Chinese is. That at which you are gasping in horror (okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration) is the direct translation of the Chinese phrase “wo ting bu dong”. I cannot even tell you how often I've uttered that phrase and I've only been here 12 days.

This morning I used the phrase several times. I was sitting by myself in a corner of a gorgeous park in Beijing. I had come to this spot to have some alone time with the Father, enjoy the scenery (some of the most beautiful water lilies I have ever seen), and listen to the huge choir that was rehearsing and singing. During my time of reading and writing a middle-aged Chinese man came and sat next to me. He started asking me questions in Chinese, some of which I feebly answered, some which I “wo ting bu dong”ed, and some for which I just stared at him blankly.

During our short conversation we pretty much established that I am an American, not a student, and that I teach English at a school somewhere in Harbin. He then asked me a question which I told him I couldn't answer in Chinese, and so he said “zai jian” and offered me his hand. In my mind I thought “Yay! A handshake! I can do these!”, but then he said something like chinesechinese 'qin', chinesechinesechinese 'qin'. So I started racking my brain. “'Qin', I know I know this word!”, and in the midst of my confusion, right as I was about to utter my fallback phrase I realized what he meant. He kissed me on the cheek. I think he wanted me to kiss him on the cheek, but that totally wasn't happening.

I'm not sure if he had this confused idea that all Westerners do the European “kiss on each cheek” thing or if he just wanted to go home to his family and say “I kissed some American girl in the park today”, but I do know that I heard, experienced, and I still don't understand. Oh, and I also will be much more prepared to back away should the word 'qin' ever pop up again.