Service with smile - and scrambled English

"Wai Er Keng Mu!" Yang Tingting called out loudly to three foreigners making their way to her shoe shop in Lady Street, one of Beijing's famous shopping areas.

She meant to say "Welcome", but the attempt to attract foreign customers by speaking English drove the trio away.

Yang, 20, was reading from a pamphlet with 18 common English phrases, written in Chinese characters to sound like the expressions.