"You do not eat rice."
Translation:你不吃饭。
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So since rice is sometimes used as a standin, this could also just mean "you do not eat"?
I too would like to know the how to distinguish when someone means rice or generally food?
In my experience, it's context. Generally when fan (飯) is paired with 吃 chi, it means "to eat food". If you want to say rice, you would say 米飯(mi3fan4) or just 米(mi3). I've never seen 吃飯 mean "to eat rice" in any media or when speaking to native chinese speakers.
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Yeah, saying "eat rice" for 吃饭 is really weird. It's pretty much always used for "to eat". Eating rice on its own is 吃米饭 or 吃大米. It means "rice" in dish names, such as 红烧牛肉盖浇饭, but even in words and phrases like 一顿饭, it should be understood as "meal"
Yes I agree. If you said that to a chinese speaker they would assume you meant 'food' and not specifically rice.
Exactly - I am a native speaker and it's only used in dish names because it's technically a contraction of 米飯 and meals as indicate as such because rice is literally what makes a meal for most of us except when there's well... Noodles. But if we're taking about rice on it's own it is always 米, if anything it'd be more correct to say 你吃米 rather than 你吃飯.
Come to think of it we even use 糯米 for sticky rice.
From my understanding, either the english should be changed to not include rice, or the Chinese should include "mi" (shown to a native).
