What’s it like to be a roommate with poor Mandarin skills?

I have been in the same dormitory for three years, and he has just learned Mandarin. He made a lot of jokes when he first started talking about not being able to speak Mandarin. For example, in our dialect, shoes are called HAI Zi and children are called XIE Zi. That means the pronunciations of shoe and child are completely opposite. Shoe is pronounced as child and child is pronounced as shoe. One time he was looking for shoes and asked me: "Hey, have you seen my shoes?" I was confused and said: "I'm afraid you are dreaming. I don't even have a wife, so how can I have a child?" Suddenly there was laughter.