Not Chinese, but funny story while we were in Vietnam a few years back...
I asked our adoption agency laison guy how to order the local beer, a brand called "333" (perhaps the Vietnamese favor numbers for brands - the national cigarette was called "555" - go figure). So he says it's called "ba ba ba", the number "3" being spoken as "ba". Seemed simple enough, right?
Well, I'm gonna be all local and so I walk into a bar and sidle up to the counter and proceed to order "ba bah baa", to which the astonished barkeep looks at me with some level of surprise and alarm. A national who was present, and who happened to speak very good English, busts out laughing at me. I turn to him with that international look of "What?? Did I just fuck something up and come off looking really stoopid?"
He comes over, and through his fits of snickering, tells me that I just ordered "three old women." Seems if you don't get just the right inflection, tonality, and hold the vowel just right and long (or not long) enough, you end up with quite a different order. I laughed heartily, and bought myself, the national, and the barkeep a round of 333 - the beer, that is! What a trip...