I forget what the point was, but the Chinese room thought experiment goes something like this:

Imagine a room containing a person who does not understand Chinese and a list of all possible questions in Chinese with the answers, also in Chinese. Every so often somebody transmits a question in Chinese into the room. The person in the room looks up the question in the list of Chinese questions and then transmits the appropriate answer. How can the people outside tell whether or not the person inside understands Chinese?

Bingley

Bingley