I recently moved into a new apartment building in Canton (Guangzhou) and found that it's quite easy to start a conversation with people in the lift. Assuming they speak guó yǔ (Mandarin) and not guǎng dōng huà (Cantonese) I feel it's sort of my duty to be friendly to everyone since, even in this large city, I may be the only Westerner that some of these people come into contact with.
xiào is a verb and in this sentence using duì it means to smile. However, when used with a direct object it means 'laugh at', so the sentence wǒ xiào tā men means "I laughed at them".
Of course there are other types of smile too, all of which can be verbs. cháo xiào means to smile or laugh at somebody (usually as a form of ridicule) so if you do something stupid then your friends might laugh at you for it.
Obviously when in the lift with a bunch of strangers I don't cháo xiào or jī xiào, I just wēi xiào in a friendly way when they look at me. Being in Guangzhou they also have the habit of speaking to me in Cantonese, which I don't understand a word of.
duì can mean "yes" or "correct" but in this sentence it indicates the direction of an action. The direction can be a person or an inanimate object, but sometimes the connotations change. For example, you can say wǒ duì… yǒu xìng qù. Here yǒu xìng qù means 'have interest'. When used towards something inanimate, like basketball, it means you like that thing.
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