Shanghai Bob

Over the weekend I did several small things on my own in Chinese:  mainly asking for directions and directing taxis.  The exchanges were painless, and a big improvement over my attempts to navigate the city in my first two weeks.  The early attempts usually involved getting the hotel concierge to write my destination on a card in Chinese.

I have several pages of notes on directions in Chinese, both cardinal directions (north, south, etc.) and taxi directions (left, right, stop here, you are going the wrong way).  The minimum fare in a Shanghai taxi costs only $2.00 and will take you all the way across town, so it’s pretty cheap to practice.

I learned yesterday that Chinese say “Cold hands, warm heart” just like we do.  Considering the telegraphic syntax, it could be originally Chinese.  This is just a way of saying that it’s still cold here, in spite of today’s sunny weather (the first sunny day in three weeks).

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am and is filed under chinese.