This evening, the last day of a 3 week journey to Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, I decided to take a stroll through the streets of Shanghai, in search of a place to grab one last delicious (how chee) Chinese meal before I depart tomorrow.

After walking for about 30 minutes, it started lightly raining. 

I looked around for a place to get out of the rain, and spotted a place in the distance called Tender Lamb (a western restaurant - or so I assumed !).

"Aha", I thought to myself, "surely I will be able to grab a bite to eat in this establishment".

I walked in, and quickly realized that I was the only person in the restaurant who spoke English.

The hostess walked me to a table in the corner of the crowded eatery.

Shortly, a nice waitress came up to my table and began asking me what I would like to eat.

Since there were no pictures of the food on the menu, I simply pointed to something.  She looked at me and asked (I think) "how many"?

Well, I am proud to say that during this trip, I have learned to count ALL THE WAY TO 10,000 ! (slowly perhaps, but nevertheless, I know every number between 1 - 10,000).

Anyway, I humbly said "err" (that is 2 in Chinese :-)

Apparently she didn't understand my "southern, American Chinese accent" and gave me a puzzled look, so I held up 2 fingers.

She nodded, and walked away.

Soon afterwards, she appeared with another person... he began quizzing me to make sure that the waitress had gotten my order right. 

Through my finely honed skill of the use of international body language (actually, by shaking my head over and over), I quickly assured him that she was right.

After a few more minutes, my nice, friendly (although somewhat frustrated) waitress appeared  once again.

She asked me another question, to which I replied "I'm sorry, I do not understand".  Well, she didn't understand me either, so she motioned me to follow her, to which I obliged.

She led me to a man who had 2 large pots of crawfish boiling in front of him.

He looked at me with a huge grin on his face and made the universal hand motion, "want some"?

Being the considerate person I am, and once again wanting to test my newly acquired "number skills", I pointed at 4 crawfish (one at a time), and counted off... "ee, err, sun, shu".

He smiled at me as the waitress motioned me to return to my seat.

A few minutes later, my meal arrived....

I guess I need to learn how to say "pieces" in Chinese.

The moral of this story is... IT PAYS TO LEARN ANOTHER LANUAGE!!!

Regards,

Richard