Stand in any busy market in Shanghai and you will notice a hundred different ways to bargain your way down to a good price. In markets, whether they sell handbags or vegetables, there is no such thing as a fixed price! Figures fly back and forth in Chinese and Shanghainese, calculators pass back and forth with numbers displayed, and there are a whole lot of strange hand signals going on around you. What
are those hand signals, and what do they mean?? Here's my gift to you, then, a step-by-step guide to teach you how to count to ten in Mandarin, Shanghainese, and twenty-eight different regional dialects. And no, you don't need a flair for languages, all you need is one hand. Watch. (I've included pinyin too, and a pronunciation guide, in case you do want to know the mandarin chinese). Use these in the markets, or when you walk into a restaurant to tell the door person how many are in your party, and people will assume you're a long-time local. For numbers larger than ten, just use the numbers in succession - 48 becomes the signal for 4, followed by the signal for 8, for example.
Stand in any busy market in Shanghai and you will notice a hundred different ways to bargain your way down to a good price. In markets, whether they sell handbags or vegetables, there is no such thing as a fixed price! Figures fly back and forth in Chinese and Shanghainese, calculators pass back and forth with numbers displayed, and there are a whole lot of strange hand signals going on around you. What are those hand signals, and what do they mean?? Here's my gift to you, then, a step-by-step guide to teach you how to count to ten in Mandarin, Shanghainese, and twenty-eight different regional dialects. And no, you don't need a flair for languages, all you need is one hand. Watch. (I've included pinyin too, and a pronunciation guide, in case you do want to know the mandarin chinese). Use these in the markets, or when you walk into a restaurant to tell the door person how many are in your party, and people will assume you're a long-time local. For numbers larger than ten, just use the numbers in succession - 48 becomes the signal for 4, followed by the signal for 8, for example.
