Ridiculously Badass in ShanghaiLife experiences as a foreigner in Shanghai and how you can learn from them – including my shortcut techniques for studying Chinese.

Is it hard to pick fruit at a fruit stand? Do you need some sort of certificate or degree? I didn’t think so and i’ve been picking fruit for years. However, in Shanghai every time I go to buy fruit, the people working there always want to help pick fruit for me.

Here’s a dialog from the other days:

Fruit stand person: (FSP)What kind of fruit do you want to buy?
ME: I want to buy some bananas.
FSP: How bout these ones? (he hands me some bananas with holes in them)
ME: These have holes in them.
FSP: How about these ones?
ME: Those ones have bruises on them. I’m going to choose the fruit myself, thanks.

After I manage choosing bananas with no bruises or holes in them, which seemed to be quite a tough task for the Fruit Stand Person, I go to pick some oranges.

FSP: You want some oranges, eh?
ME: Yup.
FSP: Here, how bout these ones?
ME: I’ll pick them myself, thanks. (as much as I’d really like to take your oranges with bruises and holes in them).

Then I moved on to the next fruit and the same amazing dialog repeats again. I think I’d be more satisfied with the “service” if monkeys worked at this fruit stand. At least it would be entertaining and maybe play with them, and wouldn’t be so annoying. And the monkeys wouldn’t force their crappy fruit on me (but they might throw it at me, or poo on it).

Then comes time to pay. I have all my fruit ready and there’s a man in front of me with a watermelon on the scale. Then the cashier asks, “do you want some watermelon too?” “No (bu2yao4),” I replied. Then the old me says “bu2yao1, buyao1″, (notice the tonese are wrong), then says “foreingers like to say it like this.” Uh, maybe who’ve been to Shanghai for about 1 day. Bu2yao4 is about the first thing us foreigners learn because people on the street want to sell us everything.

I know I had correct tones and I do with most things I say, and I wonder why only old people in Shanghai like to say to us that we have the wrong tones , but we actually said the right tones. I finally found out why, my gf said it’s because old Chinese people enjoy watching old shows on tv where they have a foreigner speaking really bad Chinese, with really bad tones. I guess those shows are kind of popular now with old Chinese people.

Anyways, after they try to make fun of my tones, I like to say, with correct tones, 我是这样发音的吗？(meaning: did i pronounce it like that?) They usually say “no.” Then I say, “well, did you say it like that? It sounds really weird. Did you go to school at all?” After I say this, they usually don’t say much back. Or, rarely, they start talking to me like a real person.

Seriously, though, if a Chinese person in Canada was talking to me with bad English, do I make fun of him right to his face? Uh, no, that’s pretty weird. And rude. And a big waste of time.

Ever seen a Chinese person mount a bicycle? It’s about the most awkward, unco-ordinated sorry sight you’ll ever see.  They usually get on the bike on the side of the road, then as they mount it, they’ll manage to uncontrollably swing into the oncoming traffic lane. And then they wonder why people like me smash into them. Why is it that 90% of the Chinese people in Shanghai are so uncoordinated, never looked both ways, and have really poor motor skills and depth perception? Why do they think that swerving into oncoming traffic is a wise decision? Humans are supposed to be aware of their surroundings, be aware of things that might indeed kill them, such as an oncoming car. The dogs on the street seem to have better judgement than these people. After all, I don’t hit too many dogs on my bicycle. Why do I hit so many Chinese on my bike? And, after I do hit them, why are they so surprised? I wouldn’t be suprised at all if I was riding in the oncoming lane, not watching where I was going, and they got hit.

Another thing: why do Chinese people never look both ways before crossing the street? Again, do they simply not care about being hit by something? What if a car hit and killed them instantly? I think they should care about that. It almost seems like they do want to remove themselves from the gene pool. That would mean few less idiots on the earth, would that be so bad? So if I hit them and it’s their fault, but they still get angry and want to fight, should I help them lose this fight thereby helping them achieve their goal of removing themself from the genepool?  Are these peasant Chinese people smarter than dogs in terms of not getting hit?

So it was my birthday yesterday and after a tastey Korean bbq dinner and Dairy Queen ice cream cake, it was “present time” and the gf got me a shiny new coffee maker along with some freshly ground coffee from Starbucks. Even though it was 9:30 at night I couldn’t wait to set it up and brew a cup.

The gf thought she’d take the lead and set it up for me. Even though there are only two parts (the coffee pot and the rest of the machine) she was a little confused as to how to set the thing up. It was then did I realize she, like many Chinese apparently, have never used or seen a household coffee maker.

The two of us managed to get it working and while it was dripping and grunting, the gf crouched down, closely analysed the coffee maker, and watched how the coffee amazingly dripped out into the pot. “How does the water get from the back to the front?” I opened up the mysterious device and showed her how the water goes through the white hot-water tube and then gets sprayed onto the coffee beans via the “shower head”.

Sometimes I forget that there are quite a few western appliances that Chinese people simply don’t use on a regular basis or not at all – like this coffee maker and stuff like blenders. I guess I would be amazed too if I saw some weird looking Chinese machine rumbling and grunting and then spitting out a delicious brew of Chinese goodness. But I guess they don’t need many machines to handle their hot drinks – a teapot will do just fine. However, serving Chinese tea properly can also be a science on it’s own  - each tea has their own water temperatures and brewing times, along with 3 different methods of preparing the tea (more on that here).

Tea and coffee. Yum.

5-6 years in Shanghai, and I still got tricked.

I had just come back from Thailand, arrived at Pudong airport, and wanted to get a cab quickly, it was cold and raining and 2am in the morning.

The South African girl, who I had met on the plane,  decided to split a cab with me. Her hostel was on the way to my house anyway. She knew zero Chinese and felt comfortable taking a taxi with this `seasoned vet`.

The queue for the taxis was long and was moving slowly. Few taxis are around at that time. We get approached by a Chinese guy all dressed in black, `taxi` he said and motioned that he cab was across the road in the parking lot.

I had taken an `illegal` taxi before and the price on the meter I paid before was usually about the same as a normal taxi. I thought the only difference was that it`s not a real taxi car.  So I thought `why not`, I don`t want to wait in this cold any longer.

The trip from Pudong to Jing An area is usually under 180 rmb and maybe up to 220 at night time. We were almost at the South African`s hostel, about 15 minutes south of Jing An and the meter read “280 rmb“. I thought it was a bit steep, but whatever, it`s split between two people anyway.  The S. American was nice enough to pay 200rmb, she insisted.

By the time I got to my house, the meter jumped up to around 380 RMB, which is absolutely ridiculous. It wasn`t up until then did I realize I really got tricked. The meter was totally fixed, charging almost double.

I was too tired to put up a fight, so I give him 400 and he gives me back 10. I say, “what happened to the other 10“, he says “you need to pay for this too“ and shows me parking lot receipt for 10 RMB.  I managed to get the extra 10 back.

Looking back I thought if I was really feeling frisky at the time, I might just given him 200rmb for the ride and then threaten to call the cops.

Anyways…beware of the hei1che1 黑车！

I’ve been watching the show “Shark Tank”, absolutely love the show (seems like some of the “Dragons” from Dragon’s Den have now become “Sharks).

Anyways, every time I watch the show I get so frustrated because the inventors of the products don’t know how to negotiate at all. They just hear an offer from the Sharks and say “nope, too, low” then walk away. The Sharks are always up for negotiating and are expecting counter-offers. Could you imagine a business deal without any negotiation? How often does that happen?

One of the best books I’ve ever read is Secrets of Power Negotiating by Roger Dawson. The knowledge I gained from this book saved me tonnes of money and I think about this book in my day-to-day life. Almost everything – even meeting up with friends at a certain time and place, is a negotiation.

Here’s some of the gambits in the book that I think of a lot:

Ask for more than you expect to get.

Never say yes to the first offer

Flinch at proposals

Avoid confrontational negotiation.

Conclusion:

The nice ones are usually rich and/or are the landlord’s friends and are just collecting the rent money for the landlord.  The rich landlords don’t care as much about replacing fridges and such. Poor landlords may never get you a new fridge.  I know it’s hard to pick and choose landlords, but try to go for a rich one!

Unfortunately, I’m yet to buy a house. Hopefully sometime in the next 5 years I can afford to do so. In the meantime, I need to keep on good terms with the landlord. For the past couple years the landlord and I have never had any problems – mainly because nothing serious in the house has ever gone wrong.

For the past month, however, our washing machine and fridge have been broken. Not exactly a small problem. The landlord sent her “friend” who she called a “professional” repairman to fix these two appliances. After 3 weeks and 3 or 4 attempts to fix the washing machine, it was finally fixed.  The fridge, however, was not fixed yet (which was particularly annoying because I like to cook).

Apparently, after the 4th attempt to fix the fridge, the repairman (professional?) reported back to my landlord saying that there’s actually no problem with the fridge and there never was a problem. I found this hard to believe, seeing how the air inside the fridge was warmer than the air outside (and it’s been 15C these days in Shanghai).

It was obvious that she didn’t really want to help me fix the fridge. Or if she did want to help me, she sure wasn’t moving too fast.

So the fridge was still not fixed and now it was time to pay rent and I came up with a plan to light a small fire under my landlords butt. I planned to hold out on giving her all the rent money until the fridge was fixed. She tried to feed me a bunch of reasons why she thinks there’s nothing wrong with the fridge, so I told her to just come by here and see for herself.

She finally agreed there was a problem, called the fridge’s manufacturer repair men, they come by, realize what the problem is in about 30 seconds, and fix it in about 15 seconds (the just replaced a small sensor on the freezer door). And they fixed this all before my landlords eyes. So much for her friend the “professional repairman”.  I absolutely loved that moment – the landlord “losing face”  - it looked good on her and I think it sent the point home that she should really believe what I say to her (I think for some reason she originally thought I didn’t want to pay rent so I made up some excuse such as the fridge being broken).

So now, no more milk going bad! And cold orange juice with my eggs in the morning!

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Some key phrases:

冰箱有问题 bing1xiang1 you3 wen4ti3 = there’s a problem with the fridge

房东 fang2dong1 = landlord

洗衣机 xi3yi1ji1 = washing machine

房租 fang2zu1 = rent money

修不了 xiu1buliao3 = can not be fixed

修得了 xiu1deliao3 = can be fixed

丢脸 = diu1lian3 = lose face