Supplies

This is a quick and simple story that in some ways sums up much of the communication that occurs at work between the Chinese staff and the Western Staff, confusion, misunderstanding mixed with large jumps. This week one of the Chinese women that works in the office was asking my boss about supplies and ordering. Part of the conversation was the following:

Chinese woman: I wanted to check on the ordering, you do need any ass paper?
Boss: What?
Chinese woman: Do you need any ass paper, are you out? Do you need?
Boss: Ass paper? Do you mean A4 paper?
Chinese woman: Yes, ass paper

When I first heard this I thought she was asking him if he needed toilet paper, or that there was something going on that I was not picking up on. To be able to understand how in the world he figured out that she was asking if he need the A4 size of paper, you have to be a little familiar with Mandarin. The number 4 is just s, so she was reading the order in half English and half Chinese, which came out "ass". And who said that ordering stationary was an ordinary uneventful task?

Traffic

Getting to work consists of a bus that picks us up on the corner of our street and after various turns we stop to pick up others that work at the school. The trip takes about 40 minutes in total. Traffic in Shanghai is pretty much constant. I have gotten in traffic jams at 11pm on a Friday and some traffic last until 1 am. On the bus our driver maneuvers around bikes, massive tricycles with a bed that is filled with cardboard, plastic, fruit, wardrobes or a variety of anything you could imagine you would want or not want to haul on a bike. The freeway is normally packed and we are above the streets and level with people’s laundry hanging from their windows to get drip dried in the smog and smells of the day. Construction is another constant in Shanghai, after bussing to work for the last month and passing the same construction sites we have seen projects finish in the month. New freeways are being added and there is a crew of people that only work on scaffolding here. Each day we see men in workers’ clothes standing on polls 20 meters above the ground on steel piping they use to construct cubes patterned scaffolding. No hard hats, no safely lines. They never seem to be working but just hanging out on the piping waiting for more supplies or just for the traffic to die down.
Once we are off the freeway that is when more of the adventure happens. To quote myself “We are driving on the wrong side of the road again, he does that a lot”. Our driver (now mom don’t freak out there are actually not a lot of accidents here) plays chicken with the on coming traffic so that they will go into the shoulder lane. Once in a while he will get back into the proper land by cutting of someone else, but always giving the polite Shanghai honk that continually fills the air.