Pointing my way around Shanghai

I’ve gotten used to pointing to things in Shanghai. I point at menus in restaurants or if there are no pictures of the food (or English descriptions) I point at other diners’ food. I point at metro lines, I point at elevator numbers. I point at street names on maps. I point at bottles of water or images of mocha coffee drinks.


It’s embarrassing and sort of lazy. Most wait staff and shop employees speak at least a little English and most signs are also in English or Pinyin (the Romanization of Chinese characters), but I’ve found for now pointing and using other body language is easier.



Placemat at Burger King. When you walk into fast food restaurants (KFC, Burger King and McDonalds are plentiful here) they have picture menus at the ready for you to point at.



I came to Shanghai with my locked iPhone I used in the U.S. because I had heard that many shops in Shanghai would unlock it for a fee and then I could use a local Chinese SIM card.

At a mall in the People’s Square area an entire floor was populated with cell phone shops. I went from shop to shop to shop trying to ask if they would unlock my iPhone. I first would point to the phone, then I would make an “unlocking” motion with my hand, like I was unlocking a door. Then I’d rub my fingers together like “money,” hoping that would indicate I wanted to pay to have my phone unlocked.

When that failed – which was just about every time – I took out my China Mobile SIM card and tapped it on the top of my phone like I wanted to put it in there.

That never worked, and while everyone was polite, I could tell some were getting annoyed that I just wouldn’t go away.

The only time I successfully conveyed that I wanted to have my phone unlocked was with a worker at a Best Buy whose English was very advanced (who then told me that maybe a private shop would do it, but by that point I’d wasted almost half a day on cell phones and just broke down and bought a primitive Nokia model).



Because I didn’t want to only post a Burger King photo, this is the area where the school I work at is located.