Meetings with Ordinary People

I am riding my bike home at about nine in the evening on a chilly Shanghai night. My Israeli friend Yuval sold it to me. It has no gears, so I feel like a true urban biker. Shanghai has no hills, so you don't really need the gears, and besides, I don't feel like a spoiled Westerner.

I actually have no idea how to get home, so at the nearest intersection where there are some bikers waiting for the light to turn green. I ask a girl in her early 20s on her bike how to get Shanxi Rd. She looks at me in horror, as if I am about to mug her and immediately shakes her head to indicate that she either doesn't know, or ain't going to help me with this.

I would say about 10% of the time, I get this response from people in Shanghai, usually younger women who are working in shops. I ask them a question and they look like they might go into anaphylactic shock at any moment. Perhaps this is because of my dashing good looks (see Blogger profile photo), but I doubt it. I wonder if they can't possibly imagine that a foreigner speaks Chinese. That's why, after I ask them a question in reasonably correct Chinese, they still don't respond in Chinese. Sometimes, they talk really bad English with me. It's very entertaining.

Tip of the day to younger Chinese clerks of Shanghai: If a foreigner asks you in Chinese, "Excuse me, do you know if there is a stationery store near here?", there's a pretty good chance he probably speaks Chinese, and he probably won't mug you either. So, take a chill pill, okay?

Perhaps I should learn Shanghainese. They might finally give me a straight answer. On the other hand I am worried they might have a heart attack.

This girl on her bike isn't helping me and I don't have time for charades, so I ask the middle-aged guy on the bike behind me. The light is about to turn green. He says, "Follow me."

I am relieved, and we ride together toward Shanxi Rd. "Your Chinese is pretty good," he says, as we ride past a park.

"No, it's not. Chinese is really hard," I answer. He asks me where I am from and I ask him if he has just gotten off work, because it's pretty late. He sounds like he is educated and has the demeanor of a professor, so I ask him if he is a professor.

"No, I'm just an ordinary worker," he says self-deprecatingly. He tells me I'm going to have to make a left at the next intersection. I say goodbye and pull over to the intersection to wait for the light to turn green.

He continues on and looks back a couple times to make sure I'm heading in the right direction.