After a lovely six week holiday in mountainous Utah, I am back in Shanghai. There may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but I could only come up with forty ways to know you are back in China. Here’s something a little less thinky than the dog meat post.

1. Your yoga class is on the 39^th floor
2. You think an AQI of 150 is a pretty good day

   

3. You’re willing to pay $18 for a container of Greek yogurt
4. People are singing aloud to themselves on bikes and scooters
5. Elderly men are walking down the sidewalk in their pajamas
6. Water frequently drips on your head, but the sources can never be found *
7. Your security guard is napping**
8. The street sweeper is napping

   

9. Your doorman is napping
10. Your driver is napping***
11. Your meal includes every part of the chicken
12. Strangers ask to take photos with you

    

13. Women you don’t know ask you to be in photos with their boyfriends
14. The sound of flutes permeates the evening^
15. You’re at a bird song competition (see Landscape of China’s Urban Parks)
16. Bicyclers aggressively ring their bells
17. Drivers aggressively honk their horns
18. You expect a piece of candy to be hard, but it is actually gelatinous
19. Elderly men and women are dancing in the park (refer to #15)
20. Store names are terribly literal, such as: Green and Safe or The Great Daily Shop
21. The smell of durian, cooking oil, and fish saturate the air (this is referred to, affectionately, as smelling like China)
22. Your elevator floor numbers jump from 3 to 5^^
23. Everyone is slow walking while texting (see The Constant Struggle)
24. Taxis refuse to pick you up
25. Raucous public arguments attract large, interested audiences
26. You pay extra to live on the 8^th floor^^^
27. Donkey meat is on the menu
28. An elderly lady shares her umbrella with you (it’s happened)
29. Someone just spit on your foot (it’s happened)
30. People rarely queue for anything
31. When you do find a queue, you cut in line and don’t feel guilty
32. All western food products taste like China (refer back to #21)
33. You no longer notice the sound of jackhammers
34. Women also leave the toilet seats up (see Squatting in Zion)
35. Drivers make U-turns in the middle of the road or at busy intersections (future blog post on this one)

    

36. Men are walking around on a hot day with their shirts rolled up (Bang ye, also known as the Shanghai or Beijing Bikini, depending on your location)
37. You’re dying from second hand smoke inside your apartment even though no one in your family smokes
38. You’re nearly killed by moving vehicles on sidewalks

    

39. You’re  grossed out that you wore sandals on a rainy day
40. You can’t believe you forgot to bring toilet paper with you (see Squatting in Zion)

    *Once, a drop of water (from an air conditioner??) landed on my lips. I spent the rest of the day worrying about contracting Legionnaires disease.
    
    **This happens so frequently, I wonder why anyone bothers with security at all.
    
    *** Just because a lot of people nap doesn’t mean I’m implying they are lazy. Our driver, in particular, works very long hours, from before 6:00 a.m. to well after 10:00 p.m. on many days. He needs a nap or he wouldn’t get any sleep at all.
    
    ^ This occurs regularly on Anfu Lu and is one of my favorite evening sounds.

    ^^ The number four in Chinese sounds like death so it’s unlucky. Since I struggle pronouncing the number four, “si” (it’s not quite an s or a z, and the “i” is not similar to a long or short “i” in English– it sounds more like the noise you make from your throat when you’re about to scrub a dirty toilet– a cross between ugh and ewwww). I’m pretty positive I actually say death (or worse, I’ll have death) when I’m pointing to apples in the market.

    ^^^ Eight is a lucky number because the word for eight, ‘Ba,’ supposedly sounds like the word for fortune, ‘Fa’. I find it hard to believe that even in Chinese the B and F sounds are that similar. . . Have you ever confused Bart with Fart? Buck with F- – -? Bat with Fat? But we do, in fact, live on the 8th floor, and I’m pretty sure it costs more than the 7th.
    POSTSCRIPT: None of these observations should be assumed to give form to the diversity and complexity of China.