Shoot and Point: Using Your Camera to Place an Order

How hard could it be to order a cup of peanut soup?

In September 2006, after a week in Beijing and another in Shanghai, I’d flown to Xiamen, a small city in China’s Fujian province, across the Formosa Strait from Taiwan. The namesake dish at the Huang Ze He Peanut Soup Shop was prominent on my list of things to try, and I expected to cross it off quickly before beginning some serious food hunting.

No such luck. Although Huang He Ze sits on a pedestrian-only shopping street and even sports some English signs, no one spoke a word of the language. (On several occasions during my visit to Xiamen, I wandered all day and never heard English outside of the hotel.) My smattering of Mandarin, which served me fairly well in Beijing and a little less well in Shanghai, often drew only a blank stare; Hokkien, and a dialect that might be transliterated as "zhou jia," are the languages of choice for many locals.

Even my well-practiced ability to point and signal "one of those" was no help. Huang Ze He's large menu is served cafeteria-style, but before one of the servers loads your tray, you pay, and get an itemized receipt, at the back of the shop, where there's no menu, and no food to point to.

The cashier and I were stymied for several minutes, until I took another look at the awning out front, scanned the menu board for the appropriate combination of characters, and snapped this photo. I returned to the cashier and pointed to the camera's LED display, and after ponying up 1.5 yuan (about 20 cents at the time), I got my peanut soup.

That episode came to mind last week in Flushing, Queens, when a friend and I confirmed that the Golden Mall's lamb noodle soup vendor had closed up shop, apparently for good. Later that afternoon, while sitting in another promising restaurant, we tried to ascertain whether they prepared that selfsame soup, but best intentions got us only just so far with our server. It would have been much easier to flip around my camera and point to a picture.

Have you tried this "shoot and point" technique? Have you ever uploaded photos to an iPhone or similar device so you can use it as a visual glossary? I haven't taken the iPhone plunge, but if anyone would like to experiment (for noncommercial purposes only), I've got plenty of photos to work with. Download away, and let me know how things turn out!

Here's a more recent effort.

Comments

[olia]

well i haven't done this, although yes if i finally make it to the food court I'd be tempted to bring pictures/printouts.
I have done the opposite, snap a photo of something i just ate and have someone later id it -- last it turned out i had codsperm sack sushi o_O (very good tho!)

[annamatic]

wow, great idea :)
i havent tried it with food, but because i have a terrible sense of direction, i've photographed maps and wayfinding signage when traveling in foreign lands to find my way in and out of places and ask for directions...

[Dave Cook]

Taking pictures of street signs and the like has helped me retrace my steps, too, Annamatic. If I look at my Flickr photostream for a particular day, usually I can figure out where a shot was taken by looking at the photos it's "between." When I'm on very unfamiliar territory, though, I'll take a visual "note" by snapping a photo of the nearest street sign, established business, or other landmark, in context if possible. Since these photos are intended as notes, usually they're very rough, so I keep them private on Flickr. I can dig out the details, though, for anyone who asks.