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 Ze He 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 the photo shown here. I returned to the cashier and pointed to the camera's LCD display, and after ponying up 1.5 yuan (about 20 cents at the time), I got my peanut soup.
Subsequently, in Flushing's Chinatown, my camera helped me to order "fungus drink with red date" and millet congee. Later still, once I bought my first smartphone, I learned to load its photo gallery ahead of time to make my own picture menu.
Have you tried this "shoot and point" technique? Have you ever uploaded photos to a smartphone or other portable device for use as a visual glossary? If you'd 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!