If you’ve been living in China more than 24 hours, you’ll know the Chinese are quite succinct.

Things are no nonsense, matter of fact and get done astonishingly quickly (well, if you have the right guanxi). Even the everyday vernacular is chronically abridged.

When kids in the West count to ten, they use both hands and go up in single digits. But the Chinese have one up on the West - they can do the same thing using one hand.

This long-time single-handed symbolism was probably created as a way to indicate price whilst fossicking amongst wares with the other hand (and in fact, you may notice sellers still using it today).

Add something to your kids’ repertoire of cool and have them learn these easy peasy hand signals. You can then have them negotiate the price on your behalf... for those times you have BOTH hands fossicking amongst wares...

1 yī (ee) 一

2 èr (ahr) 二

3 sān (san) 三

4 sì (srr) 四

5 wŭ (woo) 五

6 lìu (lee-u) 六

7 chī (chee) 七

8 bā (bar) 八

9 jíu (jee-oh) 九

10 shí (shrr) 十