maxiewawa

Shanghai residents got one of these in the mail today. Huh? Looks like a thermometer at first, but when you open it, you find out that it’s crappy little plastic spoon.

It occurs to me that not everyone can read what’s written on the packaging, and so not everyone realises what the spoon is for.

You can’t eat with it. You can’t scoop up anything with it. It’s hard to see what practical use it has. So why the crap did someone package thousands of these up, and put them in mailboxes around Shanghai???

I’ll give you a moment to guess. Or for all you who are literate in Chinese to read the packaging.

Finished? Or do you need a bit longer to mull it over?

Ok, here’s the translation.

On the front packet it says (on the left, in blue):

• Healthy World Expo, Healthy Shanghai. (Shanghai is hosting the 2010 World Expo.)

On the top right side (in multicolour) it says:

• A Healthy Life, Starts With Salt.

The smaller writing says:

• The World Health Organisation’s recommended standard: Every person, every day has 6 grams of salt. Consuming too much salt can lead to high blood pressure.

By now you must have guessed that this little spoon is meant for measuring salt. A full spoon is two grams of salt.

On the reverse side is a little blurb about the consequences of having too much salt. Apparently the average Shanghainese citizen has 9.9 grams, a little too much. Some kind soul (more likely a kind organisation!) has packaged these up and handed them around, so that residents can measure precisely the amount of salt in their cooking.

So it’s a public health thing. But I just can’t help laughing when I imagine an illiterate person opening his mailbox, finding a nicely packaged tiny white spoon and thinking “what the hell???!!!”