Saturday, 22 February 2014

Chinese confusion

We were at the kitchen table eating dinner last night when a face appeared at the door.  Actually, it was more than just a face, it was a whole body.  It was a student of oriental parentage, probably here in Brighton at one of our English as a foreign language schools, of which we have several.  Hosting foreign students is almost a cottage industry in this city with many families letting out a spare bedroom to earn a little extra cash on the side.  This particular student, when I opened the door, held out a phone with an address shown.

"Excuse, please.  Where is this number 10?"

Our house is number 9 and the house next door is number 11.  He seemed to think that number 10 should have been in between but that little green men had whisked it away.  I explained that it was on the other side of the road, down the hill and over the crossroads.  I think he went away even more puzzled than when he arrived.  Perhaps I should have put my coat and shoes on and taken him to find number 10, but I was in the middle of my meal.

I don't know what system is used for numbering houses in China, if they even have a system, but here in England we usually have odd-numbered houses on one side of the street with the even numbers on the other side.  This causes few problems to us as we are born into the system but there are occasional difficulties - such as with our road.  There is a stretch of the road on our side where there are no houses while the houses on the other side have already started, so number 1 is not opposite number 2.  In fact, number 1 is opposite number 20 and the first few houses on the other side give every appearance of being in a different road altogether.

There was a time when houses were numbered consecutively along one side of the street, the numbers then continuing in the opposite direction on the other side.  That system is still in use in some streets here in Brighton but is generally pretty obvious.  What has long puzzled me, however, is the system used in America where houses have such enormous numbers - 4487, for example - even though there are only a hundred or so houses in the street.  And the house next door might be something like number 4652.  I expect it is all very simple really, but it seems totally illogical to me.

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One last picture from last Sunday's walk across the Downs.  This is looking south across Brighton.


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4 comments:

  1. Sophie22 February 2014 at 16:15

    In our street we have number 1 and 3, 5 is missing, then comes 9 and 11 and lastly 7... All houses were built the same time...

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  2. Buck22 February 2014 at 17:18

    I don't know about China, but I DO know about Japan. Houses there are numbered in the order they're built and there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to the street addresses. The best way to find an address you've never been to before is to go to the nearest police box and ask for directions... assuming you don't already have them.

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  3. joeh22 February 2014 at 17:38

    Sometimes when we drive through another town, the numers start up at 1 again...you can be in a new state before you realize you missed the correct number 1.

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  4. #1Nana23 February 2014 at 00:54

    The US system is pretty simple…smaller numbers are in the center of town. Each block has evens on one side and odds on the other., counting out from the center of town. You'll have a 1000 block and then a 1100 block then a 1200, counting out from the center N,S,E,W …and I started to explain it and realized that I really only know how it works in our mid-size little town.

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