Averting Telephone Chaos in 1923 Shanghai

This article in 1923 is perhaps a bit confused – Shanghai is loving the telephone (naturally) and, of course, being an international city people are speaking on it in many different languages. Calls have to go through the operator (no direct dial yet) so, as the Herington Sun of Kansas notes, both callers and operators have to use pidgin. However, pidgin didn’t come along with the telephone but had long been a standard form if interaction in the treaty ports; one that merely adapted swiftly to telephone use.