How many people does it take...

...well if you're us and you're in China, the answer is many. To be
fair, part of it is definitely the language barrier, and it seems we
often are in places that do not get a lot of Western tourists. That
said, almost everything service oriented has involved dealing with two
(often three+) people often at the same time. We can attribute some
of this to our novelty, but there is real workforce surplus here.
Restaurants and retail stores illustrate this most graphically as we
have frequently witnessed a 1-to-1 ratio of staff to patrons.

Last night was the crowning jewel of this when almost the entire
front-of-the-house staff at a restaurant stood around while we ordered
dinner. We had an audience of at least 9 for this incredibly mundane
activity.