The Dumb Laowai

Thank God that school has finished! By the end, I just couldn’t bring myself to pick up a book and study. My comprehensive score suffered a little, but the others are apparently good. I’ll find out in a week.

For now, it’s time to live it up for a while. LD and I decided to head to Qingdao for a few days of relaxation. The beach, seafood, a brewery tour: sounds like a perfect break. It’s just the transportation that is a bit of a headache. You can’t buy train tickets more than five days ahead of time. We had both heard that it was three days, so we headed to a local ticket office (three computers, four people and two phones in a large closet) to get squared away.

After unsuccessfully trying a few dates, we were told that we would need to wait until the 18^th to travel. Then we bickered back and forth about seating and travel times. At one point, LD spent several minutes explaining our plans to a bored looking clerk who was cleaning her nails. As LD finished, the clerk looked up and blankly asked “What did you say?”

It came down to seats on an overnight train (no sleeping berths available), for which we could pay 120 yuan and ride eight hours, arriving at 7am or pay 250 yuan to ride five hours and arrive at 4am; a classic, no-win choice. We could spend an extra US$15 and save ourselves three hours on uncomfortable seats, but end up spending that time in the train station, waiting for anything to open. We went with the cheap seats.

Thankfully, I have no commitments that require me to be back on a certain day. You see, you don’t get to purchase round-trip tickets and put your mind at ease. When we get to Qingdao we’ll need to scramble for return tickets, with no firm idea of when we can actually come home. I’ve said before that I don’t mind winging it a little, but being forced to travel sans itinerary can be a little discomforting. LD is convinced that return tickets will be plentiful and easy to buy. My efforts to explain to her that practically every person going to Qingdao would likely need to return were brushed aside as nonsense. I truly can’t say if it’s a Chinese thing or a female thing but, sometimes, logic is simply a nuisance for her.

Tidbits

I’ve always realized that things change very quickly here, but I was shocked recently. My burnout syndrome left me wanting to stay home for a couple of weeks and I didn’t go out much. I re-entered the world to discover entire city blocks demolished, new buildings and outdoor cafes, new outdoor markets, even the return of the International Beer Garden. It can be quite disorienting.

I really need to stock up on batteries. Although practically everything in my apartment is controlled by a remote, most things can be operated manually if need be. Since the wall mounted heat pumps are designed to be installed at ceiling level, no one ever considered installing manual controls. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if I was able to set the A.C. to a comfortable level and leave it alone. Unfortunately, the remote is just about impossible to figure out, forcing me to simply turn it on for a while and turn it off when the room is cool enough. Of course, this was the exact instant when the remote batteries had to give up the ghost.

I found myself shivering as the room approached meat locker-like temperatures, trying to find batteries. No new ones to be found, I had the bright idea to cannibalize another remote, soon discovering that most of my other remotes had done what they do best; mysteriously disappeared. I’ll admit that it was very late and I was extremely tired, but I still can’t excuse myself for not looking up and thinking to simply unplug the unit. No, I spent twenty minutes searching for remotes that might have the same size batteries, swearing through chattering teeth the entire time.

T-shirt of the week:

Sun Purple

(picture of woman walking)

Shegood warking

Screw the Other Guy:

A recent newspaper on the spate of recently acknowledged food quality problems contained an interview with a pork farmer who had been using a feed additive to make the meat redder and more attractive. When told that the chemical made people extremely ill, his response was “City people have free medical care, so it’s OK.” I’ve recently begun to do more of my shopping at import stores.

Sanitation tip of the day: Never fart in a developing country. Life has enough surprises already.

Two more weeks and I’m a free man. I don’t think I have ever looked forward to the end of school quite this much. I’m so overwhelmed and burned out that I can’t even force myself to study, not a good sign for the upcoming final exams.

Enough whining. “What else have you gotten yourself into?” I hear you ask. Well, just a few small things actually. I never seem to learn from my mistakes and I continue to make new ones daily, so sometimes I think my learning curve looks like a steep, downhill slope.

I’ve been trying to find a Chinese doll for my niece and not having much luck, so I slipped up and asked Little Dictator to accompany me to a large outdoor market and help me search. I had forgotten what an excruciating experience shopping with her can be. After we had seen every one of over a thousand small stalls and harassed several of the vendors mercilessly, LD felt that she had a good feel for the market and we retraced our steps to begin serious negotiations. Never mind that we had not seen a single doll; this had turned into buying gifts for other family members and a few things that I wanted, even though my desire was failing by the moment.

After much pouting, stamping of feet and various, ineffective explanations, I finally made her realize that pendant necklaces with large, jade Buddhas were probably not the ideal thing for my mother and sister. However, having already focused on jade, she then decided that bracelets were just the ticket. LD is a woman and she knows what women like – end of discussion. Suggestions that we call it a day were scoffed at. She made it clear that she might not be able to help me on another day and that I was clearly incapable of making a purchase on my own. I was nothing more than a purse on legs: my only purpose was to carry the money.

As we neared booths for the second time, I swear I saw a couple people hide from us. I know that there were several who wished they had. There should have been someone following us, selling booze and blood pressure medication to our victims. Chinese people can sometimes sound as if they’re about to come to blows when they’re simply discussing the weather. LD’s negotiations were on an entirely different level. Entire bodies were involved in convincing the other person that they were an idiot and were talking nonsense. I was usually lucky to catch one word out of three. And these were just the discussions of price. We also had to consider all of the aesthetics.

Before I came here, I thought that jade was just a solid green stone. BZZZZZ! Wrong! It ranges from black/green to pure white. There are solid-colored pieces and an incredible variety of irregular mixes of color. Throw in the occasional brown, yellow or ivory accents and you’ve as much variety as you do with marble. There could be two pieces side by side, identical to my eye, and yet one would be four times the price of the other. I’ve seen enough jade to last me several years.

At various points, LD would deign to seek my input, asking if I was willing to pay a certain price. At one point, I simply said “If it means that we can leave, I’ll pay it!” As far as I can tell, this was just for show, because she would return to negotiating, regardless of my opinion. Once again, her spirited bargaining started drawing groups of admiring spectators, who would laugh whenever someone made a particularly deft, verbal jab. The highlight was when her opponent suggested that I would have no qualms paying the asking price if I truly wanted to marry her and that I was obviously a rich man. I had not said a word up until then. LD cleared up the marriage misunderstanding and I loudly said that I was also not a rich man. Looks of shock and awe were immediately replaced with howls of laughter and the vendor turned bright red when they realized that I could understand them. That moment alone was worth all of the study. It seemed to help our bargaining position as well.

When all was said and done LD was happy with the deal and I walked away with 85 cents in my wallet. I was suddenly thankful for her skills, as I had not checked my wallet ahead of time and didn’t know how much I had on me. It would have been really embarrassing to go through all of that and not have the money. The taxi ride home was spent listening to criticism in both my poor taste in art and my lack of negotiating skills. She couldn’t understand why I would want a communist painting with a Coca-Cola logo in it and that, having decided on a unique item, why I couldn’t play different vendors against each other.

The irritating part of the painting purchase was that LD let me down by doing what I often do when overwhelmed, nodding and pretending to understand. The painting is covered in numbers and when I asked about their meaning, the vendor fired off a long, rapid-fire explanation to LD, who nodded and smiled. Not having seen this confused look on others, I failed to recognize it for what it was. Upon returning home, I asked her to explain the meaning and she said that she had no idea; that she hadn’t understand a thing the woman said.

Misc. Tidbits

June 19^th (5/5 on the Chinese calendar) was a holiday celebrating some ancient writer. An acquaintance sent a text message wishing me a good holiday. When I responded by saying that I didn’t really understand the holiday, she said not to worry, that she didn’t understand it either.

Beijing recently announced that they were prepared in the event of a dirty-bomb attack at the Olympics, citing that they would be able to provide 100 hospital beds for the victims. Let’s hope it’s just a dirty-firecracker.

Another case of slow learning: I returned to the travel agent I used for my last vacation and asked about flights to Atlanta. One woman practically had me booked to Sudan when the other stopped her, pointing out that I actually wanted to go to Russia, somewhere near the Arctic Circle. (I’ve made other arrangements.)

A classmate from Kazakhstan recently told me that she had seen me in her dream. Just as I perked up, she told me that she had seen me standing in a pile of shit. It took a moment for my lack of enthusiasm to sink in. “Oh, no!” she said, “In my family this means that you are going to come into a lot of money and have a very good year!” Apparently there is a long-recognized, fortune-telling ability in her family and the last time someone had this dream, the person seen covered in shit had a great year. I told her I would keep in touch, just to let her know how it turns out.

Humor doesn’t translate. LD told me that she would like to open a clothing store; something a little different. I suggested something that could create a new trend. I thought of how, in America, there is a market for adult diapers and tried to tailor-fit the concept for China. My suggestion of selling split-bottom pants for seniors did not go over well.