"WTF?!" Moments

I’ve had a lot of ideas today for blog entries. This culture and place provide much more material for expression. I’ve had some pretty mind altering experiences here already and yet things continue to baffle me sometimes not day by day, or even hour by hour, but minute by minute.

As I’ve already said, things are massively inconvenient here. But I didn’t even realize the full extent of that statement until I just had the most confounding, unusual and probably unnecessarily long shopping experience that I have ever experienced. It must have taken me at least three hours to visit a store which is one stop away from the subway stop that I live right next to. Let me just break it down for you so we’re on the same page here. Let’s start with my mind state:

I started teaching a week ago at my new job as a preschool classroom teacher. HOLY SHIT. You can fill in the blanks on that one. I’m on my feet all day and these kids are fuckin’ wild. Wild fucking animals.  I think there are probably lots of preschool teachers who could sympathize with that

They’re crazy, but they occasionally do incredibly cute things like one day, at the lunch table, a little girl from another class was sent to our table because she couldn’t behave. She arrived and looked distraught. Noticing this, a four year old boy in my class turned and said “I love you, you so beautiful girl!” That surprised all of us.

 But on the whole, if I had to categorize them, I would say that preschool children are probably the most maximally annoying creatures on the planet. I mean, they are engineered to be as annoying as humanly possible…honestly.

Anyway, I come home after a long ass Friday of that and my feet are killing me. So I decide to go to Carrefore, which is like Costco because I want to get some good imported cheese and beer. This place is dishing out a beating to me and the creature comforts are highly desirable right now. Good beer and cheese are sometimes hard to find in Asia, especially when you’re new to a place. I know I can get it there, so I endeavor to go.  

I went down the subway and back up one station later. The subways here require a lot of walking…a lot more than Taipei at any rate. The subways in Hong Kong are a similar pain in the ass. I had an interesting musical experience while walking down there. There was an ancient and dirty looking Chinese fellow playing this thing near the entrance of the mall. 

He was ratty and so was his instrument. The instrument sounded dry…no resonance. To be honest, the tone quality was pretty terrible. But this guy was just going at it. And musically speaking, the ideas were actually interesting. I had to stop and do a reality for a check for a moment. Cause that guy was there the last time I came from that station.

I went back to have a closer look. It wasn’t clear if his eyes were squinted nearly all the way shut or if he was blind. He had wild white bushes of hair coming from his eyebrows and chin. White hair also emanated from the mole on his face, a style which in Chinese culture is supposed to mean that you are erudite.  The man is either squatting with no seat or on some kind of stool that was no higher than a shoe box. His skin was rough and red. His hands, fingers, and instrument were powdered with the rosin used on his bow. It then occurred to me that this guy sits here all day, every day and plays in that position. That’s pretty amazing. If ever there was a Zen master, it’s that guy.  I gave him 5 RMB and continued on my way.

Now every distance in Beijing, no matter how short, always seems to take wayyy longer than it should to traverse. It takes several causeways and several escalators and stairs until I am at ground level. Then I round the long ass corner and try to cross the street to where Carrefore is.

They have these barriers along the sidewalk and the scooter lane made of white metal loops. It makes it so you really can’t cross the street unless it’s at the intersections. So I had to walk all the way back down the white fence thing to the corner to cross. China doesn’t give people a chance to break its rules and laws.

             For example, the white barriers were also set up at a bus stop, where you had to line up in the little metal frame that was to coincide with the opening bus doors. I personally find that a little bit creepy, but then when you look at the retarded way that Beijingers attempt to board a bus when those barriers are not present, it begins to make more sense. Every day, on my bus to work, the driver has to stand up and yell at morons trying to board the bus in retarded ways to line up and stop shoving and all other kinds of nonsense.

Adding to the inconvinience is the sheer chaos and commotion of walking in public in a city of 25 million people. People are walking in every direction as I dodge rollerbladers in the stone park. There are artists performing outside the subway and in the subway. These people like their music here, and they’re always singing! I was in a restaurant and an employee was showing me to the restroom when suddenly her male coworker breaks out into some Chinese love song that, to her surprise, he sings directly to her face! It was really funny! And he was really singing too…like diaphragm support and everything.

Anyway so back to the stone park, then across the street, to the entrance of carrefore. I ride down one of those slanted conveyer belts which are designed for magnetic cart wheels. This is thing is quite long and I’m standing there for a few minutes. Then, before you can enter Carrefore, you have to go through this little plaza with other shops first. Except one, it’s not a plaza, it’s a mall. And two, it’s not small, it’s huge. It’s like a big ass mall that you have to walk through before you can even enter the place that you came to go to. So I walk through this big ass mall and FINALLY I’m in Carrefore. Let me tell you, this place is panic inducing. 

            Remember how I told you the subways are poorly labeled? So is Carrefore. And even the things that are labeled are in Chiense. So I’m in this massive, two story warehouse amidst an ocean of products and the ebb and flow of the masses. There is just a stupid amount of traffic going through this place. So I’m ducking and dodging, trying to get an idea of what the hell is going on and where stuff is. I go to buy a kitchen knife but I can’t find any.

The only knifes are located in a glass display case under lock and key. I ask an employee  to open the case at which point he says some shit to me in Chinese that I don’t understand. An inconvenient place really is a killer when you don’t understand the language. Usually, in Taiwan, if I don’t understand something, an employee or citizen will step in and translate. In China, everyone just mean mugs you as they impatiently wait for there turn to go.

Anwyay, we use our smart phones to translate and as it turns out, if you want to buy any type of knife in Beijing, you need to register with the police. WTF!? So he asks for my passport and he pages through all the wrong visas first apparently looking for my passport number. He writes it down and I sign some stuff and finally! I am the proud owner of a tiny little kitchen knife! Watch the fuck out China, I’m armed now! But wait! I can’t have the knife till I pay first. Every goddamn thing here is just a pain in the ass!

So he points me to the cash register but it’s located in an area which appears to be closed since all the lights are off. But the counter lights are on and there’s a girl behind the cell phone counter at the register. I’m kind of thinking “WTF?” at this time, “why am I paying for a knife at the cell phone counter?” So I’m not really sure if I’m in the right place or not.

 She takes the slip then says the price again, which I don’t know why but I just didn’t think she was going to say the price at that time so I didn’t understand her. So she had to repeat herself as people are lining up behind me and looking pissed off that they have to wait for this whitey who can’t really speak Chinese. So I go “oh!” and hand her a 100 dollar bill which is all I have at the moment. It’s like paying for a 4 dollar item with a “20” so I guess it’s not the most convenient to change. But this woman is just giving me the “stone face stupid” routine that seems to be a special little Chinese delicacy in these parts.

I think she asked me if I had smaller change. But I don’t understand what she said. So I just say, in Chinese, “what’s the problem?” Then I look around at people to see if they’ll help me out. Crickets… Then she asks me for a credit card, which I know won’t work since Judy tried it last time with a foreign credit card and failed. So I can’t pay her smaller bills or with credit card. So what does she do? She just fucking LOOKS AT ME me like “what do you want me to do about it?”. WTF!!?? I was dumbfounded. So I pulled together what Chinese I know and said, “This is a very large business, and you don’t have money?!” That got a laugh out of her and sort of diffused the situation and for whatever reason it made her dumb ass do something about the problem and ask her manager for some bills or whatever. Jesus~!

So then I go upstairs to the food section. I do my shopping without much ado and begin to make my way out. As I approach the cash registers, every single line is filled with people out into the isles. Fuck me!This place is at full capacity right now and here’s the real gem about this whole situation: In each lane, they have potentially four cash registers that can take people. Of course, there is only one goddamn cash register open in each line. ONE! And everyone got carts just brimming with shit cause it’s wholesale! Fucking ‘A’! So I wait for at least 20 minutes in that line where at least two people tried to straight up cut in front of me without shame like I wouldn’t fucking notice or something.

 

I finally make it to the cash register and there’s no conveyor belt. There is only this little counter, which is obviously inadequate for the needs of the store. So she’s scanning items and takes one of mine out which apparently nobody had put a price tag on. She takes the item and just says “no tag!” and throws it off to the side. WTF!!?? That shit put me over the edge. I lost my temper a little bit. I don’t know if my Chinese made any sense or not. It was inadequate to express the ridiculousness of the situation.

 Essentially I said, “Really? That’s not MY problem, it’s YOUR problem. I only BUY things, I don’t SELL them!” She didn’t really seem to give much of a shit. So I asked if the boss was around. Then she told me there was no boss to which I said “pee lah!” which literally means “fart” but translates to “bullshit”. Then I said “I don’t believe you!” and called her a liar...since she was most certainly full of shit. Bitch! Anyway, I had to just suck it up and let it go.

As I finish this blog entry, it’s now the day after. I’m in my tiny little apartment just happy to not be doing anything. Man this place is exhausting. We had a really bad pollution day this week as well, 450 AQI, during which you literally could not see the sun in sunny weather. It really makes your day a lot crappier when that stuff is going on. And I had to explain to the people at the school that indoor exercise is pointless if you keep letting the doors wide open for all the pollution to come in. I raised hell about it again on the polluted day and the found a bunch of filters for the exercise room. Why do I have to explain these things to people!

It just doesn’t make sense why people aren’t aware of this shit. But yet, one day, my kids were taking too long for snack time. So I was trying to suggest that they might not need to drink a full cup of milk at that time to which I was met with resistance from “the doctor”. The same “doctor” who says nothing when the children are sitting in a room with fucking awful air quality but won’t budge on the one cup of milk. Fucking A! I can’t believe it took me bitching to get air filters in that room. Mind blowing. Anyway, we’ll bear up and deal with it. It’s not all bad.

I still feel like it’s a good thing that I get to have the experience in life of living in China. Chinese culture is very rich and ancient. The food, the music…it’s much different than Taiwan. There’s far more history here. Beijingers are notoriously ignorant and uneducated though and I am beginning to see why. That’s enough for now. I’m coming back to the states in a few weeks to get my visa so it will be nice to be able to breathe for a while. See some of you then!

First I ever saw Pabst black. And in CHINA!