Sloppy in Taiwan!: The Beginning of the Beijinging

Back when I first moved to Taiwan, things were pretty rough in the beginning. After a year or so, however, I hit my groove and things became easy. I knew the places to go to get what I wanted, I could communicate with the locals, I had a scooter, an apartment, friends, musical outlets, and even a flag football team. Now that I’m in Beijing, I’m reminded of how difficult things were at the beginning. Except that Beijing is not nearly as convenient as Taipei. Judy and me are riding out the storm now, but it is trying both of our patience.

We just found an apartment here in Beijing last week. The apartment hunting process is just exhausting. You call and set an appointment up because you saw a picture ad of an apartment. They then proceed to first show you apartments that nobody else wants. There are some real shit holes here, let me tell you. And when I say shit hole, I literally mean that because in a lot of these places there are only squatters for toilets.

Then they will tell you that the landlord for the apartment that you wanted to see is not in town and so they can’t show you that one. Then, they will show you a bunch of apartments that are way over your price range. As I said, exhausting. They are also in the habit of only giving you only the answers to the questions that they wish you had asked. For example, if I say I want an apartment “that way”. They will say, “no, it’s over there” and point the opposite direction. At first I thought there was some translation error. But no, they knew perfectly well what I was saying but just only wanted to give me one answer. We’ve now settled down but are still trying to figure out basics like Internet. I’m on my phone internet now. Things are just so hard to get done here. Part of it is just that people don’t know what the hell is going on and part of it is just because the procedures for doing things here is incredibly inefficient.

Take my work visa, for example. First, we have to apply for permission to apply for a work visa in Beijing. Then after we get that, I have to fly back to America to get it from the Chinese embassy in America, even though I am currently already in China. It makes no sense…it’s just China. Also, all the transactions here are still done by paper and pencil. They don’t have modern cash registers. Everything is done on these old school purple ink printing registers. They don’t even display the price. They all have these big ass calculators that they use to manually add up your tab and show you how much to pay. We had to fill out like 3 forms to return something at Carrefore. It just makes everything take that much longer.

In addition to that, I am beginning to think that every service job in the city is staffed by prepubescent brains on sticks who tend to give Bevis and Butthead style answers to simple questions. Man they are uneducated! Like today, I wanted to buy some goggles from my gym. I asked him “how much are they?” and he said 8 or 900. You know…it’s just as a customer, you don’t expect these things. The merchant ought to at least know the price of the things he’s selling. Then he called this other guy over (because the three at the front desk didn’t know) and asked him. The guy said “900” and I had to ask “are you sure”? Becauase just now, you and everyone around you didn’t know how much those were. You’re not exactly inspiring my confidence right now. Especially cause there’s no price listed and you guys could just be trying to jack me.

And this kind of thing happens all the time. Judy called and placed an order for delivery. They took the order and everything was good. Then they called us back to tell us that the delivery guy had already gone home (40 minutes before closing time) and there was no way they could deliver.

Today, we had the apartment management come up to clear out a drain. Totally useless! He came in with what looked like a coat hanger and scraped the drain a few times. He then said there’s nothing he can do to fix it because “blah blah blah I’m too lazy.” Then we wanted him to replace the lights and he said that we would have to go buy new lights and then he’ll charge us to install them which is ridiculous because you just screw them in. Thanks for being absolutely no help at all buddy. Why do you have a job again?

And oh my god, the cab drivers! Like 30% of cabs will just tell you to piss off because they don’t feel like going where you want to go. I’ve never seen anything like it!They just don’t feel like driving that direction so they refuse to take you. Furthermore, they don’t really know where things are. This is partly because Beijing is so big…but in Taipei, all the cab drivers have GPS devices. I haven’t seen one in Beijing so far. And it’s hard to get a cab in general anyway. Taipei is like the convenience capitol of the world. Cabs are just wherever you are at any time and they know how to get around the city. And if they don’t they’ll type it in the GPS!

Another good example of inefficiency is my job. I suppose you could really say that it's a lack of professionalism and that it's rampant in Asia. They invited me to sign a contract and the woman who was going over the terms with me was someone who's spoken English is less than stellar and who actually can't read in English at all. I mean, it would be a different scenario if no problems had arisen with the signing, but, of course it's China. They didn't even indicate what my salary or working hours would be. I asked and then they gave me a few options to chose from on this convoluted schedule, in which nothing was properly or explicitly explained. We called the CEO in who had offered me the job and it turns out she didn't know the schedule either. So once again, it was like the goggles at the gym…nobody knows anything! I mean when the CEO tells you she doesn't know how much you're getting paid, that's a bit of a "WTF" moment! After all was said and done, it took a total of three meetings and almost five hours to sign the contact.

Speaking of inconvenience, It really seems sometimes that this city is just built for inconvenience. The subways are very poorly labeled. So you might come out at one subway station and see signs for two exits but no signs for the other two. I think you’re just expected to walk in the direction where those exits are not. Then on the outside, you can only see the exit number if you are under the enclave of the entrance. It’s not posted so that you can see it from across the street or the intersection. As a result, nobody knows how to explain where to meet. I am constantly getting disoriented with these things.

All the shopping here is done in malls, of which there are many. But the layouts of the malls can be very confusing. There’s one that I went to try out a gym on the fifth floor. Problem is, once you get to the fourth floor, you have to take the elevator. To which I said “nonsense! Surely there must be some stairs!” Then I spent like 20 minutes looking at the staircases. The first 4 or so I checked only had stairs that went down. It seems that there is only one staircase that goes up to the 5fth floor and it is in the middle of the 4^th floor, not on the ends. But here’s the kicker. If you take the elevator from the first floor to the 5^th, you end up in an entirely different place with some conference room. To get to the right 5^th floor, you have to take this Willy Wonka glass elevator that’s only in the middle of the 4^th floor. WTF!?

Speaking of stairs, the staircases always reek of smoke from employee smoke breaks. It’s fucking repulsive. People also smoke in the public restrooms. Even the nice ones. So every time I want to pee I have to inhale half a cigarette. Also, as a general rule, restaurants don’t have bathrooms inside. They all have these outdoor shared bathrooms that just get beat to hell and there is never any goddamn soap inside. Man, they are just some other kind of disgusting. I was eating dinner at some fast food place and I couldn’t find soap anywhere to wash up with. I asked the kitchen if they had some and they said “no” which left me wondering “how does the kitchen staff wash up before they cook my food?” As I said, “fucking repulsive. “

Speaking of things that are fucking repulsive, parents are in the habit of letting their children SHIT IN THE SINK in the public restrooms. Just thought I’d throw that one in there for good measure. I also saw a guy in Beijing airport hawk a loogie onto the clean marble floor. It wasn’t even off to the side, it was like right in the middle of the goddamn airport. Blech!

Beijingers are very nice and friendly and easygoing. But on the flip side of that is the fact that they have no urgency about anything that they do. They take their sweet time doing anything and everything. This is most infuriating when you’re trying to actual get somewhere in public. People just are oblivious. I gather that New York City dwellers have similar things to complain about.

The drivers here are just from a different planet. I have never seen people drive so slowly in my life. I got a ride from a coworker and she literally would slow motion crawl around every turn from work to my place. I’m actually not exaggerating. Picture what comes to mind when I say “slow motion crawl” and that is the exact reality of the way she drove. She then proceeded to drive at about 15 to 20 miles an hour to the destination on a wide-open freeway with no traffic. Mind boggling.

They most annoying thing about drivers in Beijing is the constant honking. I could say that people here honk incessantly without a second thought, but that would imply that there is actually some rational thought involved in the action. People honk unthinkingly here. Now I understand why they have those crossed out bugle signs posted around town. Because Beijing drivers actually have to be told to not press their horns down and hold them because they feel like it in the middle of a residential neighborhood. That’s how mucht they love honking here.

And as I was describing, it’s not just little honks when necessary. It’s like mostly angry honks with some “enraged” 10 second long honks every minute or so. Then you’ve got your “morris code” honks where the driver just busts out a beat on his horn as he cruises through the intersection just to let people know he’s there. In my new apartment, which is blessed to have a main road downstairs, the honking begins around 7:30 AM and doesn’t stop till like 6 or 7 PM.

Anyway, we’re learning the ropes here the hard way it seems. This is one big, complicated place and it’s going to take time to get things going here. This weekend was a much needed rest from our marathon of activity flying back at night from a wedding in Maylasia to our apartment where we didn’t yet even have pillows to sleep on and going to work early the next day to a brand new job. We are both exhausted and getting fed up with Beijing already. It won’t be a moment too soon when we finally figure out how to live here comfortably.