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jamesroy
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Name: James
Location: Sichuan, China
Birthday: 10/9/1980
Interests: travel, learning Chinese, history books, guitar, biking, animation
Expertise: Teaching English as a foreign language to children age 18-600 months old (no joke!)
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Member Since:
9/16/2003
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| "TIC" vs. "OIC"
Anyone -- or I suppose I should say any foreigner -- who's lived or
spent a significant amount of time in China has experienced many of the
seemingly infinite ways this country can grate on you. People
smoking in elevators despite obvious no smoking signs, cars zooming
through pedestrian crosswalks when the green man is lit, suffocating
pollution, the constant stares and "hellos" (in parts of the country
anyway - not such a problem in cosmopolitan Shanghai), people not
thinking to call you to inform you of the cancellation of a class, the
lack of a concept of "personal space," the yelling across restaurants
for a waitress to come over, the cramming into subway trains before
letting people get off first, inexplicably extreme impatience with the
automatic door-closing capabilities of elevators... the list goes on
and on. These are the things that make you throw up your hands,
roll your eyes, and groan "this is China." As in, this is just
how things work here, better get used to it, although you don't see how
you ever could. There's even an entire website
devoted to this stuff, not that I'd recommend spending too much time
there. In the face of all of this, what makes life here
bearable, and indeed enjoyable, are those times when Chinese people's
kindness, the quirks of the culture, and serendipity conspire to
counterbalance the annoying bits and make your day. The
motorcycle mechanic in Guiyang, who invited me to dinner with his
extended family, drove me to the train station, and offered to put me
up "anytime" - after I stopped to chat with him for a while simply
because he called "hello," would be an example. The Chengdu taxi
driver, who waived half of the fare at 4:30 in the morning after I'd
explained to him that I was locked out of my apartment and was running
all over town looking for a place to sleep, would be another.
When you come across people like this, you have to smile, shake your
head, and say, "only in China."
[note: Ed Gwinn, who's kindly
housing me in Shanghai until I find appropriate lodging, lent me this
particular nugget of philosophy, explaining that he'd gotten a nice
restaurant to open and serve us half an hour early (he had an evening
flight to catch), simply by talking the woman who answered the phone
into it.]
I had one of those redeeming "only in China" moments today.
I went to Nanjing yesterday with a group of friends (my first visit
ever to the early Ming and Republic of China capital - lots of
fun). We got to the Nanjing train station at 12:20 today to catch
our 12:40 train back to Shanghai. I was about to enter the
station when I felt around in my pockets and discovered that there was
no train ticket where there had been one only half an hour
earlier. It must have fallen out when I was fumbling for money to
pay the cab driver! And there's a woman checking for tickets at
the station door! What now? A Chinese man had been watching
me, with my friends looking nervous on the other side of the station's
glass wall, and guessed my situation. "Just explain that you lost
your ticket," he suggested, in remarkably good English.
Right. Aside from the woman checking tickets, there were about
three security guards standing around the entrance. No way they'd
let some laowai through without a ticket. Not a chance.
I sprinted back toward the ticketing hall to buy another ticket.
It was, predictably, chaotic. Lines for the ticket booths were
long, slow, and didn't seem to follow any particular order.
Multiple customers were demanding service from the same ticket seller
at once. This is China, I thought. I was desperate. I
approached a man who'd just advanced to the Plexiglas® after what must
have been a long wait and explained that I was in a rush and had a big
problem and could I please cut in front of him. He paused for a
second and then began nodding his head, gesturing toward the
counter. Only in China! I rejoiced. I hurriedly plead with
the woman at the counter to sell me a ticket, even if it's just a
standing ticket. She said she couldn't do it: it was already ten
minutes before departure, and they'd stopped selling tickets of any
kind for that particular train. My heart sank. This is
China. I ran back to the station entrance as fast as I could and
told my tale to the ticket checker, apologizing profusely for my
stupidity. She looked at me for a minute, then let me through. As I rushed toward the
platform, the security guards called out at me to come back. Uh oh.
I turned around to see them pointing to the x-ray conveyor belt and
motioning for me to put my backpack through. I grinned and gave
and embarrassed laugh as I took it off and fed it through the
machine. They grinned back. Here I was, a foreigner darting
through their train station with no ticket, and they just want me to
slow down and pass one of my bags through the x-ray machine? Only
in China.
(By the way, I made the train with minutes to spare.)
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| So, as you can tell by the new look of the page, I'm in Shanghai now. It's big!
Shotgun intro to Shanghai
I got here a week ago, expecting to float around for a while as I
looked for a job, apartment, etc., so I got busy calling and emailing
people to schedule meetings. I'd been in Hong Kong for the
previous two weeks, interviewing at a bunch of law firms and meeting
with some other people to see if I couldn't get some names and numbers
to call in Shanghai. The first number I did call was this guy's.
He said he wanted to meet with me at his office the next day, but to
call him ahead of time to confirm the meeing. I wrote a few more
letters and took a long walk for the rest of the afternoon to get
familiar with the city.
I called Earnshaw again the next morning. He was in a different
part of town, but wanted me to come meet him there, so I took a cab out
to Xujiahui
to meet him. Just before I arrived, I got a call from him, asking
what color my taxi was. I said light blue, and before I knew it
he was sitting in the back seat with me, telling the driver to head
back toward his office on Huaihai Road.
We began talking. I mentioned I'd been writing this blog for two
years, and he immediately pulled out a tiny laptop out of his bag and
asked, "what's the address?" He found it in no time on his CDMA
wireless card ("wi-fi's too much of a pain," he muttered) and started
skimming through it. He asked me a few more questions, and
finally said he had a job for me, working on projects for him.
"I'll think of stuff for you to do, and you can do it" is basically
what he said. I hesitated, and he continued, "I don't see that
you've got a whole lot to lose. And it's not slavery, James,
you're free to leave any time."
So, within 10 minutes of having met this guy, I'd accepted a job working for him in the back of a taxi, and was in his office beginning work. Still looking for an apartment, though.
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