Fourth day in China [October 4]

[aadler]

Susan got up a bit before 5:00, I slept in till nearly 6:30. Did my morning exercises (added reps to all of them, more resistance to one), then rested a bit while Susan started the day’s laundry.

(Little item of note: people who live expensively — Kevin’s and Mei-li’s apartment, and that of her parents, have marble floors — will have a small washing machine out on the balcony, which they use to wash clothes daily, but nobody uses dryers; instead, there’s a suspended frame that can be cranked up and down, from which clothes are hung to air-dry. That’s just how it’s done.)

At Susan’s suggestion I went out to the nearby McDonald’s to get us some breakfast. Yesterday’s rain was still coming down, mostly light, but I nonetheless remembered Kevin’s comment yesterday about maybe everyone carried umbrellas even at the hint of rain because, here, the rain can carry down some of the endemic air pollution. (Still, he hadn’t seemed worried at the time, so I decided not to be.) I’d got a mistaken notion of the McDonald’s location, and used the subway entrance to cross the street — feeling quite pleased at my cleverness — but that took me to the lower level of the Walmart we visited last night, and then I had to go upstairs and down the block and do two street crossings to get back to the correct side. In the McDonald’s itself, the woman who waited on me had little English (and of course I have far less Chinese; three phrases, maybe a dozen or so words), but in such a limited interaction our mutual knowledge was sufficient. She gave me a menu so I could point; I picked out what I wanted and held up two fingers; she asked about coffee, I said “One coffee,” and then she asked something else and I hazarded “Diet Coke?”, which she repeated for confirmation, and once we were clear on that she asked something else which I didn’t understand but this was about time for her to be saying something like This is for carry-out, right?, so I pantomimed holding two bags for carry and she nodded and we were good. When the order was done, the register showed ¥42.50. Kevin had given us some folding money, so I didn’t have any trouble paying. (Though I did think, later, that they’d given me too much change; I was supposed to get back ¥57.50, and I had two 20s, a 10, two 5s, and two 1s, which would have made 62. Nearer inspection, however, showed that one of the 5s was smaller than the other and with a different design, so I supposed that was the ¥0.50.) Back at the apartment complex, I was let in the gate without problem — I’d made a point of greeting the guards on the way out so they’d remember me — but when I reached Kevin’s building, I had to phone him — back at the Yins’ — to ask how to buzz apartment 16B, because there was no “B” on the keypad. (His answer: 16, then 2, then #.) And Susan answered and released the door, and everything was routine after that.

So, yeah, my first solitary expedition in China. Put me right up there with Marco Polo.

Kevin had told us yesterday that he would take us to Mass today. After our breakfast, I got further WeChat messages from him, saying he and Mei-li and Laura would be arriving to pick us up around 1100. He texted us again just before their arrival, and we met them down in the underground parking level. Laura took us all to a small nearby restaurant (that Kevin identified as being a step or two above fast food), where we had an unhurried lunch, and after that we did some shopping in a small mall to kill further time. From there, Laura drove us to St Anthony’s Catholic Church of Shenzhen, where we waited and talked for about an hour before Mass began, though the last fifteen minutes was taken up by a communal Rosary.

I had thought we’d be attending the Chinese Mass, because Kevin had said that one was better; however, it turned out he’d selected the English one because it came later, and he hadn’t known when we’d be up. So, okay, that made it easier to follow and participate. Just funny that I should travel over 8,000 miles to attend Mass for the first time in months, when there’s a chapel a mile up the road from my home.

Laura is Buddhist, so she didn’t stay while the rest of us went through our weird stuff, but she was there to pick us up again when we came out, and took us back to the Yins’ apartment. So, more visiting with Amber and the others, and Susan brought out some of the stuff she’d knitted for the baby (and Mei-li posted some pictures of those online, and a friend posted back that she thought only Chinese grandmothers could do work like that, and Mei-li jokingly called the friend racist). Kevin went out once to teach one of his classes, then came back; we had another evening meal where I again ate too much (can’t help myself, the food is fine wherever we go), and then Kevin went out again to teach another class — his weekend schedule can sometimes be more crowded than time during the week — and on that second occasion Laura and Mei-li took us back to our current residence, with us arriving maybe around 8:30 PM.

Little notes that I hadn’t thought to mention at the time:

• Mei-li’s father bears a distinct resemblance to Chinese president Xi Jinping (and I’m told that before he — Logan — lost weight, they looked even more alike).
• The first lullaby I ever sang to my granddaughter was Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”. What? Gotta give the kid a solid grounding in the essentials.
• Susan enjoys watching Chinese soap operas, even when she can’t understand one word in a thousand. She can follow the general emotional themes, and simply makes up the appropriate dialogue.
• The Yins have a plaque of Mao in a place of … maybe respect, rather than honor … in their apartment. Always makes me feel a little weird when I see it. I’m not about to say anything, don’t think I’ve even remarked on it to Kevin, but I look on Mao as the guy who killed 50, maybe 75 million Chinese purely from his own ego, ruthlessness, and narcissism, and I thought the days of reverencing him were long past.
• Yesterday, during all the time we were out shopping and doing other stuff, I saw one woman — one — with a traditional Chinese collar. Every single other person was dressed 100% Western. And I asked Kevin if there were any ugly women in China, or if they were all just kept in a walled compound somewhere.

Susan settled in for television relaxing. I did some other stuff, then to bed a little after 10:00 PM.

Next day

Comments

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

My mother would approve of grounding the little one in Springsteen.

Also, Susan and her Chinese soap opera-love reminds me of Willow, Buffy, and Xander watching Indian TV.


Gabrielle

[aadler]

Oh, yes. I’ve even quoted the line: “Her lover? I thought that was her chiropractor.” “Because of that thing he did with her feet? No, that was personal.” (Because, seriously, there’s one soap where a recovering dancer strained something and fell, and one of the two men vying for her affection jumped in to help her up and then start massaging the foot.)

[snogged.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a pretty great day.

[aadler]

They’re moving along okay.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

The idea of a WalMart in China is mindblowing to me for some reason. Probably for the same reason I was flabbergasted to find a DQ in Jamaica. :) I'm hoping to travel to Japan in the next couple years and the idea of going somewhere that I am functionally illiterate is a bit daunting. With European languages English speakers have a shot at sussing out the basics. With a character based language I have no clue. Good to know that the pantomime approach is still effective even in that case. :)

The pendent with the baby's hair sounds wonderful!

[aadler]

I was thinking about you just the other day; glad to have you back commenting.

The baby-hair locket was just about the perfect gift.