The Stories

The mother has come, and the mother has gone. The Aunt was here with her, and together we made a trifecta of American might. That said, there were obviously some great occurrences along the way. These: are the China files.

Frank - The Meeting
I took the fast train to get to the airport, but since I didn't know the terminal of the continental flight I was unsure of which terminal to get off the train at. I exited the first one we came to in order to check the board, and discovered two other guys that were headed for the same flight. One spoke good Chinese and was from Shanghai, the other was apparently from Singapore, spoke very little Chinese, was leaving for America instead of waiting for people to arrive, and thus was quickly excluded from our cool kids club.

The former was Frank, and due to the plane from America being late we had a long time to discuss every aspect of China. I seem to have a habit of doing this with strangers, it is how I have met most of my friends with connections in China. After exchanging what we did in China, what the people we were picking up did in America, and why the people were coming to China we proceeded to hit up a Starbucks to pass the time. I, being a pansy, opted for orange juice, and he followed suit in typical Chinese fashion. We spent the next hour discussing various things, most important to the story being our plans for our guests. He was showing an important cardiovascular doctor around in a giant convention, and thus we were swapping ideas on where to take foreigners in China. He invited me to come eat with him at a nice restaurant on Friday, and since I wanted to return I invited him to come eat with us on Wednesday.

I should mention at this point that he is attempting to recruit me to help edit his medical journal, and as such it added a bit of pressure for me to look good at the dinners. The first dinner went over without a hitch, I ordered the food well and had a good variety and balance. The second dinner, however, is the true story.

Frank - The Dinner
So I told that story to get to this story. The place he invited us to go to on Friday was a very, very fancy restaurant that featured classy food with performances during the meal. There was Beijing Opera, Beijing Face Changing, Kung Fu, and some other instrumental performances and singing. The most important performance to tell you about was the girl with the pot. She started by laying on her back with her feet straight up in the air and then spinning a big pot around on her feet. After awhile they changed out the big pot for a gigantic 160 pound pot, and I have to admit seeing her spin and juggle that was really impressive due to the imbalance in the pots shape. They then asked for a volunteer from the crowd, and Frank told me that I had to go and thus I did. What happened next was caught on video and will be uploaded in the next few days. They had me sit in the pot, then 6 men lifted the pot and placed it on her legs. She then spun me around for the audience to see before setting me back down. I wasn't concerned about her dropping me as much as I was concerned at the trouble the 6 guys were having with letting me down. Video is coming, I promise.

But I digress. I had originally been under the impression that the dinner would just be the 5 of us again, but upon arrival we discovered that there were in fact 12 people. We were eating with leading cardiologists from two American hospitals, Frank (who is a doctor), two leading cardiologists from China's two most important and largest hospitals, a cardiologist from Singapore, and the guy in charge of a Chinese medical journal. We quickly realized that we were sitting at a power play meeting of Chinese trying to woo American doctors, and we felt extremely awkward and out of place. The other people at the table seemed to be looking at us with the, "Why exactly are you here? Who are you here with? You are important...why?" I proved my usefulness through my Chinese and my knowledge of Chinese culture and food, and thus helped the Chinese and Americans bridge some of the gaps, but the question still remained of why we were here and were we just freeloading off of all the important doctors.

Thus, the place he took us to cost far more than the place we treated him to, but I feel it was fair for him putting us in that crazy situation. It was excellent because the whole dinner it felt like Sarah and my mother were on their best behavior so I would look good in front of my important friends, and I finally understand what my parents had felt like taking me to meet coworkers or important people at dinners. It was a recurring theme, I was basically the parent the entire trip.

Bonus tidbit, I also had to basically feed Sarah to keep Frank from yelling at me in Chinese to take better care of them and make sure they were enjoying themselves.

Ito Yokado - America 1 China 0
The conquering of the Ito Yokado cashier! So Sarah and the mother decided they wanted to purchase some jade, and once they discovered they could pay with credit card got extremely excited.

We make our way from the place were you select what you want to buy to the cashier counter, wait in line, and then present our cards for our purchases. Sarah's goes over without a problem, but Kelly hadn't signed the back of her cards and the cashier lady (who let's be clear now is a antagonist here) refused to accept them.

We were a bit rankled by this, but we decided we'd just walk away, sign them, and try again. So we did that, and upon returning to the counter she grew indignant and said, "You signed these just now didn't you!" I thought to myself that she sure had made a brilliant deduction, and went into Chinese confrontation mode. We argued for a bit, but she refused to take the cards and when we walked away in defeat looked very proud of herself.

The lady at the jade counter, angered by why she couldn't make a sale, went over to raise hell on our behalf. While she did so, I told all the other clerks around us our story, and they were all on our side and ready to back up the big jade lady. Managers got involved, and since China loves their rules and technicalities we were unable to win despite the jade lady being on our side.

We went up a floor to shop for some toys while trying to think of how to buy the jade, as coming back the next day with our cards signed was not very convenient. We were thinking of pooling our cash and then going to get money out of the ATM, but instead mother and Sarah came up with some complicated deal and that involved Sarah buying the jade on her card for Kelly.

Excited about our new plan and determined to defeat the cashier, Sarah and I walked over and got in line. The lady saw us behind the person she was helping, and shook her head and said to herself that foreigners never learn. I am fairly certain she thought that Sarah was Kelly (sisters + all white people look alike), but upon getting to the front of the line she realized what our new strategy was. She panicked, and in her desperation to not lose to the foreigners after taking Sarah's card got on the phone to call the manager from before. She didn't want to sell it to us, to which the manager responded asking if there was a problem with this card, when she admitted there was no problem the manager told her to sell it because duhhhh money and sales are gooood. After having us use her system against her and being beaten by her own rules, she angrily swiped the card and loudly stamped the receipts. It was our turn to be proud of ourselves as we walked away from the counter.

America 1, China 0.

Tiananmen Closed

This is just a small side story really, I don't think it even needs its own bold title as I am fairly certain I figured out the mystery behind the story, but seeing as how I need to have something to offset the good stories, I'll let the story feel special and let it keep the title.

We went to Tiananmen following our trip to the Forbidden City, but I was confused at first by the lack of people and the presence of cars. I checked to get my bearings, and was certain that we were at Tiananmen. All the underground pathways to cross the street and enter the square were closed, so I asked a nearby guard what the deal was. He apologized, and then said that he was sorry for the inconvenience but was unable to tell me why. When I pressed him for if it would be open tomorrow, he responded with, "Not necessarily." Though I was happy that I was learning the Chinese methods of secrecy and confidentiality, I was sad that I couldn't take my family to the square.

I am fairly certain it was closed for the Asian-European summit due to top European leaders being in China. Though who knows...perhaps there is a bigger story here.