Oops!

Reading John's posts is as entertaining for me as it is for anyone else. His first impressions are comical, mainly because they remind me of how I felt the first go around. Of course, when you move somewhere with so many differences, where so many things are counter intuitive, somethings are bound to go wrong. Luckily, John finds many of these occurrences comical. Without that sense of humor, things here would be much harder.

Milk, like John mentioned, tastes a bit different. I'm unsure of what causes this difference, but it has been rumored that China used to add paint powder to help preserve the milk, making its shelf life longer. While such practices have supposedly been abandoned, the strange taste lingers. The first time we went grocery shopping, we wanted to buy a gallon of milk. So, being the opportunist that I am, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to practice my Chinese. I scanned the refrigerated section, for the symbols, "cow milk". When I found it, I happily raced back and dropped it into our cart. When we got home, I poured myself a glass of ice cold....yogurt?! Enter annoyance & confusion. Turns out, I am not as detailed oriented as I thought. Before the symbols for "cow milk" there was another symbol, which I did not know and simply ignored. After looking it up in the dictionary, I found that this symbol meant, "sour" and when combined with "cow milk", the three symbols mean, yogurt. Why Chinese sell yogurt in gallon jugs is beyond me, but on our second trip to the grocery store, my Chinese-English dictionary was tucked carefully away in my purse.

As you may have read in one of John's previous posts, his new favorite past time is to say, "see you in the morning!!!" to all the Xiao Jies (little miss), who invite patrons into their respective stores (see referenced post for more details). Typically, this yields nothing but laughter and good will, mostly because they haven't the slightest clue of what he is saying. He had repeated this exercise over and over with an 100% success rate, which is why it came as such a surprise when finally, the conversation did not go as planned. On one recent occasion, the Xiao Jie, who called the hotel elevator for us gave him a confused stare and replied, OK, see you tomorrow?? I don't know who was more confused...John, because someone had actually understood him, or the xiao jie, trying desperately to figure out what this strange man had meant by his greeting. In any case, my point to this story, is that you never know who is listening here. It is not acceptable to assume that all Asian looking people can only understand Chinese and that all Caucasian looking people can only understand English. When John and I first arrived in China, we were overcome with a sense of power, because it seemed that we could talk about whatever, whomever, and wherever we wanted. No one would be the wiser, right? WRONG. After being here for some time, we've realized that you really have to watch what you say, regardless of what language you say it in. The population here is so diverse, that you never know who is standing next to you.

P.S. There is a rumor going around town that a lao wai (foreigner) broke the moving escalator at Carrefour and I know who did it! Don't worry mushu, your secret is safe with me. ;)