I didn’t begin the day intending to get on the subway. In
fact, I walked to a supermarket that I found on Apple maps, and that’s when I
met my first police officer of the day. As I wandered into what looked like a
neighborhood with apartment buildings and shops, a police officer stopped me
and spoke what seemed like rapid Mandarin. Even though I couldn’t understand
his words, I got his meaning. I was someplace I wasn’t supposed to be. He
stopped a young woman passing by and asked for her help. She explained that the
area I was in didn’t have a large supermarket, but she would show me to the
small one or direct me to the subway. Eeeeeek! The subway! Argh! I took her
directions, had a pleasant conversation with the police officer using as much
English as he could remember and my very limited Mandarin, and thanked them
both. Off to the subway I went.
After all of my worrying, I discovered that the area of town
I’m in is at the end of two lines. This means the subway cars are not crowded
because I board after most people have made their departures. I was able to get
to a Walmart and a Starbucks with only one transfer and without being
sandwiched into subway cars with too many personal space deficient people. As a
bonus, the round trip fare was about $1.10 USD. I have all kinds of questions
about why the U.S. doesn’t have high speed train travel. It would be so
awesome.
Because I braved the subway, I was able to buy groceries to
take me through more than a day or two. I now have instant oatmeal, plain
noodles, and rice to last a couple of weeks. Before I found Walmart, I got lost
in two malls. One of them was 10 stories high! Around every corner were luxury,
name brand items for sale with a bored looking shop person in each brand’s
space. I wondered, as I often do in U.S. shopping centers, who actually buys
the stuff in those places and, if no one is buying, how do they stay open?
That’s a mystery for someone else to solve. My mystery of the day was how to
get back on campus with no university-issued ID card.
That’s right! After saying c’est la vie about the ID card a
few days ago and relinquishing my desire to have that security, I was being
asked to produce an ID card in order to re-enter campus. Oh, boy. After I told
the young police officer that I didn’t have a card, he motioned for me to go
speak with the older officer nearby. As I approached him, the older man marched
over to the young officer and spoke in Mandarin with a raised voice and tense
arms and shoulders. The young officer looked at the ground and didn’t speak.
Again, even though I couldn’t understand the words, the meaning was evident.
The young man thought he was doing his job, but he was in trouble for sending
me to the older officer. I quickly typed, “I am visiting faculty” into my
translation app, showed it to the older man, and he waved me through. I was embarrassed
for the young man. That wasn’t a happy experience for any of us.
I’m learning that, although the U.S. and China are certainly
vastly different in many ways, individually we appear to share more as humans
that we believe is possible. Shame is shame, bosses can be unreasonable, and
consumerism is real no matter where you live.
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| When I tried to use the Starbucks app to find a location, it told me that I'm 6483 miles from a location in Omaha, but they could make my drink in 4-9 minutes. |
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