China will never be able to take over the world if they keep this up!

Bureaucracy sucks. Bureaucracy sucks everywhere- it sucks in the US, it sucks in the UK, and if there were bureaucracy in Antarctica, it would suck, too. But the bureaucracy in China S!U!C!K!S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is inefficient, unreasonable, and obtuse! Chinese bureaucracy is it's own level in Hell.


Today I present two tales of bureaucratic idiocy. I tried to make them more quirk, and less rant, but I'm not sure I succeeded.


#1


Tiffany and I needed to transfer money back home, so we went to the bank with Tarina, a receptionist with a bank account at one of the major banks just for the foreign teachers to transfer money.


The proper paperwork was in a back office. First they brought out only one copy, even though both Tarina and Tiffany requested two. So they fetched me a second, and while I was filling it out, a clerk went off in search of another because Tiffany's writing was "not comprehensible." (I put that in quotes because it was patently untrue, but we'll get to that.) Between the two of us, we went through six forms, and it took until the fourth copy for someone to bring out extras. You know, just in case.


Up at the counter, computer and calculator right there in front of her, the teller made Tiffany calculate how much USD her Chinese money would exchange into.

After a good twenty-minutes to a half-hour Tiffany was finally able to return to work, and it was my turn.


First it was the paperwork. Here is an excerpt from the copy I filled out:

Take note of the 6s. Can you tell what number they are?

They made me fill out a new sheet because of the cross-out. I was annoyed, but not surprised.


On the second copy, Tarina offered to fill it in, but I declined. 'No no no, I have nice handwriting, Tiffany checked it.' I got as far as the very first line. Let's see!

Yes, I saved these until I could take photos of them. I wanted proof.

Do you see that little line within the loop of the 6? That's my original 6. Tarina stopped me, and showed it to the teller, who couldn't tell that it was a 6!!! They use Western/Arabic numerals here. More often than they use Chinese numerals! So then, Tarina redrew the 6 "properly," and they told her that 'no, that wasn't going to work.' We had to fill out an entirely new sheet!!


This time I just let Tarina do it.

'If we're going to talk about writing things incorrectly then I feel obligated to inform you that that is not an "E"!'

Are you kidding me?!?!?! This is where failing to teach your populace independent, creative problem-solving thought processes gets you: a bank teller who is so incompetent she can't reason that my 6 is a 6.


Arg, just thinking about it makes me frustrated all over again. I need a break.

Aw, cute!

Oookay, we got the paperwork filled out, so the next step was the money. Even though they had done it for Tiffany who also has a different bank, they refused to withdraw the money from my bank account because I use a different bank than Tarina. So we spent another thirty minutes going down the street to a branch of my bank, withdrawing money (the only positive in this entire adventure was that they let me fully empty the account), and returning to freakin' finally complete the process.


Two things of note:
 A. The branch I withdrew my money from uses a dot matrix printer :) .
 B. Also, my bank charges me every time I withdraw money, which is waaay uncool, so I had Tarina ask what the deal was. It turns out, the card came from a branch in Nanjing, a different city, so they charge me for withdrawing money from another jurisdiction or whatever. What. the. hell?!

#2



We weren't the only ones dealing with bank business either. Tino, who is from Switzerland, came in with Meirong (his girlfriend) while we were waiting. Tino had loaned 30,000RMB to the local rugby club, because one of the requirements for official government certification is that they have that much in a bank account. The bank transferred the money, the rugby club took the statement of proof to the government, and the government rejected their application. Because the money had been transferred, instead of deposited. Bureaucracy!
So everyone had to go back to the bank and 
 1. the rugby head transferred the money back into Tino's account
 2. Tino withdrew the money
 3. Tino handed the money to the rugby head
 4. the rugby head then deposited it back into his account

Chelsea, starring in "Whoa, Don't Touch Me!"

I do not enjoy clothes shopping (or, honestly, shopping in any small store) in China*, and I lay my objections squarely at the feet of the salesgirls.


First, let me explain what I do appreciate when I'm shopping: a question about whether  I need any assistance when I walk in, more than a few clerks available go give me that assitance, and an entire staff that'll leave me alone to shop. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.


But here, here, sales staff attach themselves to me like a long-lost shadow the minute I walk in the door. In fact, sometimes I just peer into a shop from outside, and they'll eagerly make a move toward me. I can tell them "I'm just looking" in Chinese---a phrase I was compelled to get Tiffany to teach me shortly after arriving---and they'll still eagerly trail me through the racks like monosodium on glutamate. Showing me different styles of something I glance at, attempting to take clothes from my arms until I'm ready to try them on, asking me questions even after I've said "I don't understand," and generally being annoying and unhelpful.
And the thing is, they're not simply trying to sell me stuff. They're actually trying to be helpful. Which, for the average Chinese customer, they are being. That's the customer - retail clerk relationship here: the retail clerk waits on the customer in an overly-attentive way, and the customer expects and appreciates the service. But for someone who,
  A. likes to shop without being bothered
  B. comes from a culture where being tailed by sales staff means you're a candidate for
   theft
  C. does not like to have people hovering over her, to the point that she has a hard time
   doing it as a teacher, to students, even though it's a common motivation technique
it's a very uncomfortable, frustrating experience.
I like going to bigger, more metropolitan cities like Shanghai. It's less of a problem there.


A perfect example of the too personal, too hands-on service---and the inspiration for the title of this post---occurred the other day. I was shopping with Tiffany when I found a skirt I wanted to try on. After just slipping it on over the dress I was wearing, I left the mirror-less dressing room to check it out in a mirror outside the stall. The dress underneath made it sit a little funny, so as I was fidgeting with it to get an idea of how it might appear if I were wearing it in an appropriate manner, a sales girl reached around me from behind and began to help me rearrange the waistline of the skirt. I don't know about you, but I've never had that happen before, so I was completely caught off guard. I immediately jumped away from her, waving my hands, shaking my head, and alternately saying "no-no-no" in English, and "thank you" in Chinese, over and over while Tiffany laughed.


In conclusion, here's a photo of the Chinglish shirt I couldn't not buy from a Chinese clothing chain I really enjoy.

 the

DESTINY

NiGHT

Chelsea Couture

 love and carbon burns must try

to cool it let it

 wilfully it took a heart burn

MAGIC PARTY

*As usual, when I refer to "China," the subtext is "Yancheng, China" unless otherwise specified. Because in a country that's 9,596,961 square kilometers, there's bound to be more than a little cultural diversity.

DON'T forget your passport when you're traveling in China

'Cause I did, and it wasn't cool. Tiffany, Scott, Stuart, and I took the train to Nantong, a nearby city with a international chain store that's kind of a cross between Costco and Cash & Carry. Also, it has a US cuisine restaurant that is a wooonderful treat!

The train attendants always seem to hock stuff during trips. I have no clue what these were, except that at one point he pulled out a lighter and put the flame against the non-flammable part. Later he pitched socks and belts.

Scott giving me the evil eye

Stuart

We got into town around 13:00, and immediately went to lunch. Then we tried to check into a hotel. It's the law in China that foreigners MUST use their passports to check into hotels. I had forgotten my passport at home---Stuart: "I thought about texting everyone to bring their passports, then I thought, 'we're all smart enough to remember them'''---and only had a photo copy, which the receptionists wouldn't accept. We tried everything: getting them to call managers; calling my boss to work some guanxi-magic; calling Scott and Tiffany's boss to do the same; trying to convince the recptionists to pretend they didn't know about me; looking pathetic. After twenty stressful minutes, we finally gave up and went to a different hotel, where I hung out on the street while the other three checked in. When I walked in with the group later that night, no one gave me a second glance. And, the bed Stuart and I shared was way bigger than the bed in the first hotel---this one could have fit all four of us, but in the first, Stuart and I pretty much would have been on top of each other, something which would have sucked majorly considering I discovered he is a wicked restless sleeper.


With the anticlimactic conclusion of that debacle, we went for groceries, got dinner, and had fun on a short channel tour in a little, plastic, rented boat.

Scott with a "margarita"

Tiffany

in the boat

My small point-and-shoot camera is absolutely fabulous in all things except night shots; in the dark, it sucks big time. Still, with persistence, I managed to get a couple nice photos:

 

And you get a pen! And you get a pen! And you get a pen! You're all getting PENS!!!!!!!!

Perhaps, Dear Reader, you are one of those people in my life who might expect a gift upon my return. Some amusing quaint or peculiar trinket to demonstrate my everlasting affection.

That has proved to be an unexpected problem for me. "Things" in China appear to fall into one of four categories:
1. "I can get that in the States."
2. "Gosh damn it! Is it really necessary to slap an ugly cartoon character on everything?!"
3. "That looks special/unique/rare, but I'll eat my hat if it really is."
4. "Why would someone want to own that?"

There is one area, however, in which Chinese manufacturers run laps around the US, and that is in entertaining stationery supplies. You name a theme, I could probably find a journal/sticky-note/writing instrument/white-out container/folder that pays homage to it. So guess what? You're all getting pens!!!

(Some of you are getting mechanical pencils.)

I know it doesn't sound like much of a gift, but hear me out:
1. A pen is better than something you could have bought for yourself at Fred Meyer. ["Made in China," anyone?]
2. A pen is better than nothing, which is what I was really worried I'd end up coming back with.
3. A pen is useful. It won't collect dust or end up in a closet.
4. I can't just get these in the grocery store. I am having a great deal of fun visiting every dingy stationary shop and stall looking for pens I think will amuse certain people.
5. In the process of procuring these pens, I have been ripped-off on your behalf, several times :) .
6. We're not talking generic Bics here, these are themed and/or decorated pens.
7. I'm not just grabbing a bunch of pens to hand out randomly. I'm choosing specific designs for specific people. For example:

For Christel, who loves marine biology: an otter pen.

For Rhiannon, whose cat Bubbles is white, who probably has a skull bandanna somewhere around the house, and who, like all decent people, detests hipsters: a pen with a white cat, wearing a skull bandanna and some awesome hipster glasses. 

(Also, this cat is "Hello Jetoy," not "Hello Kitty." You've probably never heard of her.)

Those two are all I'm going to post. I want them to be a nice surprise (though, maybe not a good surprise). Also, round pens are wicked hard to photograph- you can see in the cat-pen photo, I had to take two pics from different angles, and then tediously merge them together.

You have now been warned :D

Fool me once- 'These are weird'; fool me twice- 'Aw damn!'; fool me three times- 'What the hell man?!'

I only wanted some dried fruit!

I haven't been super adventurous in the grocery store because I don't want to waste money, and I don't want to waste food. But since I've started collecting a paycheck (and stopped having to put that paycheck toward supplies) I thought I'd sample the vast array of dried fruits available.

I started with Chinese bayberries, also called wax berries.

They were pretty unpleasant: they'd been soaked in some kind of wretched indescribable flavoring, like licorice and cinnamon. And they had pits. I had to chew/suck the fruit off. The fruit itself had a grainy texture which I actually liked, but not enough to overcome the gross taste. I tossed them.

---

A few days ago I was once again looking through the dried fruit options when I saw dried peaches. I LOVE dried peaches, so I snatched them up. I didn't read the ingredients because, why would I?

Answer? Because there's cayenne pepper powder on them. They weren't awful, but they weren't good either, because they weren't what I wanted. They still aren't.

---

Take Three.

Plums are extremely popular around here. Thus, if one desires dried/preserved plums, one can obtain them in a multitude of varieties. I chose some that had a good color, and looked dry (I like my dried fruit to be dry, rather than the more juicy kind). Also, they were small, so I figured they'd been pitted.

 

As with the peaches, I didn't bother to read the ingredients. They looked harmless enough. My trust was repaid with perverse contempt. They rank among one of most disgusting things I've eaten here. Someone who likes licorice and evil might enjoy them, but oh-dear-god I do not and did not! And to add insult to injury, they weren't even pitted!


Why Aberrant Fruit Deity? Why?!

You know what it says under Ingredients on the raisins I buy? "Grapes." Because that's all it should say!
Seriously, it even says it in English, which is uncommon. [So, technically, it says "Grape."]

The information department was kind enough to make sure a few helpful tips were included as well!

All Glory to the Internets: Cracked Roundup, China Edition

Here are some of Cracked's best China-related articles:

5 Examples of Americans Thinking Foreign People Are Magic
[I LOVE this one! It's largely about Chinese culture, although other non-white cultures are noted.]

The 6 Worst Parts of Being Chinese (Not in the Stereotypes)
[The author is, in fact, Chinese.]

7 Things from America that Are Insanely Popular Overseas, #7 & #2
[I can't confirm #7, but I have definnitely run into #2. My theory is that the Garfield movies are so popular because they're not funny, therefore you don't have to deal with the whole humor-doesn't-translate issue.]

5 Reasons Parenting Is One Place We Shouldn't Imitate China
[I do not have any commentary for this one.]

Surfing the Internet in China after the Google Conflict (results of a fill-in-the-blank comic contest)
[#2 is animated, so make sure you see both "views."]

5 Government Programs that Backfired Horrifically, #1
[a brief overview of The Great Famine]
The 5 Most Shockingly Insane Modern Dictators, #1
[an equally-brief summation of Mao's follow-up performance, the Cultural Revolution]

Unrelated Chinese child who would not stop following me one day, and would not stop talking to me in Chinese.

Don't worry! In China, no matter how bad things are, it will ALWAYS get worse!

That is a waaay more positive sentiment than it sounds; it's like that trite, I-was-depressed-because-I-my-ears-were-cold-until-I-met-a-man-who-had-no-head concept. See, I've come to realize that each distasteful reality I experience isn't really as bad as it could be, and eventually I will come across the more wretched possibility.

Here are three examples!

Staring
AT FIRST I was annoyed about the staring (no matter how prepared you are for it, if you end up in a place with a low foreigner frequency like Yancheng, it will be A MILLION times more ubiquitous and grating than you can imagine).
BUT THEN, about a week after I arrived, I met Samson -- one of two resident Africans (Kenya, specifically). Now it doesn't bother me because I know it must be sooooo much worse for him.

Samson making a weird face.

Fireworks, Firecrackers, Fire-Noisemakers-from-Hell
HAVE YOU ever lived next to construction? Did the constant bang! boom! bang! bang! boom! ever get to you? If not, then you are a lucky, lucky person, and you should send $20 to me "Happy Gal" in Yancheng, China, if you want your fortune to continue. If you do, then you understand my pain. (And you should probably send $20 to Happy Gal if you want your luck to turn around.) See, the Chinese like to set off noise-making explosives all! the! time! Literally. 9am, 1pm, 8pm, 2am, 4am; Monday through Sunday. And I'm not talking pretty, joyful fireworks, I'm talking simple, exploding firecrackers and shells powerful enough to set off car and motorbike alarms.

AAANYWAY, I was all about loathing the jarring thunder, until the first day of Chinese New Year, when I awoke to a HEART-ATTACK-CAUSING COMMOTION OF DISCORDANT EXPLOSIONS FROM DERANGED MORTAR SHELLS AND ROCKETS AND FIRECRACKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was unreal. I'm totally down with the fact that my city was merely trying to keep away a lion-monster, but I think I would have preferred risking being eaten to the several hours of the audio-nightmare I actually experienced.
To make a long story concluded, now I don't mind the intermittent firecrackers so much...

This is an audio-extraction from a video I took when I was sick and cranky. It's of some SUPER loud explosives from a nearby neighborhood; I talk near the end to give you a little volume comparison.

Getting My Attention
PERHAPS YOU are aware of the "Hello!" phenomenon; it is a close relative of the staring. "Hello" is the only word many Chinese non-English-speakers know, and because their social-courtesy norms are very different from ours, they will often say it at me, and then laugh as if they are so clever. It is extremely obnoxious.
AT LEAST, it was extremely obnoxious, until a few wonderful individuals decided to take it to the next level. See, sometimes people will persistently try to get my attention, to perform the hello-laugh routine. And on more than one occasion that persistence has manifested in the physical. I have been run into with shopping carts, as well as out-right hit :P .

I don't have a photo of me being physically assaulted, so here's something funny from the internets.

In which I fail at bargaining... because of something that slipped Tiffany's mind :)

 This is a "modern" rickshaw. The city recently made the old school kind illegal, in order to promote modernity :P .

Usually, before I get in a rickshaw, I bargain a price with the driver. Tiffany, however, is cool with paying a little more (she calls it the "foreigner tax") in order to not have to bargain. This evening, when we took a rickshaw to get coffee, I attempted to pay the driver ¥4, but he demanded ¥5 and when I wouldn't budge---it wasn't a ¥5 trip!---he got really angry. So did I. We stood there, shouting at each other in our own languages, until I finally, bitterly coughed up the extra yuan and told him he sucked.
I was perplexed, because, as the Chinese will tell you, they love to bargain, and this guy totally wouldn't. It wasn't until our trip back that Tiffany remembered: when we got in, the driver told her it would be ¥5, and she agreed!!!!!!! I laughed sooo hard! I'll bet that guy never picks up foreigners again.

Government Banquet Shenanigans

Last week I attended a banquet put on by the city government, for the resident foreigners.
 
The Chinese LOOOVE to toast. They do it all. the. time. at dinners. And since it's China, where everything is more complicated than necessary, there're conventions to follow, too.

• You're supposed to stand while toasting. 
• You're supposed to drink the entire glass in one swallow. [Their wine glasses are smaller than our standard ones.] 
• And, when two glasses touch, the rim of your glass should be lower than the other person's, as a sign of respect. Whenever I remember (which, honestly, isn't often), I've resorted to just grabbing onto the other person's wrist and holding it steady in order to get my rim lower and avoid a lowest-rim battle.

Behold! My goblet of yogurt! (Tiffany says most men begin banquets with yogurt, to prepare their guts for the alcohol onslaught. I was sick, and had been avoiding dairy, but I thought better safe than sorry.)

It was pretty uninteresting for a while: important officials, bad karaoke, unappetizing food, and no one to talk to (I ended up at the head table because of my supervisor's clout). But then it picked up real quick, thanks to a lot of baiju and a man I'll call Batman:

An awkward self-shot photo of me and the Chinese Caped Crusader. And a bored Indian guy.

In China, red wine is "red wine," our white wine is "yellow wine," and their "white wine" is this foul grain alcohol called baijiu (literally, "white wine"). Drinking baijiu is a popular and "masculine" activity. Because of this, a guy is applauded when he can hold his liquor, and isn't judged when he overdrinks. Seriously, they drink this stuff over business meetings, and they drink a lot of it.

So, back to the Dark Knight. I should have guessed something was up when he first approached me and convinced me to accept a glass of baijiu (I did want to try it) by insisting that I "drank it the last time we met, on a train in Shanghai." He came by again later to inquire, "I want to know why: Why don't you love me anymore?" Immediately after his third and more overt pass by my seat, Tiffany fetched me to "use the restroom," where she informed me, "That guy? Batman? He just propositioned me!! He is so smashed!" At that point it clicked. One right after the other he'd hit on us both, saying, "I think you and me should go out, and dance and drink. You need to call me, so we can go out together." Tiffany was able to laugh him off, but after losing out to her, I think he got a little more resolved, because he didn't let me do the same, and I ended up saying, "Oh totally!" :D . We left soon after that, but not before he made sure we had our photo opp, and definitely not before my coat zipper got stuck (pretty much over my crotch) and, like a good oblivious drunk guy, he went right in for it and came awful close to accidentally [seriously, he wasn't with it enough to do anything intentionally] molesting me as I stood there laughing uncontrollably.

But that wasn't the only highlight of the night. There was also this:

Pictured, center: the highest ranking official (present) and main host of the dinner

The comb-over reigns supreme among China's balding male population, and this man's was...just...there are no words. I never did get a good photo of it, but I tried. I took several surreptitious photos over the course of the evening, and finally, when I knew things were wrapping up, decided to go for broke and shoot straight on. This move earned the attention of an English-speaking neighbor, who innocently asked what I was doing. "Uh...oh, you know, taking photos of Mr. Government Guy to show my family back home."
That smooth response got me this:

"Well why don't you go up and I'll take a photo of both of you!" All because of his bad hairdo.

And that ridiculous Asian-photograph-stereotype peace-sign thing? I've totally caught myself mimicking that more than once :D .

Learning Chinese: Reading vs Speaking

Being able to read Chinese gives me zero advantages when it comes to speaking the language. With English, and other languages that use alphabets, if you can visually comprehend a word, and you know some of the language's phonemes, you can usually make a stab at sounding out, and thus saying, the word. You know, words like "through," or "facade" or "bureaucracy" aside. Even Korean works this way. But with a Chinese character it's pretty much that either you know the associated sound-word, or you don't.

But as with both language in general, and China specifically, things are never that simple. Which brings me to this: 拿铁. I was researching a couple of characters on a take-away menu from the local department store's coffee shop, and I ran across this: 拿铁. Looking them up separately (because of the whole no-spaces-between-words thing, I can't really identify compound-character words unless I already know them) yielded this literal translation: "to catch [the element] iron." More than a little confused, I looked them up together, and you know what 拿铁 is? "Latte"! As in, what you order at Starbucks! Can you guess why "to catch iron" also means "latte"?

The answer is after the jump.

In which I piss off an old lady at my apartment complex

While everyone else was still going strong, I left the party just after midnight on New Year's Eve. I was buzzed, but not drunk because I'm old, and partying hard is like this:

I cut that video myself with new software!

So anyway, when I got home, the gates to my apartment complex were shut. 7 foot tall, metal gates:

 from the inside of the complex

So I thought, 'Huh. Okay, whatever: I'll just climb over.' It took me two tries, and I made a lot of noise (flat, metal, gate doors...), but I managed to hoist myself up. And as I moved into a sitting position in order to smoothly jump down, the lights came on in that building on the right, which evidently is a gate keeper's office. This old lady with a cane appeared, glared in response to my merry "Ni hao!" and proceeded to show me the external doorway I apparently could have used. But like I said, I was buzzed, so I just stayed sitting on the gate and laughed at her and the situation. After a few seconds of personal amusement, I ended up pulling out my keys and jumping down to wave them at her, because I felt the situation warranted some proof that I was a legitimate resident, and really, I couldn't think of anything better to do. Then I continued on to my apartment :D .