The Kindness of Strangers

It seems somewhat cliche to say this, so I'll avoid a sweeping statement about the Chinese people and use an "I statement" instead: I've encountered some of the most generous and warm-hearted people here. In general, I've had positive experiences with people throughout my travels, but it seems that everywhere we go here in Beijing people are eager to welcome or help in any way they can. Complete strangers! I'll give you a few examples:

1) Girl on the bus: Guillermo and I were on the bus discussing where the CarreFour (like WalMart, but French. Though I'm sure the French won't approve of being likened to anything as brash and decidedly consumeristic as WalMart) might be, and a young girl (early 20's) shyly turned around and told us we were not going to pass the market on this bus. We thanked her, and would have chatted more but she quickly turned back to her friends and giggled nervously. Then, just as I was leaving (i.e. trying to squeeze myself through the packed bus), the same girl turned, thrust something into my hands and quickly blurted out "Welcome to China!" It was a small key chain-type thing of Jingjing, one of the Olympic mascot characters.

2) Alex, basketball player and new arrival in Beijing: Again, Guillermo and I were out wandering around -- trying to triangulate our location from a collection of maps (We regularly have to consult various guide books and tourist maps to cobble together an idea of where we are. The quality of available maps seems to be mediocre at best, even for those published in Chinese. Some conspiracy types say its another way to limit information access, but the city is also changing rapidly and the system they use to name/number their streets is much less regimented than ours. Street names change often along the same road, and address numbers vary widely -- though generally in the same general direction.) At any rate, suffice it to say, we looked lost. Enter "Alex" (his English name) -- a tall guy in complete basketball garb, who moved to Beijing just that week! He had his own map, which turned out to not be so helpful, so he started asking locals to help find the destination (an electronics mart) and we finally got pointed in the right direction. Generally, this is where most people would exit stage left, but Alex insisted on walking us to the market, and then came in to help me find what I was looking for (card reader for my camera) and then he even insisted that the vendor write up a receipt for me, "in case it doesn't work."

3) Boy in the restaurant: One night Guillermo and I decided to try a new restaurant down the street - and did not have our extended crew with us (several of whom speak Mandarin). We weren't too worried about being out on our own with our limited vocabularies, which basically consist of the following words/phrases: "hello", "thank you", "excuse me", "I want/don't want", "I'm American", "Let's go eat together", "How much?", and -- Guillermo's favorite -- "cars flowing like water and horses creating a solid line looking like a dragon" (a flowery idiom for traffic).

Despite the obvious lack of menu and food type words, we had managed on our own before by pointing at pictures in the menu, and I had my phrasebook if all else failed. It didn't really worry us until we sat down and opened the menu. No pictures! Uh-oh. So Plan B -- except that instead of struggling through the menu alone with G-mo and my phrasebook the waitress was standing right there expectantly waiting for our order. I now know that it is customary here for the waitress to stand and take your order as soon as you arrive. I'm sure this is comforting for locals, but it only hightened my awareness of how long it was going to take to "read" this menu or at least find the characters for "beef", "chicken", etc., all the while with the waitress peering down at us.

So, we decided to try and communicate that we would like five minutes to read the menu. I knew the word for 5, so I looked up minutes and was trying to pronounce/show the woman the word. By this time the entire restaurant was watching the crazy "laowai" (Chinese for gringo), and about this time our next ambassador arrived on the scene: a freshman in college who was home having dinner with his family. At first he just helped us tell the waitress that we needed time to read the menu, and then he went back to his table. But we must have looked lost still, and he reappeared to help us order as well. We ended up just getting the same thing that he and his family had (plus a beer. I have learned the word for beer too -- of course). It was tasty, and Guillermo and I used my phrasebook to write a note to his family that "Your son is wonderful!" They seemed pleased when we gave it to them as they left.


So, in summary, maybe its just that I've never been quite this lost in a place. My Spanish certainly isn't award winning, but it was passable and I was never completely in the dark when traveling through Latin America. But in China, I've certainly had to rely on the kindness of strangers and it has been a good experience so far. And, of course, my charades skills are getting better and better every day!