Figure It Out

Last Sunday we went to the market and learned about the VAT(Value Added Tax); we came to discover that many of the things we had been told about life in China may have been true at one time but were certainly undergoing changes now. We found fresh vegetables at the market in Euro plaza, a local mall, much like the malls back home. Overpriced Legos, regular priced clothes and jewelry, but in contrast, we saw large kiosks of  knocked off movies, X Box games and CDs, all for prices so low you may actually consider the fact that by buying it you actually are violating of the intellectual property rights of the creator. We walked wide eyed, mostly impressed that other than the folks who shopped along side us, the whole shopping experience felt quite, well, American. Even the signs demarcating the items to be found on any given aisle were politely written in English along with artful yet mindboggling Chinese characters. The American in me felt like I should keep my children close by, huddled up in arms reach, but the kind folks who escorted us from River Gardens to the mall eyed us with an obvious, almost embarrassed-to-be-next-to-us, naivete that must ooze from us newly arrived types. Their child roamed the store like an expert navigator showing our boys a range of products in familiar packaging to what we are used to in the States, while I, with my head on a swivel said, "Joanne, where's Devon?" "Bennett, don't touch that!" "Parker, I don't know where the bathroom is." To our ease, our guides could communicate enough to help us negotiate our tax forms(VAT), which apparently need to be processed after each trip to the store, and to show us the public bathroom, which raised alarm in Parker when he saw a man smoking among the urinals in a bathroom marked repeatedly with an internationally understood red circle with a slash over an icon of a cigarette.

"Daddy, that man over there is smoking; it says right there, no smoking!"

Pulling him close as if to hush him and to keep the man from hearing him(ironically my American arrogance assumed that he should understand what Park's was saying), "Uh, well, I guess people here do things a little differently that we are used to." What a lame-o response. He needed me to interpret this no smoking crime for him, but just like when he asked me back home why my speedometer read 65 miles per hour when the sign clearly said "Speed Limit 55 mph", I dismissed it saying, "that's just the way it is, sonny."

In reality, I had no answers. The week's experiences would make me feel less and less like an expert father who had so far given - truthfulness irrelevant - every answer that his sons needed – Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, why the sky is blue, where babies come from, etc. But now I too was set loose on a world where I had no answers, nor the language skills to inquire when I needed information, nor the free interweb to search and Google Translate my answers into English if need be. A lost feeling, one that would resurface many times this week. The first on a cab ride to ISB(the boys school) which only upon arriving to our destination did I realize that I had no clue how much this cab ride should cost and in a move of desperation, held out my wad of RMB to the driver, allowing him to, "take whachu want., I guess -". Or in the Hutong which I visited to purchase a SIM card; the driver who was negotiating on my behalf laughed hysterically with the other men gathered in the alley, assuredly at my expense, each time I pointed to the top of my phone saying, "SIM". Or on the thirty minute cab ride from the embassy to our compound during which I had no idea where I was going, if we were going the correct direction, again how much it should cost, nor why the first driver who came by wouldn't unlock the door for me. When I finally saw a sign for the airport I at least knew that I could get home from there. 

I do have a little card which says, "Take me to River Gardens" along with the corresponding characters, but even the card seems to give the drivers a pause or require hard study, or maybe it's just the crazy and insecure American who feels like everyone is out to get him, when in reality, every interaction, transaction and correspondence has turned out just fine in the end.