Beijing's Narnia

Yesterday we were skyping with my father, and a security guard came to the door. I didn’t know what he wanted, of course, so we tried to get my father to translate. I kept trying to get him to step inside, but he stood, frozen, in the doorway. We don’t have wireless internet, so I was limited in my ability to bring my father/the computer over to him. In trying, I nearly ripped the cord out of the wall, and hurriedly pushed the couch 3 feet from its normal position while balancing the laptop/my father in one hand.

Technology is a strange thing.

I did my best to hold the computer up to the guard, and my father asked him to step into the apartment and said that he could translate for him.

The look on his face is probably what people really looked like when they saw Narnia for the first time, a mix between “Am I going crazy?” and “What the hell is this?” rather than a look of magical wonder.

It seemed that the guard had never seen skype before, and couldn’t understand how the man in the computer was talking to him in Chinese. It must be a strange thing to see a lai wai (non-Chinese ex-pat) holding the interactive talking face of a Chinese man.

I definitely don’t think that it helped, however, that our apartment is a virtual North Pole of dazzling lights, stockings, trees, tinsel, complete with blaring Christmas songs.

Needless to say, we couldn’t get him to step any further into the apartment, and, after shaking his head and looking around, he quickly turned and ran to the stairs.