Victory is Mine!

That’s right. I won my first battle with a Chinese person yesterday.
Let me explain something about living in China as an only English-speaking expat: It sucks.

You are nothing, unless they are trying to sell you something for 3x’s what it’s worth. You always lose.

Chinese workers, especially but not exclusively at the bank, decide their own rules. One teller will take your travelers cheques, another from the same bank says it’s impossible. One will give you the amount you wanted from your own account. Another says it has never and can never be done.

Settling in, even with a translator, I had to deal with many of these frustrations. I’ve had to make the same trip multiple times, to wait for someone who’s in the mood to do their job. You can rant and rave, but the power is not yours, and you leave, defeated, without getting your way.

Yesterday, I was on a mission. I needed 8 different Chinese New Year cards for my family in Malaysia. Kelly and I leave tomorrow to spend the holiday with them. At the teller, as so often happens, one of the items didn’t have the correct bar code sticker. (That’s right, it had one, but not the “correct” one.) So, as is the common frustrating practice in China, she put it down, discarded on the counter, and proceeded.

When she asked for my money, I pointed to the card and made my best face for “I need this.” Kelly ran back to try to get another one, with all the proper stickers, of course, and I set about stalling.

To say the girl behind the counter was unhappy would be a grave understatement. She held out her hand furiously, asking for the money to complete the transaction. I continued pointing to the card and spoke in useless English that I needed that card and was not leaving. She roller her eyes, tapped the counter, and yelled at me in Chinese. I yelled back in English with my wallet clasped firmly to my chest. She may be pissed, but I’d be dammed if I left that store without being able to check this one thing off of my “to do’s” with my trip fast approaching.

She called the manager, or some other person, pointing her finger at me and the card and screaming. (Mind you, there was no line behind me. Not a single person was waiting for this woman.) The other worker took the card and I presume went to find another.

Then it as back to me and her, staring, growling, not backing down.
In what felt like cneturies but was probrably more like minutes, Kelly returned with the card.

She grabbed it and rang it up, whispering the price so low that I had no way of hearing it. I held out 100 RMB bill, and Kelly leaned over and saw it was 71.
I held out a 1, which is customary here. (People can’t stand having or giving 1 yuan bills, so they’ll always ask if you have 1 to make it a 5.) She took my hand and firmly pushed it towards me before handing me the change with four 1 yuan bills. In China, this is like being slapped in the face.

I’m not going to lie, I may have abused the privilege of speaking another language by muttering some obscenities under my breath. My blood boiled, but then I realized what had happened. She was pissed, because I had WON.

She didn’t want to ring up that card, and yet she DID. That’s right. I left the store with exactly what I wanted to leave with.

Victory is mine!

Ok..I realize in typing this that it doesn't translate so well into an overseas account of victory, but I assure you, it is. Sometimes I feel like I'm not interacting with anyone or learning enough because I don't have the language. It's nice for me to realize that I am learning things about living in this city, like the disrespect of not taking 1 kuai.