(Almost) Lost in Translation

Day 11.

I'm listening to NPR's Morning Edition through iTunes (even though it's Monday evening here). It's such a relief to be listeneing to American-accented English. I need a fix once a day. Four hours out is about the limit - that's as long as I can be patient with the stares, the anarchic traffic, the hawking and spitting, the overwhelming city smells and construction grit.

We're eating plenty of Chinese food, of course. But it can be pretty intimidating, especially since most Chinese restaurants don't have many English speakers. Also, we're told that some restaurants have higher prices on their English menus than on their Chinese menu - a kind of ignorance tax. I'm in the habit of vetting my Chinese restauarant choices with our Mandarin teacher (laoshi). And we try to experiement with as many western restaurants as Chinese ones. So far we've managed to avoid the familiar American chains: There's a Subway and a Papa John's in the small mall attached to this hotel; there are several TGI Friday's, an Outback Steakhouse and of course the ubiquitous KFCs and McDonalds.

We spent the weekend exploring our neighborhood, with a couple of missions: finding the bookstore, and finding a bathing suit. (The hotel here has a fabulous indoor pool, and I forgot mine.) We found both. The bathing suit, we found in a enormous sports store inside a big mall called Oriental Plaza. The Plaza, like most shopping centers, had a major hotel (this one the Grand Hyatt) and apartment highrise attached. The mall also housed two car showroom/dealerships: Volkswagon and Audi.

We made our transaction entirely without English and with a lot of sign language. I've found shopkeepers to be very patient with us dumb westerners. The actual purchase in these stores is not made with the sales staff, but rather at a central cashier; the sales person gives you a little slip with the item you wish to purchase and its cost, which you take to the cashier, who takes your money and stamps your slip. You take this back to the sales person, who then gives you your items. We speculate that the purpose is to minimize the number of people handling cash.

The bookstore was mobbed. Six un-adorned, linoleum-tiled stories of books divided by subject, with escalators running up the center of the building. English language books were on the third floor, and imported literature translated in Chinese on the fourth. This floor was by far the busiest, with people sitting and standing in all the ailses reading. The top floor housed musical instruments, calligraphy brushes and paper and gifts. Along either side of the escalators were counters behind which sales people hawked all manner of pens, key chains, tchotchkes, and digital gadgets (the purpose of which was mostly indecipherable). It was loud, jostling, crazy-making.

By far, the most obvious cultural difference is the attitude toward public urniation. Toddlers don't wear diapers here; it is common to see them toodling around, their little bottoms peeking out through the slit in the back of their pants. In the park, we saw a little girl, maybe five years old, drop her pants and squat in the grass, right near the main entrance and in plain view of the main walkway. Mom stood idly by, reading some sign. Next to trees that line the big roads, you'll see fathers helping pull the pants up of their little ones who've just peed against the tree trunks. Our big question on seeing this sign outside our hotel: WHY IS IT IN ENGLISH?