Today my pay-as-I-go mobile phone ran out of credit. In Nanjing this requires me to cross Shanghai Lu, walk down to Happy Lady and purchase a pre-paid phone card, dial a number, punch in the code and voila… more money for calls and texts. It takes, maybe five minutes, and that’s only if there is traffic on the street.
Today’s journey took closer to 90 minutes.
I went to a China Mobile shop I have visited before and have paid to have credit added to my phone, in the shop was a clueless lazy ditz of a woman. In my horribly broken Chinese I said I wanted to put 50 RMB on my phone. She waved her hand. I said I’ve done this here before. She waved her hand again. I looked at what was holding her attention, as her head was down and she made only the briefest of eye contact.
She’s watching some shitty Chinese drama on her phone. Really? Really! One of my biggest pet peeves of China is how uselessly lazy they are. I honestly don’t know how this country has over a billion people because the thought of two lazy sloths fucking and then rearing another lazy sprog just makes my soul shutter. And I let her know it. I know she didn’t understand. I felt compelled to tell her though that the fact she is more interested in her phone than a customer is likely the reason she gets the shitty shifts. Because she deserves them.
I next entered a local corner shop which had a China Mobile sign outside, but they didn’t understand my request either. They were polite about it, so I looked around the store, saw nothing and continued on my trek.
Retracing my steps back to my apartment I snatch up my phrase book and find the relevant page. On a whim I pop by the one good class I teach to see if the students there can point me in the right direction to restock my phone.
They insist on doing me five better.
Instead of directions, five of them join me and escort me on the Quest to Put Credit on the Laowei’s Phone!
Epic indeed! As we walk I ask them why they chose the English names they ended up with. Alisa is happy and crazy (her words.) Michael loves singing and Michael Jackson, so that makes sense. (And China LOVES it some Michael Jackson). Dimon picked his because he likes a character on the Vampire Diaries (a character called Damon). Dean chose his after watching Supernatural and likes Dean Winchester (he missed the joke when I called him Winchester). And finally Jerry, clearly (and is) due to his love of Tom and Jerry.
I love their reasons for their names.
The real reason they wanted to accompany me… these kids are at school from 7:50AM until 9:40PM… seven days a week.
I know this is the Chinese Culture Norm, but it is NOT HEALTHY. They just wanted an excuse to escape, taking their laowei teacher around the streets of Suining means they won’t get in trouble for being late for night study or off grounds when they should be in class.
I don’t think they realized quite how long we’d be searching for a store to help refresh my phone.
The first, nearest store had locked their doors because it was shortly after 6:00PM. An entertaining conversation through a window occurred with me being a bargaining chip. The doors never opened, but the conversation moved to the crack between the double doors and we had our next location.
Away!
The next three… yes… three went from ‘mayo’ (out) to ‘don’t have it’ to ‘can’t find it’ to ‘try the next one’ to… it may have been more than three. In a clearly Chinese conundrum each store that couldn’t help us sent us to another nearby store until our merry band of six hit a redundancy quotient, when store number four or five or six sent us back to number two or three or four.
So… this is what hell is going to be like for me. Thanks for the heads up gods.
Byron with a get out of purgatory free call but without the funds to make it. Nicely played.
Until…
We somehow managed at the eighth or eighteenth store to find someone of competence, who took my money (100 Quai so I don’t have to do this again anytime soon) and topped up my phone. Now I can text and call… although I mostly just text… to my heart’s content.
Now for a mad scramble back to the high school so the students could continue their monotonous studies and I could go find some food (mmmm noodles). They were all scared they’d get in trouble for being late so I went in first and told their teacher they’d been with me and that they’d helped and…
that was more than enough, get back to class you five.
So they did.
And so I went and found those noodles.
This is small town China (with 1.5 million people) something like tonight is something that will resonate for those brave adventurers, and while we went basically no where, I could tell from the joy they took in talking to people for me, the pride they found in being able to show me off, to show me around… that means more than any lesson I’m going to teach them during my time here and that… that is where the magic lies.
Byron and his backpacks 
And Canadian school kids and teachers complain if they don’t get their allotted Pro-D Day(s) with regularity ie. at least monthly. After all we have to be in the classroom from 8:30am – 2:30pm (with recess and lunch included). Unless you attend Christine Morrison and have every Wed afternoon off because you go to school 12 minutes longer on Mon-Tues-Thurs-Fri. However, their overall love of life might be in a higher realm and they do get to enjoy important life-experiences that can’t be found in the classroom. Somewhere there must be a happy medium.