I apologize in advance for the lengthiness of this, but I think you'll be quite entertained!
On Monday morning we set out to get a SIM card for our phones so we could get the apps that are needed to pay for things and travel around China. We went to China Telacom. For reasons we couldn't understand, our landlady (I'll call her LL) had to be in attendance for this event.
First obstacle: get in the door. You have to show a QR code to enter any building to show you have a green bill of health. You get that on your phone. Well, not having the app, we don't have that. So no entrance. Stella tried to explain we just got out of quarantine the day before and we presented papers showing our release from the quarantine, but that didn't work. After special permission from the manager, we were finally allowed to enter. We get our cue number (think DMV type of experience) and finally get to the station--7 of us: LL, Stella, Wang Jian (our driver I'll call him WJ), and 4 deer-in-the-headlight Americans. We know how to turn heads.
Tom is the first one up to begin the process. He fills out paper work and the computer generates a number for his phone. When the number appears on the screen, the worker gasps. She shows it to Stella, WJ and LL; they all ooo and ahh and whisper 'very special'. I look at the number and all 11 digits look mishmash to me, except the last 4 digits are 6500. Doesn't seem especially special, but I am fully aware of how little I know. Apparently you have to have special permission to obtain a very special number and it has something to do with LL and she can't acquire permission then and there so we left with plans to return after lunch. (Meanwhile, LL gets a phone call saying they are fixing the screens in our apartment at noon, so we must hurry back to meet him.)
Meanwhile, meanwhile, Stella summons Jacky's help. He does his remarkable footwork and calls Stella. After explaining a new method to Stella, she hands the phone back to Tom and Jacky tells Tom that he doesn't need a special number (we agree, and don't understand why that couldn't have just been changed there, but what do we know?) and that after lunch we would go to China Mobile for the SIM card and he had started the paperwork. Then Jacky explains to Tom that in the Chinese culture he must give "very special nice gift" to President Hu (big president of Waston company) and Mr. Hu (nephew of Mr. Hu and CEO of Waston-Ortho) when he meets them on Thursday. He said the gift that we had to give was a big bottle of 'very good alcohol'. Jacky said "I know you don't drink, but President Hu and Mr. Hu really like. You must get them very nice of a gift." He thought that if he spent $200 (US) on each bottle it would be sufficient. We were not to get fake. It had to be good. (The deer-in-the-headlights look suddenly exceeded full dilation. Oh, Dorothy, you really aren't in Kansas anymore!)
Upon arrival to the apartment, LL and an entourage shows up to change screens. Stella orders us pizza from Mr. Pizza. The pizza arrives and the entourage leaves. We sit down to eat. The pizza is not awful, but extraordinarily different. It took me a bit to figure it out. No red sauce, no garlic olive oil--- mayonnaise instead. Suddenly I didn't feel much up to eating. We were video chatting with Caleb while eating, who put it into perspective. People put mayo on grilled cheese sandwiches all of the time, this was like grilled cheese with toppings. I was starving and it did beat boiled lettuce, so I ate up.
At 1:30 we start SIM card acquisition Round 2. China Mobile proves more difficult to enter than China Telacom. It took some fancy talking by Stella and inspection of our documents to pull that one off. We were escorted to a small waiting room. Tom and Stella were soon taken back to another room. WJ wandered in and out and whatever magic Jacky worked out, LL didn't need to come for this encounter. So the girls and I sat there, we 'read' every Chinese Youth in the rack. We read every English word in them--about 25 per magazine and tried to learn things from the pictures.... When that was completed, we looked at pictures from my phone and reminisced about experiences from our past year. WJ came in on occasion and got us water from the water 'cooler' (See note 1 at the bottom). We weren't thirsty, but we drank out of politeness and then he'd wander back in and see that some was gone and would refill! This went on for well more than an hour. Then I was called back into the room.
My process was a bit quicker than Tom's because they had figured some things out, but my phone threw a couple of loops at them. One of them was that I had had WeChat less than 180 days and for some reason that was a problem. In the end, I had to delete that WeChat app and lose all of my branch member contacts and get the app under my Chinese phone number only. Thankfully they have really cool apps (A-P-Ps as they call them) that scan the text on my phone that translates to Chinese characters so they know what places to click. After another hour, I'm finished. I have a Chinese phone number and the QR code saying I've got a green health code. We pay ¥100 each and off we go. Now I'm a cool Chinese app owner and get messages in Chinese. Swipe to delete. Hope they're not too important...😬
That was enough adventure for the day and WJ drove us home. Then we faced the quandary--what will we do for dinner? We didn't have a Chinese bank account tied to our phones so we couldn't pay for anything. Very few people take cash and foreign credit cards. Sherry had purchased us some vegetables, some meat and a wok, but this was the salt she bought:
For Home Evening we didn't stay home. We ventured out to see if we could find a small shop that sold boba that might also take cash. We found something. Sort of. They took the cash, but apparently the boba was free roaming jelly stuff. I'm not a real boba fan so I opted out entirely. It was a fun time together anyway--which is the goal. We stopped by the fruit store near our apartment and they were willing to take cash as well. We bought a very large pomelo (my favorite), cherries and a dragon fruit. (Side culture note here, Stella was trying to order breakfast for us for day 2. We told her we had fruit so we would be just fine. She thought that was incredibly odd; Chinese never eat fruit for breakfast.)
Day 2
Our adventures started near lunch time and we took Stella and WJ out for lunch. We tried to get them to commit to a good place so we knew a good place to eat, but they wouldn't pick for us. Tom finally chose one and it was a Korean BBQ. It was fun! And good! And definitely an experience we haven't had before. It cost $34 for the 6 of us.
Next up: the bank. Other than getting in the door, trying to pull up our green health codes (we have to turn off VPNs to do so and our mobile data is not speedy at all; so it's just a bit of a wait) we went in without incident. We sat down and waited our turn. Then Stella and Tom were called back; the girls and I waited, WJ wandered. This time we talked about the building, the bank employee uniform (including a specific hair bow for the females) and took out all of our US coins and looked at their mint dates. The wait was long but not nearly as long as the phone expedition.
Per Tom's report the bank was hoop after hoop. Fill a form out, hand it to the employee who checked boxes, stamped several times, signed and sent them off to a different room. Fill, check, stamp, sign, go to another room. Fill, check, stamp, sign, go to another room. After plenty of that, he was done and whatever happened covered me as well. That was nice. Very nice. However, the bank card doesn't come for another month, so we have to 1) find places who take cash and 2) not spend more cash than we have for the next month. We are relishing in one adventure after another!
Next we head off to Sam's Club. Jacky said they take foreign credit card, sell expensive alcohol and we were hoping for things to be a bit less foreign. 1 out of the 3 were right. You only get one guess as to which one was right.
At this point of the day the battery line on my phone was just barely visible so I didn't take too many pictures at Sam's even though many things were photo worthy. (See note 2.)
The most memorable thing at Sam's was these small brown things that looked like dried octopus legs, but they were about the size of a mushroom. They were packaged individually in small red boxes and were in a glass case. I was looking at them very perplexed. Stella used an app to read the characters and then showed me the translation. Guess what they were? "For your health" So I still don't know what they were... I don't need to be that healthy.
Of course we caused another scene when we tried to check out. Tom pulled out every credit card he had and all were rejected. Turns out the limit for using a foreign credit card is ¥3,000. So we pulled out the cash.
At one point we were on what I called Home Depot road. I didn't think about taking a picture until it was too late; which is sad because I don't think I can aptly describe it. But there was one store with paint. The next store with wood. The next with pipe. The next with tile. Etc. But the very interesting thing was all of the merchandise was all the way to the front of the building and most store's openings were garage door style. So all of the pipe (my dad would tell me it's really conduit) filled the entire opening of the store front. (I wonder what would happen if you wanted the bottom center pipe...) Someone was sitting in front to sell it to you. All of the stores were like that. A whole road. Very interesting!
Tomorrow Stella and WJ get a break from us. They must be especially relieved. Everywhere we go it seems to be an adventure; that will be our lot for a while, but they deserve a break!!
All is good for us in China! The girls and I don't speak much and everything is so foreign, but it doesn't matter--we're not here for our good time (even though we are having a good time!). This is a great work that we are thankful to be part of it. A smile turns on the light for others and for now, that is communication enough. We are thankful and we are happy.
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Note 1: Water coolers here are just clean water--nothing cold or cool about them, we were surprised that it wasn't hot water since that is what they drink.
Note 2: The Chinese use their phones for EVERYTHING. It truly is unbelievable how much they use them. So battery life is at a premium. Most of them have two phones; one for WeChat and one for everything else (or some other division of purpose) or else they all have a battery pack always hooked up to their phone. At first I was baffled. Now I know why: your phone is at constant use here.
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