Chinese phone conversations

By Kevin

I have a confession to make. I hate making phone calls, particularly to strangers.

It was one of my least favorite parts about being a journalist. I hated being the interruption to somebody's day. I hated the impersonal nature of it. But it was a necessary evil. If I wanted the story, I had to make dozens of calls a day. So I sucked it up and did it. For an introvert like me, it was always a task. It wasn't something I did on the spur of the moment. It took deliberation. It was a means to an end. I even got to the point where I didn't mind it so much because I can type much more quickly (and legibly) than I can take notes by hand.

If I hated making phone calls in America, imagine my hesitation in China. For my first year in China, I didn't even have a cell phone. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to go for a hike in the hills behind campus and not have to worry about it ringing with some pressing need. My students and superiors all had my home number. That was good enough.

I only broke down and bought one because Ruth and I were dating and I wanted another way to talk to her on the days when our Internet in Tonghua cut off at 11 p.m., making Skype useless. I also decided I'd need something I case I needed help getting out of inevitable travel difficulties on my first solo domestic China trip to see her in Yangzhou. But I only spoke English. Only to friends. In fact, the only people I gave my number to were friends -- and if they were my friend, at that time, they could speak English. If someone on an unrecognized number spoke Chinese to me, I apologized, told them I was a foreigner and my Chinese was bad, and hung up. If it was important, they'd find an English speaker to help them call again.

Year three, when we moved to Weinan, I was forced to pick up the phone and call my first Chinese stranger: the water delivery company. In China, you can't drink the tap water, so you must purify your own water with a boiler or filter or buy bottles of purified water (a bit like those 5-gallon Sparkletts bottles you can sign up for in the States). The first words out of my mouth (in Chinese) were: "I am a foreigner." Then, reading from a script, I informed them that we needed them to deliver a bottle of purified water to my door. I crossed my fingers and hoped that they'd understood. Thankfully, the water company had gotten the routine down from the previous foreigners who lived there, so as soon as they saw our telephone number on their caller ID, they knew the drill. Before long, I just had to tell them I was the foreigner on the third floor. An hour later, water would magically appear. Success. I could speak Chinese. As long as it was written out in script form. If they varied from the script, I was utterly lost. I usually just went back to the top and repeated myself. In Tonghua, this wasn't an issue mainly because I had a water purifier in my apartment, so I never had to order water delivery. This continued for years three through five. My Chinese improved incrementally in that span of time, but not enough to branch out beyond the now memorize script, plus a few variations.

Year six in Yinchuan was the start of language school. Day one, we repeated the water ordering routine we'd established in Weinan, first informing them I was a foreigner, then explaining our need for water and where we lived.

A month later, one of our homework assignments was to call information and ask for a particular phone number. I was so spooked when the operator asked me to repeat my request (the name of a park) that I had to call back a second time to get the number right. I continued to avoid phone calls.

Halfway through the year, I signed up for a Taobao account (kinda like an Amazon.com of China, though China also has Amazon.com). I figured it would be easy, I'd use Google translate to sort out any problems I had with ordering, then the items would arrive. The delivery guy would either call or send a message upon arrival (most domestic deliveries in China don't arrive via the standard postal service), but it wouldn't be too difficult, even with beginner Chinese. Then one of the orders was bad. Apparently sometimes Taobao merchants continue to list items that are out of stock. So one day, after ordering something, the merchant called to explain to me that they didn't have the item. It took me awhile to figure out that she was asking if I wanted another similar item or if they should return the money. Eventually I figured out to just ask for a refund. It didn't make me enjoy talking on the phone any more.

An aversion to talking on the phone isn't exactly a great trait to have as a language student. Some students might relish the challenge of a phone conversation. They might be excited to see how well they can communicate. They may be excited to see if the other speaker is able to guess that they aren't Chinese. Generally that isn't me. I just want utility. Usually talking on the phone is nothing more than a necessary evil.

The one highlight to my phone experience in China was when one day, I had to order more propane. Our apartment has a small 10 gallon propane tank underneath the counter to run our stove burner. It needs a refil every 8 months or so. Anyway, when the delivery guy arrived, he was shocked that I was a foreigner. It was the ultimate compliment: I hadn't made enough pronunciation or grammar mistakes in my short phone conversation to reveal myself as a non-native speaker. I was ecstatic.

I should probably put today's phone calls in the "language win" column. After all, in the end I was successful at completing my task. I think. But after a rash of miscommunication, it feels like it belongs in the "loss column."

Let me explain. We will be moving next week. Ruth is 6 months pregnant and I fell down while jogging two weeks ago. Nothing was broken, but I scraped the knuckles of my left pinke badly enough that I still can't bend it and sprained my wrist badly enough that twisting bottles and lifting heavy boxes is out of the question. Not ideal timing for us to move. Since we live on the sixth floor and will be moving to the third, we need to hire movers to do the heavy lifting. Thankfully hiring movers plus a van here costs less than renting a moving van in the States.

So I called up some movers recommended by my Korean classmate (who ironically taught at the same college in Tonghua as I did the year after I left -- but that's a different story). My classmate said they charged them 200 RMB for the move, which is half of what some American friends paid for their move. The caveat -- their new building has an elevator. So the operator answered and cut quickly to the chase: where were we moving from and to, how much stuff and what floors. She didn't recognize the new apartment complex, so I explained that it's just across the street from our campus gate. I explained that we have very little furniture, just a wardrobe and a crib and 40 or so boxes of various sizes. Then the floor - sixth to third. It took her a few seconds and she gave me a quote: 350 RMB. Reasonable, but I figured I'd try another mover.

Yesterday, my classmate Kevin -- whose apartment we will be moving into -- had arranged to move some other furniture and boxes belonging to our friend Kaylene into his apartment at Cai Xiao (the name of the complex). Kaylene had to leave early last year for medical reasons and plans to return to a different city in China after she recovers. So we packed up her stuff, bought some of her furniture (since our new apartment is mostly unfurnished) and decided to store it all in our apartment while we are in the States awaiting the birth of baby #2.

Kevin had also bought some of her stuff, so he called the movers and got a quote that he could move the stuff -- from floor 2 to floor 3 of Cai Xiao -- for 260 RMB per truckload. Plus, the movers would charge a little extra for big stuff like refrigerators and giant wardrobes. He set it up for Tuesday morning. Kevin said the guy's Chinese was a bit hard to understand, but he'd worked things out fine. Granted, of everyone in our class, Kevin's Chinese is the best. Every semester he gets the award for being the best student in class.

So, since I also needed movers, today, I sent the same mover a text message with the details of our move and asking for a quote, hoping to avoid a phone conversation that would immediately reveal me as a foreigner. But when he hadn't replied after an hour, I decided to give him a call.

I asked if he'd received my text message and told him I wanted to move from Ning Da to Cai Xiao (our new complex). Immediately, he seemed confused. "You called earlier about moving on Tuesday, right?" he asked. I feigned ignorance."No. That must be someone else." I didn't want to admit that I was a foreigner. Often the price quoted to a foreigner is significantly higher than that offered to a Chinese. I didn't want to be a target for being cheated. I just told him that I wanted to move on Friday. I didn't mention that my friend had spoken with him yesterday. He said that he'd already said that it would be 260 because He charges by the truckload.

A couple hours later, he called me back. "I just saw your text message," he said. "If it's not the second floor to the third floor, but the sixth to the third, it is more agonizing (Sometimes Chinese is a bit melodramatic -- word used to explain difficulty -- 痛苦 -- literally means pain and bitterness). "The price will be 350 RMB." So, a bit more than 20 RMB extra per extra floor.

Then he asked, "Aren't you the international friend I spoke with yesterday?" I told him I wasn't. I'd been foiled. So had Kevin. How he figured it out I'll never know. Was it my limited vocabulary or my repeated requests for him to repeat himself. Who was I kidding? I'd mostly hoped he would think I was someone from a different province, whose Mandarin was poor. "But you are moving to Cai Xiao also, right?" "Yes." I gave in. "Yes, my friend spoke with you before. He is moving from another apartment to Cai Xiao on Tuesday. I am moving from Ning Da to Cai Xiao on Friday."

We'd thoroughly confused the poor guy. I was afraid that might happen. Now I'm hoping he still shows up on Tuesday. Maybe I'll wait till then to decide if it goes in the "language win" or "language loss" column.

An Electrical Adventure

By Kevin

Our first goal upon arrival in Yinchuan was simple: get the power turned on. Or so we thought. As often happens in China, a simple task turned into a bit of an adventure.

In America, paying your electric bill is a fairly straightforward proposition. Someone from the electric company comes, reads your meter, then you wait for your bill to arrive by mail and send the company a check. If you don't pay, they send you a warning, then eventually shut off your power.

As teachers in China, dealing with utilities was simple because our school footed the bill. Occasionally, we saw a paper posted on our building in Weinan listing the electricity charges for each apartment, but the school paid it. We didn't have to concern ourselves with the process, so we didn't know how it worked.

We knew coming into Yinchuan that we likely wouldn't have power when we got here, but we had no clue how to solve the problem. Upon arrival at our apartment in Yinchuan, after five trips hauling our luggage up and down six flights of stairs, I flipped the light switch. Sure enough we had no power. So I enlisted the help of Angel, the Chinese friend who met us at the airport, to pay the electric bill.

Naturally, being fresh out of college and never living on her own, she didn't know what to do. So, she knocked on the neighbors door and asked them where to pay. They told us to bring the prepaid electricity card, which the landlord had left for us, and to set off for a building across campus. We had to stop a couple times along the way to ask directions, but eventually, we found ourselves walking down an empty alleyway adjacent to the Muslim dining hall. At first, we walked right past it because it isn't clearly marked, but someone pointed us in the right direction. Naturally, the door was locked. A faded sign was posted listing hours: 5-6 pm. Apparently the office is only open for an hour per day to pay for electricity.

Thankfully 5 pm was only ten minutes away, so we waited. When the worker arrived, she opened the dingy door, pulled the cold weather flaps to the side and let us in. She headed for a desk and removed the dust covers from the computer and a handful of other devices.

She plugged our electricity card into the computer and frowned, saying something about it not working. Then she declared that we needed to go back to our apartment an plug the card into the electricity meter before we could add money to the card. Apparently it had been inactive too long to add money to the chip on the card.

Ok. So we went back to apartment, plugged the card in, flipped a switch and Voilà! It worked. There were still 104 of whatever unit of electricity they measure electrical use by on the card (kWh perhaps?).

Since by this time, it was 5:30 and we were exhausted, we decided to just wait and add more money later.

After about 10 days, we noticed that the amount of power was beginning to get low. We were down to a quarter of that original number – 27 kWh. So, on Wednesday night, I decided to go ahead and add money to the card, thinking it would be an easy process. I was walking across campus to pay the bill, bumped into Harmony, so I asked if she would mind coming with me just in case there were any problems.

When we arrived, I was surprised that the office was closed, even though it was 5:30 p.m.. “Angel said it's open from 5-6,” I told her, pointing to the sign.

She read the weathered print-out posted next to the door. “It is only open from 5-6 on Tuesdays and Fridays,” she said.

“Angel didn't mention that,” I muttered.

“These are the summer hours, which run through Friday.”

“We might have a problem,” I told her. We had already made plans to go to dinner as a team at an Inner Mongolian restaurant across town on Friday night at that time. “But we'll run out of electricity before Monday.”

She tried calling a phone number written on the sign to ask if there is another place we could pay. Naturally, one of the numbers was illegible because it had been torn off. We couldn't tell if it was an 8, a 6, a 5 or a 3 (the bottom, which was all that was left, was rounded). She tried these numbers, but figured that someone in Dalian or Chongqing wouldn't be able to help us.

So she called up our landlord and asked if there was another place we could pay. He directed us to the Bank of Ningxia, across the street from campus.

When I went to the bank the next day, we were down to 18 kWh.

Seeing several long lines, I asked the manager where I should pay my electrical bill. Thankfully, hearing my poor Chinese, he started speaking English. “You can't do it now,” he said. “Follow me.”

He walked me out of the building and down the street to the State Grid (the power company), repeatedly grabbing my hand and saying “follow me.” “Five years, I study English,” he said. “Where you from?” he asked. “New York? Chicago?” “California,” I told him. “Ahh, California. Very good.” The woman at the State Grid plugged the card into her machine, frowned and said something about how I couldn't add money to it there because I lived on the university campus. I'd have to pay somewhere else.

The helpful bank manager walked me back, saying “Come back to bank, six time,” which I interpreted to mean to come back to the bank at 6 p.m.

I thanked him and went home. “Still no power,” I declared to Ruth.

That night, I went back to the bank. I waited as several people deposited large stacks of bills. When I got to the front, I said I wanted to pay for electricity and handed the teller my electricity card and some money.

She plugged the card into the “adding money machine” and frowned. She pulled it back out and tried reinserting it into the machine several more times, each time followed by a frown. Then she handed the card back to me, declaring something about it not working.

My mind was blank. I did the math – at the current rate of power consumption we'd run out on Friday or Saturday. Then I remembered – I'd forgotten to plug the card into our meter immediately before coming to the bank – maybe that was the problem.

So I ran home, declared to Ruth that we still had no power, plugged the card into our meter, then hurried back to the bank. When I got to the front, the teller didn't even try plugging it in. Exasperated, she repeated the same phrase she uttered earlier. For the second time, I didn't understand much more than a the words “electricity” and “not able.” I tried to explain that I had talked to the manager earlier and he told me to return. She called out a manager who spoke some English, who told me that my card was broken, so I needed to go to the State Grid during business hours. They would give me a new card and solve my problem. She too insisted upon walking me down the street to show me where the State Grid office was located. I thanked her and called Harmony, who contacted the landlord. I wanted to make sure it was OK with him if I got his card replaced.

The landlord insisted that the card worked fine. I should just go back to the place on campus to buy more electricity.

I told Ruth the news. “Still no power. I think we need to turn off all non-essential items.”

We were down to 16 kWh.

By this point we were relatively sure that we would run out of power sometime Saturday, but since we weren't sure if the power company office on campus would be open on Saturday or not, we decided we'd take our chances and run to the office at 5 p.m. We would have to be late to dinner, but our food would go bad without a working refrigerator.

I plugged the card in: 9 kWh left. I rushed over to the on-campus electricity office fifteen minutes early and waited. I anxiously hurried in when she opened the door and whirred the computer to life along with two other students. I got nervous when she turned the other students away. I went ahead with it. I handed her the card and the money. This time it worked. 400 RMB bought us about 850 kWh. That should last us for at least a few months, I figured. Relieved I hurried to meet Ruth and Harmony so we could head off for dinner. “It works. We have power.”

Fun with names

by Kevin

Sometimes you just wonder what these students are thinking. I've been back in Weinan for about three days now and have already taught three slightly jetlagged classes and managed to have both computers here breakdown.

But one thing that always brightens my day at the beginning of a new semester is seeing and hearing the English names my students have chosen. Usually, I pass around a list on the first day of class and encourage them to take their pick. But since I wasn't here for their first lesson this year, the students had already made their choices. In addition to normal everyday names like Mike and Sam and Victor and Amy and Sally and Lisa, I always wind up with a handful of oddball names.

For example, I asked if my class yesterday had selected a monitor yet. The girl shyly stood up. "Do you have an English name yet?"

"Yes," she said, sheepishly. "Leaves-a."

"Lisa?" I asked, not sure if I heard her right?

"No, Leaves-a," she said. It hit me that she was adding an extra syllable onto the end of her name, as Chinese students often do.

"I've never heard someone use that as a name," I told her.

Usually I encourage them to change them because no native speaker would take you seriously if you introduced yourself as "Leaves." Probably not even if you were wearing tie-dye.

But hers was only one of many strange names that showed up when I asked students to list their English names.

Some, I can't help but wonder if they are misspellings. There's YaLianna, but maybe she just has a hard time saying Lilian or Lianna. There's Buluce (Bruce?), Mria or Mvia (I couldn't quite read her handwriting, but perhaps she meant Mia or Maria? Lijaky (Leejay?), Selar (Stella/Star?), Shasha ("Sasha?) Aileen (Eileen?), Kaia (Kayla/Kay?), Kathyria (Kathryn?), Felice (Felicia?), Sunna (Sunny?).

In one class, I was scanning the list and found a Shannor. I figured that surely she meant Shannon, until I went further down the list and found another girl named Shannon (we try to encourage students to not choose the same name as a classmate).

Others like Still , Lemon, Tiramisu, Fantasy, Lucky, Delta, Cherry and Willow are at least words, even if their usefulness as names is a bit questionable. If only a few had chosen pronouns, prepositions or conjunctions as names, you could make sentences just from their names they choose.

Lenka Hopes that Milo Still likes Tiramisu, Coco and Candy, but Cher's Fantasy is to eat Lemons and Cherries with Bella under the Willows on the Delta in the Summer under the Starrs.

The upside of these names is they're a lot easier to remember than Vivian, Ann, Sarah and Amy (Almost every class tends to have at least one of these). So now the decision, should