It doesn’t have the same ring as Bond, James Bond, does it?

A couple of Fridays ago, I went with my neighbor to sit in on their English lesson.  Almost every single person there is retired and over the age of 70.  They decided since they no longer work, they might as well do something productive, and learning English seemed like a good idea.  Some of their English is very good, while others are shy and are still learning.  Some of them have even gone to the United States.

The first week, I more or less listened.  A few times they asked me to help with pronunciation.  They had a hard time pronouncing words like camera and digital.  I also gave me them new words to liven up their vocabulary.  They thanked me over and over for coming and helping them learn.  I told them it was my pleasure, and that I admired them for learning English.  They asked me if I would be back the following week, and I said that I would.  Hey, I don’t have anything else to do on Friday at 9:30 a.m.  And it is kinda cool hanging with people that have seen China change so drastically over the last several years.

The woman on the far right lives in the building next to me.  Her name is Gan Youfan.  I met her and her husband, who both speak English rather well, a few days after I arrived in Shanghai.  Their grand-daughter is American.  That is part of the reason they decided to learn English.  The second and third person down from her are the two ladies who have decided to teach me Chinese in their spare time. Their names are Cau Yuehua and Jiang Zhenrong.  I asked them if they wanted English names and they got so excited.  Usually, I am really awesome at choosing names on the fly, but knowing they would have difficulty with the names my mind could create, I had to go with simpler names.  For Cao, I chose Katie and for Jiang I chose Jody.  They really seemed to like their names and said them over and over again.  For those of you who don’t know.  Chinese names are written with the surname, the family name, and then the first name.  So, in China I would be Olexa Gabrielle.  To me, that just looks weird.

The second guy from the left visited America for a few months several years ago.  I asked him if liked American food, mostly because Chinese people are always asking me I like Chinese food.  He very frankly said, “No.”  It made me laugh.  Maybe, like me, he just didn’t know what to order.

During our first meeting, everyone wanted to know my email, so I gladly gave it out.  One woman, maybe it was Cao, asked if I had MSN messenger.  I told her no, that I didn’t, but that I had QQ, the Chinese equivalent.  Almost all of them perked up and said, “You have QQ?!  What is your number?!”  I found this extremely funny because I don’t know many 70+ year old people in America who are as technologically savvy as these people.   Nearly every person in the room can text, send emails, and use an instant messenger service.  I’m not going to point fingers or anything, but there are a few closely related people reading this blog that should be ashamed of themselves.  If a bunch of retired folks in China can learn how to speak English and use modern day technology, well, you should, too – except, you should be taking the time learn Chinese or some other language!

A few days later, I received an email from Cao.  It  reminded me of the days when my middle school students would send me thank you emails.  I found it very touching.  And I don’t know how, but apparently, I went to graduate school and got my PhD because I am now Dr. Gabe.

Dear Dr. Gabe :

Yours Sincerely

Cao Yuehua

I responded to her email saying that it was my pleasure and that I enjoyed spending time with them.  I mentioned that I wished my Chinese was as good as their English and that the following week I would like to teach them all how to sing “Take Me out to the Ball Game”.

Because I am a baseball fan, or more importantly, an Atlanta Braves fan, it is my duty to spread the word of baseball to everyone I meet.  One of these days, China will love baseball as much as they love basketball.  It may take years to bring the love of baseball to China, but I’ve got time.  I’m not even 30 yet!  🙂

Speaking of baseball, when Phil and I were walking around the university just across the street, I saw a whole bunch of students wearing New York Yankees(curse them) uniforms.  They even had metal bats, gloves, and cleats!  I nearly fainted.  It was the first time I have ever seen Chinese students seriously partaking in baseball.  I stared in awe for about ten minutes and then Phil drug me away.

So, the following Friday, I showed up with lyric sheets and a mission – teach these people what baseball is and how to sing “Take Me out to the Ball Game”.  Only a few people had arrived when I showed up.  Cao was already there and wanted to show me something.  She unfolded a newspaper and placed it on the table for me to read.  Cao had written the entire contents of my email on the newspaper so that everyone could know what I said.  I was like, “Yep, that is what I wrote.”  As people came in, she showed it to them and explained what it said if they didn’t understand it completely.

I tried my best to teach them the basics of baseball.  I think they grasped most of what I said.  And then came the hard part.  I had to teach them how to sing “Take Me out to the Ball Game”.  I had them read the lyrics to themselves first, and had them ask questions about words they didn’t understand.  Most of the words are very simple, but there were a few that they didn’t understand.  I had to teach them what Cracker Jack was, what rooting meant, and I tried my best to describe the meaning of “old ball game”.  After a bunch of practice, they more or less got it.  Thankfully, they were okay with me capturing them on video.  I would have been mad if they hadn’t – for one guy had his HD camera out the entire time – recording everything I said and did!  I wish I had just let them sing, because my voice was loud and it sorta drowns them out, but I think it helped them out, too.  And here it is!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsctjdK90Do[/youtube]

The guy on the far left, in the video, told me, “Frankly speaking, I find this very hard. I would rather sing Peking Opera.”  This made me wonder what a Peking Opera version of “Take Me out to the Ball Game” would sound like.  My brain would probably leak out of my ears.  Peking Opera to me sounds like a fleet of cats dying in agony.

Maybe one day, these guys and gals will make it to a MLB game somewhere and stand up during the 7th inning stretch and sing the song and make me proud!  I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

Last night, right before I was going to bed, I checked my email.  I had another one from Cao.  When I first started reading it, I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t take long to figure it out.  It totally made my day.  I think it is one of the most creative things I ever seen someone Chinese do. Here is what she said:

Cao Yuehua

Isn’t that just awesome?  I thought so.  Okay, well, now that I have typed your eyes off, I should probably stop while I am ahead, and save something for the next post.  I think I will share Meili, my evil Shiba Inu with you next.

Okay, yesterday I posted about how I came across some pious Buddhists releasing some sparrows and a fish back into the wild.  I said that I did not have my camera and that I wasn’t able to catch any of it to share.  It is true that I didn’t have my camera, but luckily, Phil had his iPhone on him, and even though the quality isn’t that great, I was able to catch some of what I saw.  When I posted yesterday, Phil wasn’t home, so I wasn’t able to get the video off of his phone to put it in with that post.  It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing, I suppose.  They had already released some of the birds when Phil said I should just use his phone.  I guess I was complaining the whole time that I had forgotten my camera and he finally got annoyed!  Me?  Annoying?  No way!  Well, here we go – enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_H4Ux-iW9s[/youtube]

And I don’t have a picture or a video of it because I didn’t want to lug my purse around when Phil and I took Meili for a walk.  Never again will I leave home without it.

Our community is really nice. We have a lot of trees, ponds, grassy areas, and part of the complex borders on the river.  We decided to take Meili down to the river to see how she would react to the water.  As we strolled down the boardwalk, I started hearing some commotion.

It sounded a lot like chanting, so I said to Phil, “Are we interrupting a cult meeting?”

“It’s sounds like they are worshiping Jesus.”  Cult . . . religion . . . what’s the difference?  And I seriously doubted they were worshiping Jesus, not if they wanted something like this to go down – click me to read about an underground Beijing church that got busted.

Then I started to hear a lot of birds chirping.  Too many for it to be a coincidence.  As we rounded the corner, the people came into view and so did the cages they were standing around.  “Then what are all the sparrows for?”

About 20 people were standing in a circle around 8 cages full of sparrows.  And by cages, I mean large boxes with lids made of wire.  Each box probably contained 50 sparrows each.   Almost everyone  there was holding a small, flimsy book and reading the passages out loud.    Most of the people were dressed in normal everyday clothes, but one was dressed like a monk.  I decided to take a seat because I had to find out what they were doing.  Were they going to sacrifice the birds?  Were they going to let them go? And what about the single fish chilling in the over-sized cup?  What are they going to do with him?

The chanting went on for several more minutes, and then finally, without warning, everyone started to sing.  The song sounded a lot like chanting, too, and they sang the same 4 or 5 verses over and over again.  At this point, I would have been really happy to understand Chinese.

The monk went to a table and picked up a green water bottle.  He shook it up, and then preceded to spray the sparrows with it.  The birds did not like this.  They fluttered and tried to run from the water, but of course, there was no where for them to go.  Another person went to the table and grabbed what appeared to be bird seed or some sort of grain.  A few others took notice and did the same.  Slowly, they sprinkled the bird seed over the sparrows.  I couldn’t tell if the birds liked this aspect of the ritual or not.  They were still fluttering like mad because of the water. The singing, the spraying of the water and the tossing of the food continued for sometime.

Without any indication, at least, not that I noticed, some of the people started to walk away.  A few others stayed behind and picked up the cages.  The birds were really starting to freak out now.  Everyone was still singing as they walked passed me, Phil, and Meili.  One woman stopped and crouched next to Meili.  I have no idea what she said, but I would almost swear that she prayed over her.

The group then moved over to a grassy area and sat the boxes of birds down.  As they continued to sing, they began to open up the boxes.  The birds, stressed to the max, all tried to escape at the same time.  The sky was a torrent of feathers.

Some of the birds knew it was best to fly far, far away, but others decided that the ground was a comfortable place to hang out.  I waited around to see what they were going to do with the fish, but I lost track of him.  Maybe someone already took him down to the river and I just didn’t see them.  He’s probably dead now, and the river probably killed him.

As we walked Meili around the area a little longer, the population of sparrows seemed to have quadrupled.  They were everywhere.

Well, thanks to the internet, I think I know what happened and why.  If I am right, the people were just being pious Buddhists.  According to Wikipedia, “In East Asian Buddhism, and particularly in China, the release of animals, particularly birds or fish, into their natural environment became an important way of demonstrating Buddhist piety. In China it was known as fang sheng. This practice is based on a passage in the Mahāyāna Sūtra of Brahma’s Net, which states that “…all the beings in the six paths of existence are my parents. If I should kill and eat them, it is the same as killing my own parents. … Since to be reborn into one existence after another is the permanent and unalterable law, we should teach people to release sentient beings.”‘

I’m still mad that I didn’t have my camera.  It was so interesting to watch.  Maybe I’ll get lucky one of these days and be able to capture  the memory in a different way and not have to rely on my brain to explain exactly what happened.

During our trip to Xingping located in the Guangxi province of China last summer, I got a peek of what 2012 will look like right before I blink out of existence.

I wish I had had just a little more sun light, so that the pictures would have been a bit more clear.   The pictures, of course, doesn’t do the scene justice – like almost every other picture I’ve ever taken in that area.

Everyone was taking pictures of the ominous clouds rolling in as night fell on the rooftop of our hostel.

And if I had a telephoto lens, this picture would have been awesome, but woe is me.  This picture was taken from the balcony of our hotel in Yangshuo.  As I have mentioned before, if you ever visit Yangshuo, you should stay at Riverside Retreat. It is where we have stayed both times that we have gone.  It is about a 10 minute walk from the city, but the place is clean, comfortable, and the staff is really friendly.  And if you don’t want to walk to town to eat, they serve breakfast, lunch and dinner at reasonable prices.  It is a great place to go if you want to relax and get away from the world.  The views are some of the best, too.  If my parents ever come to visit me in China, this is one of the places I am going to take them.  If I ever win a huge sum of money, I am moving to Yangshuo, and open up my own hotel/hostel.

Nothing too exciting happening in Shanghai, so I went diving into my picture collection and found some amusing ones to share with you.  All of these were taken in Linyi, China.

Usually, when you need to escape a building, there are multiple exits – at least two sets of stairs.  This was not the case of the building that we lived  in Linyi.  There were two sets of stairs, but only one would go all the way to the bottom floor.  On the third floor, where we lived, the middle stairs continued down to the restaurant below us only in the case of an emergency.  Unlike some of the emergency doors you would see in America, this one could not be opened by simply pushing it, thus causing an alarm to sound.  In the event of an emergency, we would have had to find the person who had the key to open the door, had a handy pair of bolt cutters, been willing to chuck something very heavy at the door or pray that our parachutes were ready for action because the window would have been our only remaining option.  Thankfully, there were no emergencies in the ten months we lived there.

Hrm.  How does one fight against time, and publicly nonetheless?  And why do you have to strive for efficiency(not spelled correctly on the sign) privately?  Isn’t it easier to make things better when you work with like-minded people?  Hrm.  I don’t think I get this sign.  I found it in the F building of Linyi University, which is the Foreign Language Building.

Well, I suppose it makes sense right?  An elevator is very much like a floating stair.  Out of curiosity, I Googled the term airstair, and found out that the term is real, but it isn’t quite an elevator.  Wikipedia tells me that an airstair is “a passenger staircase that is built in to an airliner — often, though not always, on the inside of a clamshell-style door. The stairs can be raised or lowered while the aircraft is on the ground, allowing passengers and ground personnel to board or depart the aircraft without the need for a mobile staircase or a jetway.”  You learn something everyday.

I don’t know how the Chinese do it, but time and time again, I see dogs riding in bicycle baskets down busy streets.  The dogs aren’t strapped in and they aren’t being held there, so I can’t figure out why I’ve never seen one try to jump out.  If I put Meili(she’s my Shiba Inu pubby) in a basket, she would jump out and take off running in less than three seconds.  Maybe the Chinese are all secretly dog whispers.  Or maybe they just beat their dogs into submission.  It’s probably the latter.  I snapped this picture on a bus as they road by – that is why it is so fuzzy.  I never have my camera out and ready when I see them, so I am lucky to have taken this one.

Using a public bathroom in China can be unlike any other bathroom experience you’ll ever have.  You never know what you might see or how extreme the smells will be when you walk in.  Yeah, I know, US public bathrooms can be pretty wretched, too, but I believe that a good many bathrooms in China would easily win a gold medal if there was a dirty bathroom competition in the Olympics.   In one bathroom in Yi Shui, Shandong, as I squatted in one of the scarier ones I’ve seen, unknown water steadily dripped on me from high above.  I pray, even to this day, that is was just a leaky pipe connected to a second floor sink and not something more . . . vomit inducing.

In one particular bathroom that Phil visited, there a was plaque placed above the urinal.  It wanted to remind him that a cleaner bathroom was indeed possible, but he had to play his part.

I’ve never walked into a men’s bathroom in China, but Phil has told me that he is convinced that the male population in China, more so than the US, just don’t know how to aim.  And apparently, according to many of my male friends, it hard to pee in any sort of privacy in some of the smaller Chinese cities.  They’ve told me many stories of other men checking them out and commenting just how  . . . hrm . . . how to put this delicately . . . big they were.  Thankfully, that sort of story only happens in bar bathrooms after everyone has had one too many.

I don’t want to make it seem like girls don’t need some instruction, too.  Instead of plaques, we get bad English poetry.  If the boys have a bad time aiming, then the girls have issues remembering how to flush.  I guess that is why the reminder was taped to my stall wall.

Okay, well that is enough bathroom humor for today.   Just remember to aim and/or flush, and the world will be a cleaner, if not more fragrant place.

Blogging . . . it used to be a part of my daily routine and then I got lazy.  Well, now I don’t have any excuses.  I’m not bouncing around the globe, I’m not attending a funeral or mourning my loss anymore, I’m not standing at an alter saying, “I do”, and I am most certainly not working.  So, what else do I have time for?  Pretty much anything that I want. And for the most part that has included sleeping late, watching season and after season of whatever TV show I downloaded, and making sure that dinner is cooked for my hubby when he finally gets home after a long day behind the desk.  But those aren’t the only things going on in here in Shanghai.

Since I have moved to Shanghai, China, a lot has happened.

On my second day here, my flipping wallet was stolen.  All in all they didn’t get much, but they did get five crisp 100 yuan bills, my US and Chinese debit card, credit card, traveler check receipts, a whole section of business cards of people I don’t really know, the USC staff card I liked to use to get discounts at movie theaters and the like, my driver license(that had a good picture on it!) and random mementos that I’ve carried in my wallet for way too long.  Most of what was stolen can be replaced.  The major pain was having to call and get everything canceled and knowing that it was probably going to be a complete bitch getting access to 8000 yuan I still had left from Linyi.  Why, would that be difficult you ask?  Well, it’s simple really.  China wouldn’t be China if everything was easy.  As much as the lack of ease irks me here in China, I do suppose that it is part of the reason it keeps me here.  I know, I am completely retarded.

As soon as I realized that my wallet had been stolen, the first thought that popped into my head besides, “Oh, shit, oh, shit”, was the Ben Ross post I read several years ago.  His wallet wasn’t stolen, but it might have well have been.  He just forgot his pass code.  You can read all about it here, here, here, and here.  It’s a lot of reading, but worth it.  The memory of this post put the fear of God in me.  I was almost certain I was gonna be screwed eight ways to Sunday.

I did the proper thing after I realized my wallet was gone.  Teary-eyed(me, not Phil), Phil and I found a police officer and in broken Chinese told him what had happened.  He told us to follow him and so we did.  I don’t think he told us where he was taking us and if he did the Chinese was lost on us.   All I knew was that he was walking us away from the possible scene of the crime.  He guided us, silently, across several busy streets and eventually turned down a very dark and quite alley.  For one paranoid, horror-esque moment, I thought he was guiding us to our doom.  I’ve seen to many movies for my own good.  In my defense, I was tired, angry as a bee hive that has been poked with a stick, and worried sick about how I was going to survive in Shanghai until all this was resolved.  You need money to live after all.

The police officer finally parked his bicycle in front of building and pointed that we should go in.  Surprise, surprise, he had taken us to a police station.  He told us to wait while he went and talked to a few of the other officers.  In a small, windowless back room, I could see about 7 officers chain smoking.  A wall of smoke continuously wafted out.  When one officer put out his cigarette and left, another officer would replace him.  Not a single one of them stepped through the door frame holding a cigarette.  It was obviously the designated smoking area.  I didn’t know China had designated smoking areas.

Finally, a guy came over to me and asked in Chinese if I had a Chinese friend that he could call.  Apparently, of all the officers present, not a one of them spoke enough English for me to file a report.  If this had happened in Linyi or Fuyang, or any other small city I have lived in or visited, I would have expected as much.  I guess I thought Shanghai would have more officers that could communicate with foreigners on some level at least, and especially so soon after the Expo had finished.    I thought wrong.  I was very lucky that I did indeed have a local Chinese friend to call.  Amanda(Zhang Yun Jing) has been so very helpful to both me and Phil since we have arrived.  I hated to call her so late, but it was the only way the officers were going to be able to communicate with me.  I figured they would just use Amanda as a translator, so I waited patiently while they talked to one another.   When the guy hung up the phone without handing it back to me, I was confused.  I immediately called Amanda back and asked her what was going on.

“I am coming to you,” she said.

“But it is 11:00 p.m. and you live so far away.  You don’t need to come all the way here.  I just want them to know my wallet was stolen, so that if it is somehow found that they can give it back to me.”

“No, it is okay.  We are friends.”

At this point, I had only met with her three times.  We spent two days together looking for an apartment in December and then earlier that day, I had seen her at Phil’s work.  She was helping us get our paperwork in order.  I tried very hard to convince her that she really didn’t need to travel 30 minutes across town, but it was no use.  She was my friend, and friends help friends in times of need.

Phil and I sat and waited while our ice cream cones melted.  We had forgotten we had bought them with all the insanity.  I refused to let mine go to waste and slurped mine out of its wrapper.  It dripped all over me and I didn’t care.

When Amanda arrived about 45 minutes later, we found a police officer who sat down with us to write up a report.  He asked the normal questions – where did I think I was when my wallet was stolen, when did I realize it was missing, what was in my wallet, and how to contact me if my wallet was found or if they had any further questions.  This took about 30 minutes.  They told me if I was sure it was taken at Carrefour, a store a lot like Wal-Mart, they would review the tapes, but there was no way I could know for sure if it was or not.  It could have happened in several different places.  They took all of my information, typed it up and gave me a copy.  It was my first and hopefully, last Chinese police report.

As we walked back down the dark and now even quieter alley, I thanked Amanda repeatedly for all she had done.  I even got a little emotional when I told her how happy I was to have a friend like her because g0od friends, not just in China, are hard to come by.  She told me that I did not have to thank her because I was her friend and that she was very happy to be there for me.  I hugged her and off she went.

Phil and I went home and promptly crashed.  It had been a long day.  I probably should have looked for the number to my bank then, but I was just too tired to think about it.  It was the first thing I did when I woke up the next day, though.

After finding the English hot-line number to the China Construction Bank and telling them that my wallet was stolen(fairly easy), they froze my account so that the stupid pick pocket couldn’t attempt to withdraw my small chunk of change, after verifying who I was.  They wanted to know how much money I thought I had, when the last time I used it, and my name of course.  Since I did not know my card number, I had to provide my passport number.

I asked the guy on the phone how I would be able to get what money I had left out and he told me what I feared. He said that I would have to go back to the China Construction Bank branch where I opened my account to unfreeze my account and to have a new card issued.  I told him I didn’t care about the card, that I just wanted my money, but he said that was what I had to do.  This wouldn’t be much of a problem if I was still living in Linyi, but I wasn’t.  Linyi is about 10 hours away by bus and depending on when you buy a plane ticket, it can cost anywhere between 370 to 800 yuan to fly there – one way.  Of course, to fly I would need my passport, and Phil’s work was still in possession of it at the time, and without the ability to get to my money, it would be difficult to pay for the stupid ticket.  I could have used what money Phil had left on his Chinese debit card or had him take money out his US accounts, but I refused to go that route.

The next day, I decided to call the hot-line number again, to see if there was someone else I could talk to – maybe there was another way.  I talked to a woman and told her my situation.  She asked where I was living and gave me the address to a near by branch that should be able to able to help me.  This seemed promising and made me happy.

Almost a month later, I finally made my way to the branch the woman had told me to go to.  Why did it take me so long?  Well, Chinese New Year happened, it took almost three weeks to get my passport back, we were really busy getting settled, I kept forgetting about it, and perhaps it was that I didn’t want to have to deal with what was most likely to come.  But if I wanted my money, I would just have walk the walk and deal with it.

With my passport in hand, Phil and I jumped in a taxi and rode to the bank.   I think the taxi guy took us to the wrong branch because the numbers on the building didn’t match the ones I had written down.  We walked in anyway.  In a lot of banks here, they have a machine that gives you a number and you have to wait until your number is called.  There were 25 people in front of us.  Not too bad, really.

My main worry was that I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone at the bank and that I would just be screwed.  I brought my police report hoping that would help.  I showed it to the guy who greeted me at the door and he gave me a paper to fill out.  Of course, it was all in Chinese, so I had a really difficult time filling in all the blanks.  Another guy tried to help a little, but most of the form was left blank.

We sat down and waited, watching the numbers tick away.  About 20 minutes later, a guard came over and tapped me on the shoulder.  He reached down and took the number I was holding in my hand.  I was confused why he was taking it because my number had not been called yet.  He pointed over to the side where some other consulting areas were located and I saw a woman getting her area ready.  I put two and two together and walked over and sat in the chair in front of the desk.

Since I hadn’t heard her talk yet, I wasn’t sure if I should speak  in English or my broken Chinese.  I went with the good ole’, “Ni hao”(hello in Chinese).

“Hello,” she said back to me in perfect English.  “How may I help you.”  This made me smile.  Maybe it wouldn’t be that hard after all.

I explained my situation to her and handed over my passport and my police report just in case.  It seemed that she had experience in this and started pulling out several forms that I would need to fill out.  I must have signed my name no less than ten times.  Just like on the phone, I had to answer questions about my account to prove that is was me.  She was just about down with all the paperwork when Phil suggested that I mentioned that the card I lost was issued to me in Linyi and ask if it was still possible.  So, I did.

As soon as I asked, her eyes seemed to get bigger or maybe it was just my imagination.

“Linyi?” She repeated.  “No, that is not possible.”

My heart sank.

“It has to be from Shanghai.”

“Well, it’s not,” I said.  “Can I at least get my money?”

She looked at me and you could tell she was thinking really hard by the way her eyes moved.  “I don’t know.  We have never done that before.  Please wait while I talk to my manager.”  I felt like I had been put on hold and that any minute a stupid ditty would start playing.

As she walked away, I crossed my fingers and prayed to every Chinese God there ever was, specifically, Guanyin, the goddess of mercy.

After she talked to her manager, they disappeared around a corner for a while.  The woman came back with what seemed to be more paperwork and handed it to another man sitting behind one of the main desks.  They talked for awhile and then he sat the paperwork aside.  He fiddled with something on his computer screen and then waved me over.  I looked over at all the other people waiting patiently and wondered if they were mad that I had skipped ahead a few places.  No one threw anything at me or yelled any insults my way, so I guess they didn’t mind all that much.

The man before me asked me a bunch of the same questions about my account, making sure once again that I was indeed who I said I was.  Hey, at least they are cautious.  His fingers danced across his key board for a long while before he spoke to me again.

“Okay,” he said.  “Forget about your account.  It does not exist anymore.”  My heart stopped.  “If you want you can open a new account later.”  Still no heart beat.  I was beginning to get  a little light headed.  “I can give you the money remaining in your account,” he said, and my heart fluttered back to life.  “But,” he continued, and my heart flat lined again, “I will need to charge you 25 yuan for losing your card.”

“Oh, that is fine!”  I probably sounded hysterical, but I was so happy.  My heart almost leapt out of my chest and hugged him.

He just looked at me and then said, “That will be 20 yuan, please.”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”  I opened up my purse to look for some money, but all I had was a few yuan and some lint.  I looked over my shoulder at Phil waiting patiently on a metal stool.  “Please tell me you have 20 yuan.”

Phil reached into his wallet and handed me the most beautiful 20 yuan note I have ever seen in my entire life.  I snatched hit out of his hand and quickly shoved it into the metal tray so the guy could get it.

“But just forget about your account,” he said, taking the 20 yuan bill into his possession.  “It doesn’t exist anymore.”

Ten minutes later, after counting and recounting, I had my money and I didn’t have to go all the way to Linyi to get it.  I danced out the bank’s doors.  Everyone thought I was nuts, but I really didn’t care.

Life may not always be easy in China, but man, when things go smoother than you expect, it makes you giggle like a school girl.  And now that I have written a short story and bored all of you to tears, I am going to jet.  And since the secret it is out and I don’t have any more excuses, I’ll be more of a regular here from now on.  Next time, I’ll try to post some pictures or something.