I left the house early to get to the school by 8 AM. Next up on the menu of registration week activities was the "Visa/Residence Permit Service." Actually I should have gotten there much earlier, for by the time I did get there, there was a long line of foreigners stretching all across the courtyard. And it was not a fast-moving line, either. I listened to all four chapters of The Secret Garden that I had brought on my little SanDisk, and listened to nothing for a while, and then listened to music too. The line inched along, and I stifled the thought that in the U.S. they surely would have come up with a more efficient way to do this--had people come at different times depending on their birthdays, or whatever. Useless thoughts. Better to go with the flow.
For a while, since my mind was on gardens, I watched a gardener raking away the weeds from a round flower bed in the middle of the courtyard. Then I saw something hopping along the newly raked bed, and I could have sworn it hopped much more heavily than a bird would. I was hoping very much that it would be an enormous old toad, but of course I couldn't leave my place in line, and embarrass myself and the gardener, by clambering over to find out--in front of several hundred international students. So I was left wondering.
The boy in front of me was wearing a very pretty baby blue hooded sweater that I quite envied. It looked a bit funny on him as it was so girly, but would have looked just right on me! The boy's bag had some buttons on it. "Fuck you, you fucking fuck." "If at first you don't SUCCEED, suck harder." "I like men. [In tiny print:] Big ones, small ones, not fussy." You know I had a lot of time in line, if I read even the small print on the guy's buttons, and memorized it.
It turned out that the "Visa/Residence Permit Service" involved divesting me not only of all the official papers to which I had been clinging so carefully, but also of my passport. Come pick it up on the 25th, they said. That means 20 days in a foreign country without my passport, a rather uncomfortable feeling. "What if I have to change money?" I protested experimentally. "Then you should have done it earlier," they said stoutly, and that was that. Well, at least it will save me trips to two different police stations. I have a photocopy of my passport, in case I need the number. And the FB boss, KC, promised his assistance if anything came up where I needed it.
All told, I waited in line for more than two hours. Maybe I wasn't the only person in line reluctant to give up my passport. By this time, though it was only 10:30, I was hungry again and very weary on account of this lingering cold. I decided I just HAD to have some hot soy juice (dou jiang) which is very different from the soy milk in the U.S. After a couple of misses, I found a cafeteria that was selling it, and also had a fried egg with spicy sauce on it (which I devoured in two bites). I got to use my new meal-card!
On the way home, despite being so tired, I stopped in at a different bookstore, Disanji [Dee san jee]. It turned out to be quite a different thing from the Zhongguancun nearer my house! It was more like the book equivalent of the computer city. It was untidy and divided up into ever so many tiny shops, each with its own bookseller and its own specialization. Most of them were devoted to things I don't care about at all--computer programming--economics--middle school textbooks. But eventually I did find a place that had a certain appeal. I ended up with six books, two scholarly books I had previously had to keep checking out of the library, and four volumes of a classical Chinese textbook written by a famous Chinese linguist, which has always been recommended to me as wonderful but I had never made a serious effort at it before. Well, no time like the present! The total, slightly over 80 RMB, was little enough to me ($10) but made the bookseller hand me his card with a grave expression. "Feel free to give me a call," he said, and I began to understand why people so much like buying books in China. They're cheap, and the booksellers are among those rare people who share your taste for things old and dusty--the make you an honorary member of the fraternity, simply because you are interested enough to pick out a few and pay pennies for them. Getting my purchases home to the States, of course, will be a different matter...
[Update: I later discovered that I never made it to Disanji at all. Disanji is kind of a like a Barnes and Noble type store that occupies the upper four floors of the building. The lower four are small bookmarts, and these were the ones I saw.]
Back at home I rested and lounged and drank hot water and blew my nose a lot. Stupid tough Chinese cold. I ate another green orange, listened to more stories, chatted with Colin on Skype. Eventually, I bestirred myself to go out and look for a grocery store I'd heard about. The one I'd heard about was a French grocery called Carrefour. I was good and even looked it up in their store-finder. Yes, there should be one right near me. I noted down the location on my map. But the place turned out to be--well, like a Chinese equivalent of Times Square, if Times Square were still under construction and swarming with bicycles as well as cars and buses--and minus some of the neon and flashing lights, since there is a certain veneer of energy consciousness here. I just mean that there was this incredible sensory over-load feeling about the place. Though I looked carefully at all the buildings (or tried to), Carrefour must have been somewhere slightly other--or hidden from my dazzled eyes.
I did, however, find a Chinese Wumei Hypermart, which seemed good enough for me. It was in the basement and the first thing I saw were quite a number of fancy departments selling expensive jewelry, cosmetics, watches, clothes, books, and other stuff I could barely take in. Then I got in to the grocery store proper and for a minute was quite confounded. On the surface, at least, it looked exactly as if it were the tiny convenience store Wumei Mini-mart from campus stretched out into gigantic proportions! A tremendous predominance of packaged and snack foods, aisles and aisles of them, most of which I had no clue about. Farther back, though, I found produce, and a bakery, and some of the more common raw materials of Chinese cooking like oil and soy sauce. Also a small dairy section. Milk is not refrigerated, I'm not sure why. It is sealed very heftily, maybe sterilized and vacuum-sealed, so you don't have to refrigerate it until you open it? I'm not sure, but it tastes fine.
You might think that my experiences with Sunrise in Eugene or the Mei Dong Asian Market in Plainsboro would have prepared my for my Wumei Hypermart experience--but you would be wrong. I guess in the first place a lot of what I bought from those places were Japanese and Korean foods, not really in evidence here. Also, I was decidedly unprepared for the level of staffing the place had. Why, each aisle seemed to have its own aisle attendant. Some were calling out loudly information about the specials to be had on their particular aisle. Also, when I took something and had walked a few steps away, the aisle attendant stepped forward to straighten up the display and erase the gap my interference had created! It was kind of stunning in its way.
Each produce island also had its own produce attendant, and they had produce-weighing stations just like the ones Colin detests as Wegmans--except these were compulsory and of course NOT self-service. (I learned this the hard way.) Some of the produce was familiar, some totally bewildering.
I spent a long time wandering around the store looking at things, despite the fact that I was still feeling under the weather and exhausted from the over-stimulated walk from my apartment. Finally I decided on the following items (yes, I really am blogging my shopping list; sorry if I'm boring you, but you have to remember that I do this instead of talking): milk, brown bread, butter, a papaya, a brilliant red cactus fruit (not sure what it tastes like, but they assured me it could be eaten raw), a super-size instant cup noodle in some mysterious Chinese flavor, a package of black sesame porridges, and a very much on-sale package of pickled vegetables. Good for a start, and it's nice to have some food in my little place. The grand total (drum roll)--slightly under $4. What a bargain!
And though it's a bit out of order, I will report on the foods I have tried as of this writing. The papaya was delicious and brilliant sunset red inside. The pickled vegetables were too salty to be eaten plain and I didn't buy any rice. The bread was probably fine, but I should supplement my report by saying that my terrifyingly hot electric hot plate and really thin lightweight metal wok will NOT do duty as a toaster. My toast was burnt to a crisp in seconds. The kitchen fan is pretty effective, though. The sesame porridge is great with a bit of milk and sugar. When mixed with hot water it is a deep, thick grey color like cement or mortar, and is ground very fine. Here (because I can't resist this choice bit of Chinglish) is what the package says about it:
NANFANG BLACK SESAME PASTE is a kind of black food which is a traditional delicious food of China. It is made of high-quality materials, such as rice, black sesame seed, peanut, etc. It is produced with the advanced scientific technique. This product is aromatic character and agreeable taste, and really an ideal delicious convenient food for people, at home or it tour.
Here here! And it does have some calcium and iron and protein, as well as carbs and fat. I know what I'm going to be having for breakfast from now on. I'll report on my other Chinese groceries soon.
The only other noteworthy thing I did was go back to the pulled noodle place for my dinner. I could have tried out my new cup noodle, but somehow I had a hankering for those chewy pulled noodles again. When I went there, the noodle chef remembered me and asked where I was from and complimented my Chinese. I complimented his noodles, and we did the transaction with knowing smiles. He knows I like to watch his noodle-making, and we both wished there were more customers! It was early yet for the dinner hour, though, since I'd had only the fried egg and soy juice for lunch.
Beyond that, I have to confess that I really didn't do much. My days have been modest and probably look tediously uneventful to your average ex-pat. But I feel that my eyes and brain are practically all filled up with the little details of each new experience, and I like to take it slow, digesting and processing and thinking about it all.
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