retail friends

The shop clerks at Walmart are starting to catch on to me. The guy who’s been trying to sell me an iron for the past week was among the six or seven people who mobbed me in the kitchenware section, and the mattress and bedding fuwuyuan totally called me out on having been there multiple times as she helped me choose a set. In the first case, even though by this point all seven people there knew I didn’t speak much Chinese, they all still insisted on blathering at me at once and trying to drag me around places to see their individual products until, surrounded, I finally asked in rudimentary but firm Chinese “Qingwen, bie dou ren dou yiqi gen wo shuo hua, zhi you yige ren gaosu wo.” They pointed to one matronly clerk and, all but for the continued sales pitch of one guy who was just not understanding that I was not understanding what the hell he was talking about, everyone left me alone and somehow I ended up with a hot plate, wok, wok lid and pan for about 180kuai. Not too bad.

With that, some cutlery and a bed desk that I’ve adapted towards a different purpose, I have a pretty functional small kitchen in my windowsill now.

I also have a bed that I can actually nestle into now. The sheets that were previously on it had looked suspicious to me, so I threw the bamboo tile covering onto it and slept on that without the blanket, just turning the AC off at night to keep warm (the room temperature would get to about 90F that way). But after getting the new bedsheets, I can actually sleep like a normal person (well, a Western person) now. It took me all week to get this done because I kept getting confused about the bed sizes and the characters on the bedding products, until finally one fuwuyuan came up to me today and helped me out with things. As she did so she remarked that she had seen me around the place before. She spoke very slowly and with a few English words (bedsheet, twin, etc.) that helped me out, and encouraged my Chinese (like almost everybody else has been doing). We actually exchanged phone numbers later so I may hear from her again.

As for that phone number exchange, it really seems like everybody here is fast to network. I had been forewarned about how the Chinese easily ask a lot from acquaintances, due to how Chinese social networks perceive people as “nearer” or “farther” as opposed to Western social networks regarding others as either “in” or “out.” The other day an old lady who asked me to help her read a small label in Walmart (and to whom I replied that I could see it but not understand it at all – oh hilarity) ended up talking at me for a long time to the bemusement of surrounding shop clerks (the senile lady talking to the uncomprehending idiot, I guess). She asked for my number too, but I hedged and just gave her an email address because I really didn’t understand anything that she was saying, and I figured that future meetings with her would be largely unhelpful for me. Today’s shop clerk spoke very slowly and simply for me, though, and I can see a good language partner in her. At the same time, I should be wary of what she might actually want, lest my parents’ cardinal worry be proven right. No gain without risk, though, and I have an even head on my shoulders (and some baggage in my chest anyway, so it’s a moot point for sure).

Anyway. The point of this post was that I now have a real bed, a pseudo-kitchen, and pseudo-pseudo-Walmart-friends.