The Idiot, the Rice Bowl and the Yogurt

Ten minutes later I stood at the baggage carousel waiting for my life, in the form of two suitcases, to appear. One by one the Chinese people around me grabbed their bags and left me standing in a cloud of stale cigarette smoke. I had only one of my two suitcases by my side and a nervous look on my face.

From around the corner appeared two small Chinese men. “Are you Keith from America?” they asked timidly. “Yes. Yes I am,” I replied with a big smile, thinking about the effort that had been required to locate my shaved head and 6’2”, 250 lb. frame in a now-empty Chinese airport. The two men introduced themselves as my assistants from the school where I would begin teaching in a few weeks. They took care of the baggage problem by arguing with the baggage men for several minutes. The results were simply; “The men will find your bags soon. We must go now.”

My apartment is located in a very crowded and bustling Chinese neighborhood and my arrival created immediately created a ruckus. People were lounging around on the street in their underwear and t-shirts. The carcasses of birds, fish, and other animals were hanging from lines drying alongside people’s laundry. People were everywhere – playing cards, sitting on chairs talking by the side of the road, zipping by on bicycles, or strolling slowly along the street. Everyone did the same thing as I passed. They stopped what they were doing and stared directly at me as I walked past, curious about the new foreigner in their midst. Four men in a small van were staring so hard that they drove into the curb.

I started to get settled quickly. My apartment was quite nice inside and my luggage was found within a couple of days. The two things I needed most were a means of transport and something “normal” to eat. I found both within my first week of living in China.

First the transportation. Most people here ride bicycles so I figured I might as well get one too. I went to a big bright bike store and bought a “Giant” brand complete with lots of goodies that would have gotten me beat up and my lunch money stolen back in grade school. My bike is (actually now – was) a powder blue girl’s model complete with a basket in the front, fenders to keep the mud off, a chain guard, a little rack thing behind the seat and a license plate. I even had to get a Chinese bicycle driver’s license. The kid at the bike store had a good laugh because I am far too big for the bike even though it was the biggest one they had.

I rode for three hours all around the city with my knees hitting my chin. I would like to say there was a method to the madness that was my Wild Bike Tour of Nanjing, but I forgot my map and got really, really, lost and just rode around until I found my way home.

Now I needed to get something to eat. I bicycled past a small shop called the “Exotic Foods Store” and found a whole bunch of western goodies. Exotic foods in China include breakfast cereal, mustard, tomato sauce, and instant mashed potato mix. I spent an enormous sum of money on a box of Frosted Flakes and with great excitement bicycled back to my place with the cereal in my little basket. I stopped at the grocery store and got a quart of milk for the next day’s breakfast.

Sunday morning I woke up like a kid on Christmas day ready to have my cereal. I got the Frosted Flakes off the shelf and went to grab a bowl and realized that all I had in the bowl department were these little rice bowls the previous tenants left. I had to make do so I filled the little bowl with cereal and opened the cardboard container of milk and poured out this off-white pudding-like substance that was definitely not milk. I looked at the carton more closely and realized that I had bought a quart of yogurt, which in China is apparently something that one would drink, and something that one would put in a container that looks exactly like a milk container.

I went back to the store and bought real milk and proceeded to repeat the whole process. I opened the drawer to grab a spoon, and low and behold, I live in China – the land that spoons forgot. Ahhhh! All I have is chopsticks. So there I was, sitting on my porch in my boxer shorts, eating breakfast cereal out of rice bowl with chopsticks. This painful process continued until the cereal got soggy and I couldn’t pick up the little buggers easily any more, at which point I switched to the old tip and slurp method. Moving to a new land is like regressing to the point of being 5 years old again as I have to relearn all those little things I figured out years ago in the USA.