Our First Week

China is nutty.  Salt is only sold behind the counter.  And when you ask for it, they say they don't have it.  But if you insist, it appears.  On the roads, might makes right.  If you are a bus, you can do whatever you want.  If you are a young child, you must run for your life, because nothing is smaller than you.  Crosswalks are meaningless, I'm not sure why they waste the paint.  My home is new and beautiful, but the closet has space for about 5 articles of clothing, and the drawers fit about 4 pairs of socks each.  No other storage-type furniture.  It works for now because we are living out of suitcases.  The bed is virtually a slab of granite.  I was told this before I came, but I didn't realize how realistic the description was until my first night.  Everyone speaks Cantonese.  Mandarin is spoken with a thick Cantonese accent.  My nanny is sweet and kind, but I simply smile most of the time when she speaks.  If she seems to really want a response, then I make the effort to figure out what she said.  This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to days and calling a friend to translate.  Neither myself nor my new friend, who speaks impeccable Mandarin, have figured out my nanny's name.  So we just call her the Chinese word for nanny, "ayi."  It works.  I had my first day of work yesterday. It was just a meet and greet of all the important people at the consulate.  It was also the first day my current cold came on with full force, so I disrupted the formalities with constant nose blowing, nose wiping, and eye wiping (even my eyes are draining goop).  I haven't had a cold like this in years.  I start my first day in the consular section on Monday.  The shuttle that runs between my apartment and the section leaves 15 minutes before I can drop Hazel off at school.  So I'm left to fend for myself.  Maybe a taxi, maybe a shuttle/subway combo.  I've yet to decide.  Neither seem particularly reliable for a punctual appearance at work. Hazel's school is delightful, from my perspective.  Each morning at drop-off they shine a flashlight down her throat, inspect her fingernails, and take her temperature, then one of the teachers escorts her upstairs to her classroom.  Though the school is advertised as an English-immersion experience for rich Chinese kids, it only really includes 1-2 hours of English instruction in an 8 hour day.  There are 4 other English-speaking kids Hazel's age attending the school.  They are all in the same class.  But their class is full.  So Hazel is the sole English speaker in her class, which has more Japanese kids than Chinese.  Her teachers speak Japanese and Chinese.  I imagine she'll learn a hybrid Asian language by the end.  Our nanny doesn't speak any English, though she has learned the word "No" in the few short days she has been with us.  She is a delightful woman who is eager to please.  She comes for 4 hours a day, six days a week.  She cleans, does our laundry, and picks Hazel up from school.  All for the low low price of $230/month.  Though littering is prevalent, the streets of Guangzhou are impeccably clean.  All day people with brooms created by tying tree branches together sweep and clean the streets. The brooms are pretty ineffective, but the abundance of cleaners makes up where they lack. And that's how things work here.  With 1.3 billion people and a Communist government that seeks to have everyone employed, manual labor is the most abundant and cheapest resource.  The air in Guangzhou is filthy, and accordingly everything outside except the streets, is filthy.  Buildings, benches, fences, etc.  In China, things are done very effectively and efficiently if someone with authority directs them to be done.  Otherwise, they are completely neglected.  For this reason, unless someone has express authority to do something for you upon request, your request will always be answered initially with a no.  Only after probing and asking for other people to verify or problem solve does it seem possible to get simple needs met. For example, I had two lights out in my apartment.  After I mentioned it, they were both replaced in about 6 minutes (including the time necessary to go and fetch the lights).  But when I asked the front desk to show me on a map of the city the route that the shuttle takes, the attendant looked incredibly uncomfortable, chatted with several people in Cantonese, told me "no" several times, despite my insisting, and then finally was corrected by the manager who happened to walk by during my demands.  The attendant then cheerfully started drawing the route on my map.  I watch all of these simple interactions ever aware that U.S. economists are continually warning about the threat China's economy poses to the U.S.  And I have not yet decided what I think about that.  For now it appears that only if a thorough and well-articulated plan were put in motion could China really threaten us.  Because free thought and problem solving along the way is not where China shines.  But I don't know about the feasibility of such a plan.  I doubt it would be possible in the U.S. for us to create such a plan, because we tend to stumble along and fix our errors as we go, often swinging from one extreme to the next before we find a good middle ground.  So my frame of reference is inadequate at this point to gauge China's potential.  But it has only been a week.