My Ayi and Bill Emmott

Today at work was great, because I've been asking both my new and old managers for more work to do, and today they both delivered. So I felt more useful than I have since I came, which was good. Besides that there are two stories I'd like to tell.

One is about my Ayi. She's this squat Chinese woman who works at the gym in the basement. she's very well meaning and treats me as though I'm about 4. When I go to the gym, I turn in my card and get a key to a locker, where I put my things. Also in the locker are this teeny little red plastic shower shoes to wear when you shower off afterwards. Today I got into the shower and was mostly done showering, when I realized I'd forgotten to wear the shoes! When Ayi showed me around she was very specific about wearing the shoes and then putting them in a bucket for her to wash afterwards. Not many people use the gym... there's no way she wouldn't notice that my shoes weren't in the bucket if they weren't, but then again putting clean shoes in the bucket would just be silly. Oh well, it's not a big deal, I think to myself. I finish my shower and go to dry my hair. Ayi and another employee are in the locker room talking. Then Ayi sees my feet. (Note that she only speaks Chinese, and I'm going to take a rather literal translation.) 'Where are your shoes?'
'I forgot them!'
'Do you want your feet to get sick on this floor? Put your shoes on.'
'What?' (Since I was already finished showering.)
'Put your shoes on.' (She puts them on the floor in front of me.)
'Ok.' (I put on the shoes and go on drying my hair.)
'Now go shower again to clean your feet.'
'What?'
'Go shower again with the shoes, so your feet don't get sick.'
There's no arguing with her, especially in Chinese. So I go and shower again. The other lady reminds me that Ayi just doesn't want me to get sick as they leave the room. I wait until they leave to laugh.

Story 2: An adventure!
There was a talk I wanted to go to this morning by this guy called Bill Emmott, about economic competition between China, Japan, and India. But, I couldn't make it to the talk this morning, which was conveniently located at Microsoft and included breakfast. However, the talk was given again tonight, across town at a place called The Bookworm. So, I set off after work to get there. Despite leaving fully an hour early, I only had 10 minutes to spare when I got off the subway, and I didn't know where the bus I needed left from. As I was talking with a couple of old Chinese people to get directions, someone came up and asked me if I knew how to get to the Bookworm. '我刚在问他们。。。 I mean, I was just asking them where the bus station was...' It was confusing, since I'd been speaking Chinese, and she looked Chinese, but addressed me in English, and I wasn't sure if she'd used that because I was white or because she really didn't know Chinese... Anyways, her name is Hinia, she's Brazilian-raised-Chinese, and she can get along quite well in both Chinese and English (as well as Cantonese, which her parents speak, Brazilian, and Spanish.) We decided that since we didn't have much time we'd split the cost of a cab... less than a dollar each since we were so close.

We got there before the talk began. Unfortunately, as the nice British woman told us, the room had been packed full for fully half an hour, so we'd have to listen over the speaker in the back. The two of us snagged the last single chair and took turns on it. Afterwards I asked the lady at the door how many ｐｅｏｐｌｅ had come. 110 in the rooms, 50 out in back, and 40 out in front. Wow! Many people stood or sat on the floor. The talk was interesting, mostly an overview of the main points of the book. One person during the Q&A afterwards commented that he was relieved by a parallel drawn between Japan in the 60s and 70s and China today. At that point Japan was the terrible polluter of the world, so maybe Beijingers can have hope. Another audience member asked when Asia would have one currency, like Europe, and Emmott led that into a joke about the fact that, while it would be before the British used the Euro, it wouldn't be anywhere in the forseeable future.

There were so many Europeans in the audience, and Americans... I haven't seen so many white people in one place since the plane ride to Beijing. The atmosphere in the place was great. They had food, and a libary (the room used for the speech,) and shelves and shelves of books for sale. Books of all sorts! Books by American political candidates, travel guides for places all over the world, the Harry Potter series, books about the culture and history of China, collections of Chinese propaganda...

After the talk was over Emmott did a book signing... but his book (Titled 'Conflict' or 'The Three Kingdoms' depending where -- well, in which language -- you buy it) was expensive and I'm running low on cash. But I wanted to meet him anyways. So I asked him to sign a book about a different conflict... The Lord of the Rings. He did, too, and gave me his 'Best Wishes.' He was great at the book signing... despite the long line of people, he looked everyone in the eye, smiled, and took the time to talk to them individually as well as signing their books.

Afterwards Hinia and I walked back to the subway. She's a pretty impressive person. She started studying English by herself with tapes when she was 15, and now she has a job translating Chinese into English. On the way to the talk she said to me, 'I'll just go and see what I can learn,' and that seems to sum up her approach to life to a large extent. She's come to China to work for two years because she won tickets in a lottery and wanted to see what she'd find here. We plan to get together and do a bit of a language exchange. I 'll critique her English and she'll tutor me in my choice of Chinese, Spanish, Cantonese and Portugese, with her preference being to the last two since she knows them best. What do you guys think I should chooｓｅ？　Ｌｅｔ　ｍｅ　ｋｎｏｗ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｃｏｍｍｅｎｔｓ！！