i get by with a little help from the chinese people

just got back from a jam-packed trip with my parents. it was tiring (hehe) but it was a really good trip. blogger is not working AGAIN though so i can't put up more pictures.

i haven't written in a while about the acts of kindness i've experienced in china. no good deed should go unrecognized! unfortunately though, i was talking to one of the chinese english teachers at school and she told me that the chinese are often nice to foreigners and cruel to each other. a little shocking, but when i think about incidents like the little girl who was ignored by several passerby after being hit by a car, i can see what she means. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/chinese-debate-aiding-strangers-after-toddlers-death/?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

however, i don't know if i would have mentally survived here this long with out little (and big) gestures that make me feel like someone is watching out. i can't imagine how hard it must be to immigrate to a country like america where no one really cares that you are foreign and things are hard for you. although i came on my own here, i never really feel like i am on my own, so god bless the chinese for that, lol.

a few things i remember recently that struck me-

just now i took a taxi with a driver who had a really non-standard way of speaking. maybe he was just speaking with a really heavy dalian accent, i don't know, but i could barely understand him. i unknowingly agreed to go to a neighborhood that is near where i live, but not where my apartment is at all. i tried to chat with him along the way, and it was funny listening to him speak. i can't imagine someone speaking english the way some people speak chinese - it can sound so loud and exaggerated. but sometimes i also think the chinese can just be very excitable- like i told him that i couldn't make this popular chinese bread (man tou) and his eyes grew wide and he screams YOU CAN'T MAKE IT!! i'm like no, sorry! haha. we finally got to where he thought i lived and i told him we were in the wrong place. i figured that it was my fault but he didn't say anything like another cabbie probably would have, which was a relief. when we got to my apartment the fare was a little over 20 but he wouldn't let me pay the extra because he had gone to the wrong place. i told him that it was probably my fault so it was okay but he didn't care. then he explained to me what the other area was called, and i realized that i had just not been able to understand the way he had been saying the word for 'neighborhood'. it wasn't a lot of money, but still a nice gesture that said it's okay to make mistakes.

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a couple weeks ago, i took a really long sea walk with the intention of grabbing lunch somewhere and taking a bus back to my apartment. well that plan didn't work out because i left my wallet at home and didn't even have enough money to take the bus (15 whopping american cents). way to go me. i didn't have a plan for getting back yet, but i had drank a whole bottle of water along the way and needed to use the bathroom, so first things first. i finally found a public toilet that had a little old lady sitting outside of it in a dalian worker uniform, so i knew she must be the bathroom attendant. i asked her if the toilet was free, and she told me it wasn't, it was like 1 yuan. dagger. i told her that i didn't have any money and that i was sorry. then she started telling me about how she needed money for food and all this stuff so i just said sorry again and started to leave but she stopped me and told me to use the bathroom. i told her again that i had no money. i don't know how she could believe that this foreign girl in the middle of china was walking around with no money, but she pulled me in and pretty much pushed me into the toilet. it was a normal squat toilet but the place didn't have running water, so after i was done i tried to manually flush it with a bucket of water. i guess she wanted to take care of that herself though because she pulled me away and took me back outside. she took out a large bottle of water from the store and instructed me to put my hands out to wash them. she poured like half her bottle on my hands, and i was like stop, it's enough! i felt so bad. i told her that if i saw her again i would give her some money, but i haven't been back that way since. i should go though, wouldn't it be nice if she was there and i could give her like 10 or 20 yuan.

i couldn't walk all the way back home so i flagged a taxi and explained the situation to him as best i could. he said it was okay if i ran upstairs and got my wallet when we arrived at my apartment. thank god. the fare was like 18 or 19 yuan, but i gave him a 20 and told him to keep the change for his troubles. again, 1 or 2 yuan is like nothing but he seemed so pleased with receiving a little tip. it's nice when little things can make someone happy.

just a couple of memories for me of good interactions i've had here...i realized these stories are all about money but hey, money is important here, especially when you don't have a lot of it.