bitter sweet taste of selling a bike

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27August 08 Buying bus tickets for the first time.

Although I’ve been learning Mandarin for some time now, I’m still painfully aware of my language inadequacies and my basic toneless Mandarin skills. Chris has always been good at languages and is way ahead of me with his Mandarin skills and this puts me in a position whereby I let him do all the talking because he’s better at it than me. Also, this further adds to my own feeling of inadequacy because I think I’m worse than I am and I get on that treadmill of thinking that I won’t ever get it. I need to sort my attitude out but it’s difficult sometimes when I don’t feel confident with something and it’s easy to step back rather than step up.

We need to buy tickets for the bus to Kunming and there is no one to help us but ourselves. I write down what I would say, Chris confidently speaks what he would say - of course it’s different which makes me feel worse. I would like to buy the tickets but feel that if I do it in front of Chris, I will become tongue tied and feel stupid so I just can’t do it but also feel that if I step aside and let Chris do it all the time, I’ll never get any better. So I get back on the treadmill of thinking that I’m rubbish at the language and blah blah. I explained everything to Chris he said that I should get the tickets and that he wouldn’t help so that I could have a go on my own. Of course, no end of whining on my part wouldn’t change his mind and he forced me to get the tickets so that I would have a go and sort it out. I couldn’t do it in front of him so, poor guy, waited patiently on the street. After figuring out which bus we needed and after waiting for the huddle of local guys shouting words through the holes to the ticket seller and thrusting money under the gap in the counter to buy their tickets, I eventually plucked enough courage to ask for 2 tickets on the correct date for the correct journey. All was understood until she asked whether or not I wanted upper or lower bunks, this being out of my quick thinking, took longer to understand - even though I know these words, and even thought there were no lower bunks left. Eventually, it was sorted and I felt a lot better. I did not do it perfectly by a very long way, but I did manage to get tickets and Chris waited until I’d done it. So, my first big thing that I did on my own is buying 2 bus tickets. Oh, such a very long way to go still…



28 August 08 The bitter sweet success of selling a bike.


Today was the day that we had set aside to sell a bike that was given to us by a new friend that we met 2 nights ago. His name is Jing Yu and he lives in Shenzhen. He gave us his bike because he was flying back home and didn’t have time to sell it. He bought the bike, brand new, in Kunming and cycled here, which took him 4 days. We met on Tuesday night and immediately got on. He’d decided to cycle the whole way from Kunming to Lijiang to see the differences between the ethnic minorities along the way but he had found it all to be the same. The journey is 517 km over great hills or small mountains and on the way he’d got very sunburnt and said that he’d stayed in a hostel for 5Yuan a night, which is about 40pence, and been bitten by maggoty bugs. After we met, we all went out for dinner and openly and honestly talked about China and the UK and some of the differences in politics and culture. He also told us that he’d bought the bike and pump, lock, tyres and extras for 300Yuan but offered to sell it to us for 150Yuan. However, as we were moving onto Kunming on Friday, we didn’t need it.

As he was leaving the next day, Jing Yu, had written us a note but he saw Chris on his way out and said that he’d like to give us the bike to either use, take to Kunming, give away or sell because he didn’t have time to sell it, which brings me to today. As we can’t get it onto the bus with all of our 7 big bags, we needed to sell it. We started off in good spirits and I joked that Chris had his bike selling hat on. We aimed to sell the bike to any of the surrounding bike rental places in town and after Chris, in very good Mandarin, tried to sell the bike but was turned down and we realised that selling this way was not going to work. We just had to find a market for it because we found that all of the rental people are all sitting on lots of bikes that no one wants to rent. So, this wasn’t our place.

We became frustrated with the burden of this thing and realised that anyone who rents bikes out for 8 or 15Yuan a day is not going to buy another for 150Yuan when they have so many unrented ones. After failing to sell the bike, we limped back to the old town and thought about the hostels which rent bikes to their residents - we could either try to sell it or put a card up to advertise it. Around the corner from out Chinese International hostel is the regular International Youth hostel which is full of westerners. I approached the lady who runs the hostel and explained that we had a bike to sell and that it was only a week old. Three people came out to inspect it. I expanded on my selling techniques by explaining that it was a good price and well cared for. She asked where we had got it from, I told her, then she agreed straight away to my asking price of 150 Yuan, no bartering or arguing. Now you would think that I would be happy but I felt sad. Jing Yu had bought the bike, travelled all those miles on it and had given it to us as a gift. If we had been staying in Lijiang for the full 4 weeks, it would have been ideal for us to use every day but as we’re not, it had to go. But this seemed rude - selling a gift and the fact that 150yuan, worth about £14.40, seemed wrong. I know that money is all relative but is seemed a shame. I didn’t really mind about the money - what it means to us is that we can have 2 dinners here in Lijiang before we leave and that, I’m grateful for but I feel as if I have done Jing Yu an injustice.

When I look around this town, some people are eaking a living out of taking plastic bottles out of bins to recycle or selling hand-made bamboo bugs or begging with polio, or actually going through waste vegetables from restaurants to live on and 150Yuan is a lot of money to some people here. Even now Chris and I are thinking how we will make a living here in China in the future but I still feel that although we successfully sold the bike, it was a sad result and I don’t mean the financial outcome -I just mean that it highlighted that this is the way things are and I should toughen up and get used to buying and selling because everyone does it in one way or another to survive.

Our Last afternoon in Lijiang has been spent getting ‘pleasantly’ lost. The weather changed as we sat in cafes from thunder to heavy beating rain to faint sun and warmth and back again. During the afternoon, the weather repeated its changing pattern over and over. We walked deep into the old part of Lijiang and out of the back past Mu’s old house, into residential areas and towards the South Gate. There are crafts people hand making shoes, carving doors, bowls and windows, making cloth and just living. It was our first taste of real Lijiang. I opened up more and enjoyed the back lanes and felt it was more of a real Lijiang. As we went deeper into the residential areas, we went more into local areas where we were certainly the only westerners. People sold puppies by the cart load as well as birds and weird fruits. As we were winding our way back, we saw 3 deep stone bowl watering well system - the first used for drinking water, the second for washing vegetables (not meat) and the third for washing clothes. As we passed a woman was washing a huge chicken and duck in the middle pool and another was washing her clothes in the last pool. This is the normal way of life here . As I sit here writing, the rain is again falling heavily onto the clay tiled roofs and as there are no gutters, it pours down onto the streets and balconies in long curtains. It’s a lovely place to visit and I’m sure it has many secrets but we’re happy to be leaving tomorrow on the 8.30pm night sleeper bus to Kunming to start at the Keats School for 3 weeks language training.

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Photos

Jing Yu's photograph of us
taken with his twin lense roliflex

express bus station - Lijiang
the quietest bus station we've ever been in

a puppy in my pocket for Jane
A present for Janey W