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Published: September 17th 2009
"I'm having a bad China day" is something that I hear with relative frequency. It's hard to describe what exactly they can entail; there is not one specific thing that gives you a bad China day. I guess in some way, it is just a bad day, except being in a foreign country makes all of the little things much harder to deal with. You get ripped off by someone, you are late for work and suddenly everyone in front of you decides to stop and look at the goods people are selling on the street (this is a particularly big issue on the bridges over the big road in our area, because people frequently stop in such a way that they block the bridge to other pedestrians), you order food and it turns out to be something totally different than you expected, mysterious liquid drips on your head, etc etc etc.
If you had asked me a day ago, I would have said that, after my first few days of adjusting, I tend to be less annoyed by those kinds of things than the average foreigner (certainly than a lot of my coworkers). Sure, things are bothersome, but they don't linger and they don't build up in my system. Part of the reason that I'm in China is that I want to live somewhere out of the United States. I knew that China was going to be different, and I want to experience that difference, not attach value judgments (at least not yet...). It really doesn't offend me the way it seems to bother my coworkers to see children peeing on the street or to know that somewhere on my street apparently serves dog (okay, that might be partly because I know there's no chance
I'll accidentally eat it). But today I got a wake-up call that some aspects of living here might be stressing me out more than I'm realizing.
I was walking on the street right outside of my school with some of my coworkers, kind of in a rush and pretty distracted. I felt a tug on my bag and ignored it. Then, 15 seconds later, I put my hand down and realized that the front pocket of my bag, where I usually keep my wallet (I've reasoned it out--it is the safest place in the bag) was unzipped. Put my hand in quickly, realized that my wallet was not in there, remembered the tug, and panicked. A few days ago, I was walking on the street, felt a similar tug, moved my bag closer to me without realizing it, and then noticed that the pocket was slightly open and there was a man trying very hard to look inconspicuous next to me; I thought to myself then that I had now had good reason to always keep a hand on my bag, and it just happened that as I was leaving school, I was carrying papers and not paying attention to my bag or my wallet. I shouted up to my coworkers in front of me (one of whom is a Chinese teacher at the school) that someone had just taken my wallet, with the hope that maybe the thief would still be in sight. Of course, there was no way of telling--it was a crowded street and I hadn't been paying attention. Normally, I would have be flustered but not too upset, since bank cards are easy enough to block and replace, and I don't tend to carry other things of value, but we were on our way to the security bureau and my wallet had my receipt for my passport/visa application in it. I didn't particularly think there was any hope of recovering it, but apparently there were video cameras all around (Shenzhen is one of the most intensely surveilled cities in China), and I would have to make a police report in order to get everything done without the police.
The Chinese teacher got the security guards to call the police and then went with everyone else to the security bureau. I was sitting wait for the police to come, looking for something in my bag, when I suddenly found my wallet in an inside pocket. Apparently I had put it there without realizing it. OOOPS.... boy did I feel stupid.
So I managed to explain/ gesture to the guards that I had found it (luckily I have learned the words for sorry/ excuse me/ thank you) and very sheepishly called the Chinese teacher to apologize and explain.
So I don't really know what happened. It is possible that someone opened my zipper pocket, didn't find my wallet, and went away (my neighborhood is well-known for its unusually high concentration of pickpockets, who employ a wide range of strategies). It is equally likely that I have just been at such a level of tension
waiting for something like this to happen that my mind jumped to conclusions. I do occasionally put my wallet in a different place, and I do occasionally leave my zipper unzipped without realizing it, and if I weren't so stressed, I would have thought to look elsewhere before deciding my wallet was missing. Of course, if there had been a pickpocket, it would have made sense to say something as soon as possible, in case anyone saw anything...
Ironically, the effect of this is that I will probably now be even more away of my stuff at all times (or get a pacsafe bag), which doesn't necessarily increase my comfort level in the country.
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non-member comment
yeah, pickpockets have certainly stressed me out some places; I've fantasized about planting easy-to-snatch wallets with thousands of dollars of play money.