Raymond, who teaches at the law school here at SISU and rides the 11:30 bus with me to the Songjiang campus, asked me yesterday if I was having regular problems or "China" problems when I began telling him the stories that I'm about to relate here. When I started talking, he said, "Oh yes. China problems." And I somehow knew exactly what he was talking about.
The last two days, we have had a couple "China" problems to deal with. And they haven't been fun. One was pretty major and the other was less so, but still quite annoying. I'll start with the first one.
So Sunday night, Kerry and I went to a Japanese sushi place called Kagen for dinner. It was VERY good: I'd say it was my #3 eating experience in Shanghai thus far (#1 being the brunch, #2 being Dadong). We had all you can eat for 330 RMB each: it was a bit pricey, but SO worth it. We had foods like seaweed salad, lotus chips, an avocado rool, Hawaiian maki rolls (with crab meat!), and eel with foie gras. The price also included a teppanyaki grill, and the chef made lamb chops and filet mignon for us. We sat around the grill, just as we would at Osaka. The portion sizes tended to be pretty small, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves--another great French Concession restaurant, right around La Creperie.
Anyway, to the problem: we get to the apartment, and Kerry discovered that he's LOST HIS KEY TO THE APARTMENT. We started freaking out and went to security who, of course, couldn't speak English. They, apparently, called the police. We contacted Carol on WeChat, who, amazingly, ended up calling us and then talking to the security folks. And, of course, Boris, one of the French professors stopped by and tried to help. He contacted his girlfriend, who contacted Ms. Yang (the building manager), and he found out that Ms. Yang wasn't able to come until 8 am the next day. Therefore, Kerry and I walked to a nearby motel. When we got there, they wouldn't accept us. We were devastated and began to leave, but a young man beckoned us back. The young man behind the desk located two possible hotels for us. I called one of them, they had a room, a taxi was summoned, and we checked in. We spent quite a bad night there: the room was far too hot and we didn't have our CPAPs. Kerry couldn't sleep at all. We awoke at 6:30 the next morning and got a cab back to the complex to wait for Ms. Yang to show at 8 am. Kerry got the wise idea to go up to the building, where he ran into her.....and he FOUND THE KEY. Apparently, he had left it in the mailbox when he went to take out a letter from his mom.
From this experience, we learned that while the language barrier can sometimes suck, I told Kerry to look at the silver linings on the many clouds. People did try to be helpful: Carol was there right away, Boris tried to help, and the young men in the motel that rejected us helped as well. When I told Raymond about the rejection at the hotel, he told me that some motels don't have permits to accept foreigners, and they want the foreigners to stay at the best motels to get a better impression of China. So I didn't take the rejection personally.
The rest of my Monday wasn't as insane--I taught my classes, and they both went fine--and the weather was nice. But one incident did irritate me. I get to my Short Novels class (which Yanis led me too, again--he volunteered), and my students tell me that there's another class in there. So we're all standing around in the hall, not knowing what to do. Fortunately, Yanis called Carol, and Carol came over and told us to go back to Teaching Building 4, Room 420. FRUSTRATING. This was the original room that I didn't want to be in; however, it least it was air-conditioned, and at least the students sat class to me to listen and didn't spread out or act rude. We got to talk about literary theory a bit in connection with Charlotte Temple--haven't done that in awhile. And in the Honors American Literature class we spent the day on Washington Irving. Fun stuff! Fortunately, neither the ride to school or the ride from school was bad today: 50 minutes to get there and about 60 minutes back. It was frustrating not hearing from Kerry all day (I tried calling him several times), but I knew that he was sleepy. I took the bus home and didn't even have dinner....just collapsed into bed.
Today, Tuesday, I'm going to do some prep work and just hang out. We have today and Wednesday to get ready for our trip to Beijing on Thursday. Tomorrow I'm supposed to get my passport back. We'll see how that works out!
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