I realized that I had spent several days in the two-block cocoon that surrounds my apartment, the newspaper and the alley where the coffee shop and noodle shop sit. With my messed up knees, and the very cold weather, walking is not the best option for now. So what about taxis? Well first you have to remember that you are not just getting into a taxi to go from one place to another. You are climbing on to an E-ticket ride. (old reference I know) The other challenge is the language barrier. I haven’t met a taxi driver yet that speaks any English at all so you have to memorize how to say the address you want to go and also how to say where you live so you can get home. Many people have someone write down the address on a card so you can show it to your driver. Unfortunately, some don’t read so you have to practice how to say where you want to go.
Ok so Wu Mei isn’t too bad for WuMart. Now lets see about getting back. Xuixin Dongjie Chaoyang District across from the University of……… Wait. Can’t I just say the name of the newspaper. No my friend tells me because a lot of the cabbies don’t know where it is. Ok what about the address Xuixin Dongjie etc.. Well that will work but you should also tell them that it is across the street from the University of….. Hey let’s take the bus!
So all you have to remember is what stop you get off and number of the busses that go there. I am following bill as we cross the street to the bus stop. When you cross the street you have to have a strategy, sprint for a zone of safety. Watch and wait, sprint for another zone of safety, watch sprint watch sprint. Pedestrians are not much more than speed bumps to many drivers in Beijing. I guess the best way to describe it is if you ever played the video game Frogger. I am sticking to Bill like a baby kangaroo to his mama. While we are froggering across the street he is rattling off bus numbers that go where we want to go. Was the 234 or 243, was that 354 or 435? Crap I can’t even hear him as he is in front of me. We stand there and a number of busses pass. This one he says and we jump on. The bus is only one kuai. On our short ride I try to memorize landmarks. Someday I will have to go out on my own! We get off and have to play frogger again to get to a tunnel that goes under a few lanes of traffic. Soon we are in front of Wu Mart.
It is a sprawling place with department store upstairs and groceries downstairs. They have almost anything you could want. As I wandered the cavernous market, I realized I needed shampoo and a few other things. Of course with everything written in characters, it is hard to tell the difference between shampoo and conditioner or soap or lotion. Could be any of them. I found one shampoo that looked familiar. Head and Shoulders! Ok that worked well but I just got lucky, as most of the products don’t have English names on the box. Again I feel like a child trying to negotiate in a strange place but I also remember that I feel a bit lost in large American stores so this isn’t that different.
All in all I think I can find all of the essentials that I will need and with a little sign language can figure out the money thing. The grocery section was bustling with the Chinese people getting ready for Lunar New Years /Spring Festival, it is a busy time in grocery stores. They had great looking produce, interesting looking food including some bins filled with some kind of plump larvae or maybe they were grubs. I thought I would wait on that for a while. Bill isn’t too daring with food. He has declined to try things like scorpions on a stick, monkey brains or certain parts of the chicken that we might not find appetizing. Chicken feet are big here. He goes by the idea of, just because they eat it doesn’t mean he has to. The good thing for us is chicken breasts are cheap because they aren’t the most desired part of the bird. There is a fish tank where you can pick out the live fish to take home and toss on the bar-b. It is crowded and loud here as workers are shouting out that they have beef. They also have turtle, and other delicacies that I am not familiar with. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to make his or her selections and get out. They had so much produce it seemed like I could find anything. Tortillas and guacamole weren’t available as far as I could tell. Maybe too much to ask for.
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