A China Moment

I picked a winner in this year's election. Go Obama! Now we can go back to having only opinions that don't really matter. All this individual equality thing was going to my head. I'm not experienced and wise; who cares what I say? Now no one does, again.

I've been stressed out the last few days. I'm not sure why, really. Taking 12 credits isn't conducive to stress. But I've been on hold for a lot of things, and that's taken a toll on me: the election; the Crest contest; a date; another contest; the impending LSAT. This morning I couldn't make myself do any work, so I decided to go mail my friend's book back to him. In the summer I traveled to a remote part of China with my friend Alex, and then when he had to leave I went to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan by myself. He had a phrase book (which ended up being useless) which he lent to me on the condition I return it to him when we both got back to America.

Today was the day, then, but in my fragile state the best I could do was go to the store on campus, Do it Reitz (a pun on the name of the student union), and have them tell me what kind of packaging and postage I needed.

While I was there, I had a China moment. It started lightly: I felt like I was barely keeping my head above the water of life. I mailed more things in China than I have in America, so it was also understandable that I wasn't confident in the store. They type the label up for you, so I recited Alex's address to her. Then she asked for a phone number. "What?" I asked, and was reminded of how I was much better at Chinese when I knew what question was coming next. Apparently that's true for me in English, too. "A phone number," she said.

I don't have Alex's phone number memorized, so I wanted to tell her that I didn't have one. For about a second, though, all I could think of was an answer in Chinese: "没有。" I stuttered, knowing that wasn't right.

That's a pretty good China moment. I don't often have the urge to reply to people in Chinese. But it consummated itself a minute later.

"That'll be $12," the girl said. Mind you, the book I was sending is post-card size with fewer than 50 pages.

"That seems pretty high," I ventured.

"Well, we're a private business, so we're not allowed to compete with government prices," she said--or something like that. She spoke in English, obviously, but I didn't really understand what she meant. I only understood the general idea: she wanted $12 from me. I thought about leaving and going to the post office on the other side of campus, but rejected that because I didn't have the stamina for it at that moment.

In China, I was glad to be a rich American, because it meant I didn't have to sweat the small stuff. If I got ripped off a few kuai my budget wasn't off-kilter. Of course, the longer I was there the more I became able to live like a Chinese person would, and the less my spending would be out of the ordinary. But while I got adjusted I explicitly allowed for what I termed my "foreigner tax." That is, if I were Chinese, I'd know not to buy that brand because it sucks and I wouldn't have just wasted three dollars.

Anyway, the girl at the counter told me I'd have to pay a ridiculous amount to send Alex my package, and I knew vaguely that it was way too high. And as I brought out my debit card to pay for it, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is a pretty high foreigner tax."

But then I remembered I'm not a foreigner here.