Facing Uncertainty

What Coke Zero looks like in China ...

So this was an unplanned post, but I want to try to be sure I remember this experience.  I had heard from colleagues who have visited here that the breakfast at this hotel is not their favorite, and many in fact skip it entirely.  But after waking up hours earlier than necessary (thanks jet lag) I was starving at figured how bad could breakfast be and headed down to find out.  The entire experience left me feeling frustrated but filled with empathy for those who visit our country and have no clue how things work, especially a librarian from China  who was interviewing at Kenyon long ago, and at a breakfast meeting ate an English muffin raw because he didn’t know what to do with it.

The hotel restaurant is really just a very small dining room.  I entered in and made eye contact with a worker, who didn’t speak English.  When I made a gesture indicating I didn’t know what to do, he just stared at me – clearly unable to explain what the process was.  I saw a table of food in the middle of the room, and two pots in the back.  I tried to see what other people were doing and mimic them, but it didn’t work too well.  I assembled a couple of things I recognized:  a muffin and an egg,  but only picked up the egg after I saw someone peel it.  I also decided to try one thing I didn’t recognize:  some sort of dumpling like thing.  I got some strange looks from the people in the room, so clearly I was doing something wrong.  Yet no one tried to demonstrate anything for me.  I ate the stale muffin, and the egg, and took one bite of the dumpling only to find out it was some sort of sponge-y thing that clearly was supposed to go with something else.  After seeing that no one was paying their bill before leaving (maybe breakfast is free for everyone?) I hightailed it out of the place as quickly as I could.

I then decided to go to the small market down the street to see if I could find a diet coke for some caffeine as I’m getting sleepy again.  I don’t have time to walk all the way to Starbucks, or even the one café closer that Liu Liu showed me that had coffee and lattes.  It took me a while, but I eventually located familiar looking cans of coke, sprite, Sunkist and … coke zero, the closest thing to diet coke in the place.  I bought two cans (at 4RMB – who knows how much that is) and happily made my way back to my hotel to wait for my 10:30 meeting.   It’s amazing what a little bit of familiarity does to lift my spirits after being so completely out of my element earlier.