ShanghaiMamas

Trying China Days Par for the Course

Thursday, September 25th 2008

By Katrina Beikoff* 

Can’t Handle It, Never Again. 

It’s been one hell of a China day. Make that a week. Maybe a fortnight.

My partner has lost track of how long I’ve been unable to shake my present China funk.

The milk has been poisoned, we’ve come perilously close to suffering more traffic accidents than normal, the air is choking us, and the woman who gives me my one simple pleasure — foot massages — has begun making fun of my wacky toe.

Everything that sometimes bugs me has been magnified.

The place not only emits unidentifiable odours, the whole city seems to stink.I am sure taxi drivers who take us on board are having a competition to see who can escape serious smashes by the smallest margin.

My job is throwing up more of its confounding work place cultural differences and even email is taking an interminably long time to connect — it currently takes about as long to send an email as it does to boil the jug and make a cup of coffee.  I’ve tested the theory and haven’t been able to sleep for a week.

My little boy, who suffered a stubbed toe about four weeks ago, has been diagnosed with suffering a terrible infection in his entire foot.  I just thought he was tired and a bit off, so feel sick with guilt for not even thinking to seek treatment for him earlier.

I also feel terrible at giving my lovely ayi the opportunity to pick up the English vocab she may need to give anyone a jolly good bollocking after she overheard me yelling my discontent down the phone at a bed manufacturer who didn’t seem to think bed slats should come with the ‘whole bed package’.

I’ve poured countless cartons of milk down the sink after being drip fed the information on which brands are safe and which could cause illness — and haven’t even been able to indulge in my normal ice-cream pick-me-up.

I couldn’t feel any worse if I actually earned enough to invest in the stock market — unless of course I foolishly wander too far away from a bathroom within an hour after eating just about anything at any time of day.

I share this not just to get my woes off my chest (though I am already feeling remarkably better for it), but because, for all its excitement, advantages and ability to open our minds, living in China can sometimes be just  plain hard.

Of course, I could be back in my homeland kicking myself for not taking the chance to come and live in Shanghai. And despite all my complaints, I’m glad that I’m not.

And yet, there comes a time when finding out some of the elements of our basic sustenance can’t be trusted not to hurt us, we may be inflicting all sorts of damage on our bodies simply by living here, and needing to step back and use the perspective of historical and cultural differences to understand current events and local reaction to it, can test us.

I’ve been going crazy — on top of cranky — trying to work out just what it has been about this past week that has had me so agitated.

And then my partner comes home.

He, by contrast, has been on a high.   Having invested in a set of top brand copy golf clubs for a ridiculously small outlay, he spent a perfect China day last week playing a round in Shanghai’s west.

Oblivious to my seething, he beamingly recounted how thrilled he was to have had a caddy who followed him around like he was Greg Norman.

Not only did she praise his every shot, guide his every put, but at the end of the round she actually cleaned his club heads with a toothbrush and blew the specks of grass from his shoes with a mini leaf-blower.

”How lucky are we to be in China?” he says.

OK, I know he’s right. 

 

*Katrina Beikoff is a Shanghai-based writer and mum of two.  Her column appears fortnightly on shanghai mamas.  

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