Getting Paid

I had just sat down in the local ice cream shop to enjoy a treat and answer any question that the group I had just taken on a culture walk might have, when the guy who works at the ice cream parlor interrupted me.  “There is someone waiting outside to talk to you” he said.  I looked towards the window where customers can place orders as they walk by on the street and sure enough a Uyghur women stood there craning her head to see me.

I excused myself and step out to see what she needed.  She smiled warmly and greeted me by name, which sadly I could do in return.  I didn’t even recognize her, and yet it was obvious that I was suppose to know.  She noticed my confusion and graciously said “You don’t remember me, do you?  You taught my daughter English a few years ago.”  That didn’t narrow it down to much, but I faked a smile of understanding and said “Oh right, right”

She continued “I never paid you for the last few weeks of teaching and it has bothered me ever since, so how much do I owe you?”  She had already pulled out her wallet and was ruffling through the bills. 

I still had no memory of this women, or her daughter, or being owed any money.  I stalled.  “How is your daughter?  How old is she now a days?” Her answers to my question slowly started to draw the memory of who she was to mind.  I remember teacher for this family… I had only said ‘yes’ as a favor to another friend.  After one or two months of teaching I had cancelled on them with the lame excuse that my classes and work load were just getting too busy to keep  teaching.  

“So, how much?” she asked again.

“Don’t worry about it”  I had always felt kind of bad for the way I had dropped their daughters class so suddenly.  “That was a long time ago you don’t need to pay me”

“No,” she said very insistently.  “It has bugged me for four years.  I must pay what I owe.  I lost my phone and didn’t have your phone number or else I would have called you a long time ago.  I was so glad when I saw you out walking this afternoon.  I tried to call you name, but you didn’t hear me.  So I followed you for the last few blocks and chased you down to this ice cream shop.”

“Oh let me give you my number now,”  In truth I was still stalling over the whole money issue.  I felt weird that this woman I barely remembered had her wallet open under my nose and was asking me how much I wanted.  I recited my number and she immediately called it back so that I could save her number.  But I didn’t need to the second my phone ranger this woman’s name popped up on the screen.  I still had her number saved in my phone from 4 years ago.  I try to clean out unknown number ever year or so, since my phone log quickly gets filled up with the names and numbers of random people I meet on the street once and never hear from again.  But despite regular discards of unused numbers, this women’s name was still saved in speed dial.  She laughed when she saw it and said “Oh, you still have my number.  You should have just called me and asked for your money”

“I had totally forgotten about it.  Please don’t feel like you have to pay me now”

“No,”  she insisted, “It was like 250 ($40)”

As she handed me the ‘outstanding debt’ we chatted a little more and realized that we were practically neighbors living only a couple of blocks away.  Getting paid lead to making plans to be in touch and hang out some time. 

It’s the Principle of the Thing

At 3:00 a.m. on what was meant to be an all night sleeper bus, pulled into the station. The driver obnoxiously flicked on the light and yelled for everyone to disembark. My fellow travel companions and I stumbled off the bus in a bit of a daze. The cold air of a December morning did a lot to bring us out of our slumber. Parked all around the gate of the bus station were waiting taxi cabs. As the group counted to make sure we had all our bags and belongings, I went over to one of the drivers and told him where we were headed. We couldn't all fit in one so I suggested my roommate take the first car and head out with some of the girls.

As soon as I saw their cab start to drive down the road in the right direction I began to find a second car that could take us. The driver knew the location, but insisted that I pay him 10 kuai. Now granted 10 kuai is really only equal to less than a $1.50, but I have been to this city many times, and I know for a fact that you can drive anywhere in town for under 5 kuai. It was outrageous… the whole lot of drivers were ganging up of the weary travelers and over charging them. Well not me I wouldn’t put up with it.

I grabbed my bags, yelled over my shoulder for the others to follow and we started walking down the street. Sure it was 3 a.m., sure it was pitch black out, sure the temperature was below freezing, and sure I had no idea how long we would have to walk before another taxi would come along, but there was no way I was letting a gaggle of taxi drivers take advantage of me and steal 75 cents. It is the principle of the thing. I know the right price, he knows the right price, I know he knows the right price and he knows I know, and yet we still ended up walking in the cold.

We got to the corner and looked across the street, there standing at the side of the road was my roommate and those who had driven off in the first car with her. After going less than a block, her driver had also refused to use the meter. He too demanded the same rip off price of double what it should be. And so she had boldly opened her door and declared they were done. We saw them and waved. I knew she was just as upset about the lack of justice as I was. 50 cents is not a lot of money, but it was the fact they weren’t playing by the rules.

We only had to wait about a minute before a couple of empty taxis drove by, with drivers that were so desperate for any fare in the middle of the night that they were more than willing to use the meter .

Pick Pocket on the Bus

What would you do if you saw the guy next to you on the bus have things stolen right out of his pocket? Do you turn a blind eye? Scream? Slap the hand of the thief? Make a scene? Play Robinhood and try to steal the money back when he is not looking, so that you can be the hero and give it to the first guy?

This is a question all of us expats have had to ask ourselves at one time or another. My friend uses his imposing six foot stature to step into the middle of the proceeding. He will actually become a wall between the crook and his target. While glaring down at the robber with such a menacing stare he will try to connive them of their sinfully ways and call them to repeat all in one look.

Considering most of the pickpockets carry knives in their pockets I try to be carefully doing anything that will draw attention to them or make them angry. My favorite trick is to stomp on the foot of the person who is in the midst of having their belongings taken. Sometimes as they squirm around in pain, from a good foot tramping, they move in such a way as to make their pocket unreachable to the eager hand.

Climb Every Mountian

After last weeks run in with the the dance performance manager, my friends and I realized we had a few days free. We were scheduled to help him from Tuesday until Friday of last week. Since no one was expecting us we deiced to head to the mountains for a bit of a vacation.
The city I live in is surrounded on almost every side by mountains, which you can see on beautiful clear days from almost anywhere. It only costs about a dollar to hop on a bus and have them take you out to a point from which you can start hiking. Sadly these mountains are turning more and more into a tourist trap all the time. There are big hotels and restaurants, and even gate fees to pay to hike in certain parts.

We were able to talk with a Kazak family a little about their horses (Kazaks love horses, they are a vital part of the culture) and in the end the wife told us the round about path we could walk to avoid paying the entrance fee.
We hiked for about three hours before stopping for a picnic lunch ( huh, I might not be able to dance, but I can participate in some physical activities). As we hiked on we noticed that the rain was moving in and decided it was time that we find ourselves a place to sleep for the night. All through the mountains are Kazak yurts, where you can make a deal with the owner for dinner and a nights accommodation. But you have to be willing to bargain hard.

I don't speak Kazak ( it is linguistically close to Uyghur kind of like Spanish and Italian are fairly similar), I know a few simple rules of how the languages are different so we muddled our way through a conversation. I did pull out all the stops to try to get us a good price. I repeated the fact that I was a student over and over, I even showed off my skinny wrists to prove how little I eat. In the end I got the price down to $4CAD a night per person. I thought this included our dinner, but I was wrong, she ended up charging us an extra $5 for our food ( not to mention the $2 she charged us for coal to heat the fire and keep the yurt warm at night). I felt like we were getting riped off.

The outside of a Kazak yurt (traditional home)

The inside of the yurt (I am the one on the left with my head covered trying to get some sleep)

A cute little Kazak baby, dressed really warm against the summer chill ( except for its little bum sticking out of the split pants).

But since returning home my teacher asked how much we spent on our night in the mountains. I have learned over the years to turn the question back on them. If I answer first with how much I spent, my local friends will always tell me I paid way too much. But sometimes if I can get them to estimate the price first they will name something higher than I paid and I end up proving to them that foreigners can do alright at the bargaining game. My teacher thought a night in a yurt plus dinner for three people should run about 300-350 of the local currency. So you can imagine how surprised she was to learn that I had only paid 110 (for a grand total of $6CAD per person).

As you can see it was a beautiful and restful place to get away (and yes mom, these are all file photos from three years ago. We didn't have a camera on us to capture the beauty this time, but I have in the past.)

Fast Money

In Uyghur Culture there is a simple way to get cash fast… throw a party. They call it a chai it is more like a money borrowing system with your neighbours and friends. A group of ten to fifteen people take turns throwing a chai every month. Today I had the honour of joining said party and learned a lot about the culture and how money and friendship interact here.

The party I went to today was made up of a group of fifteen ladies; they are all retired and from the same hometown. Some of them have been friends since middle school. These ladies know everything about each other, good and bad. Trust me when I say that don’t let anyone forget any of it. There was so much gossip spinning around me at such a fast pace I was actually glad I couldn’t understand it all.

We went to a very fancy restaurant where we were given our own private room off to the back. The room had one large table, a TV and DVD player and a small dance floor. The meal itself was very extravagant, taking us more than three hours to eat it all. In order to join the Chai each one of the ladies was expected to bring 150 kuai with them (about 20 dollars, which trust me is a lot considering I can normally go out and eat at a restaurant for only 1 dollar). You can do the math 15 ladies X 150 kuai = 2,250kuai (or about 280 dollars). As we were eating the ladies made sure to ask the hostess how much the meal cost, and then compared the price with how much they had spent the last time they hosted the chai. It seemed that on average the hostess spent about 400-500 kuai to throw a chai. This means they make at least 1,700 kuai. That is a lot of money here. But as I said early a chai is just a way to borrow money from your friends and neighbours, because next month they will be invited by someone else in the group and expected to pay 150 again to join the party. In one day they can make some fast money and then spend the next year paying the loan off to their neighbours. And trust me they keep track, if one person missed one chai, the hostess of that chai is not expected to pay the other person for attending theirs.

The Uyghur people have a saying that says “good friends keep count”. This is true at chai, or any other time you go out to eat. I remember in college when a group of people would go out to eat, the bill would come and we would spend twenty minutes trying to break it apart and figure out how much each person owes, we would add in the tax and count down to the penny. But Uyghurs hardly ever split the bill evenly. One person is always treating. Fights break out over who will give the money, but even as everyone is fighting they all know whose turn it is. Part of being good friends is remembering who paid last time and making sure to pay them back next time with an equally valuable meal. It gets complicated after a while if you have a lot of friends.