This is the third day that I have woken up at 5:30 in the morning. This morning was much more pleasant though, since, unlike yesterday, I didn’t have mosquitoes buzzing in my ear and no one played basketball until after I had woken up. (Apparently the Chinese like their basketball…at ALL hours of the day) The mosquitoes hadn’t left the room this morning—I killed a big juicy one with my gargantuan roll of 卫生纸 aka toilet paper—but last night I doused myself with an excessive amount of bug spray. And it worked! I only have ten mosquito bites now.
I and the other students have pretty much come to the conclusion that we will always be a) sweaty b) overwhelmed and c) confused. During one of the orientation sessions yesterday, we were told that this is probably the first time in our lives that we have ever been illiterate. Now, having had two years of Chinese I can read about half of every sign, but when it comes to the 菜单aka restaurant menu I have pretty much resigned myself to use of emphatic hand gestures and monkey noises. I don’t know if the waitress finds us amusing or annoying, but at least there is one universal language we can all speak—money.
Money is the saving grace here, because everyone understands the language of green. All I need are a few token phrases such as 多少钱？(How much money?) and I’m good to go. I don’t even really need to know that. The cash registers I have encountered so far just beep the total number of yuan at me. All I need to know is simple math.
It’s worth briefly going over the Chinese currency for those who are curious. The money is referred to as RMB (I suppose how we call American currency “dollars”) but the Chinese people refer to it in speech by “kuai” (which we supposed was the Chinese equivalent of “buck”). “Kuai” is more informal I think, but it is how the Chinese refer to it when they are ringing up your total. Yuan is used to count the units of RMB. You would never say “It costs 7 RMB,” instead you would say “It costs 7 yuan.” It’s kind of like how you wouldn’t say “I would like 7 silver,” instead you would say “I would like 7 pounds of silver.” In this analogy, Silver is RMB, and Pounds are Yuan. Easy peasy.
So far I am a big fan of RMB. Each bill is a different size, which I suppose makes it a lot easier for blind people to differentiate (why didn’t we think of that?). Yesterday I got my first Chinese coins too, which was fairly exciting.
My favorite thing about RMB however, is the exchange rate. RMB is currently going for 6.2 yuan for every dollar. (I figure that my stay in China will make me immensely proficient at dividing numbers by six to figure out the cost in dollars.) Lunch one day cost me 15 kuai, and the next day 23 kuai (I sprang for a bottle of Kekoukele aka Coca-Cola.) This amounts roughly to $2.42 and $3.71—for a full lunch.
Man, I love China.
I’m off to see the Great Wall today, so I’ll let you know how that goes. Lunch is provided yet again, so I’m going to fully enjoy saving every bit of money until I have to start buying gifts for Chinese and American friends (The cost of exchanging dollars for RMB is not exactly cheap either.) Catch you on the flip side. Don’t forget to subscribe!
~Chopstick Chick
