You should be careful bargaining with street vendors, or you could lose an arm, or worse, your novel. On my fourth day on campus, when I was still running a little stupid from jet lag, hungry and hot in the middle of the day, I happened to spot some merchants selling a kind of sticky walnut snack that I love. They wheel these huge blocks of pressed nut/honey/apricot something into the neighborhood and cut you a chunk with big cleavers. The blocks are about eight inches high and two by three feet in size. The men who sell this food seem to belong to one of China’s many ethnic minorities who work in Beijing but do not enjoy full resident status.
Two years ago I had got overcharged by one of these guys, and I remembered Julie being annoyed with me because she could tell from a distance that I was being taken. It wasn’t the money that bothered her so much as watching her husband appear vulnerable. At the time, I didn’t mind spending eight dollars for a snack that lasted several days, especially when I considered the price of Belly Timber Bars in the States.
So I kind of knew these guys were opportunistic, but as I approached the vendor cart on this blazing September afternoon, I was too stupid to look in my wallet and see what kind of bills I had. I asked for “xiao,” small, and the cross-eyed man sliced off a 1 x 8 inch piece. He was swarthy. He had thick forearms and a jagged scar on his thumb knuckle. His eyes were pretty messed up. He put the nut cake on his tin scale and said a number. I was still at the point where numbers didn’t register with me all that much. I then understood “40 kuai” and it didn’t seem like a lot, but because I was tired and nervous, I hadn’t yet made the conversion to seven dollars. Later I would realize that this was slightly less than I paid two years ago for a bigger piece, meaning that forty-something must be their bi zi price (bi zi meaning “big nose,” roughly translated as “gringo”). I had a few fresh 100 yuan bills in my wallet and two tens. I took out the 100 and must have hesitated. This seemed like a bad time to be giving out (relatively) big bills.
The thing you should know about 100 yuan bills is that they seem really valuable. The notes are big and pink, usually crisp, with a flattering portrait of Mao gazing into space and the number “100” repeated seven times. “100” always looks big. Maybe I can’t divorce myself from the value of a Ben Franklin note, but I always find it hard to part with a 100 yuan bill, even as I know they’re worth sixteen dollars.
A Han Chinese guy in a white shirt stopped on his mo-ped and shouted to me: “Hey friend, hey friend, don’t take it! It’s a trick. Don’t take it. It’s a trick.”
“What? How’s it a trick?”
“Don’t buy it. They put it on the scale. They tell you the wrong price and they try to blackmail you.”
By now the vendor had wrapped the walnut cake into a plastic bag. With my book bag slung over my shoulder and my wallet still out, I walked over to the man on the mo-ped. He was a short pudgy man with an honest face, acne scars, and silver glasses. He would have looked jolly if not for the situation. He said, “Trust me. I work here. I work for the university. Don’t worry, we’re safe. They don’t understand English. Don’t do it.”
Now the vendor came at me yelling, thrusting the plastic bag at me, grabbing my arm hard, grabbing my black bag. His voice sounded like all the other sellers I’d heard barking in the street, a distinctly male Chinese tenor that is strong on the vowels, long and yodeling. I had an Apple laptop in my bag along with Julie’s iPhone. I realize that on the playing field of sympathy, a college instructor with multiple Apple products is no match for a man who trundles a metal tricycle for a living, but it could also be fairly said that this guy was a dick. Cross-eyed or not, I had decided not to buy his product, so tough shit. That’s business. Maybe in his culture it is a great insult to agree on a price, to say “I’ll take it” and back out of the deal. Maybe after he’s cut a chunk off the block, he can’t sell that piece. If so, he’d have a right to be angry. He could have bargained with me, but I didn’t get the sense that we were going to practice our “I” statements in the street. The fucker had my bag. I had the strap. My novel was on that laptop.
Fine, so maybe this guy sleeps on cardboard at night and ye readers ought to root for him and against the man with the leisure time and education to write a novel. He was stronger than me. His grip on my arm made it obvious he had put his muscles to good use through hard labor. I was aware of the wetness in his mouth, the crooked eyes that looked mad. He did not have his cleaver, but he seemed angry enough to use it. I seemed to have the feeling—though it may only be in retrospect—that this guy was desperate enough to do something violent.
I was in China alone. I was in my own panicky bubble and unaware of anyone but my foggy self, the two other men, and my wife and daughter across the ocean. It must be said that Beijing feels flat dangerous sometimes. Cars will run your ass over. Moterbikes come flying the wrong way down bicycle paths at night, with no lights on. You read stories about huge panes of glass falling out of skyscrapers, about toxic milk, about highway ramps that collapse under the weight massive trucks illegally overloaded with freight. It isn’t the stories in the China Daily that get to you—an elevator at a construction site fell 100 meters, killing 19 workers—but the things you can see: exposed electrical wires, the sedan’s tires rolling inches from your toes, the hot cooking grease flying out of a doorway. When your wife and child are thousands of miles away, the last thing you want to do is get miserably hurt.
As I tugged free of the man and ran off in my hipster suede shoes, down the ramp and into the underpass, I kept looking back to make sure the man wasn’t following me. Students had been watching. I felt stupid and embarrassed and unreasonably afraid. Nothing was going to happen. I was a jerk. He was a jerk. Julie knew these guys were bad news and now twice I hadn’t listened to her.
Now it seems silly that I felt such fear for my safety, and clearly it would have been better to forfeit sixteen bucks than to get in a street fight. I only now recognize my physiological reaction as a feeling from childhood: Eddie Gunter with his broken beer bottle, wanting to kick my ass. A sick feeling in the gut. You reach a certain point in life where “street fight” gets filed in the “never” category along with “beer bong”—the way a woman past menopause checks “baby” off her list—but you can be wrong about this. If we are ignorant in such a way, that ignorance knows no bounds. Either we’re unaware of our actual safety (the guy was only trying to scare us) or we’re unaware of the danger (a mentally ill man with a cleaver could do anything).
Which is it?
The body doesn’t know. It only runs away into the stream of International Business students with their pink sneakers and chunky glasses and bookish smiles—runs away on adrenaline and shame, looking back, watching for the guy.
Two years ago I had got overcharged by one of these guys, and I remembered Julie being annoyed with me because she could tell from a distance that I was being taken. It wasn’t the money that bothered her so much as watching her husband appear vulnerable. At the time, I didn’t mind spending eight dollars for a snack that lasted several days, especially when I considered the price of Belly Timber Bars in the States.
So I kind of knew these guys were opportunistic, but as I approached the vendor cart on this blazing September afternoon, I was too stupid to look in my wallet and see what kind of bills I had. I asked for “xiao,” small, and the cross-eyed man sliced off a 1 x 8 inch piece. He was swarthy. He had thick forearms and a jagged scar on his thumb knuckle. His eyes were pretty messed up. He put the nut cake on his tin scale and said a number. I was still at the point where numbers didn’t register with me all that much. I then understood “40 kuai” and it didn’t seem like a lot, but because I was tired and nervous, I hadn’t yet made the conversion to seven dollars. Later I would realize that this was slightly less than I paid two years ago for a bigger piece, meaning that forty-something must be their bi zi price (bi zi meaning “big nose,” roughly translated as “gringo”). I had a few fresh 100 yuan bills in my wallet and two tens. I took out the 100 and must have hesitated. This seemed like a bad time to be giving out (relatively) big bills.
The thing you should know about 100 yuan bills is that they seem really valuable. The notes are big and pink, usually crisp, with a flattering portrait of Mao gazing into space and the number “100” repeated seven times. “100” always looks big. Maybe I can’t divorce myself from the value of a Ben Franklin note, but I always find it hard to part with a 100 yuan bill, even as I know they’re worth sixteen dollars.
A Han Chinese guy in a white shirt stopped on his mo-ped and shouted to me: “Hey friend, hey friend, don’t take it! It’s a trick. Don’t take it. It’s a trick.”
“What? How’s it a trick?”
“Don’t buy it. They put it on the scale. They tell you the wrong price and they try to blackmail you.”
By now the vendor had wrapped the walnut cake into a plastic bag. With my book bag slung over my shoulder and my wallet still out, I walked over to the man on the mo-ped. He was a short pudgy man with an honest face, acne scars, and silver glasses. He would have looked jolly if not for the situation. He said, “Trust me. I work here. I work for the university. Don’t worry, we’re safe. They don’t understand English. Don’t do it.”
Now the vendor came at me yelling, thrusting the plastic bag at me, grabbing my arm hard, grabbing my black bag. His voice sounded like all the other sellers I’d heard barking in the street, a distinctly male Chinese tenor that is strong on the vowels, long and yodeling. I had an Apple laptop in my bag along with Julie’s iPhone. I realize that on the playing field of sympathy, a college instructor with multiple Apple products is no match for a man who trundles a metal tricycle for a living, but it could also be fairly said that this guy was a dick. Cross-eyed or not, I had decided not to buy his product, so tough shit. That’s business. Maybe in his culture it is a great insult to agree on a price, to say “I’ll take it” and back out of the deal. Maybe after he’s cut a chunk off the block, he can’t sell that piece. If so, he’d have a right to be angry. He could have bargained with me, but I didn’t get the sense that we were going to practice our “I” statements in the street. The fucker had my bag. I had the strap. My novel was on that laptop.
Fine, so maybe this guy sleeps on cardboard at night and ye readers ought to root for him and against the man with the leisure time and education to write a novel. He was stronger than me. His grip on my arm made it obvious he had put his muscles to good use through hard labor. I was aware of the wetness in his mouth, the crooked eyes that looked mad. He did not have his cleaver, but he seemed angry enough to use it. I seemed to have the feeling—though it may only be in retrospect—that this guy was desperate enough to do something violent.
I was in China alone. I was in my own panicky bubble and unaware of anyone but my foggy self, the two other men, and my wife and daughter across the ocean. It must be said that Beijing feels flat dangerous sometimes. Cars will run your ass over. Moterbikes come flying the wrong way down bicycle paths at night, with no lights on. You read stories about huge panes of glass falling out of skyscrapers, about toxic milk, about highway ramps that collapse under the weight massive trucks illegally overloaded with freight. It isn’t the stories in the China Daily that get to you—an elevator at a construction site fell 100 meters, killing 19 workers—but the things you can see: exposed electrical wires, the sedan’s tires rolling inches from your toes, the hot cooking grease flying out of a doorway. When your wife and child are thousands of miles away, the last thing you want to do is get miserably hurt.
As I tugged free of the man and ran off in my hipster suede shoes, down the ramp and into the underpass, I kept looking back to make sure the man wasn’t following me. Students had been watching. I felt stupid and embarrassed and unreasonably afraid. Nothing was going to happen. I was a jerk. He was a jerk. Julie knew these guys were bad news and now twice I hadn’t listened to her.
Now it seems silly that I felt such fear for my safety, and clearly it would have been better to forfeit sixteen bucks than to get in a street fight. I only now recognize my physiological reaction as a feeling from childhood: Eddie Gunter with his broken beer bottle, wanting to kick my ass. A sick feeling in the gut. You reach a certain point in life where “street fight” gets filed in the “never” category along with “beer bong”—the way a woman past menopause checks “baby” off her list—but you can be wrong about this. If we are ignorant in such a way, that ignorance knows no bounds. Either we’re unaware of our actual safety (the guy was only trying to scare us) or we’re unaware of the danger (a mentally ill man with a cleaver could do anything).
Which is it?
The body doesn’t know. It only runs away into the stream of International Business students with their pink sneakers and chunky glasses and bookish smiles—runs away on adrenaline and shame, looking back, watching for the guy.
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