You thought I forgot about you? 不得噢！没办法 is in full effect!

I walked outside for my jog this morning and the massive intersection in front of my building was more packed than expected. Cars paid no mind to the boundaries that make an intersection move efficiently so there was what appeared to be a well developed and harmonious bumper to bumper jam for as far as my sleepy eyes could see. 100 hundred or so of us waited for the light to change and then, made our way randomly, naturally between the bumpers of cars. I was one of the first in a pack to head toward a 3-4 ft space between two cars, when the driver started to nudge forward and choke off our lane. I stopped, dirty look in hand, and threw it into her window. Others yelled and I made my way to the back of her car. She backed up, of course, hitting an old man and briefly pinning his bike beneath her rear bumper. Others yelled. “莫得办法”, she replied.

I had almost reached my destination when, waiting at the crosswalk, I was ran over by a dude on a big electric bicycle. He came from behind, road up the back of my leg, and kept going, as if he had simply hit a speed bump. No look, no words, not even mei banfa.

So there I am. Nothing new. The round table, drinking baijiu, new acquaintances. Older, very friendly guys. Warm and funny. Huge smiles all around. After a toast, the top guy refills my glass. Blurry eyed, he says, “We Chinese are friendly people”. It’s a statement, but a question. He’s seeking approval. I get this on almost a daily basis. Usually it’s asking me to approve of some adjective Chinese describe themselves with - usually “friendly”, “kind”, or “smart”. I’m drunk but even if I wasn’t I’d have to agree. Yes, Chinese are super friendly (kind and smart as well). I say yes and he announces to the rest of the table, “Did you hear that? He said Chinese people are friendly”. Everyone is happy and we down another shot.

Masturbatory thinking and classic mei banfa.

My point lay not in the adjective, but in the process. Even “westerners” know that it’s not good manner to praise yourself. That is, unless someone else is trying to degrade you. And even then it might be best to keep your mouth shut and let your record, or at least others speak for you.

It’s been a while, but that doesn’t mean “mei banfa” experiences aren’t happening all around me. To the contrary, they are so common that patterns have started revealing themselves. It’s chaos theory over here. I’ll save the insights for another time and give you this overdo dose.

No matter how many degrees, how much money in your account, multinational your company, or big your Benz, Chinese people, all of them - your co-workers, business partners, friends, people on the streets and in the clubs - see you only as one thing: A resource*, and more specifically, an English teacher. It doesn’t matter if you are European and come from a country whose official language is not English.

I promise you, when I go back to the States, any Chinese I see in a suit - proper business people - I’m gonna approach them and say, “oh, have you thought of opening a restaurant? I’d eat lunch there”.

It’s so insulting, but so natural here. It is…mei banfa.

*expanded discussion to come when I have time

In a lounge

6 clocks, all different time zones

No mention of corresponding locations

mei banfa

At a “nice” (my friend’s assertion) restaurant.

Spoken in Chinese

Me: The bathroom?
Waitress: There ain’t one.
Me: huh? The bathroom.
Waitress: There ain’t one. You gotta go outside, up the stairs and around. There’s a public toilet.
Me: {looking around for any sign of a bathroom} Impossible. No bathroom?
Waitress: {smiling} mei banfa.
Me: {mumbling, resigned to fate of holding it} mei banfa.

The format (i.e. characters written left to write) of modern Chinese writing in newspapers and on most of the web is different from the older format that saw characters written/read top to bottom beginning on the far right side. Older writing also lacked any punctuation like commas, semi-colons, or periods. At the afore-blogged restaurant, sliding silk screen dividers/doors separated dining rooms. On the screens were old Chinese poems printed in beautiful calligraphy. To my surprise, separating some of the characters were the weirdest things ever - punctuation marks. I felt so awkward looking at the poems. It was ugly (难看, literally difficult to look at). It threw everything off and made me feel like whoever printed it thought their audience wasn’t going to be sophisticated enough to understand the nuance in the poem. Why?

mei banfa

Why pay thousands of dollars for a well designed, well placed advertisement, but not a few hundred for a good translator to tell you it’s a “Limited Liability Company”?

[Company name redacted]房产有限责任公司 does not translate to

“[Company name redacted] Has Some Responsibility Real Estate Company”.

mei banfa

Roughly translated as “It can’t be helped” or “Nothing we can do about it”, mei banfa (每办法) literally means “No method”. If you live in China, you’ll hear it often, and will see it, or I should say experience it even more frequently. If you take the philosophical route to all you see and do here, you will undoubtedly finish with that which you started - nothing. No method.

-拼音王子 (the pinyin prince)

I was at a dinner last year. We were all red faced from too much to drink (nothing new) and a new acquaintance made it a point to put me on the spot (nothing new). Somehow managing to herd the attention of the other 15 or so people, he begins by telling me that he already knows (nothing new) I don’t know much about Chinese culture and history. But he’s not mad or even disappointed. As the self-appointed Minister of Culture, he was there to help me sort it all out. He asks what he can help me understand. Of course, I could care less about dynasties and revolutions. I paused, inhaled the second hand smoke of “Pride” cigs, and asked why, with so many fucking mosquitoes, aren’t there any screens on the windows.

mei banfa

Why are we asked if we’d like clean (sterilized) dishes for a charge of 1元 per set versus “other dishes” for free? Aren’t clean dishes a human right, or at least an industry standard?

mei banfa

What is that “Under maintenance. Out of service” sign doing outside the elevator I just rode down?

mei banfa

Why is 回锅肉 2元 more than 土豆回锅肉 when 土豆回锅肉 has less meat (potatoes substituted)?

mei banfa