Chinese drive-thru restaurants

I almost didn't notice it until someone pointed it out to me in my English class, China doesn't have drive-thru windows at restaurants. I almost forgot about those. I never liked or used drive-thru windows much in the states anyway, so I hardly miss them. I did hear that one KFC in Beijing opened a location with a drive-thru recently. Is that what I should call modernization? I have found that Chinese really like Chinese food. In general, I've discovered they prefer it to any just about any other country's food. But I don't think that is the sole reason why there are so few international restaurants in Beijing. I think it's rather that there aren't enough Chinese or foreigners who know how to prepare authentic international cuisine and have the resources and can take the risk to open up such a restaurant.

Its funny how I consider myself a foreigner. Chinese people always call me one, so I guess I have assumed I am one. Officially foreigners are called Wai-guo-ren which literally means outside-country-people. However, Chinese often call us Lao-wai which is like Old (or Dear) Foreigner. Lao means Old or Dear. Like you might call your old uncle Wang, Lao Wang. So Lao can have that dear-old meaning attached to it. But sometimes, if used in a negative tone, it is not such a friendly term.

When they compare Chinese people to western people, then they say Xi-fang-ren, or West-direction-people. Maybe that is the same as Americans calling them Orientals or Eastern people.

I got into an argument with a shop owner the other night. He gave me too much change back and swiped the bill right out of my hand before I had a chance to count it. That ticked me off and I gave him a dirty look, but walked away. Then I heard him talk to other customers, saying something about Lao-wai, and I got ticked off and went back and got into his face. That did not do me any good but ruin the relationship I had with that store owner. I could not explain to him that I did not appreciate that he swiped the money out of my hand even if he had given me back too much change.

But in fairness, people are pretty nice to me. But sometimes I feel its nice in a strange way. People treat me differently because as soon as they see me they seem to have a number of thoughts run through their head, like a check-list.

Oh, he's a westerner. He is different from us. He is a guest in our country. Treat him nicely.

Oh well. I fortunately found a nice restaurant nearby that serves salads, spaghetti and hand made pizza. I have been going there recently to get my "fix" of western style food. They are are a little bit more expensive, but worth it for my stomach and peace of mind. As much as I have gotten used to living abroad, I still feel like I have my hand on the railing, so to speak, and afraid to let myself go completely. I need to see, eat, hear things that are from the US sometimes. I don't feel comfortable completely detaching myself from what I like about the US, even for a short trip.

Amazingly, I met a guy from the US who lives in the same building as I do. His name is Matt and is from Los Angeles. He is a musician, a saxophonist actually. He seems to be a bit of a wanderer himself. He has been to Australia for a year, north-east China for a while. He also happened to be very interested in starting a business in China after in got here. I found a Saxophone manufacturer, who makes super high quality saxophones for one tenth of the price they cost in the US. He has gone to the factory, checked the quality and workmanship, found a partner experienced in China and is building his website. He enlisted my help for some of the website elements. We have had lunch together for the past three days in a row. One good thing is we laugh a lot. Laugh and jike about things around us and the cultural differences and some things about the states. That is all fun and I think provides me with peace of mind. I do feel bad though that I have lived in China for almost a year and a half, but I don't have any Chinese person that I could really say is a friend. I think for friendship to blossom, its important for that person to understand you. With the cultural divide between east and west, that is not easy.

Finally, I have spent this evening partially trying to watch a DVD, but it doesn't work in my computer and reading about Cascading Style Sheets, a computer language for rendering web pages. I regret not instilling good organization habits into my character during my life. When you are trying to run a business, things easily start to get chaotic because your organization is sloppy.