After Pre-Orientation, Merlot and Zombie take us on a field trip. We are finally going to get phones.
My pre-game research into China was sporadic and mostly what scholars call “useless.” Mostly, but not completely: I did learn that the way to get a phone in China, with little fuss and a lot of flexibility, is to bring your own. The reason is simple: I’m not Chinese. Figuring out the turns and intricacies of a phone contract in America is hard enough. China is a spewing fountain of indistinct electronic devices, so quality is difficult to assess; and also, contracts are a culturally recent import. It’s just fundamentally risky to purchase a phone in Shanghai, from a Chinese vendor, unless you really know what you’re doing. I don’t, so I instead purchased a phone from an American company that makes their phones in China. (The earth is weird.)
There are two things I learn from this experience: The first is that us American shoppers can be really fucking stupid, when the mood strikes, as the national cohort. This cohort decided that the way to purchase a phone, in early 2015, was to go to a large chain store, sign your life away, and walk out with a very expensive piece of hardware that was made in a Chinese sweatshop for the cost of a single crouton at Whole Foods (so, like $20). The gimmicks were rearranged in years prior to 2015, so you didn’t have to get a two-year contract; but you did essentially rent your phone and live at the mercy of your service provider. This was particularly true if the phone you purchased was an Apple product, because Apple wouldn’t (and won’t) let you even open the fucking device without recourse to shoddy, unusual tools purchased in the guts of the internet.
But my imminent departure to China made me aware of the way much of the rest of the world handled mobile service plans: They got cheap phones that were completely empty, then they bought small circuits to insert into these phones, hopping between plans and rates and networks at need by switching that circuit. Poor Americans, who have to be clever, and immigrant Americans, who aren’t part of the suburban cultural consensus, had apparently been doing this shit for years. And us children of the ‘burbs mocked them, because what brand is your phone, even? It was (and remains) the equivalent of deriding someone for purchasing a cheap, no-nonsense waterproof backpack while you lurch around in designer gear – your bag has long since ceased to function as a bag.
Granted, if you do set forth into the unlocked phone wilds, and you are looking to save money, you can find yourself with a phone that ceases to function as a phone. After a little research, I found a company called Blu, run by a colorful Israeli-Brazilian guy out of Miami, that sold most of its wares in South America. (It’s “Bold Like Us;” shit you not.) If you say, “Damn, that sounds too shady for me,” you have a higher cellphone-based risk tolerance than I do. But you’re also not wrong: At the end of 2016, Blu was busted for selling their phones with Chinese spyware attached, which stored all the text messages from its users’ phones on a server in Shanghai (state surveillance or advertising AI-training were the likely culprits). Since I didn’t know about this until I had already used a Blu phone for a year, while living in Shanghai, it worked out to an irony of some density I can’t parse.
But it’s not 2016: It’s August ’15, and it’s my fourth day in China, and I’m armed with a Blu phone that has the battery life of a Toyota Tundra with the lights left on overnight. I just need the SIM card to latch onto Chinese mobile networks.
A pack of us assemble outside the main gate. Merlot and Zombie ask for volunteers who know how to direct Shanghainese cabs – or are willing to try – and we divide into platoons of four. Merlot starts flagging cabs, and the herd thins; two by two. Our compound is walled and gated. The street is hazy and crowded with vehicles. Vehicles; not just automobiles: Scooters – some electric; some puking up gas – buzz on and off the sidewalks. Older Chinese, brushed by handlebars and mirrors, walk on in the posture I’ve already come to expect: head down; hands clasped behind the back; hunched.
“It’s like we’re doctors of the edge of a refugee camp,” says Tom Collins. He doesn’t seem entirely upset about this. I feel like I ought to be offended by the colonial scent of that quip, because Tom Collins is not exactly joking. But I look up and down the street, and it’s not exactly funny, either.
Some of these metaphorical doctors are not looking to heal: A tall Canadia teacher with a goofy smile ducks into a shop and emerges with a large beer in each hand. “No open container laws!” he announces proudly.
The cabs take us into a large shopping district called Xujiahui (roughly: shoo jyah HWAY). Xujiahui is a set of factory-sized malls surrounding a five-way intersection. Billboards scream in all directions. Western, Korean, and Japanese brands mingle.
Our cabs don’t stop at this intersection: they brake just before the five highways meet. And when we are deployed, Merlot and Zombie don’t lead us to the towering malls decked with signs. They lead us to a blocky glass building with the tint peeling off its panes, nestled behind a knockoff KFC whose mascot is some very determined Bruce Lee identity theft.
We enter through the typical wall of yellowed, plastic strips. Inside, it’s a lot like the base layer of Chinese Wal-Mart: a court of shops; a miniature mall unto itself. But this mall is denser, and this mall sells no NewbaliunLP sneakers. This mall sells only electronics: phones, cables, adapters, power supplies, monitors, MP3 players, and computers. These goods are more or less arranged intentionally on some shelves in some stalls, and splattered gorily across other shelves in other stalls. I see a lot of Apple logos, and I don’t want to bow to stereotype but I’m pretty confident these aren’t licensed.
We’re not here for any of that hardware, however: we’re here for Chinese SIM cards.
At the back of the first floor is a bright orange storefront. It screams “CHINA UNICOM.” I don’t know why this storefront is orange, and I never will: China Unicom’s corporate logo is red, and China Mobile’s is green and glue. I learn these colors later, because for non-Chinese users, those are the only two state-sponsored cellular providers you can use. China Telecom, the runt of the litter, doesn’t play well with any phone for communicatory device outside of China. So it’s Unicom or Mobile; we’re getting Unicom because Zombie and Merlot decided so.
(An aside: China Mobile has about 70% of the market in China, making CM the largest mobile service company on Earth. You would think that maybe T-Mobile would try to get in on the 0.9 billion-user Chinese mobile market, and they might if they were allowed. China has issued three mobile service operating licenses, and three only; to three Chinese companies, only. The government itself created a new mobile communications protocol, used by at least China Mobile, that was designed to evade license fees paid on Western patents. Reportedly, the Chinese are trying to institute this protocol in the developing African and Asian countries that China is attempting to more or less purchase. The Chinese like to rail against Western aggression, but their chief complain of the West writ large is that the West has all this shit the Chinese deserve, because they are Chinese. The Chinese are pretty sure they deserve Tibet and like minimum half the ocean.)
When our pack of white, dumb faces arrives at the orange China Unicom storefront, bedlam comes with us. The manager of the shop hops up and, in the same glitchy motion, berates his associates: they must prepare for the flood. He chats with Merlot in Mandarin. His manner is subservient, and this is not appealing. The sales reps behind the long counter are less subservient: they scream at each other and us. English-language menus of mobile service plans are thrust before us. The sales reps bellow like they’re amidships on the Titanic.
“Noise is good,” Tom Collins nods. This is something Zombie told us a few hours ago: noise is a sign of happiness in China; of good activity. I didn’t believe her, but here we are — a week’s business, marching in formation into the store — and the employees are ripping out their own vocal cords as we the whites stand in a dumb, befuddled clump. Noise might signify goodness, but this noise is not good, for same the reason the sound a mule makes during castration is not good.
The goodness that the bad noise signifies is cash money. But before we can deliver said monies to China Unicom, we have to figure out what we are purchasing. And this is not easy.
The plans provided do not disply any kind of linear progression. They list data amounts, transfer speeds, and call or text limits; but the amounts don’t rise uniformly as the plans rise in price. There are also bizarre sub-categories of service that don’t seem to articulate meaningful division; almost like groups of Legos piled together by color or approximate size, but not actually connected to each other. Form is not manifested. I eventually revert to the strategy that got me a contract with the Chinese government: I close my eyes and sign.
Well, I try to sign, anyway: first I have to get my receipt for [I hope I’m reading this right] GB of data and [does this make sense?] monthly minutes printed by the crew manning the long desk. And to get to the desk, I have to wait for my turn. To assign turns, the staff give us tickets, like we’re ordering lunchmeat at the deli. Having given us these tickets, they promptly ignore them; and point at whoever’s around the front of our cluster of ignorance. The entire process is tightly regimented in a way that has nothing to do with organization. I sincerely hope this isn’t a representative sample of life in the employ of the People’s Republic.
Merlot tires of the morass and starts ordering us himself: “C2? C2? Okay; that desk. C3? Over there.” I eventually am directed to a seat. To get my chosen plan approved (it’s the one with the cellular data), I have to give my passport to the long desk. The sales reps take it and copy it several times after scanning it. They frantically pass the copies between themselves. I think maybe one ends up in a drawer. I point a lot of times at the plan I think I want. This makes things much worse: The women at the desk yell at me and then each other; all point at the place I pointed at. I regret something, but I’m not sure what.
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I manage to communicate my needs: A SIM card, using the plan Merlot pointed out, for my unlocked phone. All I want to know is how to pay for it.
This is not easy to determine. It’s not easy to determine because Merlot is not my personal translator, and has to attend to other stupid white people floundering like beached whales on the shores of Chinese industry. It’s not easy because when I point to the selection I’ve made, the lady at the counter turns and yells at someone else. And it’s not easy because the English translation on the pricing menu is not easy.
I reread what I can and get precious seconds with Merlot and the very nearly English-speaking manager, and work it out to this: I’m not under contract, but I’m kind of under contract: I will pay China Unicom the cost of the SIM card and my first month’s service charge. I will also reduce the overall amount I will pay over the course of the year by paying three months’ service fees up front. However, that amount of service fee, paid up front, will be spread over 12 months. But not evenly across those months.
Got it? Neither do I. I sign some papers and receive my credit card and passport and a little chip. The chip costs me some hundreds of dollars, which is either a really good deal for months of mobile data or a terrible deal for basically nothing. I stick the chip into the back of my Blu. Bold like us, indeed.
It took me over an hour to get to this point, and I’m sort of middle of the line. After about another hour, we leave the screaming orange box of terror and head outside. The pollution is bad for just about anywhere in the western hemisphere, but not terrible for Shanghai. Or maybe I’m already adjusting. I allow myself a deep, sooty breath.
I hold down the main button and watch the graphics dance across the screen filling my palm. A little icon in the top right corner tells me I’m getting reception. I’m back online.
To celebrate our new freedom – “new freedom” here meaning, “continual enslavement to a small electronic rectangle that holds our sadness and petty entertainments” – Tom Collins and I decide to eat out. We join up with two of the teachers from Pudong, and with a lanky history teacher from Canada. Canadian Club’s accent is not weak – he says “eh?” unironically several times within the first fifteen minutes I know him. The two other teachers seem to have a taste for China: Jaeger is tall, and though not sick his voice croaks like he’s suffering strep throat. His smaller shadow is Mad Dog 20/20, who has unusually large blue eyes and looks kind of like a gecko. They walk like they own the streets, shouting opinions about China and the Chinese that the Chinese, who surround us, either don’t understand, don’t hear, or have heard too many times before. (These opinions are not positive.) Jaeger and Mad Dog have the unhurried chemistry of close friends who know where the body is buried.
When I say MD 20/20 and Jaeger are from Pudong, I don’t mean it in the same way that Canadian Club is from Canada. Shanghai is split into two pieces; one on each side of the Huangpu River. Puxi is on the western side; Pudong the east. International K-12 has a campus on each side, and splits its Western teachers between the campuses. The main campus – where I now live – is in Puxi. I note this because the Pudong campus currently only serves younger students. Jaeger and Mad Dog are going to be teaching the youth. Among other things, the youth are probably going to learn what a hangover smells like.
We catch the subway back to the school, by which I mean we catch the subway to a mile from school, then walk it in. It appears I’ll be taking a lot of taxis for the next year. We buy Harbins from an anonymous storefront and drink as we walk. This helps. I have a suspicion I’ll be doing that a lot for the next year, too.
“This is so much better than my last year,” Canadian Club tells me.
“Really?” I’m skeptical. We’ve walked most of our mile, and all I’ve seen are fading, smudged lights and rectangular housing compounds. (Copy, paste.)
“Oh yeah,” he nods. “I was up north last year; outside of Jinan.” (I nod, like a person who knows where stuff in China is.) “The pollution was horrible. I would cough up black goo after a run. And there wasn’t really anything to do up there.” He reflects for a moment. “It wasn’t a very good year.”
We wander over to Baise Lu and pick a shop nearly at random. It’s called Soup Place. (Listen, I haven’t learned Chinese in the last four days.)
“Oh, right on,” enthuses Jaeger. “This is that shit!”
“You ever done one of these before?” asks Mad Dog, unblinking. I’m pretty sure his fingers are sticky, to better clutch trees.
“No,” I admit. “How do you do it?”
The thing confusing me is a wall of small refrigerators, filled with raw ingredients. There are dry blocks of ramen. There are skewers of pink, gristly meat – and skewers of brown, dripping meat; and skewers of hot dogs. (A lot of skewers.) There are green leaves I don’t recognize from American supermarkets. There are strange vegetables. To the left of these refrigerators, there are red baskets. To the side of these lie tongs; crusted with indistinct residue.
“Okay, you pick what you want,” Mad Dog explains.
“I’m going to fuck with this stick meat!” Jaeger announces, plucking a skewer from its perch with dirty tongs and tossing it into his red basket.
“Hmmm,” Tom Collins squints. “I might could try some of the greens.”
Once again, China asks me to do something I don’t think anyone should do, on the grounds that germs have already been discovered: I take the least-crusty tongs I see, and forage in the under-cooled wilds for some meat and greens.
Following the lead of MD and Jaeger, I present my offering on the altar of the cash register. “Ni hao,” I mumble.
“Hnnuuugh, ah!” The man behind the desk grunts. I’m told there are a lot of Chinese dialects; Shanghainese seems to be about 17% growling. “La de?” He asks.
“Uh…” I try.
“‘La’ is spicy!” Jaeger explains, already walking to the table.
“How do I tell him a little?”
“Yidian!” he barks. (It’s kind of like “EE Deanne,” but the “A” is halfway to a soft “E” sound and there’s just the faintest taste of the “Y” in the first syllable.)
“Neewrrrgh,” nods the man behind the counter. “Yidian la de!”
“Yidian la de” means, for your pussy American tongue, “Spicy as fuck.” My mouth is effectively numb after a few sips, and when the soup cools it still registers as hot to the parts of my tongue that can still acknowledge heat.
But I’m getting ahead of myself: the food at Soup Place is just that: spicy soup. They take your basket of gunk and toss it into a steaming broth. After it cooks through – sorry; I’m kidding: after the guy on broth duty is bored – they scoop it all into a bowl and serve it to you.
The place is a one-story building with a high roof, which in China means, “This is a two-story building.” We climb petite stairs that effectively comprise a ladder. Dainty tables line a linoleum attic. An extremely loud air conditioner rattles in the corner, but does not cool the room (this air is not conditioned). We sweat at the tables, sipping beer from plastic cups. The cups are set, like hats, on the lip of enormous, 600ml bottles of Suntory beer. The label is yellow, and “beer” is here a strong word: it tastes like water sprinkled lightly with Budweiser.
The soup arrives and we slurp and sweat, hunched over the table in a room none of us can stand in, upright. Canadian Club has to bend at the waist to walk around, so he doesn’t. When he wants more beer, he yells “FUWUYUAN!” at a decibel that cracks pottery. Up until this moment, he seemed kind of relaxed to me. Now I’m starting to wonder if Jaeger and MD might be the relaxed ones; the ones with the breezy nihilism tailored to expat life.
In time, we clamber down the stairs and into the street.
“I think I’m heading in,” says Tom Collins.
“Aw, we’re gonna fuck around up here,” Jaeger gestures up the street.
He disappears with Mad Dog down Baise Lu, but only after we exchange numbers – I can do that now, so this day works out to something like success. Tomorrow, the schedule tells me, is the start of real, actual orientation. I can’t say if I have been adequately pre-oriented or not, but I am happy to have a working mobile device and a full stomach. My stomach is less happy, and grumbles and snorts. I think it’s learning Shanghainese.