Typhoon!

A Typhoon hit off the coast of Guangdong, and subsequently school was closed and classes were cancelled for the day. It reminded me of day I didn’t have to go to my college classes because of Katrina, but less frightening since the word Typhoon still sounds like some storm from a story book. All I could think was “thank God for the cooler weather.” The day was relatively mild—just a little rain off and on with a few gusts of wind. The night before was a bit more frightening as I sat huddled in my fourth floor apartment while the metal doors of the school banged and palm trees lashed the windows.

I spent my day off in another kind of storm. The train station was flooded with people by the time my friend and I arrived there at 11 am. My mission was to buy a train ticket to Guilin, which is near the area I am traveling to for National Day holiday next week. I was also flooded by Chinese characters and confusion. Somehow it did not occur to me or my friend that everything would be in Chinese, and we would have to blindly pick which impossibly long line to wait in and try our luck. So, there we were in this sea of people, Chinese characters, and confusion, and we had to pick one line to stand in out of the twenty possible choices. Naturally, we split up, picked the shortest two lines, and hoped for the best. My friend, Megan, got to her window first, and extrapolated an understanding that “there are no tickets to Guilin.” Of course she wasn’t sure if this meant “there are no tickets to Guilin at this window” or “there are no tickets to Guilin left at this train station.” While struggling to determine this difference with phrase book in hand, the young Chinese woman behind her miraculously spoke English and helped solve the problem. She discovered there were no tickets to Guilin left for the day we wanted to leave, so our next option would be the bus.

Megan relayed this information to me while the helpful Chinese woman tried to buy her ticket. I then realized that we had no idea how to get to the bus station or how to buy a ticket, so I pushed our luck and accosted the helpful Chinese woman as she began to walk away. She agreed to show us to the bus station, and the clouds suddenly lifted and we felt as if this storm would not be so bad. We discovered her English name is Autumn; she is 23 years old; she has worked in Shenzhen for two years (she couldn’t explain to us what she does in English), and she gave us her phone number and email address so we can meet again for her to show us the city. I love helpful Chinese people.

So, a few wrong turns and about 30 minutes later, we finally made it through the maze of the terminal and found the ticket window. After our tickets were purchased, we lavished thank you’s upon our new friend Autumn. She responded simply, “This is my country. I am the host and you are the guest. There is no need to thank me.”

Would something like this ever happen to me in a big city in the U.S.? I am doubtful, and I am doubtful that if a Chinese person were in the United States they would receive the same kind of help. Of course less Americans know Chinese than Chinese people know English, but I think we could all benefit from adopting Autumn’s philosophy.