Surprise Adoption

Summer is officially over! (Unless you work at a Chinese University, but it's not like I'm bitter...) School has begun, and now my weekly excursions to adventurous places, like the grocery store, are mostly regulated to the weekends. Who has energy after standing on your feet all day educating a bunch of youths? While the grocery store may not seem like that big of a trip, you never know what will happen when you walk out the door of your apartment into the swarming mass that is China.

Last Saturday, I was returning from a visit with a friend. Our late lunch at the mall turned into lunch + shopping + walking around...so we officially parted ways around 7pm. Because of how far this mall was from my abode, I was able to take the subway (a work in progress) halfway home and then planned on calling a car. Once I emerged from the subway tunnel, I quickly booked a private car using an app (Didi...China's response to Uber) and waited for my driver.

After about 10 minutes of being stuck in traffic, my driver turned up. This guy began my trip by telling me, quite enthusiastically, that he had never had a foreigner in his car before. I was the first... This opener led to a series of topics ranging from whether his commemorative Obama watch, which he paid quite a bit for, was real (in his eyes, my American status made me an expert on the genuineness of presidential memorabilia) followed by his ardent declarations of love for the IPhone 8 (which he kept asking me if he could buy).

He spoke nearly no English and my Chinese is fairly poor, so our skills were limiting our topics of conversation. The longer we talked, the more we both began to rely heavily on our phones to translate questions and answers. Using my phone was not a problem for me, being a passenger, but my new taxi friend was driving...in the middle of the road for the majority of our journey. He even pulled the car over twice so he could type with two hands.

When we arrived at my apartment, he gave me his wechat info (the social media app of China that does ALL THE THINGS) and told me that if I ever needed a ride I could call him. Kind of weird? Nice? Fortunate? Well, the strangeness doesn't stop there.

The next day, my new friend messaged me all day. Literally. All. Day. The day started with him adding me to a group chat with 17 of his friends, who then proceeded to invite me to eat grapes with them. They seemed nice, but I couldn't join their grape-fest. I had church and was busy for most of the day.

Throughout the day, he continued to message me. How long had I been in China? Did I buy my clothes here? How much money do I spend on rent? Could I teach a 1-year old English?

After asking how old I was, he then told me that in my culture I should have been married by now. He is only 30, but he is married with a wife and a baby. He then sent me his wedding pictures and told me that he was like my older brother, my "gege" 哥哥 (said like "guh guh"). Weird? A bit. When I asked him what I should call him later that day, he told me I could just call him "older brother". In Asia, titles like this are fairly common. It's not like walking up to your brother in America and calling them "older/younger brother" constantly instead of his name. But, it was a surprise to me that suddenly I had a sibling my parents never warned me about.

Later, he called me 3 times to ask me questions. Each time he would try to talk slowly, ask his question, and then end the question with "yes or no?". Every time I had to remind him to type out the message, I mean, only if he wanted me to really understand what he was saying.

Before bed, he tried to video call me twice. I sent him a message that I was getting ready to go to bed, but he just replied that his wife wanted to meet me. So, he called me again and introduced me to not only his wife but also his son, mom, and dad. And of course...the communication was kind of a mess.
He and his wife then invited me to do many things with them. Shopping for clothes, eating food, celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival...all of these things and more. They wanted to show their "little sister" all the Chinese things.

Side note: I doubt I would tolerate this level of...eagerness from a person I just met in America, but he and his wife seem genuinely nice and very excited to have a foreign friend. At this point it kind of feels like forced adoption, but I'm just going to go with it (until I feel unsafe, super weirded-out, or harassed...but, I'm hoping these things don't come to pass).

With this new Chinese family of mine, I'm expecting 3 things: opportunities to share the gospel, time to practice my (poor) Chinese, and the discovery of all the cheap places to shop (you know, where the locals get stuff done). These are kind of like my ambitions...these are my friendship goals!

Today, Thursday evening, he has arranged to pick me up so we can have dinner with his friend who is an English professor. Will it be awkward? Probably. Will this be a good story? You betcha. But, you can count on whatever happens tonight to be typed up semi-coherently in the next few days and shared with you all. Hope you enjoy my awkward encounter, and I can assure you there will be many more to come.