The Hardware Store

Shortly after waking up today, I started thinking of the best way to spend my three day weekend. (China marks today, May 1, International Labor Day, as a national holiday) Looking about my apartment, I was discontented with the more or less bare walls and decided to take action. With visions of grandeur, I went off to the hardware store and the intention to embark upon an art project that would drastically change the decor of my apartment.

While the art project itself is still in the envisioning stage, I knew that to get what I wanted I would need a big canvas made of wire screen. This project will, you see, involve of papier mache.

Thus, I marched though the doorway and down aisles of porcelain toilets and various other decorative fixtures to the "raw materials" department. With rough dimensions of the project in mind, I first set about converting from standard measurements to metric. At this point, I can convert from Farenheit to Celcius well, as well as miles to kilometers and pounds to kilograms. However, other units of distance, such as inches to centimeters or feet to meters, is still a bit beyond what I can do. In the end, I simply ended up spreading my arms and asking "How many meters is this? This is how wide it should be." After a short discourse, what I wanted was clear and it became time to bargain. Not really knowing the price of wood, screen, nails, and staples, etc., I doubt I fared well. I think in the end, I probably netted free delivery. However, not having any tools of my own, my position to negotiate the cost of having it all put together was rather weak.

None of this is very noteworthy. Outside of the bargaining, it had been up to this point a rather typical American hardware store experience. Then, the assembly began and suddenly I was in China again.

People who have not been to China expect it to be a crowded, noisy place. And, of course, it is. Here in China, we foreigners also enjoy groaning about the annoying Chinese cultural nuance of basically ignoring strangers- unless, of course, that stranger is doing pretty much anything. Naturally, as assemblage of this canvas frame began, what seemed to be half of the store crowded around us to wonder outloud "What is the laowai (a slang term for foreigner) doing?" And so there I was, instructing the store worker as per my specifications while a peanut gallery of smoking Chinese men proffered their own advice and made jokes about how the store worker should make me pay even more.

While this all sounds annoying, it was actually rather fun. The hardware store felt kind of like a circus. As tired as I am of being so regularly the focus of the center ring, the atmosphere was jovial enough that I could laugh with them throughout the afternoon and the experience lacked almost all of the frustration that typically comes with trying to get anything done efficiently here in China. Next time, however, I will bring a bargaining partner.