Meeting Friends Can Pay

Beijing - My speaking teacher dismissed class last Friday with an unusual assignment. He wanted each student to meet two new Chinese friends and one foreign friend. His gave us a short list of questions to ask, including name, age, hometown and profession and said the data would be collected on Monday.

Groans echoed through the classroom. Students don't like additional work five minutes before the week's final bell.

"When you come to China, of course you want to meet Chinese people," our teacher said, and dismissed the class.

My first friend I met at a bar. Wang Winxin is 27, a computer programmer in central Beijing who lives out here in the city's northwest. He hates Zhang Yimou movies and most recent Chinese historical dramas, preferring to watch Tony Jaa action movies from Thailand. I saved his phone number in my address book and wrote down the rest of the information the next morning.

Saturday and Sunday passed, but I made no new friends. I passed thousands of possibilities on the streets of Beijing, but not once asked the necessary questions. "How much is this," slips easily out of my mouth; "What's your profession," less so.

After dinner on Sunday I became desperate. I remembered a couple additional instructions issued by my teacher two days earlier. "Don't meet taxi drivers. Don't meet fuyuans." He meant that the class should try to meet other students, not service workers. But I was low on options; I went downstairs to see the fuyuans.

A fuyuan (服员) is a general category of customer service worker. In my life here, they're the two dozen or so people who clean my room every day, guard the building against theft (not very well - where's my bike??), and constantly converse with the building's 100 or so residents.

Working downstairs on Sunday I found two ladies and a man, each dressed in crisp uniforms, a tan and red pant suit for the women, a dark navy jacket and slacks for the man. The man appeared to be in charge, as he sat confidently behind the desk while the women played cards in front. I approached the desk and soon found myself in conversation with Li Ke (李刻), 23, a native of Beijing. He is an only child, currently single and residing in on-campus service housing.

I asked Li Ke if he had any hobbies. He responded in unfamiliar Chinese words. We fumbled around a little, trying to establish meaning until Li Ke switched to English. "Collect money," he said. His coin collection included American, British, Italian, Australian pieces, and others from more exotic places including the Faroe Islands, Denmark and Iraq. This collection came from friends, Li Ke said.

Then I had an idea. "Wait a second," I said, and hopped on the elevator up to my room. I grabbed a few roubles from my desk. I have dozens of these rouble coins, they continue to fall out of strange corners of my luggage. I went downstairs and gave Li Ke one, two and five rouble coins. He looked thrilled.

The next day Li Ke called me over coming back from a class. "I have a little gift for you," he said, and pulled a small envelope with two bills inside. They were two multicolored bills from Afghanistan. One was 5,000 Afghanis, the other 10,000 Afghanis.

Back in my room, I looked up the current value of 15,000 Afghanis out of curosity. According to XE.com, the current mid-market trading rate is $306.21.

But before I booked a vacation to Afghanistan, I went to eBay where I discovered these multicolored notes were issued by the Taliban and are no longer legal currency and fairly common. Current asking price: $1.50.

Oh well. I finished my homework on time and made a new friend in the process, and my life's a little richer thanks to that.