BEIJING - Wasting time in China can be hard, for every annoying experience in Serviceland is a chance to practice Chinese.
Take Tsinghua's woefully ineffective library. One of the best in China with over four million volumes, the library's English collection would be laughed out of a tiny town in the middle of South Dakota. Tsinghua offers an English major, although I hope that students are not encouraged to practice based on what's on offer.
Despite the collection's small size, I wanted access to some of the only available English books. It took four seperate trips to the library -- one each to acquire a student card, library permission slip, borrowing form and a passport photograph, but I finally got the library card. The library charges a 300 RMB deposit on language students taking out books, presumably so I'm not tempted to swipe the 50-year-old copy of "Crime & Punishment" after I've finished it.
It took me around half an hour to choose two books from the five shelves of English literature. I decided on V.S. Naipual's "In a Free State" and a book by a Nigerian author whose name I did not recognize but had an interesting sleeve. Books in hand, I went to the checkout counter.
"You can't take these out," the woman behind the counter said. "Not with this library card."
She said it matter-of-factly, but this was the first I'd heard of a two-tiered library system.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"English books are very expensive. You can't take them out."
At this, I became quite angry. I'd been waiting to take out books for two weeks. Using new vocbulary from class, I unleashed a torrent of insults on the woman, including "This isn't fair," "This policy is stupid," "I'm very annoyed, not satisifed and still want to take these books out." The woman responded by getting her manager.
Mrs. Lin handled my complaint. She probably held a senior librarian post, and she looked the part, with long black hair with pieces of gray and a conservative, pilly blue sweater.
"Do you understand Chinese?" she said, "Because I don't speak English."
"A little," I said, and then we launched into a discussion of the differences between Chinese and English books. In the past Tsinghua has had problems with students taking foreign books and not returning them. To compensate, they don't allow certain types of cards to take out books. To take out an English book, I'd need to pay a deposit of 1,000 RMB, and an additional 10 RMB a month to use the library.
But the English books I wanted to take out weren't expensive, I said. They had their prices listed on them -- $1.50, $2 -- and hardly required such a large deposit. Besides, with Tsinghua in control of my student record, why would I want to cross the library?
Mrs. Lin nodded her head in agreement, but policy is policy. I couldn't justify keeping that much money at the library, and told her that I wouldn't be needing my library card. She arranged for my money to be returned.
"You can understand Chinese quite well," she said, as a salutation. I looked at my cell phone. My various library arguments took over an hour to resolve, during which I spoke only Chinese. I didn't realize the time passing, Chinese seemed less a skill to practice than a necessary tool in my battle to access literature. I lost that battle, but I didn't walk away empty-handed.
