XINING, China -- One unfortunate legacy of China's decades under a Communist government is service. It's terrible.
This afternoon Rebecca and I took a local bus town August One Avenue to Xining's central square. On this, the fourth day of the May Holiday, the square and the surrounding shops were swarming with people, and we eventually moved from the large public space to smaller spaces. Each time I would pop into a store, I would be mobbed by workers. "I'm just looking," doesn't help, attractive young women would continue to point out bright yellow shirts, push 28" blue jeans in my face and pick out clothes that I wouldn't and couldn't wear.
I quickly gave up and left, but I know from experience in Beijing if I actually found something I wanted to try on, it would take several minutes to locate an associate and there would inevitably be problems on the way to the fitting room. Service in China usually goes from cloying to nonexistent.
Thankfully I have found a model worker in the service industries. I'm not sure of her name, but she works days at the Xining Long Distance Bus Station. The last time I saw her, she was wearing a dark green uniform and was wearing lip gloss.
We met in the bus station's parking lot. I was frantic, having just unpacked at a guesthouse across the street to find my camera missing. I ran back to the parking lot, finding the bus from Tongren gone. In its place was a taxi shark, who moments earlier asked me if I wanted to go straight from a three hour bus ride through mountains to a five hour ride in the back of his cab to Qinghai Lake. Frantic, I asked him where my bus went.
"Qinghai Lake?" he said. I resisted the very strong temptation to smack this diminutive man in the back of his face, instead scanning the parking lot for someone who might help. That's where I saw the woman, standing a couple feet away looking official.
"I just came on the bus from Tongren," I said to her. "We got here at 1 p.m. I left a very important thing on the bus."
She sprung into action, not pausing to laugh, point, stare or do any of the other things that frequently happen when people realize they are talking with a six-foot redhead. She led the way back into the station, where she unsuccessfully tried to find the licence plate number of my bus. When that failed, we went to the information booth, where she called the Tongren bus station and got the information. Within two minutes we were back in the parking lot, looking for a blue vehicle with the correct digits.
It was locked. The woman looked around, trying to find the driver. He wasn't there, but she had a plan. This bus would go back to Tongren at nine tomorrow morning. At eight she would search the bus, and give me a call if she found my camera.
I returned to the guesthouse feeling strangely satisfied. Even though my camera wasn't lost, I felt that I had an advocate in the station, a woman who would do anything possible to find it. As I entered the branch of the guesthouse, I saw Rebecca waiting in the hallway.
Dangling from her left wrist was my camera. It was in her backpack.
