12/11/13

Guangzhou Diary X

Wanna know the one thing pretty much every restaurant in China has on their menu?  From fast food places to coffee houses to sit down restaurants, it’s Mei You (pronounced May Yo).  What is it, you ask?  It means “We don’t have it.”  Maybe my 2nd or 3rd day in Guangzhou, I was strolling around the neighborhood by my hotel, and decided to grab dinner at a Kung Fu –China’s #1 ‘native’ fast food place, based in Guangzhou (their “mascot” is a very unsubtle Bruce Lee-type image, tho they don’t have permission to use it and thus it is not “officially” Bruce Lee).  ANYWAY, they were advertising what looked like a Kung Pao chicken type dish at a reasonable price (15 yuan – or about $2.50) on the door and in the restaurant so I asked for it.  The cashier promptly said Mei You and waved her hand dismissively to help me understand.  I was still surprised – how could they not have something so prominently advertised when she was offering, instead, a variety of other dishes that seemed to have some/all of the ingredients in this particular dish they didn’t have?  In any case, I was so disappointed, and so “set up” to have what I hoped would be like Kung Pao chicken, I went and ate somewhere else.

Maybe a week later, I was in another part of town, on another day of the week, and at a different time, and came across another Kung Fu – still advertising the possibly Kung Pao chickenesque dish all over the restaurant.  When I tried to order it, though, I got another mei you.  Enraged, I left again without ordering.  Fast forward another couple of weeks and I’m settled in my new apartment, which of course conveniently has a Kung Fu right around the corner.  That is still prominently advertising the same dish.  And still giving me the mei you when I tried to order it a third time.  This time, I did order another sort of combo meal so I could at least see if I liked their food since it was so close to me.  Turns out I don’t.  Ha!  The main dish was okay, rather bland, but their soup was nasty.  And I’m so pissed/over their ridiculous inability to have a dish they continue to advertise so prominently, I’ve just given up on ever eating there again.

But, as I say, it’s not just the Kung Fus that stupidly don’t plan/arrange to ensure they have the ingredients/whatever to serve stuff prominently advertised in their establishment.  I went to a restaurant nearby with Bex and Nicky one night that gave me a mei you when I tried to order a particular chicken dish on their menu; the Maan Coffee across the street from our Center has NEVER had the particular smoothie I’ve wanted, prominently advertised on their menu, though I’ve tried to get it three times now, spread apart over the course of a month (another time, I got a mei you when trying to order a certain flatbread they have displayed in their showcase menu); even the Burger King near my apartment has “mei you’d” me out of their new “Chinese style” chicken nuggets.  And so on and so on and so on.  All I can say is: GHET-TO!

NEXT: So I’ve had a few encounters with the local medical system by now and, honestly, it’s no worse (although not necessarily any better) than the system in the U.S.  I went for an eye exam to monitor my glaucoma and eye pressure and luckily there is a clinic near my Center that takes our insurance and has English speaking staff.  I had to use a translator with the opthamologist (who only comes to this clinic once a month) and he told me that while things are “okay,” I might be better served going to a hospital out in Panyu (i.e., the sticks of Guangzhou) that has better medical equipment for eye stuff.  I had a bit of a row with them upon leaving when they wanted me to pay the whole bill after saying my insurance told them it wasn’t covered.  Even though I had the money on me, I told them I didn’t so they were forced to get on the phone with my insurance, and once *I* talked to them, they were very polite and confirmed, yes, I only needed to pay my 10% co-pay – which ended up being a little over $10 for the exam and tests.

My one visit to the dentist was even better – no co-pay, a VERY nice office (again, not too very far from my center – actually, in between my center and my apt.), and they had the current “teeth cleaning technology” that uses the high pressure water to blast the shit off your teeth, rather than scraping it with those horrid little sharp hook thingys.  Hell, my last dentist in San Francisco didn’t even have that yet.

Finally, I went to an even nearer small clinic a few weeks ago when I was suffering from “pollution sore throat,” and got a prescription to clear out my lungs, as well as 3 “inhaler” treatments of a sort of saline solution to unblock my head of the crap I’d been breathing in.  Very effective, and ZERO co-pay for all of that.  So, on the whole, thinking about it, my experience has been pretty much equal to that of health care in the U.S. and at a much lower cost to me out-of-pocket.  Big surprise.

As for local remedies, they’re effective, too – but at a cost.  I got some throat lozenges in a little shop on our way to Hong Kong one day as I had a pretty sore throat.  While they worked very well, they also stank to high heaven.  The locals couldn’t even tell me what the ingredient is that’s in it/makes it stink, but even they find it “odorific.”  Poor Bex had gotten some herself and everyone around us for the next few days hated on us when we used them.  There would be this sudden head movement, a sniff, and then a “My gawd! What is that horrible smell?”  But, again, WAY more effective than any throat lozenges I ever had in the states.

Speaking of Bex, I’ve learned thanks to her that the British are just as arrogant as the Chinese, the Americans, the French, the Russians, etc.  She is SO easy to bait about the English language, about British imperialism & history, etc., and gets SO pissed/huffy when you dare to suggest any of their culture, language, way of doing things is outdated/silly/whatever.  I mean, you should have heard her go on and on and on lecturing/haranguing me about the “true” nature of England’s coal history when I used the never-heard-by-her idiom, “carry coals to Newcastle.”  She completely missed the point about the idiom (but don't tell HER that) and acted like *I* was the asshole who made it up and didn’t listen to her “enthralling” lecture about how Durham or some such place actually provided Newcastle’s coal and built the Titanic or some such rot when all I was doing was using a cute phrase, of British origin, to talk about how useless it was to try and educate the Chinese about how uncivilized they are!  But listening to her, you would have thought that, in my “American ignorance,” *I* made up the idiom that originated over 400 years ago. In England!

I mean, bless her heart, I love Bex to death, but talking to her sometimes reminds me of when I would talk with some of the Russians and they’d go on and on about how THEY were the ones who really won WWII, dammit, and the U.S. is just full of arrogant, stupid, lazy assholes blah blah blah (if I had a nickel for every time Bex used the phrase “American asshole”!) It’s quite amusing on the one hand, and kind of cute/amazing on the other considering that, honestly, the British are SO “passé” anymore.  Sorry, Bex honey, but it’s true. Although, to be fair, it’s hard to think who really “rules the world” right now in terms of cultural and/or political and/or economic impact.  I suppose, on the whole, it’s still the U.S., but the violence and otherwise down-the-drain-dysfunction of its political system makes it seem like a pyrrhic leadership, at best.  And from what I’ve seen & read & experienced of China so far, they hardly seem poised to be true world leaders themselves. Again, SO uncivilized!  Maybe now it’s just “regional” leaders – Germany in Europe, China (India?) in Asia, and who knows in those still-suffering-from-Western-imperialism southern hemisphere continents.

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