Counterfeit Fifties and Tears

Life in Shanghai is going great. Many have asked
and yes, it often smells...real bad...like a
rotten horror. The stench comes in waves and
causes a physical reaction much like being
slapped. Other than that, life's not so surreal.
Except for everyone is Chinese and speaks
Mandarin slang and everything is written in
Chinese. Imagine that in China! Things that
should be simple, like buying and installing a
printer for my computer, are not, because I live
in China, and the installation CD is in Chinese.
Culture shock has only led me to cry once, and it
was less out of desperation than instinct and
necessity. A couple days after moving into my new
apartment I took a taxi home from IKEA. Yes IKEA.
There's no escaping self-assemble Scandinavian
furniture, even in China. However, all the
products are also written in Chinese, so again
something simple like buying a sheet set for a
double size bed is complicated. (Also bed Sizes
are defined in units of inches or centimeters or
meters for all I know) Back to the taxi home. So,
I handed the driver a fifty to pay for the ride
and he held it up to a tiny blue light under his
rear view mirror, then looked back at me and
started pointing and shouting at the fifty. I
didn't need to know the language to understand
that the fifty was counterfeit. Well that's all
the money I had and since I don't speak mandarin
slang, I couldn't say "that's all I have or take
me to the bank." The more I tried to smile,
point, and shrug my shoulders the angrier the
driver became. Seeing that the sweet stupid
innocent foreigner routine was not working I
decided crying was my out. And it was. He stopped
shouting and pointed to the door.