The adventures in China have begun, and I find myself learning life lessons that only a ‘foreign’ experience can offer.

Yesterday we bought my youngest daughter a bed. I’m not sure if I’d call it a curse, but assembling IKEA furniture has always afforded me opportunities to test my patience and my tolerance towards inanimate objects. After breaking a screw that has left an almost completed bed too assembled with one-way screws to be unassembed and returned, it occured to me that I was missing the slats that the mattress lies upon. Yes, the easy to follow ordering directions did show them as a separate item to be purchased, but I looked at those directions long before we decided on purchasing that specific bed.

So, off I went in search of a taxi to head back to IKEA. It was just after 5pm and there was a light drizzle of rain when I hailed the first of ten, (yes I said 10), taxis. My wife had given me an IKEA bag to show the taxi driver, to help me communicate my intended destination. After the first four taxi drivers denied knowing where I wanted to go, I asked a couple pedestrians for help. They were both kind with their time, but could not understand me. It was after I went back to unsuccessfully hailing cabs that I had my first ‘Im not in Kansas any more’ moment since arriving in China.

Four blocks of walking, three pedestrians and, as mentioned, ten hailed but failed taxis later, I decided to go into a western-looking coffee shop to ask for both coffee, and more importantly, assistance. A waitress and the barista worked together to understand me and armed me with a written note and the knowledge of how to request my destination verbally, (“E-jah-jah-joo” was my phonetic reminder I wrote below the Chinese characters).

Armed with this new information I stepped back into the drizzle and hailed another taxi… And another, and another. Now it occured to me that on my first 10 attempts, the ‘denial’ was not that of misunderstanding, but of willingness to take me to my destination. This realization came to me because the 13th cab driver had stopped, just 25 feet in front of me, for a well-dressed Chinese lady, holding a newspaper or magazine over her head for protection from the rain. I watched her lean her head towards the passenger window and request her destination. The cab driver shook his head ‘no’ and I hailed him as he left the woman at the curb. When I showed him my note, saying “E-jah-jah-joo” his face defined for me what I’d seen, but not recognized, many times before in my quest for a taxi. For the most part, the ‘no’ that I was getting was a choice, rather than a miscommunication of my destination.

It wasn’t me, it was the rain that made my request a challenge. Although I had not tried to hail any already-occupied taxis, I saw this happen a number of times in the hour-or-so that I was out in the light rain… Sometimes with the taxi-hailing person joining the other occupant, and sometimes not. With the rain falling, a seldom-seen occurrence here in Dalian in the summer, a taxi driver can make a lot of money taking passengers on short trips, sometimes picking up additional passengers along the way.  Taking me to IKEA would likely mean a long, and probably passengerless drive back to the hub of the money-making locations.  My trip would equate to a financial loss for the taxi driver.

I’m not sure why I hailed one more taxi, but his denial of service sent me sipping coffee on a quiet walk back ‘home’. During the walk I thought about the contrast in my disposition during the past couple hours. I wanted to scream at the IKEA bed for failing to be less than ideal, but faced with another less than ideal situation, I was willing time-and-again to unsuccessfully hail a taxi in a country where I don’t yet fit in. Perhaps this was because I recognized that it was my own failing that brought about the challenge. Perhaps I might have let persistence cloud my powers of observation, and I could have learned this lesson sooner. I could have also chose to be angry or cast blame on others, but what would that have accomplished?

I got a little wet, I had a nice cup of coffee, and I was given the opportunity to laugh at myself, and at my first misadventure in China. I came here for a journey, about a two-to-three year journey, and I can choose to make a failed trip to IKEA the first of a series of upsetting mishaps, or the first of many lessons placed upon this journey… My disposition is something that I can choose. My choice will make this journey everything I hope it can be, and more!