lucky

heh, to counter the bitter supermarket cultural misunderstandings, here's another supermarket episode that's a bit sweeter:

On a recent evening trip to the store across the street I picked out a bunch of bananas, and took it over to our smiley fruit weigher friend. (You bring your bag of fruits and veggies to the respective weigh station and have it priced and sealed up.) She printed the sticker, clamped the bag and then showed it to the darling old man standing next to me. All I could understand of his commentary was "pretty" and he looked up at me, said something, and I had to reply with a hopeless smile, "听不懂," [loosely translated: I know you're talking to me but I have no clue what you're saying!] which is my automatic response to almost any Mandarin tossed my way.

I heard the fruit lady say something about "three" but I definitely had more than three bananas. I just shrugged apologies for being in their country and not speaking their lengua, took the bananas and left them smiling and chuckling.

It wasn't until I got back to the apartment and unpacked everything that I realized the bananas cost 8.88RMB, and the lady was showing the man the price tag with the three eights. In China people pay extra money for phone numbers or license plates with 8s because they're "auspicious" (their favorite word). The Mandarin for "eight" is "bā" which sounds like the word for "prosperity", "fā." So they believe eights are blessings of fortune. How lucky were my bananas! The Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony began at 8:08pm on the eighth day of the eighth month, in the year 2008.

I'm bummed I didn't try a little harder to figure out the circumstances at the fruit stand. But I guess it's called a language barrier for a reason... Too bad I couldn't have hurdled this one with a display of gratitude at my great fortune. They must have thought I was a terrible waste of 8s!