This morning, I had to go to the little convenience store just outside the side gate of my university. It’s a typical little Mom & Pop place similar to the kind you can sometimes, although rarely now, see in the United States. It’s a relatively dark, narrow space with an open entrance that has a Coke fridge to the right, as you walk in, and a little cooking area for snacks (boiled eggs, kebabs, etc.) on the left. Inside, the shelves, stacked with everything from báijiŭ (Chinese white lightning) to instant noodles to potato chips to beer to Halls mentholated tablets, rise over the two aisles, creating a shadowy, claustrophobic effect and the vague but very real fear that you might send the whole place crashing down if you reach for the wrong roll of toilet paper. Mom is usually making snacks, and Dad is usually lingering near the cash register that sits on the tiny counter near the fridge. Their little boy is also there, probably about two years old. Whenever he sees me, he tries out some of his new vocabulary. Last time, it was “Lăowài!” I’ll attempt to say something witty and clever in reply, but this is not easy. Today, for instance, when he saw me, pointed, and exclaimed “Wàiguórén!” (Foreigner!), I pointed at him and said, “Zhōngguórén!” (Chinese person!) It was good for a polite laugh from his parents and another customer, but that’s about the best that I could do. Such are some of the pitfalls of living in a non-English speaking country while possessing deficient language skills. I am trying to learn some Pŭtōnghuà, and I’m more or less pleased with my progress and attitude, but it is slow going and, after all, daily life does happen on a daily basis. I am pretty good at picking up Chinese numbers, though. As anyone who has spent time (even a few days) in a foreign country will tell you, learning the numbers makes life a whole lot easier. They’re everywhere because cash transactions are everywhere. Not everyone will have a calculator at hand to type out how much something costs, and besides, the whole experience makes you feel like a powerless child: a dose, however small, of self-respect is lost in the process. If I was a tourist, I could laugh it off. But I’m not. And the numbers aren’t so hard to handle, so I learned them. Going to the front to pay for my goods, the boss lady went behind the counter and, asking the boss man for a price-check, tallied everything up in her head. “Shísì kuài wŭ qián.” (¥14.50) I handed over a ten and a five and she put it in the register. She gave me back a five máo coin, which I expected, and the five kuai bill that I’d just handed her, which I didn’t. I was puzzled…I mustn’t have heard her right. I stepped out to the street…I know I heard her right…she gave me too much change. I went back in and realized that I hadn’t yet learned the word for “give”. I wanted to tell her that I’d given her fifteen kuai, not twenty, but all I could tentatively put together was “Nĭ yŏu shíwŭ kuài.” (You have fifteen kuai.) as I pointed at the cash register. She said something as she pointed at the coin she’d given me, which I was still holding with the five kuai. I implicitly understood what she was saying. She thought that I was complaining about being shortchanged-what I was trying to tell her just mustn’t have registered. If you want to argue with a Chinese woman, especially a shopkeeper’s wife, about money, you may as well just save your breath because you’re going to lose every time. It doesn’t matter that you’re trying to give money back-all decisions are final. I took my things, and my unexpected change, and went back into the street. I kept telling myself that I must have heard her wrong. But I know that I heard her right. To me, here and now, that’s much more important than the money.