The Colombians

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We wanted to talk to some people from not-SAS that first night in Shanghai.  We went back into town and took a cab – though I can’t remember for the life of me where we asked them to take us.  In either case ended up on pretty much the brightest and most neon street in Shanghai, which was pretty cool, but we had no interest in shopping really.  I was looking for a Starbucks in particular so I could get internet for like ten minutes.

 

Anyway, we found a Starbucks and saw a group of white people there, and figured we should go talk to them to find out about their travels.  They said they didn’t mind us sitting with them, so we asked where they were from.  All three were from Columbia, although they had lived and studied in other places as well.  One of them had been there for a year and a month or so, and his Mandarin was becoming pretty okay, but the other two had only been there for a month and theirs wasn’t so good.  But they still taught us some words.  They told us how to say “too spicy,” and “too expensive,” as well an equivalent of “Oh crap!” and the conversational agreement (which is, where we say “mmhm, mmhm, mmhm” when listening to someone talk, they just say, “ah, ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah, ah-ah”). 

 

The older girl with them was a lawyer – already out of law school – and currently working with the Columbian government in Shanghai.  I think all three of them were actually, and said they hadn’t really made too many Chinese friends.  They said their job typically consisted of going to factories or workplaces and making sure that the standards of safety and hazard for the government of Columbia were met.  They also said that a lot of Mexicans (the rich ones) lived nearby, and there were some Latin American clubs that they all liked to go to, but they were taking a night off for now.

 

I also tried asking them about growing up in Columbia, but they didn’t really say much.  It’s hard to tell people, “Tell me a story like on The Moth or This American Life!” and not have them think that you’re crazy for expecting it or wanting it in the first place.  Oh well!  They talked about how kids would go to “the farms” (just empty areas where they grew up) to have parties where they could drink or have sex or whatever else they wanted, although they said that they never got nearly as messed up as American kids at bars and in their basements did.  I also asked about the US government dumping herbicides on the coca fields, and if that pissed them off.  They didn’t seem to think it was a big problem, because apparently the south is the only place that grows it and almost exclusively grows it.  I wondered how Leiha from DC would have responded to them.  That was one of the things she cared most about.  I kind of wished she had been there so I could hear what she had to say about it.