Two Men & A Baby

As regular readers know, I've been in rural China the last two and a half months helping to look after Danny while Joanna (accompanied by Phil) has been back in the States pushing eight pound Jeremiah through her birth canal (ouch!) The arrangement is basically that I take care of Danny, and he takes care of their apartment and gets it ready for their arrival.

As a result of some technicalities, the arrangement got a little shuffled up this week. Part of taking care of Danny is translating for him on a need-to-know basis (when he needs to know, I need to translate). (Truth be told, his Chinese is actually pretty impressive, and the times when he wants me to interpret are relatively few and far between.) As part of helping P & J, Danny went to the supermarket to buy diapers and baby wipes in preparation for the arrival of the three Yateses; I accompanied him to help to iron out particulars. So in essence, I ended up indirectly helping to set up for the baby. (Why this important or how it's relevant to anything I'm not sure, but I'm typed those sentences, and I decided I do not wish to delete them.)

Anyway, diapers haven't really made a big here in the PRC yet (unlike the Carpenters, and "I'm a Big, Big Girl in a Big, Big World"—both of which are inexplicably huge among the Chinese). Instead, most parents opt for pants with a big slit right between the cheeks. Whenever their babies have to defecate and/or urinate, they simply squat right in the middle of the street and unleash the contents of their bowels and/or bladders upon the public. It's unsanitary, but not necessarily any more unsanitary than most aspects of daily life here. (This, I think, is a fairly sad, but accurate, commentary on the state of the public sanitation of the Middle Kingdom.) I even saw a toddler peeing right in the middle of the airport once—in line at the ticket counter, probably the highest trafficked area! Imagine how many unsuspecting, unobservant shoes marched through that yellow puddle of filth, how many wheels of luggage rolled right on through, leaving a trail of urine in their wake.

This relative unpopularity of diapers means that most grocery stores have a pretty limited supply of these baby essentials. When Danny and I went to the first store to stock up, we cleared out the entire inventory of size M diapers. We literally purchased every single package of mediums available (which I think amounted to approximately 150 diapers). Not only did we clear out the entire shelf, but Danny felt that we needed to ask the manager to restock more diapers and ask when the shipment would arrive.

Imagine for a moment what this would look like in a typical American supermarket. Two men walk in, pillage the store of its entire diaper inventory, then request that an additional shipment be sent in ASAP to satisfy the waste management needs of what would look to be an entire orphanage of babies plagued by a fairly severe case of dysentery. Danny, being the easily embarrassed type that he is, felt rather uncomfortable receiving the attention of unoccupied employees as we waited for a worker to check the supply room for extra diapers and inquire about placing a special order to restock. (I, in contrast, am not so easily discomposed, and didn't mind the attention.)

In retrospect, I can understand that in rural China, it's unusual for anyone to purchase western style diapers, let alone two men who are not actually in possession of an infant. What did those workers think? Were we two foreign, gay men who had adopted a baby? Were we two kinky gay men who have a medium-sized diaper fetish? It's difficult for me to conjure up explanations that don't involve our being gay, kinky, or both. I truly doubt any of them guessed we are two straight friends who are watching over the apartment of an American couple who returned to the States to bear their child, and that we were simply procuring as many diapers as possible in anticipation of their return. (Sigh. Oh well: Ockham's razor.)

As we waited, all the idle employees (which totalled around seven or eight) gathered around us and inspected the items in our cart. Some picked the diapers up, examined the packages, then returned them. Some of the fuwuyuan were quite chatty, and asked things like "how do you say this in English?" while picking up boxes of powdered milk. There seemed to be a general, tacit understanding we were abberant enough to draw attention, but tolerant enough to invite questions and chit-chat.

I considered explaining the situation to them, but after a cost-benefit analysis, I decided that all the translating wouldn't have been worth the strain it could place on my already teeming and over-worked brain.

Danny recounted his version of our story^* to his mom, and she emailed him back. I found her reply charming enough to be reprinted. [Bold and underlining mine.]


From: Elsie L.
Date: Mar 26, 2007 2:10 PM
Subject: Re: funny story
To: Danny L.

I just receive your e-mail that sent 14 minutes ago, what a funny story. Remember the movie 3 men and a baby. Jackie Chan had a similar movie, this one he and another man kept the baby for a while, they had to learn how to take care of this baby, I think he cop[ied] here and there. I remember friends had the same story. Joey and Chanler left the baby on the bus. Jackie Chan is a copycat. When you go to HK, try to get 2 months, if they don't grant it, then ask for 1 month. Really ha[ve] to go to sleep!
Mom


*Hi Mom, here is a funny story to tell you. Joanna had told me to start stocking up diapers and babywipes at the supermarket so she'll have a lot when she arrives. So, JT and I went to the market one day looking for a lot of diapers.

It was very interesting going shopping for baby items. As you can imagine, you don't see two guys buying a bunch of diapers and babywipes very often...especially in ~. Soon, there were a group of female workers that gathered around us and I heard some talking and saying, "Why are the two men buying diapers?" and "why are they buying so much?" We took all Medium size diapers and put them in our cart. The female workers kept on picking up the things in our cart to see what we were buying. Some were giggling and some were whispering to themselves. I wondered if they thought JT and I had a baby together =O. And then one worker kept on telling me that Medium is too big and insist that I buy small. I kept on telling her that my friend wants Medium...and finally they stopped telling me to buy small. Then, when we were walking home with a big bag full of diapers, the people on the street were looking at us funny and thinking why are we buying so many diapers.

I talked to Phil today on the phone briefly and I told him that I bought a camera and asked him to bring it for me to ~. I think I've decided to go to Hong Kong in April to get my cavity taken care of and get a regular visa. Then, I will change my visa to a business visa with them later.

Danny