The tale of two lunches

When NZ walked in the door (four hours later than he had told me to expect him) this afternoon, the look on his face was priceless.

I of course, had been chomping at the bit to share with him what happened to us today... but I knew by the look on his face I just had to hear his story first.

Me: " Wow, I thought you were working from home today? Didn't you say.....?"

NZ: shaking his head, "Yeah--I thought I was going to be home by 11:00"

Me: "What happened?"

NZ: " I went to the bank."

Me: "And where else?"

NZ: "Nowhere...the bank took FIVE hours to set up the account."

Me: " Why would it take that long? Did you not have everything you needed? Did they have to make calls or something?"

NZ: " You don't want to know--long story"

Me: " So what'd you end up doing for lunch?"

NZ: " Since my transaction cut into the bank's lunch hour he invited me upstairs to the cafeteria that feeds the bank employees. I ate with our banker, and after that we went back downstairs to finish the transaction "

What the...?!

We both laughed at how absurd that sounds to us as Americans....being in the middle of a transaction and having the banker say "Well, it's lunchtime, I'd love to continue this----after lunch--please come back later, or join me."

And this is where I shared my story I couldn't wait to spew his way...

Me: "  We just ( emphasis on juuuuust) got home about an hour ago."

NZ: "What'd you two do today?"

Me: " We went and bought our train tickets to Suzhou"

NZ: " And what else? "

Me: " Nothing. That was it. We ( 5 expat women and 3 babies) got to the ticket kiosk at 12:00p and waited in line behind a woman. After she was done, Mrs. Georgia stepped up to the kiosk to order her tickets and the woman behind the counter got up and walked through a door in the back of the kiosk. We waited like 15 minutes and there was a line behind us...but she never returned...We figure she went to lunch, but she didn't hang a sign or announce anything."

NZ: "So, what'd you do?"

Me:" We went to KFC and sat in the air conditioning. But it was like lunch rush, so of course, three white baby boys caused quite the commotion."

NZ: " Quite the spectacle, I'm sure...so did you get tickets?"

Me: " Yeah, we went back at 1:00p and she was back in her kiosk."



Lesson learned: China takes their lunch hours very seriously.