Continued from Part 1
The trap was sprung. Aunt Fong and I were stranded at a makeshift timeshare sales office in the back corner of an isolated construction lot, in an out-of-the-way part of a city I didn’t even know the name of.
Once inside, we briefly wandered through the sales office, looking over the enlarged map on the wall and the model display of the future, finished apartment complex. China, currently undergoing a construction boom, has sales offices throughout its cities with large display models like those. They always inspired me with childish daydreams of filling the streets with army men and tanks, playing out big battles or defending civilians against a rogue, mutated lizard. Out back of the sales office was a lawn area with two rectangular fountain pools, some shade trees, and three different demo buildings to show all the tourist/prospects what their timeshare purchase would be like. (I refer to the apartments as timeshare units, but I do not know for sure that the Chinese used the infamous timeshare system prevalent in American vacation spots. However it was, they were trying to stick us poor saps with vacation property.)
I wonder if this grandmother daydreamed like me about marauding through this model of the Forbidden City (at a theme park in Southern China).
Our walkthrough lasted 30 minutes at most, and most of those minutes were spent flattening up against a wall or shuffling through a crowded hallway to get a look at a bed or shower stall with all the other trapped souls loitering their time away. Reluctantly, my aunt led me back into the sales office to find a seat. I have no idea what Aunt Fong told our inescapable sales rep as he pulled his white plastic chair up next to ours, but the mood was one of tension and futility. I could not feel sorry for him; anyone caught in the sales game (as I shamefully once was) ought to relieve themselves of the dirty business.
It must have been plain, even to the men on that sales mission who were primarily focused on scoring money, that Aunt Fong and I were an unfortunate woman and her foreign “son” who had been duped into this scam, and no amount of salesmanship would have turned us into buyers. Salesmen, unscrupulous curs by nature, have no shame and they believe that every objection can be overcome, so they will hound a prospect until he gives up his money or, in a fit of anger or frankness, spits out the real objection (or curse words) and walks away. For Aunt Fong and me, there was no exit, but the young sales rep could see there was no use harrying us- doting middle-aged women and their foreign honorary sons do not buy vacation property.
It did not matter that our assigned sales rep was content to coast through this misery with us by offering refills for our water cups and bothering us only occasionally; his teammates rotated with him in a system that ensured the tourists were always talking to someone and had new, fresh personalities constantly entering and working them over. In China, I had seen how the morning shift employees would line up outside the store’s front doors and either be berated by the boss or receive a pep talk and have a group cheer (even the security guards at my university’s gates would do this before they went to loafing in the guard booth for the day), so I could only imagine how awful the strategy meetings were for these college-aged kids who were selling timeshares to unsuspecting tourists in this weekend getaway racket. Every time a new sales rep or manager came over to us, I knew it was because they had a sales manager or president breathing down the back of their neck, and if they didn’t perform, he would call them out in front of everyone at the sales meeting.
I considered that all these sales reps were just kids trying to pay for college, or without the grades to get into a good college program, and now the cult-like company environment had them believing they had to pressure innocents in order to make money. (Money! That most sacred of words to a salesman’s ears, surely containing more pleasures than paradise.) But I knew better than to pity the youths; sales companies quickly filter out those with any qualms about the ethics of scamming, cheating, charming, and cozening (hence the high turnover of the fainthearted), so anyone still working for this timeshare company was either nearly out the door or, just as likely, a performer who had refined his craft to make regular sales and, more importantly, someone covetous of filthy lucre. Feeling sorry for the hopeless squad of salesman would be like feeling sorry for a hungry snake coming upon a bird’s nest only to find it empty. Let it starve. The world does not need more timeshares.
I was so innocent before at the beach, not knowing what sales agony lie in store.
During the first hour, I slowly lost hope. My stomach felt worse than terrible, the constant presence of the sales rep made everything awkward and without a moment’s privacy, and the mass of people crowded throughout the confines, combined with the dance music, drumming, and shrill announcements over the PA system, made it impossible to focus on a single, clear thought. When the man behind the main counter began whacking away at the drum for the third time, and the thin girl once again rose into a fever pitch of exclamation, Aunt Fong asked me if I knew what she was hollering into the microphone about. Yes, I nodded, they had gotten some wearied soul to sign on the dotted line. Those “lucky” buyers then became the envy of everyone else when they were allowed to take their families into a small, private room shut off from the main sales office.
I reasoned after the fourth or fifth announcement, when an hour had gone by and things seemed to relatively slow down (there were no new busloads of people and no new sales celebrations), that surely, everyone had been subjected to the sales pitch and had time enough to make a final decision. Our business was done here; let us go. I was neglecting to factor in the callous, unrelenting hearts of the managers behind this sales tactic. They were going to hold us there as long as they wanted and squeeze us until more signed contracts came out. Like juicing a lemon, the effort and time put into the final drops- just to make sure all the juice that could be gotten out was gotten out- was far more than the first effort of squeezing the fresh fruit.
During the second hour, after I had made a trip to the bathroom, seeking some stomach relief in vain, and come back to sit next to Aunt Fong, she told me to close my eyes and rest. She would do this all the time in China’s various and sundry crowded, chaotic scenes. I protested about the futility of trying to ignore bedlam this way, but she would always insist I follow her relaxation technique. So, absurdly, as the dance music thumped on and people walked and talked around us, I followed her lead and lay back in my chair to try and relax.
Our assigned sales rep at least had the sense not to try selling us at that point, but that didn’t stop his sales buddy from tagging in and loudly speaking at us. He was barking away like a man possessed towards two people who would not even open their eyes to look at him. He tried selling us by starting a conversation with me, a foreigner who could not understand a word he said. I finally opened my eyes and stared at him, mystified that he was going on at length when I clearly comprehended none of it, and I tried telling him a couple times, in Chinese, that I didn’t understand. “Ting bu dong. Ting bu dong.” It was no matter. He chattered on until Aunt Fong bitterly scolded him and told him to get lost. He retreated, but still we could get no peace. Inevitably, other salesmen came in to take his place. They were on a tag team system, sent out by an overbearing sales manager, and would not leave prospects alone. The large stereo speakers, not twenty feet away, continued pounding out a dance beat.
So, Aunt Fong and I retreated to the back lawn and pulled some chairs underneath a shade tree. As the din of the sales routine reverberated and repeated around us- tourists never really changing places as new faces came in to badger them- I began contemplating if I could sneak off into one of the demo apartments and stretch out on the bed for a nap. My pain showed no signs of subsiding and I was growing weaker by the minute. After another half hour, Aunt Fong went out to the bus and convinced someone to open it so she could get her bag. Then, at least we had some bread and snacks to give us energy and occupy our time. Plus, I had my notebook, so I did my best to focus on writing over hours three and four.
Writing in relative luxury- I had one of the only chairs on the lawn with a back and arm rests, most everyone else sat on stools for hours.
Yes, hours three and four. I spent them wilting in the oppression of the summer heat and sales bleed. When my eyes drifted from my notebook, I entertained myself watching two little boys, one wearing only sandals and the other nearly naked, as they ran around the lawn and splashed in the fountains. They skipped about, having the time of their lives, blissfully unaware of everyone else’s misery. Their hilarity, I thought, was a picture of the incurable optimist who believes attitude creates every situation, rather than believe that being stranded at a sales company office creates the situation. Those bare-bottomed little boys may well have found the only way to be happy during that sales pitch. Like most optimists, they ought to have been embarrassed by their naked idiocy, but they were only thinking of the glee they had running without clothes. I smiled, not at their pluck, but because I was the only one who seemed to notice two naked boys running around. Back at the university, a student once summed up Chinese opinion on public child nudity by remarking, “What? It’s natural.”
Someone needs to sell that baby a sense of shame.
Then, in my plastic lawn chair, my head drooping in defeat, I noticed a bright green praying mantis balancing on the blades of grass. I tried to pick him up, but he always hopped out of range of my fingers, so I switched to taking pictures of him as he crawled around. Eventually, he walked over to a tree trunk and started climbing. I was captivated and watched him until he was so high that he disappeared in the sunlight. Then I was left with only my notebook for entertainment and at least another hour waiting in that chair.
Mantis vs. Tree
Finally, well beyond four hours after we were stranded in that cursed sales office, people started standing up, the sales reps quickly stacked the chairs, and we were back on the bus. Our captivity stretched well into dinnertime, so they had to relent. I was expecting a mutiny at any point during that unendurable afternoon. I imagined that there would surely be impatient individuals who would cause a major fuss if this were an American group. I couldn’t fathom how a Chinese crowd, known for their lack of manners, had failed to cause an uproar.
The bus driver took us right back to the restaurant we had eaten lunch at, which both dampened any enthusiasm I might have had for dinner and clued me in that the sales company and restaurant owner had a business arrangement with each other. The sight of food didn’t move my appetite and my stomach gripes had grown more turbulent, so I didn’t try eating any food. Not even when the man sitting next to me, another tourist (with a bald head, side tufts of hair, and glasses that made him look like an ostrich), dug a fish head out of the soup and plopped it into my bowl as a show of friendly hospitality to a foreigner. I listlessly stared at it, and he blurted out some choppy sentences in Chinese through a foamy mouth full of food. Aunt Fong insisted he was being very friendly. I spent the rest of the dinner declining food offers and waiting for the evening to end.
After eating, they took us straight back to the hotel. We had spent so long at the sales office that there was no time for any after-dinner activities, which was fine by me. I took some medicine from Aunt Fong and went straight to bed.
On Sunday morning, the sales reps came around again, banging on our door and hauling our luggage out to the bus. They drove us out to another dopey Buddha statue on the beach, so I walked along the shoreline and looked out at the sea for twenty minutes. Then, it was back on the bus, where I hung my head and wished that we would turn onto the highway and just start the long trip back to Bengbu. But I was awoken out of my gloom by a bump! bump! and the awful, terribly familiar shaking of the bus. Oh, please, they can’t be serious. This isn’t happening.
We were headed back to the sales office.
This baby was probably the only one excited to go back. I think even the sales reps and managers hated themselves for putting us through that grind.
In the words of Karl Childers from Sling Blade, “I seen red.” I didn’t have the strength or the language faculties to say anything, but why weren’t the other passengers on the bus protesting? Americans, I had a feeling, would rise up and demand that bus be turned around. I reflected on tense situations I had witnessed in the past, growing up in the States, and usually there were one or two fiery individuals who would raise a ruckus and give voice to the complaints of the silent majority. In those instances, I could hold my tongue and quietly observe the battle unfold. Perhaps, I surmised, now I was in the middle of China’s group-minded culture, where no one wanted to be the one to speak up, draw attention to themselves, and risk losing face. Or perhaps everyone’s psyche was crushed from the day before and we all believed we had no option but to helplessly sit through the sales pitch again. Every sales pitch has its psychology plotted out, so the timeshare company probably expected, reasonably, that a second dose of the sales office would leave all the tourists so exhausted that they had no sales resistance.
I began reasoning with myself again. Maybe they only needed to check over some documents from yesterday. One of the sales reps will run in while we wait here on the bus.
We came to a stop and the sales reps immediately stood up; everyone else followed. No! No! Come on, people! Let’s kick out the windows or do whatever we have to- we are not going back into that office! Do not go gentle!
I was in a feverish sweat. Sitting in the back row, watching the backs of the others as they filed out, I resolved not to leave my seat. I was terribly sick, I had no energy, this sales treatment was an outrage, and all I wanted was to lie down and rest. By the time everyone except Aunt Fong, me, and a couple sales reps had left the bus, I recognized that my protest was futile. I would be shut inside a hot bus with hardly any ventilation. Aunt Fong, recognizing my current infirmity, looked at me sorrowfully and helped me to my feet. “Don’t angry. Don’t angry,” she said.
Off the bus, I grimaced in pain and searched for the nearest place I could lie down and escape the sun. Aunt Fong and I didn’t even start down the walkway into the sales office, lined with yesterday’s haggard, colorful streamers that were pathetically flitting in the wind. I hobbled across the dirt roadway and sat down under a tree where the bullfrog-shaped bus driver and his wife had already claimed the only decent seating. Sitting on a wooden post, supporting myself with my hands on my knees and barely having the strength to stay erect, I watched a scene on the dirt roadway.
Outside the bus, Aunt Fong was quarreling with some of the sales managers. She was furiously shrieking at them, and one, maybe the head manager, was posturing and shouting right back at her in between drags of his cigarette. Aunt Fong was inconsolable; I was enraged. My downcast face and posture didn’t show it, but I was filled with wrath beyond the point that polite people care to admit they are capable of. I wanted to commit violence. I imagined myself marching into the sales office and overturning the tables and driving all the sales reps out, kicking over the speakers, and tossing that big drum into the model table. I wanted to yell at someone or run off and take the bus out of that miserable resort.
I was incapacitated by illness, so I wasn’t capable of any of those actions, but as I watched Aunt Fong and the sales manager continue to fight with raised voices, I swore to myself that if that manager went from aggressive, dismissive gesturing with outstretched arms to placing his hands on Aunt Fong or so much as poking her in the chest with his finger, I was going to be up and off my seat. It would have required everything I had and my body would be completely spent, but I was ready and willing to pay the price. I was going to lay hands on this Chinese ruffian and take him down to Brazilian jiu-jitsu town. I didn’t care if he had learned Tai Chi in the park from Kung-Fucious himself, I had spent enough time grappling to take him down, sit on his chest, and make him sorry he ever considered selling us timeshare. I would probably double over in pain afterwards and vomit what little was left in my stomach, but I believed I could will myself to efficiently tackle that scoundrel and serve him his comeuppance.
I watched intently for a moment of contact between him and Aunt Fong, but it didn’t happen. After telling them off, she broke away from the small huddle and hurried over to me, still slumped on the wooden post in a sullen pose. She took my hand in hers, knelt down in the dirt so she could look up into my downcast eyes, and with tears streaming out of hers, she pleaded with me, saying, “Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry.” I reached my hand out and tried to comfort her with my languid arm. Tears were running down my face, too.
“No, no, mei gwanshee. Mei-yo wuntee.” Never mind. No problem, I told her.
After a moment together, we went back under the shade trees out behind the sales office to find a better seat. This time, I did not even have the energy to eat or entertain myself. I read and struggled to sleep, tormented by the discomfort of the cheap lawn chair and the unceasing noise around me. It was Sunday, and trapped as I was I still tried to have a rest and read through passages of my Bible. I know, that must seem like a great contrast between my feelings of wrathful violence a few moments earlier. I suppose my spirit has passes from Psalm 83 to 84. A great thirst for God’s vengeance, to a desire for peace in His presence.
Trying, and failing, to sleep on a long, sick Sunday afternoon.
About three hours later, we were allowed back on the bus.
Lunch was at the same restaurant as before. This time, I didn’t even pick up my chopsticks. The smell and sight of food, and the stuffy, enclosed space of the dining room had me feeling even worse than before, so I spent the duration of the meal seeking fresh air out on the street curb, next to the smokers. They asked me where I was from and if I played basketball. They laughed at themselves for teasing a six-foot tall American with such a novel question.
In time, we were back on the bus and on the highway. I spent the trip alternating my posture as I reclined on the back row of seats, failing to ever fall into a deep sleep. So, I passed the time straining my eyes to try and read the subtitles of the movie on the overhead televisions. Stopping mid-way at a rest area, I sought a moment of solitude by walking around the back of the bathrooms and shops. My assigned sales rep was at my heels in a moment; he couldn’t let me be, even then. As I solemnly circled the parking lot and ambled back onto the bus, I refused to respond to his pleasantries or the looks of anyone else involved with the company. They disgusted me and I never wanted to see any of them ever again.
After an exhausting, seemingly interminable ride, we were back from whence we came, in Aunt Fong’s city, at a time when people were in bed and the streetlights were the only thing filling the lonely streets. The bus pulled up to the corner where this whole regretful experience began. People poured out of that bus as fast as they could, desperately hailing down taxis, no one saying the least word to each other or even making eye contact to acknowledge another and tacitly bid them good bye. I thrust through the sparse line of people on the sidewalk and pulled my luggage out from the cargo space below the bus, not content to allow our sales rep to show me the courtesy, stepping past him to grab hold of it myself.
Aunt Fong and I looked left and right for a cab. As she walked down the sidewalk, I paused, noticing the attractive sales rep standing by herself on that forlorn street corner. I had felt this dilemma approaching in my stomach as we neared the end of our trip. I could have easily walked up to this young woman, one of the most attractive I had seen in China, and asked her for her phone number. Two nights ago she had outright told me she was interested in me. But she was part of this ugly, devious sales company, earning her wages by beguiling the unsuspecting. I hated that company and I wanted to be rid of even the memory of it.
I wasn’t going to be like Lot’s wife. In that instant I turned away from her and looked over my other shoulder to see that Aunt Fong had found a free cab. I strode forward without ever looking back. She and I were back at her apartment in a moment; then I was in my bed on the floor of the guest bedroom. I wanted to put this awful weekend behind me. Compared to it, all the other bad weekends in China were only runners-up.
I say bad “weekends” and not “times” because, while I managed to make it through the weekend without collapsing and being taken to the hospital, I could not maintain throughout the week. My three-day hospital stay would begin starting Monday night.
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