Meiyou

In Chinese, meiyou(pronounced mayo) means don’t have. First meiyou of the day: Meiyou Internet. That’s right we didn’t have internet. We didn’t know what was wrong, but we knew that we didn’t owe any money and some friends in our building also didn’t have internet. So we went to Starbucks.

I wanted to get a Coconut Mocha Frappuccino, which is one of the special drinks right now, but meiyou coconut (the second meiyou of the day), so I just got a Mocha Frappuccino. After getting our drinks, we sat down to get some work done. When you connect to the internet in Starbucks in China, you get a page that asks you for your phone number, and then you get a text message with the wifi passcode. Well, I tried the process several time because sometimes it takes several times for the code to work. However, I kept getting this pop-up box that said something in Chinese. After trying this at least half a dozen time, I realized that I could view the page in English. This is when I learnt that the internet was not working at Starbucks. This was the third meiyou of the day.

So we decided to leave Starbucks a little early, and go to the Thai Restaurant for dinner. I lead everyone astray by taking them out of the wrong exit, but we explored a little bit, and we got to see Eric Liddell’s house. Finally after retracing out steps, we found the Thai Restaurant, but it did not open until 5:30, and it was only 5 o’clock.  (This isn’t really a meiyou, but I’ll call it meiyou 3.5).

Because we had a half an hour to kill, we decided to walk around the area, which is very beautiful. After some exploring, we went back to the Thai restaurant and enjoyed delicious Thai food.

However, our whole purpose for this trip was to get internet, and we still have not succeeded in this endeavor. So we took a taxi back to our apartment complex and decided to go to a coffee shop in our complex. Our intention was just to sit in the coffee shop, and use their free internet, but (fourth meiyou of the day) meiyou free wifi. We had to buy something. So we thought about getting scones, which are only 7kuai (a little over a $1), but they told us that we each had to get a drink, which are 25-30 kuai ($4-5).  We decided to bite the bullet and buy drinks.

After blissfully enjoying the loveliness that the internet has to offer, we decided to head home. However, when we got back to our building, the doors to our building we locked. They are never locked, and we don’t have a keycode to the building (fifth and final meiyou of the day). Thankfully, a Korean family, who seemed just as surprised as we were to see that the door was locked, was coming out as we were hoping to go in, so they opened the door for us. 

Thus ended my meiyou day. However, yesterday was a wonderful day of bonding and adventure, which makes all the meiyous worth it.