Buy Five, Get Three Free

Leading up to my southern journey I became anxious.  I was running out of disposable contact lenses.  I know where I can get them, either here in Beijing or down in Shanghai.  I have an old pair of frames on my shelf.  But anxiety doesn’t always submit to logic.  The box I had was running out.  This was the last box.  The Beijing store with refills would require a special trip downtown.  I had not time for this.  The very last pair would need to be the pair I inserted the morning I headed down to Shanghai.  If I didn’t get a pair the very first day, I’d be reckoning with some very itchy eyes. 

I can recall being younger and introduced to the idea of disposable contacts and considering it a wild extravagance.  I had a pair of hard contacts once and they were awful, or at least I never figured them out.  I can still remember riding in a cab across Houston Street in the early 90’s, going to meet some date, unable to restrain myself from rubbing the objects in my eye.  I knew I’d arrive looking insane.  They run about $25 a box of thirty.  One for each eye that gets me fifty dollars a month, and six-hundred bucks a year.  I realize I could pay not much more than this annual fee and have my eyes permanently corrected, and I guess I’m not interested. 

In the US and in Hong Kong, you must have a prescription with the store you buy the lenses from.   This seems a phenomenal scam to my reckoning.  Once I know my prescription, what’s the point in the nanny state protecting me from buying the wrong lenses any more than if I buy the wrong size clothes?  Living as I do, in a civilization ‘liberated’ from western norms, I can buy my prescription in China from whoever stocks them.  They are happy to conduct business.

I visited the mall in Shanghai, near where I was working and showed them my empty box of lenses.  I’ve bought from this place before and the ladies I discussed things with were quickly off to the drawer to pull them up.  Usually they have some sort of promotion, that says,’ buy three boxes get one free.’  Each time the math seems altered.  I inquired and the ladies were happy to tell me that it was presently ‘buy five get three free.’  I certainly hadn’t intended to buy a full five boxes but as we’ve already established I was going to use them sooner or later anyway.  ‘OK, you sold me.  I’m willing to take inventory.”

They only had five boxes in stock.  They wanted to know if I’d be willing to take five now and come back tomorrow and pick up the other three.  I explained that this would be fine, as long as they gave me a receipt and a name of who to reference.  We went over it one more time, as one does in a situation such as this, and I wrote down their surnames so I could say, “oh, you know, I was working with Ms. Du.” The lady wasn’t so young but was younger than me, said:  “Ah well you live up north in Beijing.  You’re worried cause that can happen up in Beijing.  I understand.” 

This struck me as an interesting and to my reckoning somewhat stereotypical behavior for a Sanheinin: 'kiss up - kick down.'  Much of the country cast the people of Shanghai as crafty, and untrustworthy.  But here was this young lady reflecting the aspersion back northward.  The classic northern reduction is always that people are brave, honest, warrior types, but a bit dim, when it comes to negotiation.  In her case I believe Beijing itself was being singled out.  Those people of Beijing to her thinking were less civilized and more inclined to rip you off.  I don’t really think I have been ripped off in either place, in a while now.  But stereotypes don't submit well to logic, either.