Garbage Success!

A continuation of the previous post...

I visited Joe this evening but made sure to leave for home in time to meet the garbage truck. I couldn’t bear my trash another day. I took my trash out to the curb fifteen minutes early so I would be sure not to miss the truck. As I stood waiting, a woman on a scooter hauling a huge dolly swerved to a halt in front of me. The woman leaped from her seat and began jabbering to me in Mandarin. I shrugged and gave her my “sorry, I’m a confused foreigner” face. She ignored me and kept hollering over the noise of her engine as she began to poke through my trash bags.

“Just trash,” I tried to explain, “no recycling!” She found a flattened cracker box and brandished it at me for several seconds before tucking it back into my trash bag dismissively. I picked it up and offered it to her. She accepted it merrily and tucked it into a bag hanging from her handlebars as she hopped back onto her scooter.
“Thank you!” she called out in English as she swept away.

I waited for another five minutes and then the woman on the scooter came by again. This time she stopped in front of me and cut off her motor. She pulled down her face-mask and began delivering a long monologue, periodically gesturing to me and my trash bags.

“I’m sorry,” I said “I don’t understand.”

She leaped down from her scooter a second time and came over to stand right in front of me. She pointed to my trash again and gave me a long explanation in Mandarin.

“Garbage,” I said in English. “Eight thirty” I said in Mandarin.

After several more extended monologues, much gesturing, and my continued efforts to explain that I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, the woman decided to help me learn Mandarin. She tapped her handlebar and said very slowly and clearly three words that must have meant “motorbike.” I repeated and she corrected. I repeated and she corrected again. After five or six tries she moved on.

She pointed to my hair. “Taaaang tou fa!” she said. “Taaaang tou fa,” I said. She shook her head no and said it again. I repeated it until she was satisfied enough to move on. She took off her helmet and pinched her hair, which was cut short. “Doooudin tou fa,” she said. We repeated the phrase back and forth as we had the others, and she seemed very pleased. “Shie shie,” I said, in thanks. She stepped back indignantly as if insulted. “Shie shie!? Shie shie!?” I was afraid I had upset her, but then, grandly, in proud demonstration, she said in English “Thank you! Thank you!”

“Uh, yes,” I said, “thank you.”

At that moment the door behind me opened and three fellows from my floor walked out with their trash bags. She scurried over to intercept their bags of recycling. One of the fellows hadn’t sorted his garbage, and the women stood over his bag scolding him loudly as she pointed out the items he could have recycled. Then we heard the garbage truck approaching, and she hopped on her scooter and sped away, hollering a final “thank you!” over her shoulder.

As the trash truck made its way down our block, rolling doors cranked open and an odd mix of men, women, and teenagers issued forth bearing sacks of garbage. An open box truck trailed the garbage truck, and it seemed they were accepting recycling at the back door. A garbage man hung to the back of the singing yellow trash truck, and he took my bags from me and tossed them away into the chomping depths.

Liberation – at long last.