What are the effing chances - someone please calculate!
Saturday afternoon on the subway, a guy roughly my age sits down next to me. I’m playing with/trying to figure out my new phone, feeling thoroughly unhip, so I don’t notice when he starts talking on the phone in Chinese. What caught my attention was the random English words peppered throughout the conversation, in much the same manner as when I speak Chinese.
“Ahhh. Waiguoren (foreigner),” I think to myself. From where? The accent will tell.
And so at this point I’m just eavesdropping, but not really, because I’m focusing so hard on catching the accent of the English (American, by the way) that I pay almost no attention to the Chinese. But then other words started popping up in both languages - “direct,” “shoot,” “Hollywood.”
Wow! What are the odds? An American film person sitting right next to me on the subway, out, mind you, in the middle of nowhere as far as expats are concerned. After he finishes his phone call, I hesitate to say something for a few minutes because, after all, I’m shy, and I also don’t want to freak the guy out. But still, the coincidence was too good to let go, so I mustered up the strength for a, “So you’re a film person from the States?”
Rather surprised (why wouldn’t anybody be?), he says, “Yeah…?…!”
“So you’re probably from California?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t tell me you’re from USC.”
“Actually, I am!”
Stunned doesn’t begin to come close. What are the odds that a production major and a music major from USC can meet like this in a city with 20 million people? Turns out we were both on the subway for a long haul to roughly the same destination (one stop apart), so we had plenty of time to talk about generic “Isn’t Beijing great/weird/crazy?” to “Did you hear 310 is no longer shot on 16mm (USC course jargon)?”
We trade numbers, and later that evening, George invites me to hang out at his place with some friends, including another USC film production major flying into Beijing for business that very day (what!). And there’s one more coincidence left waiting for me - as his friends and I walk into his apartment, I can’t help but notice his apartment number on the door because it’s the same number in my email address - 1701.
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OK, that’s the crazy part of the story I want to share. The other really cool part is George just recently started working as a columnist for The Beijinger, one of the most important magazines for English speakers in Beijing. Ask any expat or hip local with expat friends. His columns are really quite good - The Jing and I speaks exactly to how I feel about Beijing and was really moving considering I was in one of those moods while at the airport waiting for my flight to LA.
