Think this happens in New York? Fuhgeddaboudit!
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BEIJING -- My BlackBerry battery died last night. It might simply have died of natural causes, I’m not sure. But I suspect it was a homicide, caused by plugging the charger into the wall socket here without using an adapter.
It was a rookie mistake on my part. And 13 months ago, before I’d ever used a BlackBerry, it wouldn’t have mattered. But in China, where a hand-held wireless device is essential for keeping in touch, its demise pretty much left me stranded alone in a city of 16 million people.
But then how hard could it be to get a replacement battery?
Very hard, as it turns out.
‘We don’t have these yet,’ said a volunteer at the help desk in the Media Center, turning the phone over in her hand reverently as if she were holding the Hope Diamond.
Nevertheless, she agreed to search the Internet for a nonexistent BlackBerry battery in China. And 30 minutes later, she found one -- in an electronics store on the 17th floor of a nondescript building across town. Now all I had to do was get there.
Which is when the most amazing taxi driver in history came into my life.
I had the directions to the store written out in Mandarin and handed them to the driver, who nodded his approval. Then I pointed to the instructions at the bottom, which asked him to wait in the taxi while I retrieved the battery. Suddenly his mood became as clouded as the Beijing sky as he muttered away -- angrily, I assume -- in Chinese.
When we got to the neighborhood where the store was located, he pulled into a parking lot and handed me a receipt for the ride. This would be where we parted ways -- or so I thought. After I paid, he jumped out of the taxi, grabbed my elbow and guided me across a heavily trafficked four-lane highway. We walked for a while before coming to the office building. No way I could have found that by myself. And after asking a bunch of questions of guards and passersby, we -- I should say he -- finally found the elevator and the battery saleswoman, who got my BlackBerry working within seconds.
On the walk back to the parking lot -- it cost us 15 cents to park -- the driver finally brightened again and asked me where I was from.
‘The United States,’ I said.
He frowned.
‘America?’ I added.
He smiled and nodded, then waved a paper in front of his face.
‘Hot, isn’t it?’ he said.
-- Kevin Baxter