It’s one of those things about being in Changchun that sometimes you experience things that would never happen in other places.

If I was staying here longer, I think I’m at that stage where I need to change my number again!
I got woken up the other night several times by texts messages sent to my phone, telling me happy Father’s day! The Chinese have a special day for something practically every month, they range from Children’s day to Army day to Tree Planting Day, not to mention the various lunar holidays that also crop up. The days vary in importance, but there seems to be a special day for almost everyone at some time or another!

Then there’s the random people that call my phone for a few seconds then hang up, this is pretty common and annoying, though I guess it’s harmless. Previously I was a little worried about such things, being in red China, I thought It might be something to do with the authorities. But now I know this is of course totally wrong, it’s almost always people trying to make friends, or just being overly curious wanting to chat with a foreigner.

It proliferates to the point where I’m getting so many calls and messages from people I don’t even know. People who don’t know me. People whom have never even met me!

I get messages from people in other provinces, who say things like they would like to meet me – they got my number from a friend. Or from people wanting me to work in someplace the other side of the country, from people asking advice on all sorts of things that I really am not qualified to answer! Often I can only say I honestly dont know. I’m sorry I can’t help you. And how did you get this number!!!!

This became such a problem for me that I actually changed my phone number once. The situation was that I think every person on the campus knew my number- how they got this I still don’t know, though I suspect someone in the department gave it out.
Now I’m very careful about whom I give my phone number to, previously I didn’t have such reservations as it is a good way of meeting new people and getting into other things, especially the friend of a friend job thing, making connections etc….

Overall though, It’s flattering in a way to recieve such attention and there is a part of me that enjoys it all, however, sometimes it becomes really annoying. For example, not wanting to answer the phone if you don’t know what the number is!

There are also other sorts of Chinese messages that get sent to me pretty often. People offering various interesting personal services, selling fake IDs/documents, the black market lottery, even selling guns!

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