Recently, it was my birthday. I had an amazing day planned out: lunch with my expat friends, ice-skating afterwards, and a free concert in the evening with my boyfriend Alex and my good friends Lisa and Echo. My girlfriends and I met up first at the Beitucheng subway station, and waited for Alex to arrive straight from work. “Can I use your camera tonight?” Lisa asked me. “Um…okay, sure,” I replied. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her with my nearly 5-year old camera. It’s just that normally people ask to use your camera to take one picture, not to hold onto it. “You can use the camera on your phone,” she added. So I gave her my camera without much thought.
The things you see in China.....
After chatting, laughing, and waiting for nearly 40 minutes downstairs, we decided to move upstairs. We waited by the escalators, and I decided to open their birthday gifts to me to pass the time. “Where is he?” I asked them. “Should I give him a call?” I called Alex, but there was no answer. So we continued chatting and laughing. And waiting. All of a sudden, coming up the escalator, I saw someone dressed in a full head-to-toe Winnie-the-Pooh costume, giant head and all. Winnie-the-Pooh was carrying a bouquet of about a hundred or more roses. Pretty much the biggest bouquet of roses I’ve ever seen. My heart stopped and my first thought was, “Is it…? No, it can’t be.” I waited for it to walk over to us, but it didn’t. Winnie-the-Pooh sauntered around the subway station (which was pretty empty, save for a few people and us), which, to be honest, threw me off a bit. A couple followed it, wanting to pose for pictures with the giant honey bear. “Quick!” I said to Lisa, “Take some pictures!” In true Chinese fashion, we whipped out our cameras and camera phones and zoomed in on Winnie-the-Pooh.
