An Amazing Grace

Meet Julie, our banker. She loves to keep us in her office to practice her English as well as her French.

In a very typical Chinese way, she graduated from college 2 years ago and has dreams of becoming an investment banker. She just got accepted into the university MPA program. It will be ALL day Saturday and Sunday for a few years. She will have to work extra weekday hours to make up for missing work on Saturday.

With an MPA she will not be able to go the private investment banking route. but since the government owns part of her bank, she will end out managing money for the government. She is pleased.

She mentioned today she makes 5000 RMB per month or about $800 a month, which makes her very middle class. She was bemoaning the fact that she and everyone else spends a full months salary to buy their smartphones.

Kitty corner from our apartment is our bank, the one Julie works in. It used to be 2 blocks away, but they just built and opened this one a couple of months ago. It is about 150 yards from our apartment window.

Now that it is spring/summer, our windows are open and I have made an annoying discovery. I have been hearing a doorbell ringing constantly these last few days.

I just figured it out a couple of hours ago. It is the bell that rings in the bank every time the number advances on who gets served next. Since nothing has a closed door over here, we hear it quite well. China.

We were in the bank today taking care of a couple of things with Julie. (What is going on now? It is 9:22 PM and I am hearing a ton of noise outside our window. I just looked out and there is a big traffic jam on our little street. It is all jammed up behind several large trucks. I wonder what it is tonight?) Julie had grabbed a couple of #s for us because when she was finished with us, we would need to go wait our turn with one of the women behind the glass dividers.

As we were standing, chatting, in a lobby full of maybe 20 people, I realized the music I was hearing was "Amazing Grace." I asked Julie if she knew the song and I recited some of it for her, explaining it was a very religious song about the love of God for us. She said she had picked it to play. She had wanted to play some upbeat music but her boss said "Play some really calming music so people will wait more patiently " She said this was really good calming music. Get them ready for church.....