Last night Stick and I passed a street vendor with a cart full of china. I found a blue-and-white mug, just right for holding toothbrushes in our turtle tank bathroom, but then I noticed a flaw on the glaze. Nothing major, just a little irregularity in the blue printing and a little bump in the white glaze. I pointed it out to the vendor hoping he had another mug like it, without the deformed part, or that he was going to offer me enough of a discount to make me turn that spot towards the bathroom wall.
“Mei shi,” he said (this means “no problem” and is pronounced “Mei shRRR” in Beijing), touching the spot with his finger.
He tried to explain why it was no problem, and not bu hao, as I was insisting, but it was beyond my Chinese. When he realized that I wasn’t following him, he finally rubbed the cup on his cheek to show us that the bad glaze job won’t hurt us!
Despite his excellent salesmanship, we decided NOT to buy it.
