The Boy with the Tin

Walking through the back streets near the Wangfujing shopping area is a lot of fun. Along with the array of exotic foods for adventurous tourists to try, there are normal eateries as well as stall upon stall of trinkets for sale.

We wandered through one alleyway recently and saw a water fountain that had been overtaken by buildings and little stalls.  Making our way past a couple of the stalls and negotiating the people traffic, we discovered a little street full of tables and surrounded by outdoor restaurants.  As soon as we were seen, vendors started shouting and trying to encourage us to eat from their particular eatery.

At one of the restaurants was a young teenage boy with a rather loud voice that could speak a little bit of english. Allowing ourselves to be persuaded to eat from his parents restaurant, we were quickly seated with menus being shoved into our hands.  Since it was almost lunchtime we decided to order and eat. Possible not a good choice as we found ourselves a bit of a tourist attraction ... especially by the chinese tour groups wandering through.

Shortly after our food arrived, the boy came back and put a small chinese tea tin in front of us.  He spoke to us in Mandarin and we nodded, not really sure what he was saying and assuming the tin had toothpicks in for us to use at the end of the meal.  After about 10 minutes the boy came back, and chatting to us (in Mandarin again) he opened the tin and emptied the contents onto the table for Paul to see.    

The tin was full of coins from different countries.  As Paul examined them, we realised the young man had been given coins from various tourists as they sat at his parents tables to eat.  He was incredibly proud of all that he had collected, and was really keen for Paul to take a good look at each coin. 

It was obvious he wanted us to add to his collection, but we had left our NZ currency back at the hotel. So we complimented him on his great collection and thanked him for showing us; paid for our meal and left.

Later that evening we returned - at first his mother thought we were back to eat, so we pointed to the boy to get his attention.  Explaining that we are from New Zealand; Paul emptied some NZ and Hong Kong coins into the boys hands.  At first he seemed surprised, but then he noticed the coins were foreign.  His face lit up with delight and he almost squealed with glee!  Quickly showing the coins to the customer he was serving (and his mum); he turned to thank us and seemed genuinely pleased but also surprised that we had returned just to give him the coins.  

We nodded, smiled and waved goodbye.  Then all of a sudden he yelled and came running towards us with a bottle of juice he'd taken out of his parents fridge ... a gift for us.  As we left I turned around to sneak a look at the young man again and he was excitedly showing his mum and dad the new coins he had received ... with a large smile on his face.