The key may be to stop thinking about what might have been. What easily could have been. If the taxi driver we hailed from in front of the American Embassy didn't misread the direction to the Chinese Consulate and headed towards the fifth ring instead of the rightful second ring of Beijing. If I had said something when my husband pointed this out instead of holding our sleeping child in my arms, afraid of waking him up. If we had, despite the subsequent two hours of sitting in the taxi while it shuttled back to the opposite end of the city, still made the morning shift of the notary office.
As it turned out, we arrived at our destination just as the morning shift ended. The way the Chinese government treats its civil workers, they basically only need to work four hours a day, with an absurdly long lunch, and a minimal degree of civility and patience to the civilians they serve. So we puttered around the consulate entrance for two more hours, joining the queue that formed 20 minutes before the afternoon shift started, only to find out that the building we really needed to go to, the one on the other side of the building we were in, did not have an afternoon shift. So, basically, everything we've done since 9:30am when we got into the taxi had been completely in vain.
I hate stupendous amount of wasted time. And energy. And causing a baby to become whiny, crying, and super tired because he nursed constantly in the taxi for comfort, and then threw up milk all over himself and me, and then leaked urine all over himself and me as he screeched and yelled and pummeled his dad and me. I was sad for the lost nutrients, and annoyed by the sour smell that encircled me for the rest of the afternoon.
When the official at the Chinese Consulate told me that it's not their job to fulfill what we needed at that place, I literally felt a stab of white hot rage. I closed my eyes and stood still for just a minute so that I wouldn't scream. Or slam the pen I was holding into my eye. All this work for nothing, and losing the opportunity to tour other parts of Beijing during the afternoon with a happy sense of accomplishment.
We rode the subway from there back to the hotel. It took half an hour, one transfer included.
