By Rich O‘Neil PhD

My wife and I took a bus tour of China last summer, visiting four cities in seven days, which, as our guide said, is like smelling flowers from a galloping horse.

Anyway, a few days in, our group was in Shanghai with plans to stop at a street market for the afternoon. I‘m not a big shopper so I asked our English-speaking Chinese guide to write on a piece of paper the Chinese characters for the name and address of our hotel, and the restaurant where the group was going after so I could take a cab to the hotel, run on the treadmill and meet for dinner later. And even though I didn‘t have a cell phone with me, I asked him to write his phone number, just in case. We agreed to meet again at 5:10, and off I went.

I flagged a cab and gave the driver the paper. He nodded, and off we went onto the highway into Shanghai‘s bumper to bumper. It was a steamy 95 degrees, so I tapped on the plexiglass window between me and the driver. I stuck out my tongue, waved my hand in front of my face, pointed to the air conditioner vent, and then pointed up, hoping he would turn up the air. Instead, he started yelling and zipping in and out of traffic, cutting people off, blowing his horn.

Next time we stopped I did my face-and-fan thing again, but this time put my finger right on the air conditioning vent and then the control knob. He started laughing, turned it up, and stopped the Indianapolis 500 imitation.

Thirty minutes later, like our guide estimated, we were at the hotel.

I had a good run. When it was time to head back, the doorman got a cab, looked at my paper with the restaurant address, and told the driver where to go.

Now, Shanghai is gigantic with more than 20 million people, so I was hoping he knew where he was headed. I sat back to enjoy the sights. A few minutes later, I realized we were not on the highway the other guy took to get here. Sure enough, the cab driver pulled over to consult a map. I handed him my paper with the restaurant name and address. He nodded and tapped something into his GPS that talked to him in Chinese. He u-turned, and off we went. I left a half hour early, so we had plenty of time.

But the clock and the meter were ticking, and still, there was no highway. At the next light he rolled down the window to consult with another cabbie who gave him the universal “who knows?” shoulder shrug.

I remembered our guide had distributed printed cards for a pearl shop in the market as a rendezvous point for the shoppers. I handed that to the cabbie. He called the number but didn‘t sound happy.

I gave him the guide‘s handwritten paper again, pointing to my failsafe–the guide‘s phone number. He dialed, but got no answer. He shrugged and took off again. Uh oh!

Could this guy be taking me for a ride to jack up the fare? I wondered.

A cabbie license with a picture and ID number was on the window, and a phone number for what I guessed was the taxi commission, but I could not tell if my cabbie was the one in the picture.

I thought briefly about getting out of the cab at a light and into another one, but who knew how that would go? Was that was OK in China like in New York City if your driver is lost? I did not know if I had enough time to make it to the restaurant, or whether I should return to the hotel. I did not know if I had enough Chinese money for two cab rides. I knew it was about 6 yuan to the dollar, but were the Chinese bills I had all yuan or some other denomination? Some cabbies took American dollars, but even if mine did, my jetlagged brain was having trouble with the math.

It was 5:05 p.m. and I began worrying: Would my group wait for me? What would I do if they did not?

We came to another light, and nothing at all looked familiar. I pointed again to the guide‘s phone number. Again, my cabbie dialed. This time there was an answer. There was talking, nodding and sounds of agreement, followed by the international thumbs up in my direction.

Five minutes later, at 5:10 on the money, he pulled to the curb and pointed to a sign on a building and then to my piece of paper. Could I tell if they were the same words or characters? No. And there was no guide and no familiar faces. Should I pay him and get out? I took a leap of faith.

Even up close, the sign on the building was not a match to the name on my paper. No restaurant was on the ground floor. Could it be upstairs? Where was it? No guide or fellow travelers were on this loud and crowded street, and no police were around to ask. So I stood on the corner, visible from all directions, hoping that someone who knew me would see me. It was still blazing hot. I was parched, hungry and feeling at the mercy of strangers, whom I hoped would be kind to me.

“Richard.”

Did somebody say my name? I thought, looking around.

“Richard?”

Ah! It was my guide, smiling. He walked me two doors away and upstairs to my wife and the rest of our group.

Afterward I realized my experience was like what my 95-year-old mother, and others like her with Alzheimer‘s disease, go through every day: Where? When? Who? What? Why?

What an amazing thing to discover in China.

Listen to psychologist Rich O‘Neill on HealthLink on Air radio from 9 to 10 a.m. every Sunday on FM Newsradio 106.9, WSYR. Read more about his work in Upstate‘s Institute for Decision Excellence and Leadership at IDEAL.upstate.edu. Contact him at [email protected]