Not being a contact lens wearer or someone prone to itchy red eyes it was sort of a nage nage nage description of eye dongxi, eyeglasses, the small nage dongxi that some nage nage people put on their eyes if they didn’t wear nage eyeglasses dongxi, the concept of nage dryness as it pertained to eyes, and so on until finally the long suffering girl at the pharmacy counter figured out that I meant eye drops.

When it was all over and done with the woman in the cab with me (who had been in China all of about 5 days at this point) asked me “what do ‘nage’ and ‘dongxi’ mean?” because they sounded like they must be really important words.

-M