I’ve lived in China for almost four years. At times I think I’ve got the hang of how this country works, what the people are like and generally how to get by. However, there are still occasional days that make me feel like a complete idiot who has been here four minutes rather than four years.

This week I had one of those days. Luckily for me, my friends are lovely and didn’t take the piss out of me at all (which I was slightly worried about, although that speaks more to my state of mind than what my friends are like).

I’ve been wanting to get a tablet with a keyboard for a while now, particularly before I go travelling in the summer, as it’ll be much easier to write on than my phone (as I’m doing now… It just takes so long!). I’d done a bit of research and decided what I wanted from looking at various online reviews and descriptions as well as talking to people. I was happy with my decision and ordered it (in case you’re interested, Lenovo Miix 2 8 with Windows 8) from Amazon China.

There were problems from the beginning. Again, luckily for me I have a Chinese Teaching Partner (TP) who is amazing and will often go above and beyond to help me out with things. She spoke to the seller about everything on my behalf. The first issue was that they didn’t have any in stock (private seller via amazon) and I had to wait two weeks until they got the next order in from the factory. Two weeks passed and nothing. My TP contacted the seller again. They still didn’t know when they would get more in, although they had a better model they could send straight away if I paid more. Ha! Nice try! My TP is good at holding her own so she told him that he shouldn’t have put on the website it was available if it wasn’t and he should send the model they have with no extra payment as it was his fault not ours.

It worked. My tablet arrived two days later. I was very excited. Until I turned it on…

When I discovered it was the Chinese language version of Windows.

You may think that’s not a problem, all electronic devices these days have the capacity to change the language. You’d be wrong.

Yes, there was an option for English (if you could read Chinese in the first place) but only a very few things were translated. The main menus and functions were all still in Chinese. My work IT department even looked at it and phoned Lenovo to find out if a language pack could be installed – to no avail. I cannot fault the Chinese staff who tried to help me with this.

Feeling like more and more of an idiot (I live in China, of course it’s in Chinese!) I asked my ever-suffering TP to find out from the seller if he had an English language version (no) or if I could send it back.

You may well be wondering why I hadn’t thought of that. When I was looking at all the descriptions of the various tablets on Amazon, the majority either had hardly any description or specs, or they had details which included ‘Chinese language version’. The one I ordered had details but didn’t say anything about the language. Foolishly, I assumed that that meant it was an English language version. This really drove home the adage: Never assume; it makes an ass out of u and me.

Although this whole situation was annoying (I was annoyed at myself) and a bit embarrassing, I was also lucky as the seller agreed to let me return it (although he offered me a free USB if I didn’t!). If he hadn’t, there’s no way I would be able to afford to buy another tablet before the summer. I was also lucky that I had some great people to help me sort it all out and friends that sympathised rather than making my embarrassment worse.

As it is, I will have to go to Hong Kong to get my tablet now as I don’t think I’ll be able to get an English language one here in China.

You live and learn, I guess…