Defining Mafan

Mafan is one of my favorite Chinese words. It's incredibly useful for describing a lot of the little quirks of China. The standard translation is bothersome or troublesome but those words just don't quite fully describe the exact meaning of mafan. Here's a good story that illustrates what mafan truly is.

The other evening my subway card was out of money and I needed to add some to it to get home. Easy, right? Theoretically yes, till the mafan stepped in! At the subway station I went to one of the machines for refilling cards. I touched the refill button and was told to insert my card. I put in the proper slot and my card dropped into the machine and vanished. The machine didn't acknowledge that I had even tried to put a card in. Hmmm... Vanished subway card. This isn't good. Those things cost 20rmb. Not a ton of money but not how I wanted to spend my money. Plus machines shouldn't just eat cards like that. So, I got one of the subway worker's attention and explained to him in less than perfect Chinese what happened. He found someone who spoke English to help me. (My Chinese wasn't that bad!) I told her what happened and she told another subway worker. The second subway worker said wait a minute and went behind the machine to open it up and retrieved my card. Whew! That was easier than I was expecting. I thanked both of them for their help and went back to attempting to refill my card. Well, I certainly wasn't going to try that machine again so I went to the next one down the line. I pushed the recharge button and inserted my card. Something in red Chinese characters flashed on the screen too fast for me to even try to read. I selected the English option and tried again. Oh, no recharging on this machine, even though it said Recharge Only on the sign. Ok, one more machine to try. Same thing happened. I went over to the ticket booth. I gave the lady my card and said I wanted to add money. She pointed to her black computer screen and said she couldn't help. Since obviously I wasn't going to refill my card, I tried to buy a single ticket. I gave her a 10rmb note for a 2rmb ticket. She waved her hand no and pointed to the ticket vending machines. So back to those things I went. I tried to put the money in but neither machine would accept it. (If they are out of change, they won't accept bills.) So, I went back to ticket booth to tell the lady that the machines weren't working. She took my 10rmb bill and gave me a five, 3 ones and 2 one rmb coins. I went back to the machines and inserted the coins. Success! I finally had my ticket and could go home.

The next morning, I walked up to a ticket vending machine, inserted my card and 50rmb and had it refilled in less than 30 seconds...