First Impressions Series: 4

To be real here, you have to have a name stamp.It's a carved peg that displays your Chinese name. Joplin's name is phonetically, Jo-po-lin, meaning in part, quiet forest. Alison is Ai-li-sen, meaning in part, jasmine love. McKinley is Ching Lien, Ching is a dragonfly, and Lien is on her birth certificate as a middle name -- it's lotus blossom, pronounced Wren in English.
Now at the cell-phone shop, they have 5-minute stamps. You tell them the characters, and they dial in the font. The computer displays what it would look like with an ancient looking pictoral font, or a graceful brush-stroke. There are 30 or 40 choices.
You pick the right one -- we went for ones that we would actually be able to read -- and zing, zing, they have a digital machine carve out the wood or plastic.
Add a little red-orange ink paste, and we're set to open a bank account.