© 2008 by Jason Barbacovi
Some Rights Reserved
http://www.meandchairmanmao.com
Before you get to the table of contents -- it's down there, trust me -- a quick note about all this licensing stuff you see below. (I think the proper term for it might be "legal mumbo-jumbo," but, as I am not a lawyer, I can't be sure.) The short version -- which is followed by the very short version and then the long version at the very end of the book -- is that I'm putting this story collection out using a Creative Commons license, which means it comes with only "Some rights reserved" instead of the more typical "All rights reserved."
More specifically -- as you will see below -- I am giving you the right to copy, print, and distribute this book as you please. Download it for free. Send it to all your friends. Print off a copy for yourself, or print off 1,000 copies and give them away on the street corner. Perform the entire thing as a nine-act play at your local park. It's all okay. In fact, it's encouraged. (Particularly the street-corner scenario, for the record.)
As for what you can't do, check out the short version of the license, although it's all common-sense stuff-- like you can't change things willy-nilly, for example. And, if you happen to be a rich and famous Hollywood producer who is intent on making this into a movie, you have to talk to me first. And by "talk," I mean "give me money," just so there's no misunderstandings. Although we can talk -- for real, this time -- about who should play me. Brad Pitt? Too old. Tom Cruise? Too crazy. Tom Hanks? Too much hair, unfortunately for me. I'd say Orlando Bloom, but -- in all modesty -- he might not be attractive enough. Either way, I'm sure we can work it out.
Whatever. The very short version of the license can be found on the following page. Unlike the long version, it's meant to be comprehensible to the majority of human beings. If you are into incomprehensibility, not human, or just enjoy reading legalese, the full license can be found at the end of this book.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the stories. I'll let you all know about the movie before it comes out . . .
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
In a country like China, where everyone seems to either want to learn English or to improve whatever English they already know, there are a wide range of money-making opportunities available to the driven, proactive native English speaker. Unfortunately, I don't really know anything about that sort of person, being only the last of those three things. Happily, however, it turns out that plenty of job opportunities exist for the unmotivated, can't-be-bothered native English speaker as well, which actually suits me much better.
I got my first "hey, that guy knows English!" job after only about a month in-country. I found out about it through one of those friend-of-a-friend deals, AKA "I know someone who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors" syndrome. In this case, it was from a cousin of a friend of my wife's coworker. Or something like that, I never really got the relationship straight. And really, it didn't matter. What did matter was that a local school -- I forget the name, but it had "Beijing" and "English" in the title, so that should give you a good idea of what it was all about -- wanted to pay me to read words into a microphone, the idea being that their students could later listen to me pronounce these words in my flawless, native English.
And the thing was, they really wanted to pay me: five-hundred yuan per hour, which at the then current exchange rate translated into a little more than sixty US dollars for every hour of work. Let me repeat that: sixty dollars an hour. A dollar a minute. Not only is that a lot of money for reading into a microphone, it's a lot of money in general. And to make it better, I wasn't even in the US; I was in Beijing, a place where the average monthly income was a few hundred US dollars, give or take. Or, to put it into more understandable language, a place where a twenty-two ounce bottle of beer could be picked up for around fifty cents, if that. Obviously, I had hit the jackpot. I immediately emailed my wife's coworker's friend's cousin or whoever and said that yes, certainly I would be happy, delighted, and even thrilled to come and record some English words for the school and how long did she think it would take and, oh, by the way, not that I really cared about money at all -- despite the fact that I am, by definition, a capitalist pig -- but did I hear it paid five-hundred yuan an hour?
Turns out, it did pay that well. And, even better, it would take at least three hours and possibly more to do everything, depending on how fast I read. Deciding at that very moment to work as slowly as possible, I agreed to go in on a Saturday morning to read whatever the hell they wanted me to: the collected adventures of Dick & Jane; Danielle Steel's complete oeuvre; or even Chairman Mao's little red book, although his little black book would probably be more interesting. But really, for sixty bucks an hour, who the hell cared?
Saturday came and I managed to find the place on time, even though my cab driver seemed to have only a slightly better idea than I did of where we were actually going. The "school" turned out to be a mid-sized office building in the middle of a street of mid-sized office buildings, which made me wonder for the first but not the last time about the legitimacy of the alleged school. However, as long as they were going to pay me as well as they promised, I figured it was the students' problem, not mine, so I nodded to the security guard and made my way into the lobby.
From there, I called my designated contact, Mr. Wu, who, despite being some sort of underboss at an English language school, could barely speak a word of said language. (I'm guessing his Latin, specifically any knowledge of the phrase caveat emptor, was less than stellar as well.) After a short conversation in a combination of pidgin English and pidgin Chinese -- either Chinglish or Englese, depending on your point of view -- I was met in the lobby by Tracy, who was apparently the best English speaker in the company, or at least the best one they could force to come into work on a Saturday morning.
Tracy escorted me up to the school's offices, which turned out to be a suite at one end of the building, and into a sparsely furnished office -- a desk and two chairs, nothing more -- to meet Mr. Wu. I shook his hand, sat down, and was treated to what I liked to think of as the mandatory Lost in Translation moment: you listen to someone speak for a significant length of time, and whatever he or she said is then translated by a second person into an impossibly short sentence given how much the first person seemed to say.
In this case, I sat at a table across from Mr. Wu, who proceeded to ramble on in Chinese for several minutes straight, all the while smiling and waving his hands around expansively like he was practicing his Tai Chi while talking to me. Then again, maybe he was just half-Italian: Marco Polo did spend some time in China, remember.
When he stopped, he turned to Tracy, who in turn turned to me and translated: "He said read the list. When you come to end of the letter, please take a pause."
And that was it. That was all she said.
"That's all?" I asked, sure that it wasn't.
As she thought about it, her face sucked inward like she had just bit into a nice, fresh lemon. Or, if you prefer a more Asian metaphor, like she had just bit into a nice, fresh durian, which is a spiky, greenish soccer-ball sized fruit that has been accused of both smelling and tasting like a sewer, but which people in certain parts of Southeast Asia seem to enjoy, or at least claim to. All fruit comparisons aside, however, it was not a good look for her.
When her face returned to normal, she smiled and nodded her head. "Yes!"
So much for me being sure.
With that, apparently, settled, I proceeded to sign a contract that was entirely in Chinese, deciding as soon as the undecipherable text was slid in front of me that the benefits (namely, sixty dollars an hour) outweighed the risks (namely, putting my barely legible signature onto a legal document that I not only did not, but actually could not, read). Naturally, I did have a moment of doubt before signing -- item three point two point one stroke seven: if you do not complete your job to our satisfaction, you will be driven out to a field, shot, and your family will be charged for the cost of the gas, the labor, and the bullet -- but since I guessed that there was probably nothing worse in the text than several different ways they could screw me out of whatever money they owed me at the end, I signed anyway.
As soon as I did, Mr. Wu shook my hand and disappeared out the door, presumably having better things to with his Saturday than continue talking to someone who didn't understand a word he said. Tracy then walked me to the room where the actual recording would take place: a five-by-five square with a desk, a single lamp in the corner, and a window that overlooked a busy arterial, with all the squealing of brakes, gunning of engines, and honking of horns that implied. So much for a soundproof room. A decrepit monitor and computer combination sat on one corner of the desk. The PC was attached to a high-tech sound mixer -- meaning it had more dials, switches, and flashing lights than a Death Star control panel -- that probably cost five times as much as the computer itself.
At this point, a third person -- whom I will henceforth refer to as IT Guy, since I never actually got his name -- came in. He walked up to me and proceeded to reach across my body in order to pull a microphone out of one of the desk drawers, politeness, as far as I had been able to determine, not being a big point-of-emphasis in China. Let's face it: with 1.3 billion people or so, you just don't have time to be nice to people you don't know or you would never get anything done. (If you don't believe this is true, go to a Beijing train station and try to buy a ticket without being rude to a single person. I dare you.)
Producing a black cable from one of the boxes stacked haphazardly in the corner of the room, IT Guy hooked up the mike, opened some sort of recording program, and tested the sound level with the Chinese equivalent of "hey" a few times. Apparently satisfied, he clicked the Record button. I knew this because it had a red circle on it, apparently the universal symbol for record. Also, it said RECORD in over-sized red letters.
He opened up a Microsoft Excel file and pointed at it.
"Read."
I looked at the spreadsheet. It was a single column of text. At the top of the first column was the letter A. Beneath it was a list of words that -- go figure -- began with that same letter.
"Read?"
He nodded. "Read."
I looked at Tracy, who was watching the proceedings from the doorway. She shook her head and told me to read. IT Guy gestured to the microphone and said "read" again, like maybe I hadn't understood the first three times they said it. Which would have been odd, since I was the native English speaker and if I couldn't understand the word read they were in serious trouble. Although I would still be quite a bit richer by the time they figured it out, so it really didn't matter. Not to me, anyway.
That being the case, I followed their instructions.
"A."
I paused for a second and then read the first word, although I don't actually remember what it was as I was much more concerned with how many words were in the list and, consequently, how much money I would be taking home. But since I had no way to figure that out with Tracy and IT Guy watching me, I continued on, reading and pausing, reading and pausing, exactly as I had been instructed. After about a minute of this, Tracy and IT Guy were apparently satisfied that I knew what I was doing -- he can read! -- so they left, banging the door shut behind them. Why bother to be quiet, after all? It's not like I was recording anything.
And then they were gone. That was it. No other instructions besides "read," which -- based on the amount of times I had been told to do so -- was clearly the most important thing. That in itself wasn't surprising, reading being the point of the entire exercise after all, but there were other things I wondered about. Like, for example, what I should do if I had to go the bathroom. Or if I made a mistake, which I was bound to do at some point. Or where I should go when I was finished for the day. Guessing that neither Tracy nor IT Guy knew English well enough to actually answer any of those questions, I decided to follow the time-tested strategy of males everywhere and ignore them, in the same way we have learned to ignore a variety of other unanswerable questions, including sticky wickets such as Does this make me look fat?, Do you think that girl over there is pretty?, Where were you last night? etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
That being taken care of, I stopped reading. As I said, the most important thing was not those pesky questions that I had already forgotten about (see previous paragraph) or even the words that I was currently being paid to say aloud; rather, it was how many words I would be actually be reading. I grabbed the mouse and scrolled down. And down. And down. The scroll bar on the side of the screen, the little box that lets you know how close to the end of the document you are, didn't appear to move at all. I scrolled faster and faster as the column showed no sign of ending, until eventually the screen turned into a blur of unrecognizable lines and shapes. But always that first column was just a bit darker than the rest, filled, as it was, with words -- thousands and thousands of them, apparently.
Eventually, I got the end, to the literal last word. I don't remember what it was, and really, it didn't matter. What did matter the number next to that word: 1-3-5-1-4. Let me repeat that: 13,514. Meaning that to get to the end of the spreadsheet, I had to read 13,500 or so more words. Obviously, I had been lied to: this was going to take a lot longer than three hours. Not surprisingly, however, I didn't mind. I was, after all, getting paid sixty dollars an hour, which I believe I may have already mentioned.
Ignoring the fact that the recording was going to have a lot of dead space starting immediately after Tracy and IT Guy closed the door, I opened the calculator program on the computer and did some quick estimating. I figured, best-case scenario, I could read maybe one word every two seconds. That meant I would be doing this for at least seven hours, which I would try to make eight with the addition of frequent pauses. Given the exchange rate, I figured the job would actually end up netting me around five hundred US dollars. Needless to say, I was pleased. I paused for a second to reflect on just how pleased I was -- making, of course, the dead space in the tape that had been started when I paused to figure out just how pleased I was going to be even deader -- then scrolled back to the top of the spreadsheet and resumed reading.
Ten minutes and a few hundred words later, I realized that the job was not going to be quite as easy as I had thought. Not that it was hard, of course. Hard was the people I had passed on the taxi ride to the office, people whose job appeared to consist of moving boulder-sized chunks of rubble away from a building site using wheelbarrows that were roughly equal in size to those funny little European cars, which only seem to be purchased by exceptionally tall people, if the movies and TV are any guide to such things. So when I say it was hard, I don't mean that it was hard hard: I just meant that it wasn't as laughably simple as I had originally assumed it would be.
The problem was actually the reading itself, which surprised me. After all, as an English major, I sort of considered reading to be a strong point of mine. And I still do, although reading out loud is apparently not. Besides the fact that I wasn't used to talking so much -- that after only a few minutes my mouth was so dry I could spit sand -- reading down the list, pronouncing word after word after word as carefully as I possibly could, quickly became tiring.
It sounds stupid, I know, but it's true. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself. First, get a dictionary, preferably a collegiate one -- the kind you give as a high school graduation present to the neighbor's kid or a niece or nephew you don't like that much. Why a collegiate dictionary? Because of the word selection. It's got some hard words, words that you haven't seen before and have no idea how to pronounce, but not too many. Unlike, say, an unabridged dictionary, which -- besides being anvil-heavy and, as a result, great for propping open doors and flattening both slightly curled papers and pesky road runners -- not only has too many words you've never seen in your life, but also has words that you'd swear were completely made up if they weren't there for you to read in black and white. You know, words like imbauba, psittaceous, and zymurgy, all of which actually do mean something in the English language, although I still have no idea what.
Anyway, now that you have a suitable dictionary, open it up to the first word -- A, I'm guessing -- and start reading. When you come to a word you don't know, don't stop to look at the pronunciation key or the definition, just read it and keep going. After all, I didn't have the luxury of such things: I had nothing more than the word on a screen with no hints whatsoever about how to say it.
And that's it, it's that simple. To get the full effect, continue to do this for at least an hour, preferably two or three. However, since most of you are probably not being paid sixty dollars an hour while doing this, I would say that you could probably stop after five minutes or so and still get some idea of what I'm talking about.
Done yet? Good. See, I told you it was hard, or harder than you might have thought. The difficulty is that after a few minutes you drift off and start thinking about other things: the way your nose itches; how you can be hungry already when you only ate breakfast a few hours ago; if you should wimp out and go to the McDonald's across the street for lunch or stop by the sidewalk-front kitchen next to the building, which looked good but that, between your bad Chinese and what will undoubtedly be the cook's non-existent to three-word English (hullo, yes, Coca-Cola!), only offers about a fifty-percent chance of getting something you'll actually want to eat in the end.
That last item was what I was thinking about when I ran into the first of many problems I would discover as the morning wore on: word strings. What, you are likely asking, are word strings? It's a phrase I made up on the spot -- hence the you not knowing what it means -- to describe a series of similar sounding words that have a single word with a completely different pronunciation buried in their midst, the dictionary equivalent of an antipersonnel mine. But, you know, without all the blood and pain and death that accompany the real thing. Sixty dollars an hour is great, but it's not that much. I mean, it's not landmine-type money, that's for sure.
Anyway, here's an example of a word string. Try to read this series of words correctly. And if you do -- I'm sure many of you will somehow manage -- imagine trying to read the list of words correctly after three consecutive hours of reading from a dictionary while thinking about something or even anything else:
- Celibacy
- Celibate
- Celebrate
- Celebration
- Cell
- Cellist
- Cellular
- Cement
I know, there's all those S sounds in a row and then, from out of nowhere, the CH in cellist sucker-punches you in the back of the head, which, let's face it, is just like a cellist. Well, probably it is; I don't actually know any cellists. And I guess with their sucker-punching tendencies that's a good thing, although now that I've pissed them off en masse I'll probably have to start watching my back. Which won't work, since while I'm looking behind me they'll sucker punch me from the front, sneaky bastards that they are, but I still have to try. Regardless, however, of the pugilistic nature of cellists, my immediate problem was that I had pronounced the word with an S instead of a CH, potentially damning untold numbers of innocent Chinese students to look like fools whenever they went to or simply tried to discuss the symphony in English.
And now that I had made a mistake, I had no idea what to do. A few possibilities flashed through my head, all of which were discarded as quickly as they arrived, like a notice from your local charity agency that they'll be collecting soon in your area. One: get up, find IT Guy, and try to communicate to him what I'd done? No, because even if I managed to get my point across, if I had to track him down every time I made a mistake I would look like an idiot, which is not something I'm fond of. Two: try to rewind the recording program and rerecord the incorrect bits and bytes? No chance: the potential for screwing everything up was way too high. In all probability, I'd end up accidentally deleting everything I'd already done and be forced to redo it, which would be bad. And redo it for free, at that, which would be even worse. Three: read the word again? Possibly, but I envisioned the school playing the recording as is -- I was a native English speaker after all, so why bother double-checking my work? -- thereby causing untold confusion for the trusting students trying to follow along on their word list with little to no idea of what the words actually meant.
Obviously, none of those solutions would work, so I did the only thing that I could do and, really, the only sensible thing. Sensible here, of course, meaning the choice that was easiest for me personally, everyone else be damned. Because really, if that's not the definition of sensible, then what the hell is? To wit, I decided to pretend that nothing had happened, that no mistake had been made, and kept reading, starting with cellular -- with an S, natch. Did that mean I wasn't doing my job correctly, that I was letting down the kind, oh-so-very-kind, people who were giving me sixty dollars an hour to read through a shortish dictionary? Possibly to probably, with the answer leaning more toward the latter. Much more. But then again, since I would in all likelihood have my money and be long gone by the time anyone figured out that something was wrong, I decided I really didn't care all that much. Problem solved.
That issue taken care of, I went on with my reading. At least, I went on until I came to the next sticking point: lack of context. That is, for example, how would you say the word B-O-W? Like something you use to shoot arrows, or like something you do before royalty or even the front part of a ship which, confusingly, may be named after royalty? And what about E-L-A-B-O-R-A-T-E? Or B-A-S-S? When you first come to a word like that, there's no way to know what word it's supposed to be -- you have to guess. The good part about this is that you can't be wrong: sure, each word has multiple pronunciations, but both are correct. The bad part is you don't know how the word is going to be presented to the class, and -- therefore -- how the unsuspecting Chinese students will use, or try to use, the word in the future as they attempt to make their way in the cruel, unforgiving English-speaking world. And if you don't believe the English-speaking world is cruel, I have four words for you: bough, cough, though, and through. Welcome to the US, bitch.
Luckily, having previously established my lack of caring during the sellist incident, I was able to solve this little conundrum quite easily: I tossed out whatever pronunciation came into my head first and went with that. So in the examples above, I ended up with something Robin Hood uses because, in general, Robin Hood's cool (as long as he's not played by Kevin Costner); something that's complicated rather than something that's fancy for the second, since the way I pronounce them the former has one less syllable than the latter, which made it slightly easier for me; and the third like an instrument instead of a sea-dwelling creature because, let's face it, guitars are just cooler than fish. Way cooler. And sure, it gets complicated if the guitar player is in a band called fish -- spelled with a ph, no less, which is potentially even more perplexing -- but I conveniently ignored that entire possibility.
Needless to say, I read on, ever on.
The final problem I found was an interesting one: words that were not, in point of fact, actually words. You know, "words" like morous, which could be either morose spelled particularly poorly, the opposite of amorous, or not a word at all. Probably the first, but I didn't care enough to guess so I just went with the word as spelled. Most cases were a bit more obvious, though. Say, for instance, cercist, which seems like it should mean something but doesn't, or prikilothermis, which is such nonsense that if it's not somewhere in the poem "Jabberwocky," it should be. Again and again I pronounced these and other nonexistent words however I damn well pleased -- the pronunciation of non-existent words being quite simple, really -- and kept progressing toward the end of the list. This might seem particularly bad of me, but I was being paid to read the words, not to fix or edit them. I mean, for a hundred bucks an hour I might have changed the words, but for sixty? As if.
Of course, it wasn't all sitting in place reading for hours on end, mispronouncing word after word after word and not doing anything about it. Well technically I guess it was, but what I'm trying to say is that it wasn't completely terrible and all that, and not only because of the hundreds of dollars I was making, although that didn't hurt. Money, I've noticed, tends to make most things better, the same way putting a half- to fully-naked female model next to most things makes them seem more desirable. Particularly if that other thing is another half- to fully-naked female model, although it also works for cars, cigarettes, clothes, alcohol, and pretty much anything else, too. Just, you know, not as well.
But what kept it from being a total bore was that it was actually fun -- well, funny -- from time-to-time. The principal reason for this was unfortunately paired words: two words that weren't funny on their own, but became funny by virtue of following each other in the list. Like, say, Virgin and Virile. You should probably keep those two words apart, if possible. At least, you should keep them apart if you want the definition for the first to continue to be applicable, if you know what I mean. And I really hope you do, because it's not that subtle.
Other good word pairs included:
- Orgasm followed by Orgy. Funny how those two go together, isn't it?
- Pesky followed by Pervert. They do tend to be, don't they?
- Queen followed by Queer. Sometimes, at least.
- Ream followed by Rear. See previous.
And my personal favorite, given the circumstances:
- Chinese followed by Chink. And no, I could hardly believe it either, if it helps.
A second source of amusement was the steady stream of words that, while correct, are rarely to never used in day-to-day conversation, nice fifty-cent words like lachrymose (given to tears or weeping, tending to cause tears), or kerfuffle (disturbance or fuss). Imagine, if you will, a typical Chinese student, one who has studied English in average, run-of-the-mill schools for most of his or her life. He or she might be able to say something like this: "That fight caused quite a fuss, and over something so pointless! Now I don't cry very often, but I might have if your sweet voice hadn't calmed me."
That's all well and good, but it's missing something, that certain je ne sais quoi that's needed to really wow native English speakers such as you and me. Luckily, Chinese students who were fortunate enough to go the school I was currently working for wouldn't have this problem. No, they'd be able to communicate the same thing, but with style: "That imbroglio caused quite a kerfuffle, and over something so jejune! Now I am not lachrymose, but I might have cried if your mellifluous voice hadn't assuaged me."
Now that, I think we can all agree, is some serious fucking English. What -- you don't think it's better? Well, how awkward. And, I might add, how gauche of you to say so. Which, not coincidentally, is something else the fortunate Chinese student described above would be able to say -- correctly, even! -- courtesy of yours truly. Quite an accomplishment, I know.
When it was all said and done -- in that order -- I had to go to the school's offices three times, for a grand total of eight hours to get through all thirteen-thousand and whatever words and collect my four-hundred-plus dollars of semi-easy money. And, for the record, they never said anything about my pronunciation. Or my mispronunciation, as the case may be. I'm guessing they never even bothered to listen to the tapes, they probably just played them in front of the class or streamed them over the Internet without editing them at all. I assume that someone will eventually notice the -- let's face it -- many, many problems, but I'll probably never find out about. And in any case, it doesn't matter, because the money has all been spent. Turns out, papa needed not only a brand-new bag (fake Swiss Army -- I was in China, after all), but also a nice, custom-tailored suit. Quel dommage.
And that, as they say, is pretty much that. But if you ever meet a Chinese person who studied English in Beijing in the early mid-two thousands or so, and they tell you about the wonderful sellist they saw in concert; about how the sellist took a bo at the end of the performance; and how they went out afterward and had a lovely dinner featuring Chilean sea base, think of me and try not to laugh.
Or at least, try not to laugh too hard.
Mark my words: China is going to clean up at the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympics, but not for the reasons you think. Sure, since those particular Olympics are being held in Beijing, they'll have the home court, course, field, track, pool, and mat advantage, which certainly won't hurt. That's not why they'll do so well, though. It's also not because China has, over the past two Summer Olympics -- I'd tell you where they were held, but honestly I forget about them the moment they end and sometimes even during -- progressively increased their overall medal count. At the 2004 Olympics, for instance, China was not only third in overall medals, but was actually second in gold medals won, only three behind the USA, and everyone knows that we always win the most medals at the Summer Olympics. Well, at least we do now that the USSR has ceased to exist. Yes, apparently Reagan was good for something other than Oliver North, soaring deficits, and voodoo economics -- who would have thought?
However, while China's recent medal surge is certainly notable, it's not quite as impressive as you might initially think. Why? Because a lot of those medals are in sports that don't really count as sports at all – things like badminton and ping-pong, events in which the Chinese tend to dominate. And for those of you who would argue with me about the sporting merit of the aforementioned games, well, you're wrong. Take badminton: any alleged "sport" that prominently features something referred to, correctly mind you, as a shuttlecock and not as some sort of ongoing, adolescent joke simply does not deserve to be an Olympic event. I mean, do you really want your kid to spend the entire summer talking about how he gets off on whacking his shuttlecock around? I didn't think so.
As far as ping-pong is concerned, anything that can be played in a bar while drinking is not a sport. Like, coincidentally, ping-pong, which can be played in such an environment, although it should not be unless you are unable to play pool, darts, air hockey, any Golden Tee video game, or snooker, which I don't actually know how to play but which seems enough like pool that it's probably cool. Whatever the case, I'm pretty sure it's still better than ping-pong since it doesn't feature three seconds of what can only charitably be described as action followed by thirty seconds of crawling around on your hands and knees like a busy hooker at a bachelor party while looking for the fucking ball, which has naturally rolled underneath the least convenient object in the bar, be that the stage, the jukebox, or the table full of bikers in the corner who were a bit too rough for the Hell's Angels and who you just know have been debating the merits of beating the crap out of you, possibly literally, for the better part of the night -- rightly so, I might add -- because you've been playing ping-pong instead of doing something else, even if that something else was sitting on a stool drinking bottles of overpriced, under-flavored European pilsner while watching a WNBA game.
Well, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea.
But back to my point, which is that China is going to kick some serious ass at the next summer games, and not because they happen to be in Beijing -- the still-beating heart of Red China -- or because it's the natural culmination of some sort of medal-winning trend. No, China will vault to the top of the medal tables because of one thing: the tracksuit. Seriously, tracksuits? Seriously. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, who was paraphrasing Shakespeare, who was either paraphrasing someone else or who didn't really exist and was actually Christopher Marlowe, a tracksuit is a tracksuit is a tracksuit. Sure, in China it might be a cheap knockoff of an overpriced one made -- in China, of course -- by a well-known company like Nike or Puma or Adidas and sold in the States for at least ten times what it cost to get it on the shelves, but it's still a tracksuit. And as I said, a tracksuit is a … never mind.
The thing is that while all tracksuits may not be created equal, they all serve the same primary function. And no, it's not simply a suit you wear to run on a track, although that is certainly one very literal thing you can do in it. I, however, prefer to embrace a broader definition, as in something you can wear either on your way to or while practicing pretty much any sort of athletic endeavor, from actual track and/or field to basketball to gymnastics to swimming to diving and everything up, down, around, and in-between. Except, of course, badminton and ping-pong, as has already been established.
What, you might quite rightly be asking, does this have to do with anything? Good question. The reason it has anything to do with anything is that, from what I can tell, the official school uniform in China is -- you guessed it -- the tracksuit. That's right, all across China, from Beijing to Guangzhou, from Shanghai to Xi'an, hundreds of millions of children -- possibly more children than the entire population of the US, mind you -- are spending their entire day in tracksuits. And, from what I gathered by asking a variety of Chinese people, they've been wearing tracksuits for years: since the early seventies at least and possibly before then, although since my half-hearted attempt to Google up an answer one afternoon met with complete and utter failure, we'll never know for sure. However, for all I know the first thing Mao did after he finished waving his little red book around and proclaiming the birth of the People's Republic of China from the top of Tiananmen Gate in October 1949 was to institute an all-tracksuit, all-the-time policy for every school-aged child in the country. I mean, he probably didn't, but you never know.
Now, as far as school uniforms go, I suppose tracksuits are as good as anything else. Personally, I go for the Catholic school girl style because, really, what's not to like about good-looking girls who are either eighteen, or at least look like they are, in stockings and knee-length plaid skirts? But putting aside my perverted and -- as I age and have children of my own -- increasingly disturbing views on such things, I have to admit that the tracksuit is a far more sensible uniform, if only slightly. So the question then becomes why the tracksuit? Why, out of every possible uniform combination -- from the previously discussed Catholic schoolgirl (which, granted, would be odd in a communist state with no religion whatsoever) to the standard shirt and tie to stylish-yet-sensible green Mao shirts for everyone -- did they choose the tracksuit? Cost? Uniformity? Availability? Ease-of-use? No, no, no, and no, although I must admit that uniformity does make some sense, since that tends to be a desirable quality in a uniform.
So why then? The answer is obvious: to get ready for the Olympics. I mean, why wear a tracksuit if not to get ready for an athletic event? That is, after all, the raison d'êtré of the tracksuit. And why have every kid in the country wear a tracksuit unless you are getting ready for an athletic event that will involve the entire nation. Like . . . wait for it … the Olympics? Let's face it -- it just makes sense. And for those of you who think that's insane, that there is no way every child in China has been wearing a tracksuit for thirty-odd if not more years in order to get ready for the 2008 Summer Olympics, which China didn't even know it would be hosting until a few years ago, I say this: you are totally, completely, and utterly wrong. Remember way back in the Renaissance when Galileo was arrested by the Catholic Church for insisting that the Earth rotated around the sun and not the other way around? That's how wrong you are. And yes, in case there's any confusion, you are the Catholic church in this analogy. Sorry. But on the plus side, you get a funny hat out of the deal, so it's not a complete loss.
Of course, there is no possible way Mao could have known back whenever that those particular Olympics would be held in Beijing, I'll give you that much. But what you may not be aware of is that China was hoping that the 1940 Olympics would be held in Shanghai -- they even built a stadium to show they could handle hosting such an event.[1] And sure, the entire thing was put on hold by that whole "Japan overrunning the country in the early late thirties" thing -- WWII didn't help, either -- but it just goes to show that they were thinking about it way back in the nebulously defined day, when Mao was still a spunky young go-getter from Hunan province with Commie-yellow stars in his eyes.
And true, seventy years is a long time to get ready for a sporting competition that you don't even know you're going to have, one full of events people only care about for five or six days every four years -- I'm looking at you, gymnastics -- but I would argue that, on the contrary, it's just good, solid planning. And really, the Chinese are nothing if not patient. I mean, when you live in a country with well over a billion people, you learn to wait. And wait. And wait. You get the idea.
Want a more concrete example? How about the Great Wall, although I guess that's more of a "set-in-stone" example now that I think about it. Did you know that the Chinese started their wall-building ways hundreds of years before Jesus was born? I thought not. Of course, what we now think of as the Great Wall -- the wall that, in part, still stands today -- was built later, mostly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but as far as I'm concerned the fact that they began building so early shows some serious foresight, the kind that makes Prometheus seem like the kind of guy who doesn't check to make sure his zipper's up until after he gets on stage. And not only that, but once they started -- restarted -- things in the thirteen hundreds, they really went for it, continuing to build for about two hundred years. Now that, my friends, shows commitment.
And yes, like the Maginot Line the entire thing was a waste of time and didn't work at all, but the important thing to note here is that they were willing to commit to something for a few centuries or so just to see how it worked out. Think about it: two-hundred-plus years of blood, sweat, and tears -- probably in that order -- to prepare for an invasion no one was sure would ever even happen. In comparison, they've only been preparing for the Olympics via the tracksuit method for what, like thirty years? That's nothing, particularly when you've got 5,000 years of history behind you.
Things being what they are, however, I think it is not only possibly but entirely probable that the Chinese tracksuit culture, which may or may not -- Mao or Mao not? -- have been created by the Chairman himself, is part of a carefully thought-out plan to prepare China for domination at the 2008 Summer Games, thereby allowing the Chinese to prove to the rest of the world that they have arrived as a force to be reckoned with, as if flooding every country on the globe with cheaply made textiles, plastics, and electronic components that destroy huge sections of said countries' economies weren't proof enough.
No, real proof apparently requires gold, or at least a thin veneer of gold slapped over a lesser substance, like nickel or zinc or whatever it is that the allegedly gold Olympic medals are actually made out of. Strange, I know, but we say tomato, they say . . . God only knows. Something in Chinese, I suppose, which by virtue of being even less understandable than tomatoe actually only further proves my point. Or maybe it doesn't; it's actually a bit confusing. But it doesn't hurt my point, I'm sure of that.
Either way, come August 2008, when for two-odd weeks you get up at all hours of the night to watch sports you normally don't care anything about, sports like synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, Greco-Roman wrestling, or even -- God, Buddha, or whatever forbid—pseudo-sports like badminton and ping-pong, don't be surprised when you see Chinese athletes winning gold after gold after gold. And the next day at work, tell your friends, coworkers, and whomever else is also getting up at all hours of the day and night to watch sports they normally don't care about that you aren't at all surprised by the Chinese domination. Then, when they ask why, tell them that it's because the Chinese have been preparing for this moment for years. Decades, even. Tell them that, in a way, the Chinese have been preparing for the 2008 Olympics for centuries.
In short, tell them about the tracksuit.
Screw Tibet
Based solely on bumper stickers, there seem to be a lot of people in the US who are interested in freeing Tibet. Despite this apparent concern, I'd wager that the percentage of Americans who can actually point out Tibet on a map is fewer than ten, and -- given the rapidly increasing number of children who seem to be left behind, if my encounters with them at the checkout lines and drive-throughs of the world are any indication -- even that low number is probably grossly optimistic. Not to mention the fact that, even among those who can correctly identify the country, most people's knowledge of Tibet seems to consist of two things: first, that at some point somebody in Tibet was oppressed; and second, that Dalai Lama sure seems like one heck of a nice guy, what with the constant smiling and brightly colored clothes and all.
Based on that, I'm not really sure why everyone seems to care so much about Tibet. Only something like one or two percent of the US population is Buddhist, so any actual religious motivation is out. And okay, China did invade Tibet -- that would be the oppression I referred to earlier -- but no Americans seem to mind when an African country they're only dimly aware of invades some similar sounding African country they've never heard of at all, regardless of how many tens of thousands of people are raped, tortured, or killed. In fact, Americans only really seem to care when at least one of the countries involved happens to have vast amounts of oil, and even then only half of us, if that, actually think doing something about it is a good idea.
And besides, it's not like in the thousand-plus years Tibet existed before the 1950s, when it was occupied by China -- if you are either a current member or just a particularly ardent supporter of the Chinese government that would be "liberated" -- everything was complete nirvana, despite the somewhat ironic fact that everyone was trying to attain just that. On the contrary, during the previous millennium Tibet has been conquered by not only the Chinese, but also by the Mongols, way back in their Genghis Khan glory days when they were kicking pretty much everyone's ass. In fact, at one point in the early nineteen hundreds, Tibet was even invaded by Britain as a part of what I can only assume was the British master plan of subjugating any country where their army could enjoy the luxury of vastly superior firepower. (Something that worked very well, for the record.) And yet, despite all this, those spunky Tibetans still managed to deliver a little karmic retribution of their very own -- with a sword, not a ploughshare -- at one point even managing to capture Ch'ang-An (now Xi'an), then the capital of China, and forcing the Chinese to pay them tribute. I know, who would have thought?
My point is that for a long time the Tibetan border was in a state of flux, just like the border between the US and Mexico was back in the eighteen hundreds. And yes, China did invade Tibet as part of a land grab, that's true. But it's also true that the US invaded Mexico for basically no other reason than to take away Texas and most of what is now the American Southwest, and you don't see anyone slapping obnoxiously bright "Free Texas!" stickers on the back windows of their ten-year-old Volvos and Subarus, do you? Although I guess that actually makes sense, since I think most of us would be happy to get rid of Texas entirely. Except, you know, Austin, which I've never actually been to but hear is pretty cool.
And besides, even when things were going relatively well in Tibet -- that is, they weren't conquered or actively being conquered -- it wasn't exactly the kind of place people were interested in moving to, since the entire country is both really high and really cold, like a naked hippy in a snowstorm. The capital, Lhasa, is almost twelve thousand feet up in the Himalayas. Let me say that again: twelve fucking thousand feet. Most places in the world you need to be in an airplane to get that far off the ground, which as far as I'm concerned is not the sort of thing you brag about in your tourist brochures: TIBET: The Land that Global Warming Forgot!, or maybe TIBET: The Only Thing We're Missing is Oxygen! Although I guess one positive for the latter is that, in all likelihood, you won't notice that the temperature should be measured using the Kelvin scale because you'll be too busy trying to not to pass out from the lack of oxygen in the incredibly thin air, although that strikes me as a fairly dubious benefit.
And if all that isn't bad enough, old-school Tibet was lacking in several things that most people would agree are pretty handy to have. Like, say, electricity. Hospitals. An educational system that didn't involve going to the monastery on a daily basis to learn about the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, but not the Twelve Days of Christmas, which would seem to make sense in a mathematical progression sort of way, if nothing else. And while the idea of not having any real school might appeal to your inner-child, if you weren't lucky enough to be proclaimed the reincarnation of some long-dead lama, it sort of narrowed your career path to one choice: serf. And let's face it, once you've been a serf it's hard to get anywhere, since any job interview that includes the observation "So I see from your resume that you used to be a serf?" rarely ends successfully.
Oh, and the best part is that Tibet used to be a theocracy, which means that the priests were also in charge of the government. To be honest, I'm not sure how that worked out, or whether or not the Tibetan people liked this system, but let me ask you this: how happy would you be if you were living fifteen thousand feet up on the side of a mountain in a hut with no electricity or central air doing everything your priest said? Okay, if your priest happened to be the sixth Dalai Lama -- AKA the "Party Lama," who was famously more interested in wine, woman, and song than all that karma bullshit -- it might be cool, but otherwise I can think of better situations. Did I mention the serfdom?
So the big question, then, is why we care about what happened -- or what may currently be happening -- in Tibet at all. The answer is simple: it's because of celebrities. Why celebrities, the majority of whom dropped out of the educational system immediately after twelfth grade, if not before, should become the de facto spokespeople for any number of incredibly complicated geopolitical issues is beyond me. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Brad and Angelina are nice people, and I genuinely think what they do to help the proverbial helpless all around the world is great, but I'm not sure why they seem to have become the driving force behind, say, giving aid to Africa.
I mean, think about it: Brad Pitt almost graduated from the University of Missouri, which is the equivalent of simply matriculating at most other universities, or just walking past the campuses of places like Harvard and Yale and Berkeley. And Angelina Jolie . . . well, she used to wear the blood of her husband around her neck in a tiny little vial, which really just speaks for itself, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, you can bet Einstein didn't do that kind of crap. And seriously, if just visiting a bunch of different countries where people don't seem to differentiate between clean and dirty water is enough to make them experts on the subject, then I'm qualified to be Secretary of State. Although, actually, given the shape of the current US administration, that might not be too off the mark . . .
Either way, to me the strangest thing about the celebrity-endorsed Free Tibet movement is the actual people behind it, and how they've somehow managed to get the issue so much traction. What people apparently forget is that Tibet's two primary spokesmen in America seem to be Richard Gere, long rumored to have a curious relationship with certain mammals[2], and Steven Seagal, a C-list action hero who claims to have been recognized as a reincarnation of a Buddhist holy man. Let me put that a different way: do you really care what happens to a country that's full of people who worship Steven Seagal as a religious icon? I didn't think so.
When you think about it, Scientology has much better known spokespeople, yet despite their A-list stars the general public still thinks of Scientology as a crackpot religion involving aliens that was invented by a marginally successful sci-fi writer from Nebraska in the Fifties. And sure, that's mostly because Scientology is a crackpot religion involving aliens that was made up by a delusional hick fifty-something years go, but that's not the point. The point is that if a pre-crazy Tom Cruise can't sell Scientology, how do the Beastie Boys, a group of white rappers from Brooklyn famous for insisting that their dressing room be stocked with all sorts of liquor and a sizeable collection of colored condoms , manage to get so many people bought in on the Tibet issue? Truly, it boggles the mind.
Yet, despite all of this, I don't actually have anything against Tibet. Or for it, either. I guess the problem is that pretty much nothing that happens in Tibet actually affects me. Some might call that heartless, but to me it's just practical. If Tibet were the world's main provider of coffee beans or something and could suddenly no longer export them, thereby causing a simple cup of regular black to cost ten or fifteen dollars, I would tattoo Free Tibet! across my forehead and rave about it on downtown street corners every morning. But as things currently stand with Tibet, I guess you could say that I'm indifferent.
Or rather, I was indifferent, something that changed when I ate my first Tibetan meal at a restaurant in Beijing. I'd had high hopes for it, since I'd read glowing notices of the place in all the standard guidebooks and some of the local expat magazines. In fact, Holly and I were so excited about it that we'd even waited a few weeks until my parents came to visit before checking it out: we thought dinner at a Tibetan restaurant would be something they could tell their friends about, since you don't see a lot of Tibetan food places in the States. Also, we figured they would pay, which is never a bad thing.
Thinking about it now, I guess the lack of Tibetan dining options back home should have been a warning sign about the quality of food we could expect, but we were too busy making Seagal-based Hard to Kill jokes to notice. "You know what would have made him even harder to kill? If he had been reincarnated as Jean-Claude Van Damme." You didn't know that was a Buddhist movie, did you?
If I had one word to describe the restaurant itself, it would be dark. Sure, some might say dimly lit, or even romantic, but I prefer the first word. After all, when I opened the restaurant door and stepped inside, my first thought wasn't, "Wow, this place is really romantic!" And since it was the middle of winter and the sun -- or what little you could usually see of it through the famous Beijing smog -- had disappeared hours earlier, it wasn't like we were coming in from the bright outdoors and our eyes had to adjust. No, it was just that dark.
Although I could still make out just enough of the restaurant to form a second thought, which was that everything in the place looked like it had been purchased at a Cost Plus sale. Well, either that or it was decorated with authentic Tibetan items. Really, it was hard to say -- particularly since the former might have been inspired by the latter, making it difficult to figure anything out except for the fact that any description of the overall effect would probably need to include the word tacky. Which may, come to think of it, explain why the place was so poorly lit.
After a brief discussion about whether or not they had anywhere for us to sit, we were led to a table toward the back of the room. As soon as we sat down, a waitress appeared out of the gloom and dropped a few surprisingly large and heavy menus -- who knew Tibetans had so many food choices? -- bound in some unidentifiable dark brown material onto our table. Then she asked us what we wanted. This despite the fact that none of us had actually had enough time to open the menu and, when we did, it was ten pages of drinks and dishes none of us had ever heard of. While I do appreciate efficient service, this was a little extreme for my taste.
And also sort of pointless, since the restaurant was so dimly lit that it was too dark to even see the menu -- unless, as we eventually discovered through trial-and-error, you happened to hold it pointing away from you at a forty-five degree angle, which allowed you to read by light of the candle in the center of the table. Convenient. Even better was that fact that despite our obvious struggle to even make out what we could order, not to mention what we might actually want, our waitress continued to hover just over my shoulder, pen poised over paper as if we might actually make a decision in the next few seconds and she really, really wanted to be ready when we did.
Despite this less than optimal ordering situation, after five minutes or so of discussion we managed to come to a decision on what we would be drinking and eating. When we began to tell the waitress what we had selected, she was -- in a perfect example of what happens in a country with an almost unlimited supply of cheap labor -- quickly joined by a second waitress whose job appeared to consist of nothing more than standing next to waitress number one. Then, just for good measure, the owner showed up as well, apparently simply to offer his opinion on what we were ordering. He stayed silent as my dad ordered a Lhasa beer -- "Beer from the Roof of the World" -- and my mom and I agreed to split a pitcher of yoghurt wine, apparently a Tibetan specialty, since we each liked yoghurt and wine and decided to see if it was one of those two-great-tastes-that-taste-great-together scenarios. And Holly? She asked for a pot of yak butter tea, which was supposed to be the "National Drink of Tibet," or some such nonsense.
"A pot?" The owner asked, waving off our waitress -- the one actually taking the order, not the one just standing there -- before she could write it down.
Holly nodded. "I figured I should try it as long as we're here."
"Yes, but maybe only a cup," the owner suggested, holding his fingers a few inches apart in order to provide a rough estimate of how much yak butter tea a cup consisted of. He then went on to explain that, in Tibet, people normally had a mug or possibly two to get them going in the morning, but that was it. He also added that it was "not for everyone."
At this point, Holly should have ordered something else, since the owner of the restaurant had come as close as he possibly could to explicitly telling us not to order something, that she would likely find the tea so disgusting as to be undrinkable. Seriously, if actual Tibetans could only handle a cup of the stuff at a time, what chance did we have? She got it anyway. I'm not sure why, but I'm guessing it was for a variety of reasons, including thoughts along the lines of "We're in a Tibetan restaurant, so why not?" and "I've eaten pig brain -- how bad can this stuff taste?"
Pretty fucking bad, as it turns out.
Not for everyone? I can't believe that stuff was for anyone. When the waitress set an oversized mug full of the concoction on our table, the first thing we noticed was the color. It was a shiny, unhealthy looking yellow, like an oil slick gone wrong. Or wronger, I guess. From what we could gather from the waitress, it consisted of two things: black tea, which was then mixed with what we hoped was fresh yak butter, although in retrospect I would have to say either that it was rancid or that yak butter is really not the kind of stuff you want to spread on your morning toast. The flavor is actually pretty easy to describe: it was like drinking warm, whole milk that had been heavily salted and was just on the wrong side of bad. It tasted about as good as you would imagine.
Holly actually shuddered -- shuddered! -- after her first drink, like a little kid forcing down cough syrup. Luckily, the owner wasn't around to see it, although based on his previous comments I doubt that he would have been too surprised.
"Is it gross?" I asked, despite her reaction, as if she might be shuddering because it tasted just that good, like ambrosia from heaven or whatever the Buddhist equivalent is.
Rather than answer, she pushed the cup over to me and took a drink of water. Then, as everyone inevitably does when confronted with some food or beverage that is supposed to be weird, bad, or downright disgusting: I took a taste. As you can guess from my description above -- warm, salty, rotten milk, if you've forgotten -- I wasn't a big fan. On the plus side, I managed to not vomit; on the negative side, I was actually worried about vomiting. And really, in that situation, I think the negative outweighs the positive, don't you?
Not surprisingly, that thirty-second burst of activity represented two-thirds of the total sips taken from the yak butter tea mug, since my parents passed on trying it out. And the last sip? That was taken by Holly immediately after the owner wandered by to ask how she liked it. For the record, her answer was "interesting," which to him must have meant something other than the standard American translation of "it tastes like shit" because he smiled happily when she said it. Unless, of course, it was some sort of schadenfreude thing, although I doubt it because I'm pretty sure he didn't sprechen any Deutsche.
The rest of our drink order showed up a few minutes later. The beer was pretty standard, like Bud but even more watery, which apparently is possible. As for the yoghurt wine, well, if nothing else, the presentation was interesting. It came in a faux-wooden decanter ringed with a series of ornate gold bands that would have served to hold the entire thing together if it had actually been made of organic material instead of a single, shiny piece of lacquered plastic. The glass it came with, an elaborate goblet that was either hundreds of years old or purchased from the Pier 1 bargain bin, was etched silver with a base of filigreed gold, presumably to make it just as fancy as the pitcher -- fancy in this case meaning a Liberace-level of tackiness, for the record.
We peered at the wine suspiciously, having learned a hard lesson from the yak butter tea. It was a thick, pinkish-orange liquid that looked a little chunkier than it should have and smelled vaguely of fermented fruit. Or, I suppose, like wine, since wine is, in large part, just that. Either way, I grabbed the decanter and poured a little bit of the wine, enough for a few sips, into the goblet. It glopped out. That is, it came out in glops, like curdled creamer, which is not generally something you see in liquids, but I was willing to go with it.
Sort of, at least. Rather than taking a drink, I took a quick peek around to make sure no one was looking, then dipped a chopstick into the mixture to try to figure out what exactly was making my drink chunky. (Yoghurt wine: the beverage that drinks like a meal!) After several quick pokes, the only thing I could figure out was that the chunks were solid enough that they probably weren't yoghurt-based, which was something of a relief since cheese is the only dairy product I enjoy eating in chunk form.
That little mystery solved to my satisfaction, I took a tiny drink. I had two thoughts right away: first, the chunks were fruit, probably from the yoghurt; second, it wasn't that bad. I wouldn't say it was good, but it was drinkable, which is a lot more than I could say for the yak-butter crap. It tasted like fruit-at-the-bottom peach yoghurt mixed with cheap brandy: sweet at first, but with that unmistakable hard-alcohol kicker at the end. We all had a sip, and the group came to two conclusions: first, it could be worse; second, it was probably stronger than we thought since the sweetness of the yoghurt took the edge off whatever sort of alcohol -- not wine, certainly -- it had been mixed with it. The warm, fuzzy feeling I had after finishing my second goblet of the stuff would later confirm this, but at the time it was only a guess.
At some point near the end of yoghurt-wine goblet one, our food arrived. We had ordered a heavily yak-based dinner. Not because we had any particular love of yak -- not surprisingly, none of us had ever consumed yak flesh -- but because the menu seemed to consist almost entirely of yak-based dishes. Apparently, the majestic yak is the only large, edible animal native to Tibet. (I'll take the cow, thanks.) Aside from a cold dish that consisted of cucumbers covered in sugar, we had: yak jerky, which were small, crunchy pieces of yak meat that had been "jerked" -- I have no idea what that means, by the way -- in some sort of anise and teriyaki sauce; boiled yak meat with carrots, potatoes, anise, and red peppers served over "hot stones," which ended up essentially being yak stew dumped onto warm, smooth rocks; and a soupy dish that looked like Ragu but was in fact -- surprise! -- yak meat with potatoes, carrots, and some other unidentified vegetables in a reddish-orange yak marrow sauce with some melted cheese on top.
Yes, you read that right: yak marrow. But actually, it wasn't bad. It was okay even, and while that might have been because the sauce actually was Ragu, I'm guessing it had more to do with all the yoghurt wine I washed it down with. While my mom and I had agreed to split the drink, what this turned out to mean was that, over the course of the entire meal, she drank about half of what was in her cup, which had only been half-full to begin with, while I drank the rest. Turns out, it was stronger than it seemed, something I was able to confirm with painful certainty the next morning. And really, in retrospect, that stuff was so potent I'm sort of amazed that I remember the food at all.
Clever of those Tibetans, wasn't it? I'm guessing that getting people drunk on yoghurt wine was also how they got so many people so very interested in liberating their country, because there's no way in hell they did it with the food. Sure, the cucumbers were good, as most thing covered in sugar are, and the jerky was decent too, although I have yet to discover a type of jerky that isn't edible. As for the rest, well, the boiled yak meat on top of rocks was about as exciting for the taste-buds as you'd guess it might be -- as bland as I'd always imagined borscht tasting during the Cold War -- and the yak marrow, well, we've already covered that.
Perhaps the most telling thing, however, was the amount of food left. After finishing -- note that the only two things actually finished were the can of beer and the yoghurt wine -- we sat around for a few minutes, plates pushed away from us and hands off of our chopsticks. When no one seemed to notice, we asked our waitress for the check. When she saw the amount of food we had left on the table, which I assume was enough to feed a Tibetan family for a month or some bullshit like that, if only we could have gotten it into Sally Struther's hands, she asked us if we wanted to take the rest home. We looked at each other uncomfortably for a good ten seconds, apparently all aware of how much food was left and the good Mrs. Struther's could do with it, before shaking our heads and mumbling "no" without really looking at the waitress, the way you do when everyone knows you didn't like the food but don't want to talk about it.
Once the waitress had finished clearing our table (apparently no one wanted to help her with that part of the job), the owner showed up again and asked if we wanted anything else, maybe some dessert, possibly? Rather than just say no outright, we gave him a fairly standard selection of excuses that one uses instead of actually saying "no, we hated the food." You know, lines like: thanks, but we're really full; we would, but we're in a hurry to get somewhere; sorry, I've had my fill of yak byproduct for the day otherwise I totally would; etcetera etcetera etcetra.
The manager smiled and said thank-you two or three times more than he should have, as if he wasn't aware that everything we had said was a complete lie. And really, that was fine with me. A few minutes later, we had paid our check and were in a cab on our way home.
"So what did you think?" I asked my parents as we drove away.
"It was interesting," my mom said, in what was obviously a very diplomatic way. Overly diplomatic even, since there was no one there to overhear her comment besides us, but that was typical of her: she would probably say Hitler seemed like an okay guy if she met him, although not, of course, until he had left the room. "I'm glad we got to try it while we were here."
"Not bad," my dad grunted from the front seat, like maybe he'd had better Tibetan food at some point. Of course, he's also the person who'd reviewed The Basketball Diaries as "not bad" when I'd rented it a few years before, then described it as being "like Hoosiers" -- other than, I assume, the heroin and homosexual prostitution -- when I questioned whether or not he'd actually seen it. So if you want to doubt his Tibetan food credentials, feel free.
"What did you think?" my mom asked.
"I think any chance of Holly and I going to Tibet at some point before we come back to Seattle pretty much ended tonight. I mean, it would be bad enough to spend the whole time freezing without having to eat that crap for every meal."
We laughed. Or, to be fair to everyone else in the taxi -- they may care more about being seen as an arrogant, heartless jerk than I do -- I laughed. As for everyone else, I'm pretty sure my dad smiled; Holly rolled her eyes and ignored me; and my mom said "Jason!" in a tone of voice that was part disappointment and part shock that I had learned to ignore completely from a fairly early age.
"Screw Tibet. We should just go to Thailand again instead," I went on, having summarily dismissed Tibet as a free and independent country -- and possibly as a culture in general -- in my last statement. "The food's better. And it's got better beaches. Really, what's not like?"
There was general agreement all around. And really, how could there not be? It's like I told one of our friends who was thinking about coming to meet us in Thailand but wasn't completely sure about traveling quite so far abroad: "Thailand is like Mexico, except it's cleaner and the food's not as fattening. What's not to like?"
Either way, ten minutes later, we were back at our apartment, sitting on the couch and watching TV.
"This is going to sound funny," I warned them, "but is anyone else hungry?"
Turns out, everyone was. So Holly grabbed her cell phone and ordered some food for delivery. And in case there's any doubt about what we ordered, it was Thai food. And you know what else? It was damn good. And it was just as good when we ended up going to Thailand.
Again.
Lately it seems like every travel article I read involves people complaining about how an overabundance of tourists -- generally understood to mean people who are older then you, people who can afford nicer hotels than you, or both -- are ruining all the best places. You know, how the beach in whatever far-off country that was pristine in the eighties was overrun in the nineties by backpackers who were smoking pot or dropping ecstasy and then acting like sitting around high all day doing nothing was the beginning of some great new way of life no one had ever thought of before. And how, currently, that same beach is home to one if not more brand-name hotels that try but don't really succeed in fitting in with the local culture because, really, putting a gazebo next to the infinity pool in the three-hundred room monstrosity you plopped down on the seashore and calling it a sala doesn't exactly mean you've gone native. And don't even get them started on global corporations and how they are ruining the entire world, as if letting the locals in Shanghai get the same nice, cool Frappuccino that you enjoy at home on a sweaty summer afternoon is somehow destroying Chinese culture -- all five-thousand years of it.
The things is, though, those people are right. Sort of. The more you travel, the more you realize that, in many ways, a big city is a big city, regardless of what county, country, or continent said big city happens to be located in or on. That is, they all share certain features: banks, buses, bad traffic, business districts, and a whole bunch of other things that don't start with the letter B, like shopping malls and Mexican restaurants, regardless of the number of Mexican people actually living in the city, if any. Naturally, there are more similarities. For example, they all probably have at least one Starbucks and they all definitely have multiple McDonald's, because why should only people in the US become disgustingly obese when we can make the rest of the world fat as well?
At any rate, my point is that, in all likelihood, New York and Paris have much more in common than New York and any one-stoplight town you can name -- obviously, I can't name any -- in New Mexico or Wyoming or Tennessee. Or, really, a one-stoplight town pretty much anywhere in the US, although particularly those in the South, the section of the Midwest commonly referred to as "the Heartland," and any place where you can see the Appalachian Mountains from your living room.
Of course, for most Americans this city-sameness is truer of large European cities than it is for cities in other parts of the world. Which of course makes sense, since America was a country founded by Europeans and modeled after European society. Or at least parts of it, although, sadly, not always the best ones. I mean, people in Sweden get like six weeks of vacation while we in the US are stuck with only two, which we probably won't take because who has time for vacation anyway? I know: fucking Puritans, who, ironically enough, weren't. Or at least they weren't supposed to be, except on an as-needed basis.
To a lesser extent, though, these city similarities also hold true for big Asian megalopolises: your Tokyos, your Hong Kongs, your Bangkoks and Beijings. Each of those cities has the same recognizable forms and structures as other large population centers, but are still different enough from the norm to make sure you never forget that you're in a country far, far away. Naturally, things begin to break down as you start to consider increasingly smaller towns -- particularly in Asia -- until eventually you reach a point where there is nothing in common at all, when instead of comparing a five-hundred person town in Arkansas to a similarly sized village in Thailand, you might as well be comparing apples to oranges, which we all know are completely different despite the fact that both are sweet, pulpy, seed-filled fruit that grow on trees.
Of course, in a country with as many people as China, things become unrecognizable just a bit faster, like in Harbin, a quaint little provincial capital of five million or so up in the northeast corner of China. (As far as I know, China is the only place in the world where a city of five million can accurately be described as quaint, although such a thing may be possible in India as well.) And when I say northern, I mean northern: it's on roughly the same latitude as Ulaan Bataar, better known -- well, hardly known, actually -- as the capitol of Mongolia. And I think we all know three things about Mongolia: one, it's full of Mongols; two, said Mongols have an affinity for yurts; and three, it's really fucking cold. Ergo, Harbin -- while not overrun by Mongols, yurts, or any combination of the two -- is really fucking cold as well.
Does the cold make it quaint? No, but it does make it a bit more isolated than your average city of five million, since most people tend to shy away from living in places where, according to one of our cab drivers, a pre-wind chill evening temperate of negative ten degrees Fahrenheit is downright balmy for mid-January. And sure, there were still some ways that it was a recognizable big city: besides the omnipresent McDonald's, it also had a Wal-Mart -- now ruining China's labor market, too! In other ways, however, it was very different from other big burbs I have been to. Well, in one way at least, as you shall see.
So why go to Harbin at all? For the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, which is why my friends and I went. Or maybe it was for the Snow and Ice Sculpture Festival -- I never really got it straight. Either way, it's a yearly happening that involves a lot of sculpted snow and ice and begins in early January, sometime after the Heilongjiang River has frozen through so thoroughly that towering blocks of it can be cut out and used to create the ice portion of the festival. The snow, conveniently enough, is polite enough to accumulate in large quantities on its own.
Both events are pretty amazing. The snow festival features acres and acres -- although I guess in Harbin it would be hectares and hectares -- of impossibly intricate snow sculptures. Some were so big I wasn't sure how they could possibly stay together, like the thirty-foot tall dragon -- being ridden, bizarrely, by a nursery's worth of pudgy, cherub-faced snow babies -- that greeted visitors walking into the festival; or the titanic figure of Apollo majestically astride his chariot, surrounded by bare-breasted maidens, that made the baby-draped dragon look like a doorstop. And sure, it sounds like a strange subject for a sculpture, but it makes sense to me. After all, if you must be surrounded by maidens, I firmly believe that bare-breasted ones are the only way to go. It just makes sense.
The ice festival was just as incredible, although in a completely different way. Rather than featuring ice sculptures, it was a massive city built out of frozen water and lit entirely with neon, a Las Vegas for the Ice Age. But, you know, without the things that make Las Vegas fun, like gambling and alcohol and topless shows -- well, other than Apollo's aforementioned maidens, anyway. It did, however, have twenty or so gigantic ice buildings, including what I took to be the Kremlin, the Louvre (with pyramids, even), and a massive clock tower -- at least seventy feet tall, and probably more -- that loomed over the entire grounds like an Apollo rocket on its launch pad.
Either way, both parts of the festival were great, and if you ever find yourself wandering around northeast China in the dead of winter, I highly recommend you take the time to visit Harbin. Particularly since the city boasts one more interesting attraction, which is fortunate because after flying in on Friday night and checking out the snow sculptures on Saturday afternoon and the ice buildings on Saturday night, you need something to do Sunday morning while you're killing time until your late afternoon or early evening flight brings you back to whatever much, much warmer place it is that you came from. With that, I presume, in mind, the thoughtful people of Harbin created a tiger park.
Yes, a tiger park: a large fenced-in area filled with tigers, as well as a handful of lions and a few other random big cats, the existence of which I will now conveniently ignore to concentrate on the tigers. I can do this because it was a tiger park after all, not a mixed great-cats park. The entrance to the park even had a cartoonish fiberglass tiger sculpture -- complete with jaunty red shirt and white bow tie -- standing at the park entrance, arms held out in welcome, to reinforce the tiger-centric nature of the facility. Which makes sense, since there's no way a lion could pull off the bow-tie look, not with that big mane getting in the way. It just wouldn't work.
The park itself, while being a bit old-fashioned by Western standards as far as zoos go -- think cement and chain-link —was fairly normal for attractions of the see-the-wild-animals type: you buy a ticket; you get on a bus; you drive through various double-gated, fenced enclosures to watch the tigers lying around doing nothing or, if you're lucky, deigning to stand up, stretch, yawn, and possibly even amble alongside you for a moment as you frantically try to take a decent picture through the smudged and scratched Plexiglas windows; you oooh and aaah at the fact that there are so many white tigers until you realize that you've unwittingly stumbled into one of Siegfried and Roy's wet dreams, causing you to throw up a little in your mouth at the thought; you pull up at the end of the tour thirty minutes later and are hustled off the bus and toward the exit as you wonder if it was really worth ten bucks and a twenty-minute cab ride to stare at a bunch of sleeping tigers.
The thing is, though, in Harbin the tour ended there only if you wanted it to. After getting out of the bus, we were led up onto a grated metal walkway that was maybe fifteen feet off the ground. Since the path itself went straight over the tiger cages we had just driven through, it was also partially enclosed, with the same steel mesh that made up the floor used to create high, curving sidewalls that formed two-thirds of a cylinder over our heads. Once we were on the pathway -- and let me mention here that half-asleep tigers seem surprisingly menacing when you are walking above them on a see-through grating -- we were directed via a series of signs toward the exit cum gift shop, as if those two things could exist separately anywhere paid admission is required.
However, for those intrepid explorers who wanted to get a little more for their money, it turned out that the walkway was just one part of a grid that covered the entire park, and we were free to wander pretty much wherever we wanted to on said grid. Or at least there wasn't anyone or anything stopping us from doing so, which is pretty much the same thing.
Naturally, we chose to wander. And, during the course of our unguided explorations, we found ourselves approaching a weather-beaten Chinese man -- I think anyone who lives in Harbin for more than a few years qualifies for the weather-beaten tag -- who was probably ten years younger than he looked, standing at the intersection of two walkways. On the floor next to him was a wire cage big enough to comfortably hold one or two chickens, but which was currently holding seven or eight or possibly more, the exact number being somewhat difficult to determine in the tangled mass of crests, beaks, feathers, and feet.
While I was trying to figure out what, exactly, he was doing there, I flashed back to a sign that had been posted directly below the admission prices at the ticket window. It was a seemingly random list of animals, followed by a price in Chinese currency. For example, first on the list was Chicken: Y40, which was about five US dollars. Next came a pheasant, followed by several more creatures of increasing size, although not having paid too much attention to the list -- I was preoccupied with trying to take the required admission out of my wallet without removing my bulky snow gloves -- I can't remember all of them. I do, however, remember that it ended with two fairly large animals: Goat: Y700 and Cow: Y1,500.
In my American naïveté, I'd figured these were animals that people could purchase at the tiger park to take home with them, since even on the expressway to the Beijing airport you would sometimes drive by a herd of sheep grazing along the side of the road, and once you got into the country you would find chickens scratching their way around pretty much every yard. Plus, it seemed like the kind of service the park might offer: I mean, they already had tigers and lions -- no bears, sadly -- so how much more difficult would it be to keep some cows, goats, and chickens in a pen somewhere for the locals as a way to make a little money on the side?
Needless to say, I was totally and completely wrong for only the second time in my life, the first being in the late mid-nineties when I should have gotten the chicken instead of the fish. As you may have guessed, the animals were indeed there as a way for the park to make a little money one the side, the one important distinction being, of course, that the animals weren't there for the locals to buy and take home. No, the animals were there for the visitors to buy and feed to the tigers.
That's right: the chickens were sold as tiger food, as were a host of other animals that were too large to be conveniently displayed in wire cages on a walkway. We asked the guy with the chickens if this was the case, and he confirmed it was. He added that, if we so desired, we could buy a chicken right then and there and have it fed to the tigers as we watched.
As you might expect, we hesitated. We were, after all, being asked to pay to have an animal killed for what basically amounted to our own amusement, which -- despite any conclusions you might naturally draw by the end of this story, or even this page -- is not something I'm really in favor of on a day-to-day basis. Then again, it was only a chicken. How many chickens are killed per day in China? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Probably. After all, it's not Kung Pao Cow, although I must admit the rhyming nature of that dish does appeal to me, despite the fact that I think it would be hard to beat the chicken from a purely palate-pleasing perspective. Plus, and more importantly, how many chances would we have to actually see a tiger chasing after its prey? And for only five bucks! I mean, in the States that sort of thing would cost forty or fifty dollars at least, not to mention it would probably illegal -- thanks for nothing, PETA -- truly making it something we could only experience in China. This being the case, there really wasn't any way we could say no.
So, after a minute or so of discussion -- and it only took that long because none of us wanted to be the first to suggest we should actually do it -- we worked up the nerve to say yes. We gave him the forty yuan he requested and became the very proud if only very temporary owners of one genuine Chinese chicken, which he picked out for us. For the record, I should say that he did offer to let us select our own chicken, but we deferred to what we presumed to be his superior chicken-choosing knowledge.
At this point, things took a turn for the unexpected, which they often seem to do in China. As if, you know, getting up one morning and going to a tiger park you weren't aware of the night before and then paying to watch a live chicken fed to a tiger was run-of-the-mill. The thing was, I had been thinking he would immediately toss the chicken -- tough break for the chicken, what with evolution and not flying and all -- over the fence, where it would proceed to dash pointlessly around the compound for ten or twenty seconds before being pounced on by whichever tiger happened to see it first. But that was not the case. No, instead of launching the chicken to its grisly but hopefully not gristly fate, he held the chicken by the base of its wings so it could do nothing but futilely claw at the air with its feet, pressed it up against the fence, and swept it back and forth across the grating.
As he did this, the sound of the chicken's feet hitting the metal made a distinctive clacking sound. While this noise meant nothing to me, it definitely meant something to the tigers, for whom it seemed to be the equivalent of a mom telling a room full of seven-year-olds at a birthday party that it was time for cake, or the kid with the fake ID telling a room full of slightly older children at a slightly different type of party that the second keg had arrived. Whichever comparison you prefer, the tigers came running, leaping over rocks, tree limbs, and each other until five of them were circling the ground below us like, well, a pack of hungry tigers. I was going to say sharks, but that would just be silly. Plus, sharks don't stare ravenously up at you with unblinking, saucer-big eyes as they wait to make you or whatever it is that you have to offer into their next meal. At least, I don't think sharks do that; I'm happy to say that I have no hands-on experience in such matters, not to mention no feet-on, thigh-on, or torso-on experience, either.
The chicken seller stood there with an uncomfortably eager smile on his face -- I got the feeling that he'd be happy to sell us as tiger food, if only he could find someone to agree on an appropriate price -- and dangled the squawking fowl in the air until the tigers were in a frenzy, pawing one another out of the way to get as close as possible. One even jumped up, slamming itself against the sturdy metal barrier in an effort to nab the chicken first.
Remember when I said that half-asleep tigers looked surprisingly menacing when you are walking over them on a see-through pathway? Well, I can also safely tell you that tigers appear a significant order of magnitude more menacing when they appear at eye-level and are so close that, later on when you tell the story to your friends, you will swear you could smell their fleshy breath. You won't, of course, mention how thankful you were to be wearing two layers of long johns under your jeans so that if you happened to piss yourself there was a chance no one would notice. After a second tiger had launched himself at us, the chicken seller asked if it was now okay for him to send the chicken flying over the fence.
We said yes. Some of us said it louder than others.
What happened next was a blur. Not because it was disturbing or disgusting and my mind has subsequently blocked it from my memory for my future well-being, but because the tigers simply moved that quickly. Obviously I knew, or at least suspected, that tigers were quick -- they are cats, after all -- but I would not have thought that something weighing close to a quarter-ton could move so fast. Once the chicken cleared the fence, it was over. One tiger -- the smart one, I guess -- had waited, crouched and ready to pounce, while the remaining tigers milled around the snowy ground below us. As a result, before the other tigers could react to the sudden appearance of a mid-afternoon snack, the clever tiger was already airborne. It snatched the chicken out of mid-air in one fierce bite and, after taking a second to make sure it had a good grip, ran off with the screeching and obviously very much alive bird clenched between its jaws. All in all, the whole thing lasted for the better part of four or five seconds, and possibly less.
I was confused, however, when the other tigers chased after the winning tiger for only twenty feet or so before stopping all at once to sit and watch their cage-mate enjoy a paw-lickin' good meal. I mean, I figured they would at least fight over the chicken, like a rugby scrum where the ball happened to be edible. I don't know if the smart tiger was also the most bad-ass tiger, if it was simply some unwritten rule of tiger dining etiquette, or something else entirely, but from that point on none of the other tigers came close enough to even grab a stray feather. Possibly because the first time one of the other tigers seemed like it might have started to maybe consider making the slightest move toward the feeding tiger, said tiger turned, bared all of its considerable teeth, and let loose a low, rumbling growl that I would guess meant something along the lines of "The first one of you idiots who comes anywhere near me gets their throat ripped out." Then again, maybe it was "Please leave me alone while I'm eating, friend." I can't be sure because I don't really speak tiger, but I'm assuming the former is more likely.
Another thing I wasn't expecting was that the tiger actually defeathered the chicken before eating it. Not that I blame it -- I don't imagine that feathers are fun to either munch on or digest -- but I had figured the tiger would just gulp the chicken down in one big bite, like a jalapeno popper or something. We are talking about a vicious, man-eating (if possible) animal, after all. Plus, who would have thought that a tiger, or those massive incisors, could be so delicate? I was also surprised, and not altogether pleased, that the tiger waited until the chicken was plucked bare and ready to consume before putting the poor thing out of its misery with one terrifyingly loud, skull-cracking bite. And yes, it was as pleasant to watch and hear as you'd imagine.
But, with apologies to all you friends of fowl out there, the really freaky thing was that it was only a chicken. Remember, there were a wide variety of other animals that you could pay to have slaughtered -- while you watched! -- by a pack of ravenous beasts. I mean, for around eighty US dollars you could do what the trolls couldn't and turn any one of the Billy Goats Gruff into a nice, sensible meal. And if you were willing to dig deep and ante up a few hundred bucks you could send a cow to the same gruesome fate for your personal viewing pleasure.
As it turns out, doing such a thing is even worse than it sounds, which is hard to believe but is apparently possible. On the plane ride back to Beijing we sat next to someone whose friend had gone to Harbin with his entire office to take in the wonders of the Snow and Ice Festival. Needless to say, having finished the frozen portion of the tour circuit, they decided to do the tiger park as well. And, while at the park, their Chinese boss decided it might be a fun team-building and possibly morale-increasing activity for him to buy a cow so everyone who worked under him could enjoy watching it be ripped to shreds. And you think that your work parties are strange and uncomfortable. Imagine how much stranger and more uncomfortable they would be if the live entertainment was an animal sacrifice instead of an overweight, thirty-something DJ trying desperately to get everyone onto the dance floor by playing "Celebration."
Once the boss showed the people who ran the park the color of his Renminbi -- it varies according to the denomination, but odds are it was red in this case -- they discovered that for two-hundred dollars you didn't get a cow: you got a calf. A baby cow. A baby cow that was, very understandably, not pleased about being led to its death, bleating and lowing and scrambling to dig its hooves into the frozen ground as it was pushed into tiger pen.
Not surprisingly, most of the people didn't watch, but for those who did, the end came as quickly as possible for the poor beast, which is something at least. The workers who had put the cow in the pen in the first place, offering it up like ancient Greeks instead of contemporary Chinese, then somehow scared the tigers off long enough to drag the carcass out of the enclosure -- which couldn't have been pretty either, now that I think about it. Unfortunately, how one scares off tigers who have the taste of blood is beyond the scope of both my and the airplane guy's story, so you'll have to leave it up to your imagination, although one assumes the word humane wouldn't be applied to any method they might use.
But why move the cow at all? I'm guessing it's because while a chicken qualifies as an appetizer, gorging on an entire cow would really screw up the feeding schedule. Either way, I'm glad we stuck with the chicken, which occupied the tiger for about five minutes before it left and went off to do whatever it is that tigers do after snacking. Burp. Scratch themselves. Sit on the couch and watch ESPN Classic before dozing off. I don't know for sure, because as soon as the tiger got to its feet, we took one final look at the feather-filled compound and made our way to the exit. Five minutes later we were in a cab and on our way back to Harbin proper, the tiger park gone but definitely not forgotten.
So what does this all mean, you ask? How does it relate to my idea that, for the most part, big cities are big cities, regardless of what continent you happen to be standing on? To be honest, I'm not one-hundred percent certain. I do know this, however. The next time you're meandering through the twisted Medieval alleys of an ancient European capital or pushing through the crowded streets of a massive Asian super-city, sighing in despair every time you pass by the Gap or Starbucks or McDonald's and wondering if there's anywhere in the world that's different from what you know, any place left that feels unique or exotic, take a moment to think about the tigers of Harbin and remember that, no matter how it might sometime seem, you never really know what's waiting for you, just around the corner.
Although, hopefully, it's not a tiger.
These days, China seems to be everywhere, mostly in terms of how everything in China is the biggest or the best: China has the most people, the fastest growing economy, and the largest untapped market of whatever demographic you can think of, such as single women from forty-one to forty-three-and-a-half years of age who prefer their rice fried instead of steamed. Valuable knowledge, indeed. There are more superlatives than that of course, arcane figures about the incredible percentage of thingamabobs exported and the runaway use of such-and-such in certain vital sectors of whatever that have meaning to no one except a small population of overeducated, glasses-wearing economists who are tucked away into the corners of gigantic office buildings in financial centers worldwide and who likely have more control over how much money goes into and out of our wallets than any of us probably want to think about.
Naturally, everyone has their own ideas to explain the recent rise of China as an economic power, from its sheer size to a complete and utter disregard for any sort of employment, trade, or environmental laws to the fact that they have an almost unlimited supply of labor, all of whom are apparently willing to work twelve-hour days, seven days a week for as close to nothing as you can get without actually getting nothing. Some of these theories might be right, some wrong, but as someone who never took an econ class and is only able to balance a checkbook with the help of a computer, I'm honestly not the guy to make that call.
However, I do have an alternate theory of my own for the recent wave of Sino successes, and it has nothing to do with steel production or burning coal for fuel or factories full of workers doing either their best impersonation of robots or the Japanese circa 1990, depending on which analogy you prefer. No, it has to do with something simpler, more basic, more elemental, if you will. It has to do with a drive to be the best -- to come in first -- that is instilled in all Chinese people from a very young age. Simply put, it has to do with lines.
Yes, lines. Lines as in queues, something you stand in, theoretically in an orderly fashion, in order to do all number of things, from buying groceries to waiting for a movie to getting onto a plane. When you think about it, lines are everywhere and -- in the Western world, at least -- their method of operation is pretty much taken for granted. That is, you go to the back of the line; the next person who wants into the line stands behind you; you all move forward as the people in front of you complete whatever transaction or business it is that has everyone lining up in the first place; you get to the front and do the same; you exit the line -- stage left or right, it's up to you -- and the line continues to operate in the same fashion without you. It's just that easy. And sure, the line might be really long and take hours to get through, but at least you know that you're getting somewhere, that, at some point, you'll get to the front.
Unless, of course, you happen to try the same thing in Beijing. Or Shanghai. Or Xi'an. Or pretty much any other Chinese city you can name, although since most Americans lack even the most basic knowledge of world -- not to mention US -- geography, there probably aren't any others. (And no, Hong Kong doesn't count.) You'll notice that, when discussing lines above, I mentioned that they proceed in an orderly fashion . . . theoretically. That word is, of course, the key: line order is a theory, a general principal; it's not a fact, not something you can be sure of. Especially not in China -- I really hope you saw that coming -- where lines have degraded to such a degree that they no longer deserve to be called lines at all. Or queues for that matter, depending on where you learned English.
So if they aren't lines, what exactly are they? I'm not precisely sure what to call them, but if you can come up with something to describe a pushing, shoving, seething mass of humanity -- generally not unwashed but rather not washed recently enough -- all trying to force their way to the front of a crowd, well, that would be the right word to use. I haven't thought of one yet. Rabble comes close, as does throng or mob, although the latter implies a degree of anger that isn't usually present in Chinese "lines." Anarchy is also a good one, except it just doesn't sound right in a sentence, which is a bit of a sticky wicket -- I'm going to go wait in the ticket anarchy while you get the popcorn -- but whatever. You get the idea.
If you don't, consider, if you will, the counter for one of the big Chinese airlines at Shanghai's Hongqiao airport, the desk you'll need to visit if you want to switch your flight. It's a small booth with a plexiglass window separating the airline representative from the people trying to change their tickets -- the fact that a thick piece of unbreakable plastic is needed to separate the employees from the customers should give you an idea of how helpful the former usually are -- with a single slot to pass tickets and money back and forth. That's right, a single opening, as in an opening made to accommodate one person at a time.
Despite this, when you walk up to the aforementioned counter, you will not find a line of people waiting to change their tickets, with the person in the front speaking calmly to the airline worker. No, you will find an anarchy of people -- see, I told you it didn't work -- smashed up around the window, a human half-circle, with everyone trying to talk and pass tickets at the exact same time to the surprisingly unharried looking airline employee. (I'm guessing they can look so calm because they don't care about their job or you, which makes work easy, if nothing else.) This system, although I hesitate to apply that degree of order to it, works about as well as you might expect. That is, it does not work particularly well at all. Surprise, surprise.
Beijing subways are another prime place to observe this lack of lines, this omission of order, this paucity of patterned progression. Specifically, I speak of the act of getting onto or off of the subway, or at least trying to do so. Why trying? Because no lines means no forming of lines, which in turn means that everyone tries to get into or out of the subway -- depending, of course, on where you're starting the process -- all at once. Yes, that's right: simultaneously.
Sometimes this actually does work, although usually only if it is either very early or very late in the day and you happen to be at a particularly out-of-the-way subway stop. If, on the other hand, you are unfortunate enough to be taking the subway somewhere at six o'clock or so and need to get off at a popular stop, such as an interchange station -- a place where two subway lines intersect, allowing riders to switch routes -- where there might be thirty people trying to get out of each and every door while thirty other people are trying to get into each and every door, then it doesn't function quite as smoothly. Go figure. Actually, that's unfair. It does in fact work, at least in the sense that the people who want to get out do get out and the people who want to get in do get in. Or at least they usually do, which is something.
Not surprisingly, the Chinese have, to a degree, adapted to this unordered state of affairs. How? By preparing themselves for the onslaught in advance -- and trust me, it's an onslaught regardless of whether you are getting in or getting out. For example, passengers currently on the subway who are planning on getting off at the next stop crowd toward the nearest door immediately after the train leaves the previous station. And when I say "toward the door," I mean they all get as close to it as possible, so that the person who managed to get there first roots him or herself (almost always himself, though) as close to the center of the door as possible without actually touching said door, so that his or her nose is inches -- possibly not even plural -- away from the rubber seal between the door's two halves. Everyone else getting out at that stop then surrounds this lead person so that when the door opens, anyone foolish enough to think they might get on the subway is confronted with a wall of flesh intent on forcing its way out.
For those trying to get on, things work in much the same way -- everyone crowd around the door! -- albeit with two important exceptions that put the getting-on faction at a distinct disadvantage. First, the laws of physics being what they are, getting into a full subway car is more difficult than getting out of one, since people need to leave in order for new people to get in. Second, because there's no way to tell exactly where the train will stop, it's harder for those waiting to place themselves in prime boarding position. This element of chance means that there's just as likely to be a woman instead of a man leading the charge, which rarely happens with those trying to get off the subway car. Not to offend all you women-folk out there, but in a pushing contest I'll take the person who's six inches taller and sixty pounds heavier every time.
These two things mean that, in general, the advantage falls to those disembarking, not to those embarking. And while it may be a short-lived advantage -- allowing three or four people, maybe even five if you're lucky, to get out -- it's usually enough to start things moving, to get people on and off so the train can continue to the next stop, where the same process is repeated. And so it goes, people fighting their way on and off and on and off and so on and so forth ad infinitum.
That's all well and good, you may be saying to yourself, your friend, or the random person next to you on the bus or airplane -- if you are the annoying species of individual who thinks random people want to talk to you or care at all about what you think -- but what does it all mean? How does it all relate to the relatively recent rise of China? That, my friends, is simple: the fact that standing in line, that patiently waiting in any way, shape, or form will get you nowhere, has fostered a built-in sense of competition in the Chinese people. They know that to get to the front, to be the best, you can't just stand around and wait for the world to come to you. No, you have to make your own way there; you have to scratch, claw, cut, gouge, push, pull, and whatever else your way into the pole position. It's carpe diem, Commie-style: take what you want, because no one's going to give it to you. That, and only that, is the main reason why China is in ascension while pretty much everyplace else seem to be in retrograde. Or at least that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.
So what can we, the rest of the world, do about this? How can we compete? Do we need to lose all sense of line etiquette, to devolve -- yes, I'm sure that's the word I want to use -- into misrule? Well, at least as far as things like waiting to buy a hot dog at a ballgame go. The answer is no, we don't. We need to, as they say, work smarter, not harder. We need to fight fire with fire, albeit preferably with a hotter-burning fire that has really good range so we don't have to worry about actually getting burned by their fire while fighting it. Of course, since everyone knows that if you play with fire you get burned, that might not be possible. But if it is possible, it would be much better.
Whatever. On the micro-level, on the ground in China, I have first-hand knowledge of how to fight back. And sure, it involves some shoving and a not insignificant amount of bumping and elbowing, but there's more to it than that. It's not enough to be bigger or stronger or faster, you need to work as a team. Since most people in line will be on their own, teamwork will give you a big advantage right off the bat. For example, in any sort of ticket-buying situation, you ideally want to have three people: one person to actually purchase the tickets, and two to create a barrier by flanking the point person so that no one will be able to push their way in front of you, although the more foolish will still try.
In some lines, such as the one to purchase a ticket for the Forbidden City, where ropes force people into some semblance of order, you don't have to put too much thought or effort into this: a loose three-person formation will work, and positioning doesn't matter at all. However, in more intense line situations, such as the airport ticket window mentioned earlier, you'll need to formulate a plan. Your best bet is to have the two biggest people available run interference, with either the most proficient Chinese speaker or the most forceful individual in the middle to deal with the ticket seller or whoever else is on the opposing side of the counter. This is important because if things go sour and this person can't communicate with you, he or she will try to skip you and move on to the next person in line – AKA the person who has managed to fight their way closest to the counter -- regardless of whether or not you've actually been helped in any way.
If this happens, that's when your two enforcers come into play: with some clever positioning -- usually by forming a box, with the desk or whatever as one side -- they can completely shut-off counter access for everyone else who is trying to squeeze and shove in front of you. And believe me, squeeze and shove they will. They'll also try to get past your blockade by reaching over, around, or even through you with ticket or money or whatever in hand to wave it in front of the counter agent's face -- the agent will always take the item offered so as not to have to deal with you anymore -- so if you can physically press yourself up against the clear partition between you and the agent, you should. In this way, your designated speaker will be able to deal with the problem until some sort of resolution is reached. Usually, of course, the resolution is that the agent refuses to do what you want until you get sick of arguing and give up, but at least you'll have a fighting chance, which is all you can ask for.
So that takes care of the small stuff. But what about the big picture -- about how the rest of the world can compete with China at the macro-level? To be honest, I have no fucking idea. If I did, I'd be making millions of dollars running some monstrous, third-world crushing multinational company and spending my summers in my yacht anchored off the Riviera, surround by barely dressed models who only like me for my money, which I would be fine with, for the record. But instead I'm … well, I'm not really close to buying my own yacht yet, that's for sure. However much a yacht cost, I'm about that much short, give or take a few hundred dollars.
Regardless, I'm sure the same general principles I mentioned above still apply, but we can let the leaders of nations and the titans of industry discover that for themselves. They have to earn their not inconsiderable salaries somehow, for once. But now that we know the secret to the success of China, we can start to compete again, to reenergize our tattered textile plants and steel foundries, to once again start making our own t-shirts and toys, our own shoes and stereos. Then again, maybe we can't, or maybe we don't even want to -- I'm not sure. But if nothing else, we'll be able to book a different flight if we get to the airport early, to get a train ticket in something approaching short order, to be prepared to use the subway to get around the city, and maybe that's enough for now.
And as far as everyone else is concerned, who cares? They can just wait in line.
After a few months of living in Beijing, I'd developed a standard set of guidelines I would lay out for anyone who came to visit us. You know, helpful little tidbits like cars won't stop for you, so you'd better stop for them; never get into a rickshaw unless you have agreed, preferably in writing, on the amount of Chinese currency -- not American, which is a vital point -- that will change hands at the end of the ride; never pay more than fifty percent of the first price someone gives you for a knockoff purse or shirt at the market, and even then you'll be getting completely ripped off; and ignore anyone who says "Hello" to you on the street.
It's the last one that seemed to give people the most trouble. I think it's because of the American character. Sure, we tend to be mildly overweight and some of us have a disturbing tendency to believe all sorts of empty rhetoric involving weapons of mass destruction, but we're also, in general, pretty friendly people. We tend to smile a lot, particularly compared to people from some other countries. I once talked to a Russian woman whose mother had visited the US for the first time. After a few days, she started complaining that her face hurt from smiling back at everyone who had smiled at her. What, she wanted to know, did everyone have to be so happy about?
Well, there's the fact that most of us have jobs, a house or some other form of shelter, more food than we could ever eat, and access to high-quality, relatively affordable health care -- things which some doubtlessly appalling high number of people in the world go without -- but beyond that, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just something in our national makeup, the same way, for example, that seemingly anyone from Australia will say yes when asked if they want a beer, or that everyone from pretty much any former Soviet bloc country seems to be tall, thin, and have fabulous bone structure. It's just, for lack of a better reason, the way it is.
But back to hello, which is where I presumably had you. I told people to ignore anyone saying that word because there are generally only two reasons any Chinese person in Beijing says hello to you. The first is because you're obviously a foreigner and hello is probably the only word they know in any foreign language, let alone English, and this is their one big chance to put that knowledge to use. All they want is for you to say hello back, at which point they will start laughing hysterically -- at you, not with you, just so we're clear.
Why? Because for them, the entire situation is like a person saying a word to a parrot and hoping the parrot will, well, parrot that word back. Anyone who has stood in a pet store trying to get an allegedly talking parrot to say a dirty word -- and naturally I'm not saying I've ever done this -- can imagine the sheer, unbridled joy you would have experienced had the parrot suddenly decided to start squawking shit! shit! shit! as loudly and as frequently as possible. Then again, maybe that's just me. But not, you know, literally. Well, probably not, anyway.
The second reason you might hear hello is as the first word in a two-word sentence that is meant to entice you into buying whatever the person who has just accosted you on the street corner is selling. This means that the hello might be followed by any one the following words: DVD, bags, watch, shoes, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, Mount Blanc, software, or massage, the last of which is usually pronounced with three syllables -- mass-a-gee -- rather than the standard two and is aimed exclusively at the male audience. So much so, in fact, that there may be no massage involved in the process at all. Depending, of course, on what you're into.
Based on this, I think you'll agree that simply ignoring any hellos you might hear is the way to go. Sure, this may lead to a few awkward situations -- such as when Holly ignored repeated hellos from an Asian girl standing next to her in line, only to have the exasperated girl eventually add "I'm from L.A." -- but for the most part, it's pretty foolproof. Or at least I thought it was, until I went to the Forbidden City and discovered a third, even more insidious use of hello. Well, insidious as far as generic greetings go, at least.
It happened while I was loitering outside the Forbidden City Starbucks. I was standing there on my own taking pictures of Foo Dogs -- which, confusingly, look like lions -- and wondering if I should go to Starbucks right at that moment or wait until I was about to leave, when someone behind me said hello.
As per my own rules, I ignored it.
"Hello?"
I continued to take pictures. Not because I wanted to, but because it gave me something to do other than acknowledge the person behind me.
"Hello?" This time, accompanied by a tap on the shoulder.
I gave up and turned around, figuring the girl behind me probably wanted one of two things: to have her picture taken with me so she could show her friends the crazy foreigner with no hair she saw in the Forbidden City (which is, quite literally, another story); or to practice her English on an actual foreigner, which is something I generally encourage. After all, if enough people learned how to speak English, I could stop feeling guilty about not being anywhere close to fluent in any other language.
"Hello," I said.
"Where are you from?" she asked.
English practice it was, then.
"America."
"Oh, I like America." Funny how everyone claims that to your face, isn't it? Or at least everyone who's not French. "Where do you live in America?"
"Seattle."
"Oh, Seattle."
She smiled and didn't say anything else. I assumed this was because she didn't know where Seattle was. A lot of people didn't. When I'd tell that that it's actually in Washington, they'd think I meant D.C., or "the other Washington," as I like to call it. In the end, I usually settled for saying that it was above California, which most people seemed to understand. And sure, that ignores Oregon entirely, but then again, who doesn't?
I was just about to go into my whole "Washington . . . no, Washington State" routine, when she said, "Seattle -- Starbucks!" and pointed over at the Starbucks I had just been thinking about.
"Yes, Starbucks," I agreed, impressed by both the depth and breadth of her useless Seattle knowledge.
I stood there, waiting to see if she would throw out an even more obscure piece of Emerald City lore -- Did you know UPS started in Seattle, too? Or that Bruce Lee is buried there? -- but it was not to be. Instead, somewhat disappointingly, she started in with the typical questions Chinese seem to ask foreigners: have you been to China before, how long have you been here, do you like China, do you like Chinese food, and so on. Thankfully, she managed to stay away from the always insulting "Do you know how to use chopsticks?" as if there was some sort of Ancient Chinese Secret™ to it, a question I usually responded to by spinning the Lazy Susan on that person and asking if the asker knew how to use a fork. Which always worked well, except on one occasion when a girl answered "no" and I had no idea what to say. Um, you just find what you want to eat and, you know, stick your fork in it?
Once I had finished explaining that yes, I did like some but not all Chinese food -- I could do without the fried chicken feet and any sort of brain- or intestine-based dish -- she finally got around to the point, which was definitely not practicing her English.
"I am an art student. From Mongolia," she told me. Then, pointing to the north, added, "It is that way."
"Uh-huh," I said, in a tone of voice that would indicate to any American that I had completely lost interest in the conversation. Apparently it didn't mean the same thing to Mongolian art students, because the girl continued talking.
"In my country, we have many horses. I like to make painting of horses."
"Uh-huh." I started drifting away from her, shoving my camera back into my bag as I did so.
She moved slowly along with me. "There is an art exhibition with many of my painting of horses. It is very nearby. Perhaps you would like to see it?"
I had my doubts. Sure, I could buy an art exhibition in the Forbidden City, maybe one that featured famous Chinese artists, complete with large signs and banners in highly questionable English -- "Welcome To Enjoy The All World Famously Painting of China Painter!!" or something like that. But an art show that featured student painters who were roaming the stone courtyards of the Old Palace trying to get random foreigners to come see their work? It just seemed wrong somehow, like when Julia Roberts married that horse-faced country singer, whatever his name was.
Based on this, I said no. She ignored that, and told me again how close it was -- right next to the Starbucks -- and insisted that I would not have to buy anything, I could just look and it would be no problem. You know, the same way a used car salesman only wants you to test drive the car you're looking at, but doesn't want to hassle you about actually purchasing it. I said no, again no, before eventually conceding that I would maybe stop by on my way out. Naturally, when I said "maybe" I meant "not a chance," in the same way, for example, someone who says they're not sure what they're doing this weekend means that, whatever they're going to do, they don't want to do it with you. Although based on her pleased reaction, she apparently thought I was sincere, Mongolian art students being very trusting, apparently.
I didn't know it then, but I had just been introduced to one of the oldest tourist scams in the book: the Chinese Art Student. I found out later that these art students are likely neither artists nor students. Instead, they're more like commissioned salespeople who work for a small cut of the price of any painting they manage to con someone into buying. And, since they aren't actually students, they had as much part in producing the paintings they're trying to sell as I did in creating The Mona Lisa. "No, Leo, as a matter of fact I don't think you should make her sticking her tongue out. Why don't you give her a little smile, like she knows something you don't? That should give those uppity de Medici's something to talk about, don't you think?"
As for the paintings themselves, they're usually astronomically overpriced copies of famous Chinese paintings, done assembly-line style in a warehouse somewhere outside the city. Although since your average foreigner wouldn't know a famous Chinese painting if it had both feet and a mouth and decided to walk up and bite him or her in their fast-food fattened ass, I'm not quite sure what the point is. I took an East Asian Art History class to meet a university requirement in college and, as far as I could tell, pretty much every painting looked the same: scroll of parchment, spidery characters down one side, bluish waterfall down the other, probably a cliff -- which may or may not be topped by a small, wooden shack -- and, if you're lucky, colorful flowers somewhere in the foreground. Basically, the equivalent of Starry Night or any other famous Impressionist painting for the Millennial set. You know, the kind of thing a girl with little to no taste would put on her wall in college, right next to the poster of the handsome, shirtless, muscular man with a waxed chest kissing a fat baby. Which we all know is completely inane, since handsome, shirtless, muscular men with waxed chests would rather be kissing their biceps while looking in a mirror or, even more likely, kissing other handsome, shirtless, muscular men, but you don't see any pictures of that, do you? Well, at least not on the walls in the girls' dormitory.
The thing is, the scam works: people do buy from these alleged students. They carry home their carefully boxed but almost worthless painting, tell everyone who can't get out of coming over to see the post-trip slideshow about the starving student they bought it from, and then hang it proudly above the mantle for the rest of their life until they die, at which point it gets passed on to any college-aged female relation -- a neighbor or family friend will do in a pinch -- who hangs it in her dorm room, and so on. See the above paragraph for more information.
In a way, I can understand how these people are taken in. A fake art student selling fake paintings on top of that? The second is obvious -- most things offered for sale to foreigners in China are knock-offs, after all -- but the fake art student takes it up to a whole different level, like if all the Nigerians who email me wanting my help in moving some money around that they have been oh-so-very-unfairly denied access to were not only lying about the money, but lying about being Nigerian as well. Really, it's subtle, and that's not something we Americans have a lot of experience in. We prefer a more in your face approach, like mugging instead of pick-pocketing, invading instead of negotiating, etc. In fact, as far as I can tell, there's only one flaw in the art student spiel: their insistence in identifying themselves with a minority group -- usually Mongolian, sometimes Muslim -- as if being a minority in America has ever helped anyone out. But other than that, it's a pretty good set up.
Maybe that's why it's so common. While I first encountered art students at the Forbidden City, they can be found near any major tourist attraction in Beijing, with the exception of the Great Wall, possibly because of the lack of exhibition space, although I'm sure they'll make their way there soon enough if they haven't already. Either way, this means that while you can always find them in and around the Forbidden City, you may also run into them at the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, Wangfujing Street, and anywhere else there is a high concentration of foreigners, although in those last few places -- particularly outside five-star hotels -- they have to fight with the mass-a-gee girls for your attention.
Needless to say, it didn't take long for me to tire of the art students. Particularly because, since I had very little better to do during the day, I ended up as the de facto tour guide for anyone coming into town. Want to go to the Forbidden City? Oh, it's no big deal -- Jason can take you! He's only been there what, like ten times? (Nine, I think, but who's counting?) Plus, it's not like there's only one art student per attraction; oh no, they roam in packs. This meant that every time I went to, say, the Forbidden City, I would be accosted five or six times by "students" making a beeline for me and breaking out the "Hello, where are you from?" opening. It got old faster than a Mayfly, and since those things only live for like a day, it got old pretty fucking fast.
I attempted to deal with the art student problem in a few different ways. At first, I tried saying "I don't like art" as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The approach seemed good in theory, but in practice it failed pretty miserably since once they knew you spoke English they wouldn't take no for an answer. Or at least they wouldn't take no for an answer until you'd been forced to say it fifteen to twenty times, which felt like the same thing.
Based on that, I moved in a different direction with technique number two: ignoring them completely, AKA not talking at all. Because, you know, if they thought I didn't speak English, they would stop talking to me right away. Yeah, not so much. It actually failed pretty spectacularly, since it simply resulted in their following me around longer than they had before to ask over and over and over again if I spoke English, like maybe if they said it enough times I would magically learn how.
My third method was a spin-off of the second, with a slight twist: I'd still pretend to not speak or understand English, but I would kick it up a notch by replying to their question with either Sprechen sie Deutsches? or Parlez-vous Francais?, since I was pretty confident that none of the art students would speak either German or French. Plus, even if they did, I didn't, so it wouldn't matter anyway. While this usually worked great, it had the unfortunate side effect of making whomever I was with start to laugh, which in turn ruined the effect, so I had to stop that as well.
After a few months of experimentation, I finally hit on a reliable technique for getting rid of them. Anytime someone said hello and followed that up with "Where are you from?", I simply asked, "Are you an art student?" When confronted with that single sentence, which clearly showed that I knew who they were and what they were up to, and that I wasn't going to be purchasing any quickly copied Chinese artwork, most of the art students simply said thank-you or okay and walked away. It seems basic, but it worked almost every time, the notable exception being one instance where the guy in question said no, he was a computer science major, but then continued on with his art student speech. I'm not sure whether that was a case of single- or simple-mindedness, but I did end up having a nice talk with him about my digital camera, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.
Things went on like this for a while, and I used the art-student line -- with continuing success -- at every major tourist site in Beijing. And yet, as so often happens, I wanted more. It wasn't enough to have a reliable way to get rid of the art students. After all, I still had to talk to them, and I still had to deal with packs of them harassing me every time I walked down any street near Tiananmen Square. No, I wanted to turn to the tables, to make them the ones who were harassed and uncomfortable instead of me. And sure, it would be a completely hollow victory, since flipping things around on one unsuspecting art student wouldn't keep the rest of them from bothering me, but I was okay with that. After all, it would make me feel better, which, despite what your parents, teachers, and after-school specials would like you to believe, is sometimes enough of a reason. I figured this was one of those times.
That's when I remembered the horses. The first art student I'd ever encountered had mentioned that she liked to paint horses. From the brief time I'd spent wanting to draw comic books as a child, a quickly abandoned life-goal that fell somewhere between my be-an-astronaut and be-a-star quarterback phases, I knew, or at least thought I remembered, that horses were a bitch to draw. Which is strange, since you'd think dogs would be the ones that are a bitch to draw, but it turns out they're not too bad. Well, not if you only draw them sitting down, at least. At any rate, horses are hard. It's the hindquarters, known to most as "the back legs," that get you, the way all the joints seem to be going in the wrong direction. Really, if you look at a horse's back leg for any appreciable amount of time, you'll start to wonder how they can move at all, let alone run for a quarter-mile in one go.
My thought was that, sure, yes, of course horses are hard to draw, but I would expect an art student to be able to do so, or at least make a reasonable attempt -- particularly if said art student had just told me that he or she enjoyed painting horses and had several paintings of horses available for me to buy or even just look at in a nearby building. I would not, on the other hand, expect people pretending to be art students to be able to come up anything even remotely approximating a horse, except in a very general, Rorschach-test type of way. With that in mind, I went out, bought a spiral notebook and a pencil, and headed directly to the Forbidden City to show up every art student I could find.
It didn't take long. I found my first one just west of Wangfujing Street, near the start of the wall surrounding the Forbidden City. It was a he: tall and thin, with shaggy black hair and round, wire-frame glasses. I knew what he wanted as soon as he moved toward me. He was too well put together, too clean-cut, to want a parroted hello, and since he didn't have anything in his hands I assumed he wasn't selling anything. I was so excited I almost yelled out "Seattle!" before he'd even had the chance to pretend to care about where I was from. I let him go through his entire line of questions -- had I been in China before, did I like the food, yadda yadda yadda -- before I sprung my trap on him.
"Do you have any paintings of horses?" I asked, as if I actually cared.
"Horses? Yes yes yes. Many pictures of horses."
He seemed excited. I almost felt sorry for him, since he was so willingly being set up. But, just, you know, not enough to stop. Like the Count of Monte Cristo, I would have my revenge -- minus the murders and lengthy jail sentence, though. Hopefully.
"Did you paint them?"
He nodded. "Yes, I like to paint horses. You can come look at them now."
That was all I needed to hear. I told him to wait for a second -- I'm not sure if he understood or not, but he certainly wasn't going anywhere without me -- and grabbed the paper and pencil out of my bag. I flipped the cover over to expose a blank page, and held it out toward him.
"Can you draw me a horse?"
"What?" He cocked his head to the side slightly.
"A horse." I tapped at the pad with the pencil. "Can you draw me a horse right now?"
"Excuse me?"
I held up the paper and mimed drawing on it. "Horse."
This time, he seemed to understand. He grabbed the paper and pencil and started working. Unfortunately, he stopped working about two seconds later, which I figured wasn't quite enough time to draw an equine in its entirety. For once, I was right. When he turned the pad around and held it up in front of me, it had a single Chinese character on it.
"Horse," he said, then said it again in Chinese, like I'd wanted him to teach me the word.
"No no no."
I grabbed the pad back from him, and repeated that I wanted a picture of a horse. When it became clear he had no idea what I was talking about, I scribbled out the rough outline of a horse. Well, a horse or an oddly-shaped amoeba -- either seemed as likely as the other. I showed him the picture and he started laughing, although whether he was laughing at my horse-amoeba or because he finally understood what I was talking about, I wasn't sure. Probably a bit of both.
"Draw a horse?" I asked again once he stopped laughing.
"No, very sorry. Please come look at my paintings -- many horse."
He was determined, that was something. But so was I.
"I'll pay you. Fifty kuai," I told him, offering the equivalent of about seven US dollars.
"For horse?"
I said yes, and he started laughing again. He managed to control himself long enough to mutter "no no no" and that he was "very sorry," then walked away.
"Fifty kuai. Just one horse. Fifty kuai for a horse!" I called after him, stopping short of offering my or anyone else's kingdom.
It didn't work. He ignored me, and as I watched he waved down the next foreign face he saw and started talking to them. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I had a pretty good idea. Instead of waiting to find out where those foreigners were from, I put the paper and pencil away and continued down the street toward Tiananmen Square to attempt to complete my quest.
After several false starts -- a few parrot hellos and people trying to sell me everything from city maps to gloves to Beijing 2008 Olympic hats and shirts -- I found my next art student just past the first courtyard in the Forbidden City. It was a girl this time. As soon as she asked where I was from, I went for the paper and pencil, getting everything ready as she talked. Imagine going up to someone you'd never seen before, asking them something -- for directions possibly, or maybe to take your picture -- only to have them pull out a pen and paper, like they were going to start writing down everything you said. I'd imagine you might say something about it, or at least pause for an instant, maybe give them a funny look to let them know you think what they're doing is a little strange, wouldn't you?
But not this girl. No, to her credit she kept right on going the whole time, telling me how she was from Mongolia, how she was an art student, how she was having an exhibition -- the whole nine yards. Or possibly the whole 2.7432 meters, since China uses the metric system. When she was done, I gave her my speech in return, including the offer of fifty kuai, to draw me a horse. To her credit, she caught on a lot faster to what I wanted than the first guy. Sadly, however, that only meant she turned me down a lot faster than the first guy, which I handled pretty well, having some small experience in being rejected by girls. Although, I suppose, never ones that I had offered money to in exchange for a service. Not that I've done that, of course, but I just mean that I wouldn't expect it, if I did do that sort of thing. Or something.
Never mind.
She did have a good excuse, at least. She pointed at the pencil and said, "Very sorry, but I am painter. I cannot draw horse with that."
Fair enough. While I was understandably skeptical that someone would be able to paint but not draw a horse, I declined to quibble with her and went further into the Forbidden City, determined to get a horse, or at least an approximation of one.
I found my third art student -- another girl -- right outside Starbucks, which seemed to be a sort of focal point for them, what with the art exhibition right next door and tired foreigners drawn to the area by the promise of a hot cup of any caffeinated beverage like crows to an open garbage can. If, you know, the can was filled with four-dollar lattes and oversized muffins instead of last week's Kung Pao. Sadly, I didn't realize until after I'd talked to her that this meant only the laziest and least competent of the alleged art students would be found in the immediate area, the more enterprising among them fanning out from that focal point to ambush potential suckers before any of their brethren could get to them.
I listened to her sales pitch -- Mongolian art student, of course -- then gave her mine: a somewhat crisp, slightly used fifty Renminbi note in exchange for a drawing of a horse, or at least for giving it the old college or possibly even old art school try.
She looked at me in much the same way I must look at people who speak Chinese to me and expect me to understand, although she opted for "very sorry" instead of the confused "What?" I preferred to use.
I told her again, speaking slower than I had before and showing her both the paper and pencil in turn as I did so, a sort of show-and-tell approach.
She shook her head, "You want to see horse?"
So I told her again, repeating everything I'd just done, and then showing her my previous attempt at a horse.
She shook her head again. "You want to draw horse?"
This time, I shook my head. Our conversation was rapidly turning into a dandruff commercial gone terribly wrong. Even if she didn't understand a word I was saying, which she clearly did, I wasn't sure how she came up with that conclusion: by showing her a drawing of a horse, I was asking if I could draw a horse? I mean, did I need her permission? Unless she was asking me if I wanted to draw a horse, with the unspoken assumption being that whatever I had drawn, it certainly wasn't a horse. While that last part could be argued, I guessed -- based on the rest of our conversation -- the more subtle interpretation of her question was probably the wrong one, and the simplest explanation, as Occam would have it, was the best: she had no clue what I was talking about.
Despite this, I asked one final time. "You. Draw horse. Fifty kuai."
Nothing. Her face was completely blank, like a statue of Buddha. And not one of those fat, jolly, laughing ones. I mean the kind that sit cross-legged with closed eyes and eerily flat features, although how Buddha can look like both of those things is beyond me. I guess that's why people worship him, since we all know losing that much weight that quickly would take a miracle. Well, that or a sensible diet and a well thought-out exercise regime, but the first option sees a lot more appetizing.
I didn't say anything, and neither did she. We stared at each other for a good five seconds. Normally, this would have been awkward, but the fact that we were both aware of our inability to hold a meaningful conversation with each other took some of the pressure off.
I shrugged my shoulders, hoping she would understand that I had no idea what to say. Luckily, she did.
She smiled. "I have an art exhibition with many of my paintings. Would you like to come see it?"
Maybe she was smarter than I thought. I smiled back.
"Are you an art student?"
For as long as I can remember, people having been saying that Christmas is dying, maybe even dead. They say that the Christmas spirit is no more, and that the entire holiday season is now nothing but a crass, soulless exercise in commercialism at its worst. They would have us believe that things were oh-so-much better in the good old days -- generally understood to mean the Fifties, circa Leave It to Beaver -- when kids of all ages apparently left nauseatingly sweet wine and unleavened bread on the table for Jesus instead of cookies and milk on the mantle for Santa who, let's face it, really doesn't need the extra calories; an era when cherubic little children would praise the Lord when opening their presents instead of giving thanks to a mysterious interloper who, with his flying animals, ability to magically travel up and down chimneys, and predilection for the color red was almost assuredly demonic and a friend of Satan, if not a particularly fiendish incarnation of the Great Deceiver himself.
I am here to tell you that this is not true. Sure, Christmas might not be the joyous religious festival it apparently was in the time before department stores, but it's certainly in no danger of giving up the ghost just quite yet -- past, present, or future, take your pick, although that last one would be sort of creepy with the graveyard and all. No matter how few people drag themselves into a church Christmas morning, generally for the first time since Easter, the last few weeks in every December will always be magical, with a certain something in the air that makes everyone a little more friendly, a little more generous, a little more happy, even. Whether this is a result of the heady intoxication that comes from spending more money than you have on things you don't need; a side-effect of the barely concealed glee of tens of thousands of children who know that in a matter of days they'll get piles of free toys for doing nothing more than waking up; or even a dose of good old-fashioned Christmas Spirit, holy or with a small S -- the latter of which is usually administered with eggnog -- I have no idea, but personally I take it as proof that Christmas is alive and, if not exactly well, not quite ready to start pushing up the proverbial daisies. Or possibly poinsettias, as the case may be.
At least that's the state of things in America, and presumably the rest of the Western world as well. However, if you want to find somewhere where the Christmas Spirit is truly dead, a place where Christmas arrived with all the style but none of the actual substance, you need look no further than China. Probably checking out any big Chinese city around Christmas for the next decade or so should do the trick for those of you who are interested, since I doubt things will progress too far on the Christianity front in China any time in the near future. Go figure.
That being the case, I was surprised during my first December in China to find that Christmas was everywhere … just not always in a way that made sense. And sure, some things were as expected -- decorations were clustered more tightly around malls and shopping complexes, which is apparently de rigueur even in China -- but for the most part, it was as if people had just plopped strings of lights, Santa Claus cutouts, Merry Christmas banners, and other festive, brightly colored bits and bots randomly about the city in an attempt to celebrate the season.
For instance, the enterprising management office for our apartment complex had used red spray paint to stencil Christmas wreaths -- complete with bells -- on every window in every lobby of every building, but had put most of them upside down, presumably because none of them had actually seen a real Christmas wreath and didn't know any better. Another good example could be found in one of the city's most upscale malls, which had a massive two-story fake Christmas tree in its central rotunda. At first glance, it seemed fairly standard -- green, check; oversized red star on top, check -- until you moved in for a closer look and realized that the entire thing was made out of Heineken bottles, which would make for a very merry Christmas if nothing else, although the next morning would be a bitch. But easily the best decorating job could be found at one of the local shopping centers on Wangfujing Street, where the owners had covered the regular front doors with a Christmas-themed entrance that was more carnival fun house than anything else: a castle-like gate painted to look as if it was built from midnight blue bricks, complete with a spinning Santa head perched on top that, between the nervous smile and panicky eyes that looked down and to the right so as not to meet your gaze, seemed more worried than welcoming, like he was concerned some overzealous Communist party lackey might show up and out him as the capitalist threat he did indeed represent.
So if the entire holiday was so screwed up, why bother with it at all? Because the Chinese like Christmas for the simple reason we all like Christmas, and it's not Jesus, Santa Claus, or the ability to eat all the cookies, chocolate, and cake you can cram into your mouth with impunity, although I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the dessert angle was a small part of it. No, when you get right down to it, it's because of the presents. I've said it once and I'll say it again: any holiday that involves getting free stuff is bound to catch on. Really, it's just that simple. Sure, there may be some enjoyment to be had from decorating, spending time with family members you don't actively dislike, and even giving a well-received gift, but in the end, it's about getting presents -- and the more, the better.
And really, for the Chinese, that's all there is too it. Sure, there's likely a small, undoubtedly put-upon population of local Christians who give lip service to Jesus' big day, but for the most part it's about the gifts, and that's it. And when I say that's it, I really mean that's it: there's nothing else there, not even the consideration of a semblance of a thought of an idea -- you get the point, I'm sure -- that Christmas might be about something more.
For example, one day in late November, a Chinese acquaintance of ours said, apropos of nothing, that she was going to "celebrate Christmas this year by putting up a Christmas tree." And, as if this sudden pronouncement that she and her family were going to start celebrating the birth of our but not their Lord wasn't strange enough -- the way she said it, you could tell it was a choice that was roughly on par with deciding to pick up a pizza on the way home -- she also happened to be a Muslim. And a practicing, I-don't-eat-pork Muslim at that, which in China, where almost anything you order in a restaurant comes buried under a greasy layer of fried pork, requires serious commitment. To her it didn't matter that, these days, Islam and Christianity mix about as well as oil and water, white fish and pinot noir, pepper-filled Sichuan hotpot and the average western digestive tract (or at least mine), and things of that nature, because for her to celebrate Christmas meant to give and -- more importantly -- to receive presents, nothing more.
The thing is, she wasn't alone in her Christmas knowledge, as I found out a few days later at work. I was employed by a large, American company as an editor, and part of my job was to meet one-on-one with pretty much anyone who was interested to let them practice their language skills with the native English speaker that I happened to be. Often, these conversations would consist of my explaining a certain puzzling aspect of American culture, such as home buying, grocery stores, taxes, higher education, or even libraries, which, as it turns out, are remarkably similar to libraries in China. However, on the mid-December day in question, the guy I was meeting with sat down and said, "I was hoping you could explain Christmas."
Explain Christmas? Think about that for a second, about everything that involves. I mean, trying to describe the cast of characters alone would take days: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, Ebenezer Scrooge, and so on. And those are just the people on the top of the bill. What about the supporting cast: the Three Wise Men; the shepherds who watched their flocks by night; or the herald angels who went on and on about new born kings, mercy mild, and some other stuff I never remember? Not to mention Bob Cratchit, the Grinch, all the Whos down in Whoville, and the rest. And remember, this is for someone whose total Christmas knowledge consisted of two things: it was a Western holiday, and it involved -- I know you can guess -- yes, getting presents. Everything else needed to be explained. Oh, and did I mention the meetings were generally only fifteen minutes long?
Despite all this, I said yes. After all, I had a job to do.
"Do you know who Jesus Christ is?" I asked.
The question made me feel a little strange, since I have never been too comfortable with religion. As I always say, Jesus is dead and God is forgiving, so screw everything else and sin away. As a result -- in my mind, at least -- five minutes after asking a question about someone's knowledge of Jesus, you're inviting the person you're with to drop down onto his or her knees and praise the Lord with you, and ten minutes later you're going over to their house to burn their collection of Harry Potter books, which we all know promote witchcraft. And wizardry.
However, the question didn't seem to bother him. He just shook his head, no.
"You've never heard of Jesus?"
"No."
This was going to be harder than I thought.
"Have you ever seen a picture of a guy on a cross, like this?" I drew a quick stick-figure person on a cross, which itself consisted of two overlapping sticks, so that the entire thing looked like a hangman game gone terribly wrong.
He nodded, and I was off. It's not worth going into specifics, but I somehow managed to condense everything I knew about the religious side of Christmas into about ten rambling, uninterrupted minutes. And sure, I might have forgotten some things and simply left out some others (I never liked the whole Herod subplot: he's poorly written and completely two-dimensional. I mean, the power-mad tyrant is so overdone, don't you think?), but overall I thought I did a pretty good job.
"But if Christmas is the birthday of Jesus, why do people get presents?" He asked when I was finished. "When it is your birthday, you should get presents."
So much for doing a good job.
"Um . . . normally, yes. But not for Christmas. During Christmas, you get the presents."
"From Jesus?"
I didn't answer right away. Not only because I wouldn't be able to do so without laughing, but also because I couldn't help imagine what Christmas might be like if that were the case. The gifts would be crappier, at any rate. I mean, you can be sure Jesus isn't leaving Grand Theft Auto IV under the tree for Billy. And speaking of that, what about the tree itself? It would have to go -- way too pagan -- possibly to be replaced by a burning bush or something similar, which would obviously present some significant problems but would also provide a nice, natural light for your Christmas Eve festivities. On the plus side though, if you left out a piece of sourdough and a cup of water at night, Jesus would be able to provide unlimited amounts of bread and wine for Christmas dinner, which would be handy, not to mention money-saving. Whatever the case, at least he wouldn't have trouble getting up and down anyone's chimney: he could simply rise again and again and again . . .
Eventually, I informed him that presents did not actually come from Jesus. "The presents come from Santa Claus," I said.
"Who?"
Five minutes later, he was looking at his watch too fast to actually process what time it was and saying he had a very important meeting to go to.
"But I'm not finished yet -- there's a lot more," I protested.
I mean, I had barely started talking about Rudolph, and I hadn't gotten into his backstory at all. And let's face it, you can't understand Rudolph without knowing that all of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. Really, you just can't. As he was leaving, he said we could discuss it at our next meeting. Not surprisingly, he never wanted to talk about it again, and we never did.
But that's the point, isn't it? He didn't really know anything about Christmas, and he didn't want to. That was typical of the Chinese I talked to, primarily of the younger, we-don't-remember-Mao era. They liked Christmas because, in their paraphrased words, it was like Spring Festival, but without the obligations. To make sense of that remark, I will tell you that Spring Festival, AKA Chinese New Year, is sort of the Chinese equivalent of Christmas: a time when people traditionally go back to their hometowns, wherever they may be, to spend time with their family and collect red envelopes filled with money to celebrate the occasion. (Which, as far as gifts go, is pretty damn good, I have to admit.) Although as you grow up, the red envelopes become both less frequent and less thick, and then one day you wake up and realize that you are now expected to give out envelopes instead of collect them, and suddenly the entire holiday becomes about nothing more than spending a solid week in close quarters with your extended family and giving away your hard-earned cash to a swarm of little emperors who naturally won't bother to say thanks. Sounds fun, doesn't it?
When you look at it that way, it's no wonder China has come down with a serious case of Christmas fever. First, since it's not a family holiday -- thereby giving license to any unwanted, unloved, and/or uninvited family member to show up, whether or not you'd asked them to -- you actually get to choose who you spend your holiday with, which is a nice change of pace from tradition. Second, and much more importantly, the gifts never stop coming, regardless of the calendar year in which you happened to be brought into existence. Plus, as an added bonus, with Christmas you are now free to get all manner of items that were impossible to receive with the red envelope size-restriction: books, CDs, video games, DVDs, TVs, and things of that nature. And you never know, your present still might be a hefty, cash-filled envelope -- that's the simple joy of Christmas.
I suppose there's a chance that this might change eventually, that the holiday -- in a curious reversal of the way things have gone in the Western world -- will evolve from a simple gift exchange into something more complex, something that comes complete with commitments, office parties, and overnight stays with family. After all, if you start throwing around free presents, pretty soon everyone's going to start expecting one: your parents, your grandparents, your siblings, your sibling's children, and so on. You get the idea. At that point, getting together on the morning of December twenty-fifth to exchange gifts becomes the simplest solution, and suddenly you have yourself a Christmas, of sorts. Then again, maybe none of that will happen and Christmas will remain a joyous, capitalistic exercise in material excess in one of the last Communist holdouts on Earth. Really, at this point, either one is as likely.
What I am sure of, however, is that Christmas is definitely in China to stay. One day in late June, Holly and I were in a taxi with a woman who had been born, raised, and lived in China her entire life. Somehow, we ended up talking about recent vacations we had taken, and from there the discussion moved on to upcoming trips. When we mentioned that we would be going home for the holidays at some point in mid-December, the woman rolled her eyes, sighed in the way teenagers do when their parents ask them a stupid -- that is, any -- question, and said with all the outrage she could manage, "My company doesn't even give us Christmas off."
Not yet, anyway.
When it was decided that we were for sure moving to Beijing, there were, not unexpectedly, a few things about the impending change of scenery that worried me. Some of these worries were of the fairly obvious variety: for example, how I would manage to do pretty much anything -- get around, order food, go shopping, etcetera -- with knowing only about ten words in Chinese, including hello, thank-you, and one bottle of beer, the last of which is actually three words in Chinese, in case you are counting. Other worries, while no less troublesome, were slightly more obscure, and included things like being packed off to an old-school Communist reeducation camp for saying something deemed subversive, like pointing out that the Great Leap Forward was probably a mistake, what with the tens of millions of people who died as a result and all; or possibly being seduced by a beautiful Chinese woman only to be sold into white slavery on account of my dashing good-looks and roguish charm.
Needless to say, some of these worries were more likely to come to pass than others, but I'll let you sort out what's what in that regard for yourself. I will say, however, that while I have -- to my knowledge -- never been referred to as roguish in my life, I have pretended to be a rogue (also known by the less dashing synonym of thief) on more than one occasion in a variety of formats, including video games, Dungeons & Dragons, and video games based on Dungeons & Dragons. I'm pretty sure that's the same thing -- isn't it?
Regardless of the varying validity of these worries, however, the point is that there were a lot of question marks surrounding our big move. However, having been to China once before -- for a month or so one summer in the mid late-nineties with Holly -- there was one thing that I knew would definitely come to pass: I would attract attention. A lot of attention. Why? Not, surprisingly, because of my aforementioned dashing nature, but because, in a curious reversal of pretty much everything I had grown up both experiencing and learning about, I had white skin. I mean, let's face it: it's not often you walk around a US city and have people point at you and say "Hey, look at that white person!"
And finger-pointing was only the beginning: people would actually stop what they were doing -- walking, working, whatever -- to ogle us, like we had circus side-show potential instead of being just another pair of less-unwashed-than-usual backpackers, which shouldn't count as particularly notable unless said backpackers are strolling around the Upper East Side of Manhattan or wandering through the various couture stores in Paris. Prada does sell zip-off pants, don't they?
I remember one instance of this in particular. It took place in Chongqing, which was formerly called Chung King and, unbeknownst to most Americans, is a city of some four million people and not just a brand name for cheap, microwavable Chinese food from the late seventies. We were eating lunch at a fake KFC -- you try eating Chinese food for every meal for two straight weeks and see if you don't find yourself craving something different -- in some generic mall, sitting up against one of the interior walls that happened to be made of glass and face onto the mall itself.
Naturally, everyone looked at us as they walked by. And not in a casual glance sort of way, where they might look at us, then at something else in the restaurant, and then at some other store. No, when I say everyone looked at us, I mean they looked at us and only us. In fact, some people even went so far as to start walking backwards once they went by, presumably so they could pass us by twice in order to remember as much as possible when telling their friends about the funny-looking foreigners they saw eating chicken sandwiches in the mall.
"It was bizarre. They were so white, it burned my eyes. Plus, they were eating with their hands -- can you believe that shit? Their hands! Who knows what those things have been touching? I mean, it's not like this place is really clean, you know? Oh, and this is the best part: the guy … the guy had hair on his face. And not growing out of a mole even -- it was everywhere, all over his chin. Like a squirrel died on his face or something. Seriously, it was fucking crazy."
That could be what they said, anyway. I will admit there is a slight chance I might be wrong. Actually, I could also be wrong about why the people were walking in reverse: for all I know, they were doing it for their health, which sounds like a joke until you find out that some Chinese -- particularly the older generations -- include walking backwards on treadmills as part of their exercise routine when they go to the gym, something I would not have believed unless I had seen it with my own eyes on multiple occasions. And while I'm not saying I tried it when I was in our gym by myself this one time, if I had I would tell you that not only is it much harder than it looks, but you should also be very, very prepared to use the big, red emergency stop button in the center of the control panel if you attempt it. You might even clip that little safety / emergency stop string you always ignore onto your shirt for once, just in case you can't get to the button in time. Seriously.
At any rate, while I found it strange to be stared at by adults, the thing that really got me was the children. Or, to be more precise, the parents of said children. Sure, the kids stared at us just as much as everyone else did, but -- like all children, most of the elderly, and pretty much anyone stumbling out of a VW bus in a cloud of funny-smelling smoke -- they were easily distracted by any brightly colored object that passed through their field of vision. However, since the moms apparently wanted their offspring to have a good idea of what white people really looked like, they would literally drag their kids by the arm, hand, or -- once -- the back of the shirt right up to next to the restaurant window to get a good look at us. Trust me, there's nothing like having five snotty little noses pressed up against the glass window next to you to ruin your appetite, to say nothing of what is left on the window after the aforementioned five snotty little noses have departed. I'll leave it at that however -- you know, just in case you're eating or something.
We managed to make it through our meal eventually, albeit in more time than it would normally take since at some point I decided to eat only when no one was near the glass, which resulted in long stretches of sipping my drink, followed by ten- to twenty-second bursts of shoveling food into my mouth as quickly as I could without choking. (Pretty fast, as it turns out.) Some of you, mostly those of you who have never actually met me, might guess that this would be the sort of table-turning experience that would not only make me think about how I treat other people, but also question my very place in the world -- but you'd be wrong. Sure, it bothered me, but not that much; in general, I just thought it was amusing, especially since I wasn't in the country long enough for it to really start to annoy me.
This time, of course, things would be different. Yes, I was going to be in China for a much longer time -- six months instead of six weeks -- but I didn't really think it would be quite the same. After all, back then I had spent most of my time in backwater towns in Sichuan province, a place that, while rightly celebrated for its food, wasn't really high on the must-see list of too many tourists. Now, almost a decade later, I would be spending my time in Beijing, the beating heart of the burgeoning Chinese empire and the new economic capitol of the world. Surely things would be different. I mean, they'd have to be, wouldn't they?
As it turns out, not so much. While I am not aware of any instances of overzealous parents forcing their children to gawk at me, I was still stared at with such regularity that someone seeing me stroll by could be forgiven for assuming I was some sort of movie and/or rock star instead of a height-weight proportional white guy with a shaved head who, according to several Chinese people I spoke with, bore a more than passing resemblance to Bruce Willis, something which only goes to prove that we all obviously look the same to them.
Questionable comparisons aside, the truth was that from the time I left in the morning to the time I walked home at night, I was stared at. Seriously. It was so prevalent that I caused more almost-accidents than I can conveniently remember, as people walking or peddling past turned for one last glimpse instead of looking somewhere else, like, for instance, where they were going. Which is odd, I know, since the stop-and-gawk crash is something I would associate more with, say, half-dressed supermodels and/or Hollywood starlets standing on street corners. Not that I've ever seen something like that, mind you, but if I did it would definitely make me slow down and take a good, long look. More than a marginally in-shape bald dude on his way back from the market with a bagful of knock-off Lacostes and pirated DVDs, anyway.
At one point, it became so ridiculous that, during a day out with some of Holly's coworkers, they decided to stop taking pictures of the sites we were supposed to be admiring and start taking pictures of people staring at me because it was much more interesting than, say, some five-hundred year old palace that the Emperor used to hang out in before being booted by Mister Mao and his merry band of rebels. On the plus side, they took some pretty funny pictures; on the negative side, there were enough people giving me funny looks that eventually they got bored of that as well and simply stopped taking pictures all together.
But, as was the case in Chongqing, I didn't mind at first. I found it all pretty funny, actually. I was particularly amused when Chinese people at pretty much any Beijing tourist attraction -- the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Chairman Mao's decaying corpse, etcetera -- asked if they could have their picture taken with me. Possibly so they could present their friends with photographic proof of the fact that they met either Bruce Willis or his younger brother; possibly because they were overwhelmed by my previously discussed good-looks and/or roguish charm; or possibly for some other reason that makes even less sense than the first two. In any case, pictures were definitely being taken, if not by the hundreds, then at least by the high dozens.
Granted, I don't think the people asking for these pictures were Beijingers. Most likely, they were people who had come in from the countryside to the see the big city; people who, depending on if the city, town, or village they lived in was mentioned in the most recent edition of the Lonely Planet: China, might only have seen one or two foreigners in their lives and wanted to get a picture with one while they had the chance.
I can only imagine how this worked once they went back home: "Here's us at the Great Wall, one of the most famous sites in the world and a living symbol of the might of ancient Chinese culture. Oh, and here's us with some foreigner I happened to walk by but couldn't really talk to because he only knew like ten words of Chinese and didn't say anything when I said hullo hullo hullo. Who knows -- maybe he was French or something. Either way, I'm thinking about blowing this one up and framing it."
If you're smart -- and obviously if you are reading this, you are like Einstein-level brilliant -- you'll know what eventually happened with this whole phenomenon: it got old. Really old. As far as I can recall, it officially got old one morning in the gym after we had been living in Beijing for a month or so. The gym was in the basement of our apartment complex's clubhouse and was separated from the rest of the floor by several glass walls. I was on the treadmill, minding my own business and watching some random soccer game on the TV in front of me when I happened to look up and notice that the kid who was checking gym memberships at the front desk had actually woken up and was staring me. So was the lady at the dry cleaning stand across the way, a place which, despite the fact that I never actually saw anyone approach the counter, always had a full rack of plastic-wrapped clothes waiting to be picked up. For that matter, so were the two cleaning ladies who were supposed to be washing the windows but were actually doing nothing more than repeatedly running their rags over the same section of, apparently, extremely dirty railing while watching me sweat more profusely than you'd imagine someone would while running in place.
And yes, maybe the gym kid was looking at me because I hadn't checked in, what with him being asleep and all, and he was trying to figure out whether or not he should demand to see my membership; and maybe the collective women were watching me because, being a pretty plain and windowless basement, there wasn't a hell of a lot else to look at, but I didn't think so. Whether I was being completely paranoid or had simply reached my times-being-stared-at limit -- which is apparently surprisingly high, for the record -- after that morning it ceased to be amusing. All of it. In contrast, it started to annoy me. And, just so we're clear, by annoy I mean "bug the shit out of." That morning, I dealt with the problem the easiest way I could think of: I turned the treadmill off and went back to my apartment, like a bitter little kid who won't let anyone else on the playground use his ball.
Dealing with the rest of my life was a bit more complicated though, since I couldn't very well just sit in my apartment all day doing nothing. Besides the boredom factor -- let's just say that the quality of HBO Asia programming is decidedly lacking -- there was also the fact that I would probably starve to death. Or, if not starve, at least get really hungry between breakfast and dinner, when Holly would at least be around to share my very considerable pain, which is not quite starving but which feels like it is. Or at least is as close as I want to come to experiencing that feeling, at any rate.
And sure, pretty much every restaurant delivered, but not a lot of them had employees who could understand my broken Chinese well enough to actually bring me anything, other than a single bottle of beer. Which, if nothing else, would be cold, since that was one word I'd actually managed to add to my vocabulary and use successfully during my time there, despite the fact that it was winter and the outside temperature generally hovered somewhere just below freezing. But still, warm beer? As if. Just to make sure, I tested my hypothesis by ordering from Subway via cellular phone not long after the gym incident. It sort of worked. On one hand, a Subway product was eventually delivered to my front door by a friendly delivery boy; on the other hand, said product was either not mine or the words "foot-long turkey" mean something very different in China, possibly involving parts of a turkey I don't normally think of as being edible, but I didn't keep the sandwich around long enough to find out.
So basically, I was screwed: I had to go outside in order to not starve, or at least to not get really hungry; going outside meant being stared at; I hated being stared so much that I didn't want to go outside; I had to go outside … blah blah blah and so on and so forth. In practice, this meant that since I had to go outside to get food -- I believe I may have mentioned that already -- I pretty much got angry any time I went outside and caught, or even thought I caught, someone looking at me for a fraction of a second too long. So when I passed the playground on my way out to the street and noticed the five-year old kid with the planet-sized mole protruding from between his eyebrows and his nanny, whose front teeth jutted out from her mouth at approximately a forty-five degree angle, staring at me, I got pissed and started muttering things like "You're staring at me? You? Really?" under or sometimes even over my breath, since I was pretty sure they didn't speak English.
However, the playground route was much better than my other option. There was another exit from our complex, which -- while slightly more convenient, depending on where I was going -- went right past a building that was still under construction. That, of course, meant construction workers. If you want to know what that involved, think of the stereotypical situation: woman, possibly blond, probably curvy, and definitely wearing something short and tight, walks by construction site; constructions workers turn en masse to watch her walk by said site while offering various unwanted witticisms; woman gets angry; construction workers get amused; the end.
Got it? Good. Now, picture me as the woman. I know, shocking that I look so good in a dress like that, isn't it? I was surprised, too. Just kidding, of course. Kind of, although it was sort of the same: I walk by, twenty to thirty people stop working, if at all possible, in order to watch me pass. Despite what you would think, my reaction to this was somewhat mixed. After all, I generally felt sorry for these people, since the construction workers in Beijing were mostly men who had come from the countryside looking for jobs and the one they found had them working at least twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for what likely amounted to less money per day than I spent on the highly questionable Subway sandwich I didn't bother to eat. Not to mention the fact that it was incredibly dangerous as well, with what could only very charitably be described as the lax safety conditions on-site. I once, for example, witnessed a man in flip-flops standing with no harness on an exposed beam about twenty-five stories up giving directions to a crane operator with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other while a thousand-pound load of rebar careened wildly over his head. Also, he wasn't wearing a helmet. Although, in his defense, I guess wearing a helmet in that situation isn't going to make you appreciably safer.
Of course, that sympathetic feeling -- which started when I first looked out my twenty-sixth story window at them while getting ready and grew steadily as I took the elevator down to the bottom floor and made my way to the outside world -- wore off about point-two milliseconds after I rounded the side entrance to our complex, watched the heads swing around, and heard the first tentative hullo. Luckily for me, Holly refused to teach me how to say "hello, stupid" in Chinese, despite my repeated requests. Although since there were usually at least twenty to thirty times more of them than there were of me, I guess it's maybe good she didn't.
For the record, I did try saying zai jian, goodbye, in response once, and only once, just to be funny, to maybe forge some sort of humor-based connection, but it didn't work. I mean, it worked in that everyone who heard it laughed, but I am pretty sure it was not one of those we're-not-laughing-at-you-we're-laughing-with-you situation. No, I think it was pretty much exactly the opposite. Although since the people in earshot immediately stopped saying hullo and started saying zai jian, I guess it was technically a success, if you want to call it that. Which I don't, despite the fact that I just did.
I know it sounds stupid, and possibly slightly crazy -- that is, the same way I normally sound -- but I think it's one of those things you have to experience in order to appreciate. It was like having all the baggage of being a celebrity without getting any of the benefits. Benefits, like, say, a multi-million dollar condo in the Village, a checking account you don't have to nervously monitor the last few days of every month, and weekends in the country with Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, or any one of a dozen or so interchangeable Eastern European models with names that are harder to pronounce correctly than they are to spell. You know, the little perks that make all that attention bearable. Maybe I'm being cynical, but I'm guessing today's A-list actors would be even less happy with the paparazzi if they were unemployed and living in a poorly-built apartment building in one of the world's most polluted cities. Just a thought.
Either way, from then on I went through my days trying not to attract too much attention to myself whenever I went out, slouching around the city like Yao Ming at a midget convention. Or possibly just a normal-sized person convention, since the dude is like seven-and-a-half feet tall. I also wore my stocking hat whenever I could to hide my attention-getting shaved head, which wasn't overly difficult since it was winter and everyone else had hats on as well. It did, however, get a bit tricky while eating dinner at a restaurant, particularly if said restaurant happened to be the Sichuan place we frequented where the food was spicy enough to make my head sweat sans hat. Whether or not I left it on depended on a variety of things -- a complicated mix of who we were with, where we were seated, just exactly how sweaty my head happened to be, and how many twenty-something ounce bottles of Tsing Tao I had consumed -- but that's not the point. As usual. The point is, of course, just how far I was willing to go in my (ironically enough) pointless effort to remain anonymous as possible. I mean, seriously, whether or not you should take your stocking cap off while inside shouldn't involve factoring in four different variables. Really, it just shouldn't.
And then, one day, everything changed. Just like that. And, as these things tend to, it happened completely by accident. I'd gone solo to the Forbidden City to take pictures, since when I was by myself I could take as many questionable photos as my memory card could hold -- and this is another big, red-painted building of some sort! -- without worrying about entertaining someone else. For once, it was actually warm and bright, the sun having somehow managed to force its way through the smoky haze that generally lingers over the city all day, every day. This, in turn, caused two things to happen. First, I took off my stocking hat. A bold move, I know—particularly considering how, as I mentioned, it almost never came off—but it was warm and I was hot, so it seemed like the sensible thing to do. Plus, I figured that since I was surrounded by literally thousands of other tourists, I would be relatively anonymous. Well, as anonymous as a six-foot tall white dude with a shaved head can be in the middle of China. Second, I put on my sunglasses. Or at least I tried to put them on: when I reached into my pocket, I realized they were sitting on the table back in my apartment, right where I'd left them.
The good news was that I had another pair of sunglasses that I always kept shoved into the bottom of my camera bag at all times. You know, in case of a sunglass emergency, which is something that probably doesn't deserve that dramatic of a word since it basically means "if the sun came out while I was walking around and I'd forgotten my normal sunglasses." The bad news, as far as it goes, was that I didn't really like them. I'd bought them in Seattle one day during an actual sunglass emergency -- sunny day, no shades! -- because they were on sale for less than ten dollars at the store I happened to be walking by, presumably because no one wanted to buy them at a higher price-point.
The problem was that they were way too flashy for my taste: an obnoxiously modern take on aviator glasses, complete with chunky, gold frames and amber-tinted lenses that were dark enough to keep out the light but not dark enough to hide your eyes, which is the second-most important function of sunglasses as far as I'm concerned, just slightly behind actual sun-blocking ability. Because of the flashy, oversized frames, I always joked that they were my "movie star" sunglasses whenever I wore them. Not really having any other choice -- I don't consider squinting for two to three straight hours a choice -- I put them on.
Ten minutes later, my life was transformed. Changed forever. Or, if not forever, for the five or so months I had left to live in Beijing, which, at certain points in time, seemed like pretty much the same thing. It happened just outside the Forbidden City, while I was at Tiananmen Gate -- the one with the big Chairman Mao head shot hanging off the front -- taking obnoxiously Pomo pictures of people taking pictures of the portrait with said portrait in frame. At the time, I thought it seemed cool. Of course, at one time I also thought Vanilla Ice was cool, so what do I know?
While I was trying to line up a shot, two Chinese girls passed behind me, then started to giggle. As usual, I ignored them. Or at least I pretended to ignore them, which may or may not be the same thing. However, rather than continue on about their day, they stopped and pointed at me as well -- look at the foreigner with no hair! -- which led to even more giggling. In response, I pretended to ignore them even more vigorously, going so far as to make it seem like I was reviewing the pictures I had just taken and was not aware that the girls even existed, which was difficult for two reasons: first, they were reasonably cute, and the proximity of cute girls seems to make pretty much anything -- or should I say everything? -- harder on your average, heterosexual male; and second, they were walking toward me.
"Hullo?" The shorter one said when they reached me.
I continued to fiddle with my camera, as if I was doing something specific rather than randomly forwarding through uniformly forgettable pictures and there were not two girls standing right next to me, one of whom had just directed a fairly standard greeting in my direction. Whatever they wanted -- English practice, a picture, or even just a parroted back hello -- I wasn't interested.
"Excuse me," the shorter one continued, "do you speak English?"
Because, you know, all white people speak English. I looked up.
"Yes."
More giggling.
"Excuse me," the other one said, breaking her silence, "but do you mind if we have your picture?"
Naturally, I was going to say no, as I usually did. Sure, for once -- for the only time, really -- the request was coming from two attractive females, but, curmudgeon that I am, I was put-off by the directness of the question. I mean, they'd skipped right over the obligatory "Where are you from?" and "Do you like China?" get-to-know-you stages of the conversation that everyone hit on before moving to the picture request, and it didn't seem right to reward them for that. I mean, call me crazy, but that's just how I feel.
However, I never got the chance to say anything, because right after the first girl's picture request, the other girl blurted out, "You look very cool!"
I was taken somewhat by surprise. After all, in my experience, guys who know their way around a twenty-sided dice and who can name the Star Wars character famous for wearing Mandalorian battle armor without even thinking about it are rarely told that they are cool by any girl, not to mention cute ones, and especially not to mention two at the same time.
"Sorry -- what did you say?"
The girls looked at each other, a move that naturally prompted yet another giggling fit. "You look very cool, yes?"
"Um . . . yes," I answered, although I think she was looking more for a confirmation that she had said it correctly than confirmation that I was, in fact cool, but whatever. I was apparently too cool to worry about that.
"Very cool," I nodded, and they nodded with me.
It was official: I was very cool. Cool, huh?
"Can we have your picture?" Girl Two asked again.
Still more giggling, but this time I smiled with them. "Yes, of course."
Several pictures were taken, a few peace signs were flashed -- the de facto Chinese picture pose, for some reason -- and the girls wandered off to take more pictures of presumably less cool people, but in a very real way, nothing would ever be the same again. Sure, I was still a relatively tall white guy with a shaved head, but with my movie star sunglasses on I was something else: cool. And not just cool, let's not forget, but very cool.
Like I said, that was something new for me, and I liked it. No one in China knew anything about me: they didn't know that I knew Captain Kirk's middle name -- Tiberius, for the record -- or that I had once made a habit of identifying myself as Batman when I answered the phone at my parents' house. All they knew was that I was cool. Or at least that I appeared to be so, which was good enough in this case, since I would never spend more than a couple of minutes with anyone.
I decided to test my new found status by temporarily delaying my Forbidden City photography session and wandering over to Tiananmen Square instead, a place where I was sure to be stopped multiple times for pictures. It worked. In fact, it worked better than I had even expected: parading through the square with my sunglasses on like I had better things to do but couldn't be bothered to actually do them, I was stared at more than I ever had been before. Or at least it felt like I was, based on the number of heads turned. At one point I walked right through the center of a Chinese tour group -- in all honesty, I didn't try too hard to get out of their way -- and for a brief moment I was literally the center of attention, surrounded by a thirty or so people in identical straight-billed baseball hats whose heads swiveled from side-to-side to follow my progress in a way that reminded me of a school of fish in motion.
None of them so much as dropped a "hullo?" or asked for a photo, but I think that's because they were too surprised, the same way I would have been if I was standing around with a few of my friends and Bono slipped through us with a nod and a flick of his thinning, rock-star hair. Whatever the case, once I simply stood in place near the center of the square, things started happening. A dentist and his friend from somewhere in Hunan province came up and talked to me and asked for a picture, as did a woman who was hoping to become a Beijing tour guide; a husband and wife from some province I'd never heard of; and, of course, some tour group members who treated me like a cheap department store Santa, with one person at a time coming up to have their picture taken with me. The funny thing was, I didn't mind.
I know, it's stupid that something as simple as a pair of cheap sunglasses and a comment about my level of coolness from two girls who were probably so sheltered that they would think an 8-track was just as if not more cool than myself could make such a big difference, but it did. Apparently confidence, like sexy, success, and pretty much everything else, is a state of mind. And yes, things might have been very different if it had been two guys who told me I was cool, or a mom pushing a kid in a stroller, or an old man in an oversized, communist-style coat, but that's not how it worked out. In that way, it was sort of like the perfect storm, but without the raining and death and computer-animated waves.
Disaster movies aside, things were different after that afternoon. With my cool glasses on, I never refused a photo request, and would sometimes just sort of stand around looking nonchalant -- the best approximation of cool I could think of -- just to see how many people I could get to approach me. I walked around town upright with my head held high, leaving my stocking hat at home whenever it was warm enough to conceivably go without it. I even started taking it off at restaurants.
And no, I didn't become one of those annoying people who leave their sunglasses on inside -- I did take them off when entering a building -- but after a while, it didn't matter: I didn't need them. Which, apart from sounding incredibly hokey, turned out to be a good thing, since they broke a few months later when I put them unprotected in my carry-on bag on a flight to Shanghai.
Such, I guess, is life. After the glasses broke, my picture popularity did seem to decline somewhat, but I didn't mind. More importantly, I didn't mind people staring at me quite so much as I used to. It's not that I didn't notice, because I always did, but I just found that I didn't really care. It was natural for people to stare, after all, what with my coolness. Or at least that's what I told myself. Besides, it made me laugh -- and it still does -- to think that, to this day, when a Chinese person from some remote village or town pulls out the pictures from their big Beijing trip to show to friends, relatives, and whomever else they can sucker into looking at them, I'll be there smiling back at them from behind my glasses. Looking cool, of course.
Very cool.
Whenever people found out that I lived in China, they always had one question: What's it like? As if, you know, I could summarize my life in a few sentences for them while I waited for my latte or stood next to them at a party while making a drink. Despite this, however, I tried. Depending on my mood, my answer varied. Crowded was a word I used often, generally to a chuckle, or at least a grin. They have good Chinese food there was another line that came up quite a bit, generally to fewer chuckles and almost no grins, despite being at least as funny as the "crowded" line, as far as I'm concerned. But really, whatever else I might say -- there are lines outside Pizza Hut during lunchtime; so polluted that your snot turns black; and so on -- what I always thought about saying was hard. A lot of the time, living in China seemed hard.
Not physically hard, of course -- really, sitting in a chair and typing probably isn't overly taxing in any country -- but hard in a mental sense. Mostly because, I think, it generally seemed more difficult than it should have been to get things done. Regardless of what you wanted to do, there always seemed to be an extra step involved, which wears on you after a while. Like, for instance, the way that buying a shirt at the mall involved picking out the shirt you wanted and getting a receipt for it from the clerk at that section's counter, then bringing that receipt to a special cashier's desk -- which had the mystifying ability to always be on the opposite side of the store from wherever you happened to be -- where you would pay and have the receipt stamped in triplicate for delivery back to the first clerk, at which point you would then be given your shirt.
For the record, that's not an exaggeration: that's how it actually works. And sure, there are reasons for it, and once you get used to it, it's not so terrible, but it's just an example of the little differences that make everything just a bit harder. And if for some reason you think that system seems funs, imagine how much more fun it is when you make your way back to the clerk to pick up your finally paid for merchandise only to find out that the cashier forgot one stamp, meaning you have to go back across the store -- again -- and wait in line -- again -- in order to get the final stamp needed to collect your shirt. Really, it just brings the entire experience up to a whole new level. Trust me on this one.
Need another example? Consider eating at a fast-food restaurant. In the US, you order, you pay, you get your food, you eat your food. Yes, it's just that simple. Not in China, however. In China it might go something like this: you order; you pay; you get the wrong food; you bring it back to get the right food; you find out that, despite the fact that the price is exactly the same, they can't simply exchange it and you first have to get a refund and then order again; you agree to do so; you discover that you have to wait for someone to go find a manager, who is in the back smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone and is in no hurry to end the conversation, because only a manager can authorize a refund; you finally get a refund and place the same order, the only difference being that this time it's ten minutes later; you find out that whatever you want, no matter what it might be, isn't ready -- you don't mind because at this point you're thanking God or Buddha or Chairman Mao or whoever else that they didn't just say "sorry, we don't have any more of that," which is just as likely -- and they'll bring it out to your table in five minutes; you get your food ten minutes later and, despite the fact that they said it still had to be cooked, it's cold; you eat it anyway. The end.
Okay, you caught me. Unlike the shirt story above, that is something of an exaggeration -- under no circumstances would the food ever be cold. But the point is that if I told the same story to my friends in Beijing, it would have been accepted without question. Or, really, without surprise. In fact, anyone I told probably would have just laughed and said "That is so China," then moved on to the next topic of conversation like it wasn't a big deal. And they would have been right -- it wasn't a big deal, things like that happened on, if not actually a daily basis, at least on what seemed to be. As a foreigner living in China, you could, as a friend put it, generally count on at least one WTF moment per day -- and I do mean what the fuck?, just in case any of you are unclear. If you were lucky, your WTF moment might involve a restaurant visit that didn't go quite as planned; if you were unlucky, and perhaps a bit naïve, it might involve a hundred dollar bill at a tea house for what amounted to a few bucks worth of flavored water.
Like when a friend, who spoke and read both German and English, was asked to sit down and sign a ten-page contract that was written entirely in Chinese. I know, I know -- what did she expect, what with the living in Beijing and all? But it actually was surprising because the company she was working for, while Chinese, employed a substantial number of foreigners who couldn't read Chinese and seemed to have plenty of other documents, such as job applications and insurance waivers, available in English. And yet somehow a translated copy of the contract could not be found. I mean, who knew what it might say?
By signing this, I agree to work for free. For twelve to fourteen hours a day. With no rights, no vacation, and God knows no insurance. Oh, and only one bathroom break. And I promise not to complain. Even though lunch will never be anything more than cold rice and a few scraps of fatty, unidentifiable meat in some sort of vaguely fishy sauce. Except on holidays, when the rice will be warm.
Well, it probably wasn't that bad, but you just don't know, do you? When she asked if she could get it translated the HR woman told her it would "not be possible," despite the fact that there were countless agencies in the city that would be happy do just that for a few dollars. When she insisted, the HR woman suggested that she sign the contract, and they could have it translated later.
After thinking about it, our friend asked the woman, "What if the contract was for you and written in German? Would you sign it?"
The HR lady shook her head. "No, of course not."
When she told that story a few days later over dinner, everyone simply shrugged their shoulders, and -- by way of sympathy -- simply said: "That is so China."
And, in the larger scheme of things, that's not even a particularly bad case of how China seemed to make everything just a little bit harder. Things like, say, renting an apartment, as another friend found out when he moved to Beijing. After looking around for a place to live for a few weeks, he decided he liked the look of coworker's apartment and went to the management office to see if he could get one just like it. It turned out that he was in luck: there was an identical apartment on a different floor that was going to be available in just over a week. In fact, if he had the time, he could look at it right then and there to see if it would be suitable. He did and it would, so they agreed on a price and he made plans to return in ten days to sign the lease.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of foreshadowing will have already realized that things did not go exactly as planned. When he returned a week-and-a-half later prepared to sign the lease and put down the deposit, the property agent told him he couldn't have that apartment. Why? Because someone else was already renting it. It turned out that this mysterious "someone else" had also been waiting for an apartment, but since it wasn't ready on the day he was supposed to move in, they gave him our friend's apartment instead. Of course, the property agent was sure everything would work out okay because there was yet another apartment, identical to the one our friend wanted, that had just come available. Except, of course, our friend couldn't see it because the person living there hadn't moved out yet, so the property agent was not permitted to enter.
However, the property agent guaranteed it was the same, telling our friend, "You sign the lease and give me the deposit. You can trust me."
Our friend's response was a definite no, along with some understandably harsh language about how not only would no money be changing hands, but also how he did not, in point of fact, trust the property agent. After that somewhat inflammatory statement, the conversation devolved into a thirty-minute argument in Chinese about who knows what, although I'm sure you can guess and not be too far off. For the record, I'm assuming the word ma -- which can mean, among other things, either mother or horse, depending on how it's pronounced -- was used, in both senses of the word. Not surprisingly, in the end our friend left without an apartment and signed a lease at a different place -- one they actually let him see -- two days later.
That is so China.
Remarkably, things actually got worse for him after that. Despite being brand new, the apartment he moved into had a few things wrong with it -- some cracks in the walls, a leaky shower, and so on -- and the management assured him they would be able to fix the problems after he moved in. What they neglected to tell him, however, until he and his fiancée were comfortably settled in their new place was that the repairs would take about a week and they couldn't be in the apartment while the work was being done. He took it pretty well, all things considered. I think that, even after less than a month of living in Beijing, he was sort of expecting it.
I'm not sure what it says about me, then, that after six months of living there I was still so easily flustered when confronted with a China moment of my very own. It happened a few days before we moved away from Beijing for good. On the way to dinner, Holly and I stopped by the management office for our apartment complex to figure out what we had to do when moving out. Surprisingly, there was only one thing, and, even more surprisingly, it wasn't having the apartment cleaned. Apparently in China, as long as you don't break or steal anything from your furnished apartment while habitating there, you're golden. While this is great when you're leaving, we found out later on, after moving to Shanghai, that it's not so great when you're arriving. I don't know who was living in our apartment before us, but based on the amount of coarse, wiry black hair covering everything -- the floors, the bathroom sink, the mattress, and I'd rather not think about the shower drain -- it was either a long-haired dog with a shedding problem or a balding Chinese women, I'm not sure which. Although going on just sheer volume, hopefully it was both.
But moving on to moving out: the single thing we had to do before leaving was to turn off our telephone service. That was it. I remember our initial foolish reaction, which was to look at each other with expressions that lived somewhere between amazed and bewildered -- bemused, possibly -- before turning back to the apartment manager and asking if it was truly as simple as that. He nodded, and then said yes in both English and Chinese, presumably for emphasis, but perhaps simply to show off his knowledge of the word "yes," which I think is the third English word most non-English speakers learn after "hello" and "Coca-Cola."
Needless to say, after almost seven months in China, we should have known better.
"So can we call and have it shut off?" Holly asked.
This was the point where things started to go sideways.
"No." He grinned when he said it, as if only foreigners would be foolish enough to believe, even momentarily, that anything could be that simply. "You have to go to the office to do it."
"Why?"
"So that they know it is your phone."
"But who else would want to turn off our phone?" I asked.
My question was met with a blank stare, possibly because he either didn't know who else would want to turn off our phone or knew but didn't want to tell, but more probably because the majority of the conversation to this point had been in Chinese and he had no idea what I was saying.
"Can we have our maid pay the bill?" Holly asked, realizing before I did that only madness lay in following that line of reasoning and going in a different direction.
Most people, we'd learned, had the maid pay the bills, since bills in China generally had to paid in person -- usually at a bank -- and no one wanted to bother doing that themselves. And just so you don't get the wrong idea, it's not like having a maid made us a member of some super-privileged elite class: labor is so cheap in China that everyone -- and I do mean everyone -- had a maid. Honestly, I think even the maids had maids. Seriously.
"Is she from Beijing?" the management stooge asked, as if that would have some bearing on whether or not she would be able to pay the bill.
"I don't know. Why?"
"Because only people from Beijing can pay the bill."
"What?"
"She can only pay the bill if she is from Beijing," he told us again, as if the question had to do with us not hearing him rather than the complete and utter insanity of what he had just said.
Again, Holly and I shared a look, although this time it was somewhere between astounded and perplexed -- confounded, I would call it. And really, who could blame us? You had to turn off your own phone in person so the phone company would know you actually wanted it done and it wasn't just some strange practical joke, although you could have your phone turned off by your maid if she was from Beijing since apparently no one from Beijing would turn off someone else's phone. I wasn't sure if he was right -- and I'm still not -- but we'd been in China long enough, and heard enough stories from other people (see above, for example), to believe that it was just insane enough to be one-hundred percent correct.
That being the case, we did the only thing we could: we gave up, totally, utterly, and completely. In fact, we surrendered so fast a stranger might have sensibly thought we were part of the French army, but we knew that this was a fight we wouldn't win. We could call the phone company, we could send our maid and tell her to just say she was from Beijing, we could beg and plead and bribe from sunup to sundown, but in the end we'd wind up at a counter at the phone company's offices to pay our bill, there was no getting around that.
"Where's the office?" Holly asked.
The next day, we made our way out to the phone company to shut off our service. After Holly made arrangements to leave work early, we sat through a thirty minute cab ride and stood in line for another fifteen before we finally got to the counter.
Holly told the woman that we wanted our telephone turned off.
"Do you have your passport?"
Needless to say, she didn't, and neither did I. I know, you're supposed to carry it with you at all times if you're in a foreign country, but that rule goes by the wayside pretty quickly in my experience. After all, if you continually have your passport somewhere on your body -- a pocket, a pouch, a purse -- you are, conservatively, a million times more likely to lose said passport than to have a policeman or some other government agent from whatever country you happen to be in actually ask to see it. Which, for the record, I have never actually had happen, seen happen, or even heard about happening. So no, neither of us had our passports.
However, Holly did have a copy of hers, a very good copy that had actually been good enough to get us onto an airplane not once, but twice, when going between Beijing and Shanghai, and would that be good enough?
"No."
Let me emphasize that: the copy was adequate to pass through airport security -- never the most forgiving folks, even under the best of circumstances -- on two separate occasions, but was apparently insufficient for turning off a phone line that was registered in our name.
Holly held up the passport copy to the clear plastic window that, as always, separated the staff from the customers.
"It's me," she said, pointing at the picture.
"Need passport," was all the woman said, despite the fact that Holly had a perfect facsimile of her passport, despite the fact that the picture was clearly her, despite the fact that the odds of someone using a fake passport, a copy of a fake passport even, to turn off someone's telephone service -- wouldn't a pair of wire-cutters be easier? -- are about the same as the odds of getting blackjack when you hit on twenty-one. And yes, I know that's impossible. It's sort the point, really.
"So I can't turn it off?" Holly asked one more time, mostly, I think, so that she could later say she'd done all she could.
"No. Need passport."
Once again, this was a discussion we were not going to win. We'd tried to win such an argument once. It was at the airport, and had to do with the validity of an e-ticket that had been already been paid for. The airline representative said they didn't accept e-tickets, despite the fact that we had been able to buy one and we had a record of having bought it. Forty-five minutes and four counters later, we'd bought another ticket for the same flight.
We now knew better than to waste so much time.
"Okay, we'll come back tomorrow with our passport."
A few days later we left Beijing -- we never went back to the phone company.
And that, my friends, is China. Should any of this keep you from visiting China, if you are so inclined? No, of course not. Just remember to roll with the punches if you get into a situation that makes no sense, even if -- especially if -- it seems that said punches are coming from continually unexpected directions, like maybe you're fighting one of those crazy Eastern gods with six arms, which probably aren't actually Chinese but which are close enough, at least geographic terms, to do. But if you happen to run into too big of a problem, don't worry -- just look up our number in the phone book give us a call. I have no idea who will answer, if they'll speak English, or if they'll be able to help you, but the call should go through, because, as far as I know, our phone line is still connected.
The title font -- see directly above, for example -- is Elementric by Sunwalk Fontworks. I used it for two reasons: one, I like it; two, it's freely available on the Internet.
Everything else is Georgia. I used it for no particularly reason whatsoever.
Here's the long -- AKA, the legal -- version of the license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/legalcode
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
License
THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE OR COPYRIGHT LAW IS PROHIBITED.
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1. Definitions
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b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Work and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted, except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical composition or sound recording, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a moving image ("synching") will be considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License.
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f. "You" means an individual or entity exercising rights under this License who has not previously violated the terms of this License with respect to the Work, or who has received express permission from the Licensor to exercise rights under this License despite a previous violation.
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d. For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical composition:
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ii. Mechanical Rights and Statutory Royalties. Licensor reserves the exclusive right to collect, whether individually or via a music rights agency or designated agent (e.g. Harry Fox Agency), royalties for any phonorecord You create from the Work ("cover version") and distribute, subject to the compulsory license created by 17 USC Section 115 of the US Copyright Act (or the equivalent in other jurisdictions), if Your distribution of such cover version is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.
e. Webcasting Rights and Statutory Royalties. For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a sound recording, Licensor reserves the exclusive right to collect, whether individually or via a performance-rights society (e.g. SoundExchange), royalties for the public digital performance (e.g. webcast) of the Work, subject to the compulsory license created by 17 USC Section 114 of the US Copyright Act (or the equivalent in other jurisdictions), if Your public digital performance is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.
5. Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer
UNLESS OTHERWISE MUTUALLY AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING, LICENSOR OFFERS THE WORK AS-IS AND ONLY TO THE EXTENT OF ANY RIGHTS HELD IN THE LICENSED WORK BY THE LICENSOR. THE LICENSOR MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE WORK, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MARKETABILITY, MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO SUCH EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
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7. Termination
a. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically upon any breach by You of the terms of this License. Individuals or entities who have received Collective Works (as defined in Section 1 above) from You under this License, however, will not have their licenses terminated provided such individuals or entities remain in full compliance with those licenses. Sections 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 will survive any termination of this License.
b. Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted here is perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the Work). Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to release the Work under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this License), and this License will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above.
8. Miscellaneous
a. Each time You distribute or publicly digitally perform the Work (as defined in Section 1 above) or a Collective Work (as defined in Section 1 above), the Licensor offers to the recipient a license to the Work on the same terms and conditions as the license granted to You under this License.
b. If any provision of this License is invalid or unenforceable under applicable law, it shall not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of the terms of this License, and without further action by the parties to this agreement, such provision shall be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make such provision valid and enforceable.
c. No term or provision of this License shall be deemed waived and no breach consented to unless such waiver or consent shall be in writing and signed by the party to be charged with such waiver or consent.
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<span xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dc:title" rel="dc:type">Me and Chairman Mao</span> by
<a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://www.meandchairmanmao.com" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL">Jason Barbacovi</a> is licensed under a
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