The Dumb Laowai

China keeps trying to teach me something that apparently I’m just to simple to learn, or at least to accept. Actually, I’ve learned the lesson hundreds of times but, as I explained to a classmate, learning is easy, retention is the real bitch. The lesson I seem to forget daily is, quite simply put, You Will Never Get It, So Just Relax!

This usually comes into play when dealing with any authority figure and, unfortunately, there are millions of them. There are uniformed, flag-waving monitors for the bus stops and the bicycle lanes at intersections. There are block monitors for the glorious party. There are thousands of people whose job simply seems to be keeping tab on foreigners. I have to pay my 5% rental taxes at a small, neighborhood office. I must take that receipt to a district police headquarters to register my address. This registration form must be presented with my university registration form to the Public Security Bureau before they will extend my visa past 30 days. Not content to let the PSB verify my studious efforts, the university wouldn’t let me register without the residential paperwork, which I hadn’t done yet. I spent three days running in circles, screaming.

One of the problems is that with the need for so many functionaries, it seems to be almost impossible to find enough worthy individuals. A friend made me realize one of the problems they face. Due to a little ill-advised social experiment know as the Cultural Revolution from 1966-1975, almost everyone one over 40 years old missed ten years of education, practically irreparable.

One of the results is a 50 year old man who sits in a small, bare office with two desks, waiting for the occasional person to drop in and pay his rental tax. He proceeds to fill out a very simple form (rent amount, tax rates, subtotals and total), concentrating very hard and almost biting off the tip of his tongue. Five minutes later, he realizes that he made a mistake and must start anew.
Just to be sure of himself, he does all of the calculations over again rather than just copy the results from the first form. Four hours later, he calls me at home and says that he just realized he had made another mistake by writing the total on the wrong line. I was speechless when he said that would come to my house. Five minutes later he sat at my dining room table and, once again, calculated my taxes from scratch.

To some degree, the government has their hands in everything. Not trusting their employees to make decisions of any type, every last detail is set in stone. In one moment, I complained that one process or another was not very logical and that there should be some flexibility. I was soundly laughed at by people who had said the same thing a week earlier, as well as a week later. It’s a lesson that simply can’t be retained. I guess I’ll just never get it, so I’m going to relax - until the next time.

Tidbits

I was sitting at an outdoor café the other day when a group of women sat across from me with a one year old boy wearing the obligatory split pants. He contentedly nursed from a bottle while fondling his favorite parts (I never knew this behavior started that early.) I started to realize that, as he laid back on his mother’s lap and drank large amounts of liquid, his discharge equipment was pretty much pointed directly at me, from a distance of about five feet. I discovered that it is just about impossible to read a book while simultaneously keeping an eye out for incoming fire, so I switched seats.

Junior did not care for this at all, deciding that I was incredibly fascinating, although as a person or a target I’m not sure. He soon scrambled down and headed for me. The kid was covered from head to toe in large red rashes and sores as well as sporting a full bladder and he wanted to play with me! Thankfully, he was a little unsteady on his feet and bumped his head on a table. The women had him calmed down with seconds, but when he saw me making my escape he really got mad. He gave me an evil eye that seemed to promise that I hadn’t seen the last of him. I’ve made an enemy of a two foot tall, splotchy-skinned flasher.

I’m now at a different university, Beijing Foreign Studies University. Other than a couple hundred people studying Mandarin, the rest of the university is devoted to Chinese students studying foreign languages and culture. It can go too far. The campus is divided by a busy street, avoided by using a pedestrian tunnel. Last week in the tunnel I decided that should China ever declare war on France, I would back China all the way. Not that I needed yet another reason, but convincing Chinese students that mime performances are a good idea is nothing short of cultural terrorism. At least mimes everywhere else have a pretty good idea of how much they are reviled. I don’t think this guy has any clue how close he comes to being pummeled on a daily basis.

For those interested in pictures, this blog is also available at myspace.com/dumblaowai  The Chinese government doesn't seem to care what I do there, but working with this site is sometimes almost impossible.  

Don’t get me wrong; Shanghai was very pleasant. The air quality alone made the trip worthwhile. I imagine the sea breeze removes most of the smog. It’s just that it seemed to me to be the most un-Chinese city I’ve visited. Except for the baozi (dumplings), which were far superior to any I’ve eaten, my food intake was almost entirely European. The only other attempt at local fare was the hotel’s breakfast buffet, which made prison and army food suddenly appealing.

The ninety degree, humid weather didn’t help my appetite any, but I felt even more reluctant than normal to eat from street vendors. The street outside my hotel is well known for its seafood, but even the normal restaurant would advertise their offerings by displaying them in small, Styrofoam boxes set in the street, at ground level. Western junk food was everywhere. Even the old section of town, with dozens of beautiful old buildings, offered MacDonald’s, KFC, Dairy Queen, Haagen Daaz, Pizza Hut, etc.

I walked for miles trying to find an appealing Chinese restaurant that wouldn’t cost me a fortune. Since the city is laid out less like Beijing and more like Atlanta (where no street is straight for very long), I was soon hopelessly lost as well as frustrated and hot. On the verge of giving up, I spotted a bar and headed for it. I should have known that my evening would not be that easily salvaged. I got in the elevator and hit the button for the 7th floor, The Red House. It turned out to be a restaurant which shared the name of the bar and had apparently closed, judging from the lack of even employees. I went up to the next floor, also supposedly The Red House, and found myself wandering around business offices and suddenly in a kitchen. I headed downstairs to regroup.

It wasn’t until my second tour of the kitchen that I was informed that the bar was upstairs on the 9th floor. I somewhat peevishly inquired as to how the hell I was supposed to manage that, seeing as the elevator indicated there were only 8 floors. Apparently this is a fairly common observation, since all he did was chuckle. I started glancing around, sure that I could find a butcher knife or something equally useful in demonstrating my lack of humor, when he informed me that the “other” elevator goes up to the 9th floor. What school of thought could possibly have made the architect think that it was a good idea to have one elevator which goes to 8 and one to 9? It all made sense a few moments later, when I found that the establishment was French.

So it was that I spent the latter half of the evening eating a couple of overpriced houers d’oeuvres that the French have the nerve to call an entrée, drinking feloniously priced Belgian ale and listening to a French jazz group. A few ales helped me to regain my composure, assisted by some calvados, a French apple brandy that I’d always been curious about. I took it off my list of things to do before I die and put it on my list of things I wish I had never done. At least I got a buzz to compensate for the foul, turpentine aftertaste.

The jazz was more soothing than Chinese opera, although the French do it somewhat different than the rest of the world. Actually, I think may be the actual definition of French. Hearing a fast paced song sung in Chinese with a French accent was just the topper for a bizarre evening.

No matter what I tried to do, I spent the next few days resorting to foreign restaurants and bars, including a couple of German beer halls and an English pub. I decided that it was time to go back to China. I considered Huangzhou, considered the most beautiful place in China, but was informed that most of China has the same idea this time of year. I bought a ticket for Qingdao instead.

Before I even made it to my hotel in Qingdao we passed several large tents and signs for German beer. People were arriving in droves and I could hear what sounded like dueling concerts. The cab driver told me that I had arrived just in time for the International Beer Festival. The clouds parted, rays of sunlight fell upon the spectacle and I could hear the heavenly hallelujahs. I had been blessed. I would spend my days seeing the town and my nights at the festival. I was just smart enough to realize that if I spent my days at the festival, the nights would be an automatic write-off.

The next day I headed for the beach in the old part of town and immediately fell, once again, into a trap I thought I had learned to avoid: following a tout. He fooled me by having a complete little display of stand-up signs, a rack of brochures and a few souveneir items for sale. I asked about the boat tour around the bay and agreed to buy a ticket, assuming he would have them under the counter. He immediately turned and walked away, encouraging me to follow. Aawww crap!

We walked at an Olympic speed-walking pace for about a quarter mile before arriving at the official ticket booth, where I thought my troubles were over. Money taken and ticket given, he again takes off, leading me on another quarter mile hike where I’m ushered into a bus sitting on the side of the road. Apparently the boat and its nurturing bus have no set schedule. We sat for almost thirty minutes until enough idiots had purchased tickets to fill the bus, which then drove us two miles away and dropped us at a decrepit old dock.

Any picture taken of the boat after departure would have shown what looked like a Bombay train car. People were sitting, standing and hanging on the rails. There may have even been a few on top. Although it was interesting to see the navy conducting helicopter landing drills on a ship less than a half mile from the beach, we pretty much just crossed the bay, returned and got down to the real purpose of the enterprise: taking us captive and depriving us of as much money as possible.

Although I had planned to have a nice quiet lunch, I now found myself being driven ten miles across town and being herded into what I was told was a “museum.” I immediately recognized the scam and decided to stay outside and have a cigarette while watching a sailing event. The tour guide would have none of this though, letting me know that I could smoke inside as she pushed me along through the door to a very large tourist trap. The tour company gets a kickback based on bodies delivered and money spent and she wasn’t about to let me cost her money. Thankfully it was only a fifteen minute stop and we were once again on the road, this time back past our starting point and up the hill to a park at the top, where we were treated to another favorite scam.

At the entrance to the park, we were told that it would be another 20 kuai admission, but that if we did not want to see it, we could sit in the parking lot for 45 minutes and wait for the group to return. Faced with a slow, steamy death, we all paid up. From there we headed back to the beach. As we approached our spot, I grabbed my bag and stood, watching as it disappeared behind us, for we were headed to a tea shop a mile down the beach. This called for some serious ass-kicking. My 45 minute boat ride had turned into a two and a half hour kidnapping.

The bus driver actually saved me from what I had hoped would be a violent encounter. As soon as I told him that I would walk back to the beach from there, he just shook his head and told me to remain seated, winking as he said it. We had gotten to talking at the park about his son in America and he had shown me a few sights the others didn’t know about, so I decided to trust him for a moment. The second everyone else was on the bus, he pulled away and drove me back up the beach, parking when we arrived. I profusely thanked him and as I headed for the bar, I noticed him walk away as well. For all I know, the rest of the group got left at the tea shop to find their own way back. I almost hoped so. I smiled when I pictured forty irate tourists tarring and feathering the operator.

After a few warm-up beers with lunch, I decided to head back to my strange hotel room and rest up for the evening’s serious consumption. I had been given what may be the world’s only loft-style hotel room. Downstairs contained a small bed and a couch, but my king-sized bed and the glass-walled bathroom were upstairs. It almost felt like a small apartment.

The festival was great. Other than two Chinese beers and Budweiser, all of the pavilions were dedicated to one or another German beer. Food booths were abundant, cheap and offered a wide variety of delicious items. There were acrobats, flame swallowers and traditional Chinese musicians on the various stages. The biggest draws however, were several well-known pop stars. This was very entertaining and, for me, educational.

The next time some twenty year old millionaire twit demands green M&Ms, Cristal and cherry flavored condoms in his dressing room, he should be forced to perform in China for a month. Those acts worked hard and were treated to up closed and personal contact with their drunken fans that they handled with incredible grace. They would perform for 45 minutes, get a 30 minute break and return to the stage at a different pavilion, doing this all night.

I lost track of how many new friends I made the nights I was there. People were practically standing in line to drink with the foreign guy. I never saw another westerner to take some of the heat off me. I was surrounded with choruses of Gan Bei (roughly Bottoms Up!) Everywere I looked middle-aged, shirtless, beer-bellied guys were dancing on the tables, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Toward the end of each act, the performers would make their way into the crowd, walking across the tables and being offered dozens of beers in between and sometimes during songs.

One performer was fairly large and a bit of a partier himself, reminding me a little of John Belushi. He handled himself just fine, but even the trio of girls dressed in matching sequined halters and mini-shorts got into the act. It was interesting to see that much interaction, but the evening was still young. By about nine o’clock or so, fans were freely jumping up on stage and dancing along, sometimes grabbing the mike and belting out a verse. At one point, Belushi was swallowed by his fans and couldn’t be seen. Seeing one small ugly guy doing his dance routine in front of the girl act was almost mind-blowing.

At the point when my motor functions were showing marked deterioration, a new act appeared. I can’t stand the little, sugar-coated dweeb, but my legs decided that we should stick around for a while. I would just have to suffer through listening to the Chinese Clay Atkins. It took about two minutes before his fans were up there with him, handing him beers. I don’t know if its due to him being so young, such a priss or both, but he would not drink the beers, setting them on a table in front of the stage. I think the guys started to take offense at this, because at the next break, they handed him a pitcher of beer, about one third full, and just stood there telling him to drink.

To his credit, he finished it. I still think he was just afraid of being beaten up, something I’m sure happened to him on a regular basis for many years. Within minutes I found myself cheering as loudly as anyone there, although for a slightly different reason. From a distance, I had seen him do the next song the previous evening. For the entire four minutes, he would stick his arms straight out to the side and spin like a figure skater. I’m not sure of the artistic value, but having just seen this little twirp chug a large amount of beer and now begin what I knew would be four minutes of spinning, I clicked on the video camera and started rooting for him to do his imitation of a water fountain and start projectile vomiting.

Apparently no one else thought of this as a possibility, much less a desired outcome, since they continued to press in closer and closer. I would have bet good money the little pansy couldn’t finish without at least a small spew. I over-ruled my inebriated legs and left disappointed. I had to get some sleep. I was returning to Beijing in the morning to do battle with the bureaucracy, I mean register for school.

This blog is now also being posted at myspace.com/dumblaowai for your convenience and mine, complete with pictures, something not always easily done here.

I happily returned to Beijing, not minding one minute of twenty hour trip. Sure, there were a few inconveniences and irritations: a screaming baby, the drink cart running out of practically everything by the time it got to me, someone whose digestive system could not resist the slight change in cabin pressure and added a certain something to the already funky ambience. But I didn’t mind; I was going home.

Unfortunately, home wasn’t all that interesting. After some noodles and a beer I pretty much just slept for two days, occasionally waking for a little while just to confirm that my system was still screwed up. The third day saw me up with the sun, a cup of coffee in hand and marveling at the Beijing smogscape.

“Well shit! Now what?” I asked myself aloud. I had no classes and the idea of poring over my Mandarin textbooks held little appeal. LD was busy with the new business I had helped her fund. I had already seen most of the highlights in town and the ones I hadn’t would have to wait. I wasn’t about to deal with massive numbers of tour groups, which all seem to posses the same sense of timing. No matter where I want to go or what I want to see, fifty people will inevitably materialize in front of me, all wearing the same goofy red or yellow hats, listening to a tour guide screeching through a loudspeaker and taking pictures of each other. I swear that Scottie beams them down wherever I am.

I finished my coffee and immediately headed for the closest travel agent, discovering on arrival that they don’t really consider 6:30am to be within normal business hours. I guess I had gotten a little carried away. Even Starbucks doesn’t open until 8:00. I returned home and had another cup of coffee while washing the clothes from my suitcase and filling a backpack as fast as I could. Little did I realize that I wouldn’t be able to get a flight to Shanghai until the next week. The rest of my summer would follow a similar pattern. If you’re going to wing it, don’t expect things to go too smoothly.

Case in point: I get to Shanghai, collect my luggage and grab a cab, telling him to drop me off downtown. He looked at me like I was even more crazy than the average laowai. Apparently people usually give him directions that are a little more specific. Contributing to his confusion was that Shanghai doesn’t really have a downtown, something I wasn’t aware of. He didn’t hesitate to get on the road though, not giving me time to realize another of my errors.

I couldn’t figure out why a large airport like Shanghai would only have four cabs in line and no passengers looking for them. Five minutes later, as we cruised down the freeway, I was enlightened. My 170 kuai taxi, five minutes into a forty minute trip was passed my the MagLev train cruising at 270mph, completing the trip in eight minutes at a cost of 40 kuai. If that’s not head-bangingly irritating enough, riding the MagLev was on my list of things to do, necessitating a later trip to the airport and back.

My driver decided that the best place to drop me was at a the entrance to a long, vehicle-free street of stores and restaurants. I wasn’t about to argue. I was starving. I walked along until I saw a restaurant ad that looked promising. I walked into the building and found myself in the middle of a hyperactive luxury food market. It took a bit of exploration to locate the desired restaurant of the third floor, something I would have avoided had I known what awaited me. Lunch was strictly a buffet affair.

More and more, when you mention a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. people almost assume that you mean a buffet, so prevalent they have become. I’m glad; I love them. A wide variety of good food at a great price is hard to beat. Realistically it’s as Chinese as fortune cookies, which were invented in San Fransisco and are nowhere to be found in China. Buffets in China are only put out by western hotel chains, although western restaurants such as Pizza Hut offer salad bars. Even then, extraordinary lengths are taken by both management and consumer.

Due to a diet heavy on vegetables, many people would happily make a feast of the salad bar. Pizza Hut, in an ill-fated attempt to control costs, limits its customers to one plate and one trip to the bar. This immediately prompted most of its diners to enroll in structural engineering courses. With the effective use of baby carrots as load-bearing members and stabilizers, a salad plate stacked to a height of 8-10 inches is only considered an average attempt, not worthy of comment or notice. This has also had the unexpected result of reducing table turnover, as the average engineer can spend 10-15 minutes constructing his/her masterpiece and another 5-10 minutes slowly carrying it across the room to the table.

My lunch experience was the sum total effect of several Chinese traits: indifferent service, abhorrence of standing in line and minimum use of space. There were two parallel rows of tables covered in chafing dishes, roughly four feet apart, making things a tight squeeze to begin with. At one end of one of these was a station where sausage dishes were cooked to order, the only place where a line was adhered to. It’s just that this line extended past the end of the other dishes, causing several rugby scrimmages when a fresh dish was brought out.

The kitchen seemed to bring out a new dish every five minutes or so, even though everything had already been eaten. The result was that there were forty people milling around, jostling each other and holding plates with one or two small scoops of food on them. Whenever a new dish would arrive, there was a mad scramble for it, knocking over hapless individuals in line for sausage. Perhaps a dozen people would get a serving from this latest arrival and we would all go back to waiting for the next arrival.

I eventually saw a small station offering sushi rolls and managed to be first there; in my mind, first in line. As the chef finished cutting the roll, six people stuck out their plates from behind me. I looked like one of the Indian goddesses with 14 arms. I got the last piece, an end piece from which half of the contents had already fallen. I promptly gave up on the concept and returned to my table with a half-empty piece of sushi roll, some eggplant (I think) and some cold noodles. It set the stage for my entire stay in Shanghai. A foiled attempt to secure good food forcing me to take solace in a few extra beers.

Next time - What Not To Do in Shanghai and The Qingdao (Tsing Tao) International Beer Festival

I never realized that getting rid of a counterfeit operating system would cause me so much trouble. Sorry for the absense, but we're back up and running, although well behind on the posts. I'll try to catch up a little in the next month.

Arriving in Atlanta, sans luggage, the first thing I discover is that my home, The Pool Room, had been sold and most of the employees I knew were gone. It may sound strange for me to call a pool hall home, but this isn’t just any old dingy place. Decorated in light oak, offering two full bars as well as a good kitchen and featuring almost fifty, full-size tables, it was heaven. Between my running tournaments and leagues six days a week, playing pool and training for my dream career as a professional drinker, I actually spent more time there than in the place where I usually slept.

I had almost missed my connecting flight in San Fransisco, so without any real down time, I had made a twelve hour change in time zones in about eighteen hours, resulting in just about the maximum jet lag possible. As soon as I walked in the door Josh (one of the most congenial and unflappable bar managers I’ve ever seen) immediately poured me a healthy (I consider it the tonic of life after all) glass of Makers Mark, the only true bourbon. I quickly realized just how low my training standards had dropped. I got a full body buzz just from the smell. The first sip just about knocked me off my chair. I feel bad for all of the people who rushed to buy Makers Mark stock when they heard that I was back. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't affect their quarterly sales.

Lack of sleep, jet lag, alcohol and bombshell news all combined to make me feel as if I was in a bad dream. I was ready to hop on the first plane back to China. I could be back before my body became adjusted to Bizarro World.

I spent the first week back running around trying take care of all of the things I hadn’t been able to do in Beijing: renew my visa, make some changes to my banking arrangements, get my taxes finalized, buy medical supplies I had sorely missed, etc. I also spent a great deal of time and effort to make sure that I ate all of the foods on my most missed list: good pizza, chili, barbeque, sushi, steak, sausage and egg biscuits and a host of other unhealthy items.

The rest of my time was spent learning about a year’s worth of  normal, daily occurrences such as marriages, divorces, deaths, fights, hirings, firings, breakups and hookups. Along with the jet lag, which I don’t think I ever truly overcame, it combined to make my head spin almost the entire time I was there. After about a week, I finally started to settle in and process all of the changes. I was home again.

The only problem was that as soon as I had started to feel at home again, I couldn’t wait to leave. I no sooner became accustomed to all of the changes than I began to feel that nothing had really changed at all. I came to realize that the old saying was wrong. You can go home again, but only for a little while.

Tidbits

China Air has gone a little new age. For a few hours I listened to their light jazz program. After every few songs, a soft, sexy, female voice would encourage you to use her imagery to help you relax. It actually worked until she said something to throw me off. “Imagine a warm energy flowing through your feet, your legs, your buttocks…” I found that funny and disturbing. The thought of anything flowing through my buttocks is not the least bit relaxing though.

Good service can be really irritating. I’m now used to looking around for a waitress, or just yelling for one if I’m feeling lazy. Having a waiter bring me three refills of my Coca-Cola, always when my mouth was full , was over the line. I never got the chance to say that I would have preferred a beer.

I am now the not-so-proud owner of the world’s worst drivers license picture. I had misplaced mine in China, using my fool-proof method, guaranteed to lose anything at all: “This looks like a good, out of the way place; I can’t possibly forget this.” Needing a rental car to run my many errands, I had to get a new license, even though I was jet lagged and had been wearing the same grungy clothes for two days. The result looks a little bit too much like Nick Nolte’s mugshot for comfort.