Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Garbage Dump

For eight whole months, I scanned the airwaves, scoured the record store shelves, tore the Nanchong bar district asunder - and for my efforts, I found naught but Chinese bubblegum pop. But I refused to believe that China's 1.3 billion inhabitants had never once spawned a decent punk scene. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I didn't try the internet in the first place - but I suppose I had my reasons, and we won't go into those here. Anyhow, a couple months ago, I finally set out on my first Chinese punk rock internet excavation, hoping to find the merest scrap of evidence, the scantiest lo-fi sound bite to confirm my suspicion that the fu-man-mohawk had once flourished in the streets of Beijing, or what is more probable, Shanghai.

It didn't take long. I found what I was looking for in .68 seconds flat. Such is the beauty of the internet, such is why it is so addictive and obnoxious and enlightening: you can Google the Holy Grail, El Dorado, Atlantis, and at the end of an instant, they are yours. In exactly .68 seconds, I had cut through the vast garbage dump of Chinese pop and found two albums that gave me hope, or at least, the hope that there remains some hope to be hoped for.

The first, and the more readily accessible of the two, was Carsick Cars by none other than Carsick Cars. Let's give it a listen. You bust out your Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook and don your Koss brand stoner headphones. You notice lots of feedback, straight on-the-beat guitars, amelodic melodies - it takes you back to the mid-90's, back to when MTV played music videos. It all sounds very familiar, and you don't have to be an intern at Pitchfork to draw the parallel: Carsick Cars are the Sonic Youth of China. And you're probably right. But unlike China's faux-Beyonces and pseudo-Timberlakes, Carsick Cars ain't just plagiarizin'. In fact, Sonic Youth themselves are admirers. A couple years ago, Carsick Cars were invited to open for Sonic Youth in Beijing, but unspecified complications got in the way.

I listened to the album for a week straight and still couldn't make out a word of it, which was reassuring to me. Elementary though my Chinese is, I can understand enough of most Chinese pop songs to know that I wouldn't want to listen to them anyway. But here were sixty minutes of relentless feedback and off-key vocals that made no mention of love, no mention of hearts or feelings or cultural harmony or national pride - which led me to suspect that the lyrics dealt with ... something else. And then one evening I returned home from my Mandarin class to find that I could suddenly understand an entire chorus: zhe shi yi ge meiyou xiwang de guang chang - this is a hopeless square. I listened again and again in disbelief. This is a hopeless square, this is a hopeless square. Something lurked there in those words, though I am not at liberty to say exactly what.

I chased the Carsick thread back to the godfather of Chinese punk, He Yong, who made a name for himself in the 1980's, then attained Chinese Bowie status with the release of Garbage Dump in 1994, only to vanish from the scene completely, resurfacing once or twice a decade to play a lackluster reunion show, or to set himself on fire.

If Garbage Dump isn't schizophrenic, it is at least bipolar. He Yong is Iggy Pop one track and Ziggy Marley the next. Much of the album is too synthetically Latin for my liking, too chintzy, too cheeky. But if you must listen to one Chinese rock song before you die, or any Chinese song period - it is the opening track, "Garbage Dump." Garbage Dump is a jarring experience whether you can understand the words or not. At first, of course, I could not - but the more I listened, the more I understood, and the more the track floored me. Remarkably, it was recorded in the People's Republic of China, in the Year of Our Lord 1994.

The opening line goes something like this: the world we live in is a garbage dump/the people are insects. If you have lived in China longer than two months, Garbage Dump, one minute in, is already Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall, Hendrix at Woodstock, Nirvana unplugged. In a word, Garbage Dump is unimaginably ballsy. Dylan rebelled against the folk scene, Hendrix against the war in Vietnam, Nirvana against existence - but He Yong takes on something far more frightening, far more real and pressing than all those things combined. And perhaps by now, dear reader, having faithfully downloaded Garbage Dump from some shady Russian file sharing website, having donned your Koss brand stoner headphones, having navigated several key changes and countless shifts in tempo and genre, perhaps by now you have arrived at the end of the song, and are wondering what this man, this He Yong, is screaming so maniacally into the microphone.

"You meiyou xiwang? You meiyou xiwang?" he screams. "Is there hope? Is there hope?"

An eerie enough question in English, but even eerier in Chinese.

You meiyou xiwang? Have/not have hope?

This is the same question you might ask a shopkeeper when inquiring about toilet paper, or Marlboros. You meiyou toilet paper? Have/not have Marlboros?

Is there toilet paper? Are there Marlboros? Is there hope? Wonderfully, He Yong leaves the question hanging. Four times he asks: is there hope? You meiyou xiwang? Then he drags it out, slurs it like Jim Morrison singing from his deathbed toilet seat: you meiyou xiwaaaaang? The answer is there in the question. It is a challenge, a call to arms. It's up to you, he says.

Is there hope? It is a question that haunts me yet. I want to ask every shopkeeper I meet: is there toilet paper? is there hope? are there Marlboros? I want to ask my friends back home: you meiyou xiwang? But I don't suppose there is an easy answer to that question - just the hope that there remains some hope to be hoped for.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Listless Hello

Bob Marley Night at the Jack Bar. Around 10:30, the cowboys saw me come swaggering in through the saloon doors. One of them set out my two bottles of Bud Ice while the other plugged in my guitar. I sat down and donned a plastic cowboy hat, murmured a listless hello into the microphone. I spread my notebook open on the music stand and flipped past all the songs I love, to the Bob Marley jams that I could only hope my audience might perhaps enjoy.

Over the course of two months, I have watched my lofty musical ambitions crumble to the sea. The first week, I played Beck's Mutations front-to-back. The week after that, I played Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in its entirety. But now I dredge up all the happy-go-lucky pop songs I can find, anything that will keep me on stage longer than ten minutes. I no longer perform in the hope of inspiring my audience, or even in the hope of entertaining them. These days, I play for purely selfish reasons: because I enjoy playing, because I love the cool, clean, crisp taste of Bud Ice, and because - well, when else am I going to get a chance to tool around with a thousand-dollar Epiphone acoustic?

I tossed off a couple Marley songs, the ones with "love" in the title. No applause, but already the drunks were yelling at me to come drink with them. As usual, I said thank you, thank you, you're too much, just a moment and I'll be right with you. Then, midway through my cringeworthy rendition of Jammin', a pudgy fortysomething salaryman stumbled up on stage, grabbed my guitar by the neck and shouted in my ear.

"What?"
"Yesdayoncemo!"
" – what?"
"Yesdayoncemo!"
Ah, yes. "Yesterday Once More." A request. Nay, a demand.
"I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't know The Carpenters."
"Takemehome Cuntroad!"
"What?"
"Takemehome Cuntroad!"
Oh. "Take Me Home Country Road."
"I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't know John Denver."

I took Jammin' again from the top. A shudder passed through my soul.

Ooh, yeah. We're jammi -

Then the man thrust a cigarette in my face. I recoiled, so he forcibly stuffed it in my mouth and lit it. He laughed. The audience laughed. Then he stumbled back offstage to harass me from a distance.

My fourth song – "Stir It Up" – would prove to be my last. I strummed a chord.

Stiiiiiiiir it u –

Another dude had pounced up on stage. He shouted something in my ear, then he pushed a beer in my face, pried my mouth open and dumped it down my gullet. Laughter, applause. I stopped playing and stared at the man. Then I cleared my throat and strummed a chord.

Stiii –

"Hey! My Heart Will Go On!"
I ignored him, so he grabbed the neck of my guitar and squeezed.
"Hey! My Heart Will Go On!"
"Hey. I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't know Celine Dion."

Ahem. Stiii -

"Play a Chinese song!"
"I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't know any Chinese songs."
"Do you know Mo Li Hua?"
"No."
"Do you know Kang Ding Qing Ge?"
"No."
"Play a Chinese song!"
I stood up and offered him my guitar.
"Okay, how about you play one?"
Then the cowboys unplugged me.
"Pan Da, no more songs!"

One of the cowboys took my guitar away, put it back in its case, and stashed the case under the bar. The lights came up and I stood there bewildered. The peanut gallery came running up on stage to claim me.

"Do you know any Chinese songs?"
"You should play Chinese songs!"
"You need to learn Chinese songs!"
"Well," I said, "I was hoping I could introduce you to some good Western music. That's why I'm here."
"Oh, Western music," a girl nodded. "Yesterday Once More!"
"Take Me Home Country Road!"
"Hotel California!"
"Tears in Heaven!"
"You Are Not Alone!"
"My Heart Will Go On!"
"I mean," I said, "I was hoping I could introduce you to some new Western music. Songs you haven't heard before. Something new."
"Oh, new Western music," a girl nodded. "Black Eyed Peas!"
"Lady Gaga!"
"Beyonce!"
"Backstreet Boys!"

I was speechless at that point. I had been summoned down to the Jack Bar on a Saturday night to perform seven minutes and thirty seconds of music. It was clear to me then: these people didn't want to be exposed to new music, nor did my own musical taste figure anywhere into the equation. They wanted what they wanted, and they wanted Chinese songs they knew by heart, or the five Western pop songs they knew by name.

A girl tugged at my arm hair.
"You Westerners are so hairy!"
A wave of laughter swept through the crowd.
"Yes," I said, "we foreign devils are so hairy."

Usually, the pejorative "foreign devil" makes people uncomfortable, but not so with this crowd. They seemed proud of me for knowing my place.

"Foreign devil!" said the girl admiringly. "You are so open-minded!"
"Yes," I said, "I am so open-minded."

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

My Life Among The Oldsters

I once attempted to describe the American hipster to my students, which proved to be no small feat. The up-and-coming Chinese youth are about as anti-retro as you can get. Anything that predates Lady Gaga is unhip. Cellphones that do not come equipped with an MP3 player and a 26-watt tazer are obsolete. So when I explained to them that the cool kids in America listen to old music on something called a "record player," that they wear old pants, old suitcoats, and old man hats, the response was unanimous:

"American hipsters are Chinese old people!"

Not quite. But I am inclined to say that old Chinese folk are indeed hipsters.

As wary as I am of Chinese younguns, as put off as I am by the hard-drinking fortysomething nouveau riche, I am completely smitten by the elderly Chinese. But at the moment, I am only a distant admirer. I have yet to break into the oldster scene. They have better things to do than hang out with me. They congregate in the park downtown, in tea houses, or around little streetside poker tables. Legally or otherwise, they gamble - mahjongg, dice games, card games, you name it. They enjoy a violent brand of checkers that involves enormous red and black discs, and when the players make their moves, they slam the discs onto the table - whap! - to the approval or outrage of the throng of oldsters that surrounds them.

The men smoke tobacco from long, metal pipes that resemble Irish tin whistles. The women are stooped from decades of sweeping. Together they walk along the river with their hands folded behind their backs. The elderly will say nothing when they first see you, nothing as you pass them, and nothing when you're fifteen feet away from them. Perhaps some distance later, the old woman will say to the old man, "That was a laowai back there, wasn't it?" to which he'll respond with a soft, rising "O".

This is one of the more puzzling aspects of Chinese society. The younguns, who grew up on Hollywood and KFC, who can sing The Fame Monster front-to-back from memory, are the ones who heckle and fetishize foreigners. Meanwhile, the oldsters, who grew up fearing Westerners, who in seventy years have probably never seen an American live and in the flesh, treat us no differently from anyone else. I write more about hecklers than about oldsters because hecklers are an inescapable part of my day-to-day existence. And because it would be cheesy for me to write something like, "My soul takes flight every time I pass the chainsmoking geriatric shopkeeper on the way to work, because he waves at me and smiles and then pedals off on his bicycle without a word," even though something like that sentiment is pretty close to the truth. I adore the Chinese elderly and I want, someday, to become one of them.

When I first arrived in China, I lived with a host family, and my host parents were hip to the Chengdu oldster scene. My host dad looked like a Chinese Harrison Ford, while my mom bore a slight resemblance to Angelica Huston. Their 27-year-old son, my host brother, could've passed for an alien. The day I moved in, when I asked my host dad what kind of work he did, he said, "I'm retired!" and looked at me funny. When I asked my host mom what she did for a living, she said, "I'm retired, too!" and looked at me even funnier. My host brother, meanwhile, insisted that he was a "worker," though in the two months that I lived there, he left the apartment exactly twice.


Fig 32.7: Pan Da with Host Family


My host parents were up every morning at dawn. Mama would cook breakfast while baba pruned the hedges. Then mama would hustle me off to language class. When I came back home for my Chinese siesta, baba would be cooking lunch. After we'd eaten, mama would scold me to tie my shoes, then she'd hand me an umbrella and boot me out the door again. When I returned in the evening, a six-course meal would already be spread out on the table, and baba would go pound on my host brother's door to wake him up.

More often than not, host dad would break out the baijiu, or some plum wine that he'd made himself. We'd sit at the dining room table for hours, discussing politics in very general terms - Ao-ba-ma is the zongtong of America - and I would nod, scribbling the word down in my notebook. Zongtong, zongtong, zongtong. Host brother never talked to me directly, but he would sometimes linger jealously at the table while host dad and I shot the bull, whining and dining while his father wined and dined me. Host dad would grab a bottle of beer and pour its contents into host brother's rice bowl, which never failed to send the manchild into a tizzy. Baba, bu yao, bu yaoooo!

I'd often find host mom playing mahjongg with the Chengdu Red Hat Society, in a garage across from the apartment. I'd wave and say mama, ni hao! and the old ladies would giggle. I'd ask if she was winning and she'd shake her head and say, "I'm no good at this game!" - though there was a sizable heap of RMB on her end of the table. Then, when she got home, we would go for a walk together along the lake - without host brother, of course. Host dad walked slowly with his hands folded behind his back, and would every so often reach up to pluck a leaf from a low-hanging tree limb. Host mom twirled her umbrella and sang to herself. We didn't talk much in those early days because I was unable to, but we had a pleasant rapport that consisted entirely of lazy sighs and exhausted grunts.

After a couple weeks, I realized that I didn't even know my host parents' names. The words baba and mama were becoming a bit too precious to use in public, so one night, after one too many rounds of rice wine roulette, I asked them.

"Yi Yin Yue," said host mom.
I did my best to repeat her name, but what came out of my mouth, in Chinese, meant Yi Yin Fish.

Host mom covered her mouth and laughed.
"Yi Yin Fish! Pan Daaaaa!" she giggled. "Oh, Pan Daaaaa!"

Red-faced, I turned to host dad.
"My name is Liu Lou," he said in his Sichuanese drawl.
"Niu Rou," I said - the Chinese word for beef. Host mom fell off the couch.

"Yes, my name is 'beef,'" said host dad, grinning.
"Pan Daaaaa! Oh, Pan Daaaaa!"

Mr. Beef hoisted his glass.
"He jiu!" he said. "Drink!"


The Corps kept me busy in those days - language lessons, safety seminars, Friday night bull sessions that carried over into Saturday. On the weekend, I wanted nothing more than to sleep, so sleep I did. One Sunday morning, around eleven, there came an unusually insistent knocking at my bedroom door. It was host mom.

"Pan Da!" she shouted. "Pan Daaaaa!"

I slogged out to the dining room and there was host dad sitting at the dinner table with two glasses of rice wine set out in front of him.

"Pan Da," he said. "It's time to eat. It's time to drink."
"Thanks," I said, "but it isn't noon yet and I don't like to - "
"Eat! Drink!"

So we ate, and we drank - far more on both counts than is recommended by Surgeon General Tso. By noon, a high-pitched frequency was buzzing through my brain, and I was only slightly better off than host dad, who kept dropping chicken feet on the floor. After a while, we both began to drift off to sleep.

"Song Min-Tao!" host dad shouted all of a sudden.
"Song Min-Tao?"
"Yes, your friend Song Min-Tao. What is he doing right now?"
"Um, he's probably asleep," I fibbed, "or studying."
"Call him up!" ordered host dad. "Bring him over. Together we will eat - and drink!"

Through one of those fortuitous coincidences that have lately befallen me in spades - like being christened Pan Da - my good friend Vijay (Song Min-Tao) happened to live right next door. His host family and mine were old friends, or old nemeses - it was hard to tell which - so we often went out for hot pot together, though Vijay's host brother - like my own - seldom joined us, for fear of the sun.

"Call him up!"
"I really think he might be studying," I said.
"That's okay," said host dad. "We'll study Mandarin - together."

The official language of the Liu household was Sichuanese, so I knew a Mandarin study session was unlikely. But host dad insisted, so I sent Vijay a short and diffident text message and, at host dad's behest, downed another shot of baijiu.

A couple minutes later, host dad belched and checked his watch.

"Ai-ya, where is Song Min-Tao? What's keeping him?"
"I bet he's studying. He studies very hard on the weekends and - "
"Give me the phone. Let me talk to him."
"I - well, see - the thing is - he's very busy these days and - "
Host dad snatched the phone from my hand and within seconds, he had our neighbors on the line.

"Yes. Hao, hao. Let me speak to Mr. Song," he said. "It's important."

I began to laugh uncontrollably: Mr. Song! This was happening. It was inevitable. And I could in no way be held to account. It was all host dad at this point.

"Mr. Song? Song Min-Tao? Yes, hello. It's me, Mr. Beef, Pan Da's baba." Host dad turned and shot me the slightest grin. "Have you eaten? Yes? No matter. I would like to invite you over for lunch. Your friend Pan Da and I are studying Mandarin and drinking - green tea."

I clapped my hands together and collapsed on the table laughing.

"Yes, it's very important that you come. We have already cooked a little something for you," he said. "Yes, yes. That's right. We're just over here studying Mandarin and drinking - green tea."

He handed the phone back to me. I wanted to high-five the man, but though he was grinning ever so slightly, he didn't seem to find the situation as funny as I did. He sat back down across from me and we silently awaited the arrival of Mr. Song.

A knock at the door. Host mom got up to open it. In came Vijay, half-asleep in sandals and jogging shorts, a wrinkly gray t-shirt. In a glance, he took in the scene - the chicken feet on the floor, the empty bottles, red-faced host dad, a greasy-haired and grinning Pan Da. He smirked.

"Sup, y'all?" he said. "What's going on?"
I giggled. "Nooooothin'."

We exchanged a fist pound.

"Please sit," said host dad, and Vijay sat. Host dad started pouring him a shot.
"Oh, actually, I don't - "

Too late. I gave Vijay the international "take one for the team" look and he nodded. Host dad hoisted his glass. He jiu!


Little by little, my Sichuanese improved and so did our dinner table talks. I asked host dad where he'd traveled in China and he said, let me show you. He fetched a photo album from behind a case of beer and spread it out on the dining room table.

And there they were, mama and baba at the Great Wall. I laughed. Host dad was a hipster! He looked pretty damn cool back in the 70's, with a swoop of hair scooped across his forehead and the slightest hint of a goatee. And host mom was gorgeous - and still was, I was careful to add, which set mama a-gigglin'.

"Beijing," said host dad, and turned the page.

Baba with his hipster bros in the Forbidden City. It looked like an album cover - goatees, kitschy suitcoats, the smirking visage of Chairman Mao in the background.

Baba turned the page. Host brother was born. As a kid, he didn't look nearly so bratty or so alienlike. He even had complexion back then. But I noted that his outfit hadn't changed in twenty years: a green and white striped polo tucked into drawstring shorts, sandals with socks.

We sat reminiscing for a while. Then host mom went to bed and so did host brother - separately, I assume - and we, the menfolk, stayed up to burn the midnight oil together. I had just become acquainted with the Mandarin past tense, and I was eager to put it to use.

"So, what kind of work did you do before?" I asked host dad. He hoisted his glass. We drank. Host dad filled our glasses again, then sat quietly for a moment.
"I worked," he said, "in a factory."
"What kind of factory?"
"Just a factory," he said. "We made things."

I could see him teetering on the edge of going further, then he sat back in his chair and fell silent.
"Very xinku," he said finally, "Very bitter work."

Was he sweating or crying? I could see that this was a dangerous discovery, this past tense of mine. I changed the subject and talked instead about the future.

"So, what's for lunch tomorrow?"


By the end of the two months, all the volunteers were itching to leave Chengdu, to move on to our own apartments and our own separate lives. We had been adopted, and in a real sense, our host families were like family to us. But in some ways, the experience was a bizarre regression to childhood and - watching my host brother as he pouted and slurped grape juice from his sippy cup - it was a regression I was more than ready to move on from.

But like most long-awaited transitions, it came too quickly. Before we knew it, we found ourselves standing on the side of the road with our luggage lined up along the curb, all our host families chatting with one another, family pets with names like Wang Wang and Kuai Kuai and Deng Deng scurrying all over the place, play fighting, furtively humping each other in the bushes.

We took a couple group pictures with our families, then a bus pulled up and we threw our luggage aboard.

China is not Latin America. The people here don't hug often, and they aren't much for crying, either. But our host parents hugged us goodbye, and many of them were bawling. I hugged Ms. Fish and Mr. Beef. Host brother, of course, was nowhere to be found. Then I got on the bus. Hell, I felt like bawling, myself. There were seventeen volunteers and more than 50 seats on the bus, so we all sat apart from each other until the waterworks ran dry. The bus started and we waved out the window as we passed.

But Ms. Fish and Mr. Beef had already started off down the road, Ms. Fish twirling her umbrella and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, Mr. Beef with his hands folded behind his back, reaching up to pluck a leaf from a low-hanging branch.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Hotel Ambos Mundos

After a long and profoundly foggy winter, I promised myself that I would stake out an outdoor writing spot so that at the first hint of spring I might claim it and write there all summer long. A couple weeks ago I went out on the prowl and found my writing spot - a little hardwood table stashed behind the mahjongg tables along Beihu Lake - but the better part of April passed before I got a chance to use it.

Then, without warning, spring came. I left the house in my usual five layers - thermal underwear, undershirt, button-down, sweater, suitcoat - and nearly melted on the spot. My students were first amused, then disgusted by how much I was sweating. After class, I draped my suitcoat over my arm, peeled off my sweater, and went out for a walk in Beihu Park, en route to my writing spot. But in Nanchong, a walk in the park is never a walk in the park.

"FOREIGNER! COME HERE!" some college boys shouted from a distance. "HEY LAOWAI, COME BACK!"

Then, another troupe of them approached.

"FOREIGNER! HAH-LOO! HOW ARE YOU! COME HERE!"

It's always the twerpy college boys: square-framed non-prescription glasses, skinny black jeans, Converse All-Stars, hip-hop jackets - you know the type.

Back in the day, Shelley and I used to humor them.

"HAH-LOO!" they would shout, and "HAH-LOO!" we would shout back, at twice the volume.

"FOREIGNER!" they would bark.

"Foreigner!" we would gasp. "Where? Where? Let me at 'im!"

Laughter all around. But hardened veterans like Phil and Joe were unamused.

"Don't encourage them," Phil would sigh.

"Don't be their monkey," Joe used to say.

Once, some college twerps interrupted us at dinner. They shouted HAH-LOO and snapped several pictures before we had time to pose. Then they asked where we were from. Joe turned to them and said, in fluent Sichuanese, "We are from Mars." That silenced everyone.

In those early days, I found Phil and Joe a bit too cynical for my liking. I've never been one to mouth off at strangers, or to ignore a friendly greeting. But I've since become something of a veteran myself. I no longer encourage my hecklers. In a word, the constant heckling exhausts me. It probably seems easy enough to deal with when you're reading about it. But living with it is another thing entire. Where else on earth (aside from Korea) is it acceptable to scream at a complete stranger, a full-grown adult walking in the park? I'm twenty-seven fer chrissake. I sport a beard: leave me alone. So I politely ignore the college twerps. And of course, they act offended when I pass by without a word. But we are all humans here. If you would like to talk, please do come introduce yourself, and I would be more than happy to speak passable Sichuanese with you.

All hecklers aside, I navigated the park, following the faint scent trail left behind by my previous self. I walked past the arcade and the carnival booths, stopped briefly to check out the plastic bubble apparatuses which, for fifteen kuai a pop, allow children ages five and up to embark on a vomit-inducing tumble across the the surface of Beihu Lake. I passed something called the "Pleasure Center" and something else called the "Source of Life." Then I arrived in mahjongg country, where the Sichuanese men swearing at each other are very nearly canceled out by the soothing sound of plastic tiles sliding across felt-topped tables.

I sat. Immediately, I felt absurdly conspicuous, like the guy who goes to Red Lobster and requests a table for one. Red Lobster is a family restaurant, and China is a family country. If you do things by yourself, you may as well have the plague, or H1N1. My students refuse to believe that I live alone, and are creeped out by the thought of it. I tried several times to flag the waitress, but she looked through me to the table of boisterous drunks behind me. As soon as I started writing, a couple of dorks came and hovered over my shoulder. I swatted them away with a horsetail glance.

Beihu Lake: the most picturesque spot in all Nanchong. I had anticipated a picturesque writing session - not quite Hemingway chomping on a Cuban at the Hotel Ambos Mundos, but I figured I'd be able to get in a notebook page or two. Instead, I found myself distracted. Nobody was out-and-out bothering me, but every time I looked up from my notebook, I caught pairs of eyes watching me, and the people belonging to those eyes acted startled and offended, as though it were me staring at them the whole time. Lord only knows what those people must have thought of me, a sweaty laowai wearing a suitcoat on the first day of spring, sitting alone and writing furiously - and I bet he's not even going to order anything to eat. Well, if that doesn't beat the band ...

Nevertheless, I did get some writing in. At least this much worth. But I know it can't last forever. In a few minutes, someone will sit at my table, or drag me over to sit at theirs. At that point, I will leave behind the page and step out into the weird Chinese world, to do more of that all-important counterpart to writing which is called living. And perhaps that experience will inspire more writing, which will be interrupted by another minor confrontation worth writing about, and so on.

I suppose that's the important thing if you're a writer: that at all times you are either writing, or distracted from it.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Saloon Doors

By the time I finished that last blog post, I had so much NescafƩ in my system that I was peeing every twelve seconds and trembling on the verge of a grande latte seizure. Lisa called and wanted me to come play at the Jack Bar, so I jitterbugged my way outside and launched myself into the back of the nearest cab.

Lisa was profoundly drunk somewhere, so I was able to play fourteen songs instead of my usual six. And for an audience that didn't once acknowledge my existence, I played the best guitar of my life. My setlist was as follows:

1. Via Chicago - Wilco
2. Long Way Home - Tom Waits
3. Our House - CSNY
4. Random Rules - Silver Jews
5. Nobody Does It Better - Carly Simon
6. Lola - The Kinks
7. Love Song - The Cure
8. Lonesome Whistle - Hank Williams
9. Sad Songs And Waltzes - Willie Nelson
10. I Wish I Was The Moon - Neko Case
11. Joan Jett Of Arc - Clem Snide
12. Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
13. Do It Again - Steely Dan
14. Restless Farewell - Bob Dylan

As you can see, I am no longer covering albums front-to-back. I have opted instead for a schizophrenic barrage of songs that I like, or that Chinese people might like. But of course, Chinese people don't like my songs. Only I like them. I usually screw up a lot, but this time I played to my satisfaction. So I bid the crowd a restless farewell and took my seat at the bar, grinning broadly. The surly teenage cowboys slid two Bud Ices my way. I saw that they had scavenged a bottle of wine for themselves, so it was a good night all around. I picked up the bottle and gave it a look: Cabernet Chawuyvnon, the label said.

"This is fake," I told the cowboys.
"Fake? It's French!"
"No, it's Chinese. This name's not right."
"But it cost 200 kuai!"
"Fake," I said, and offered them a couple of consolation cigarettes.

But fake or not, the cowboys had scavenged a bottle of 200 kuai wine, which was nothing to laugh about. They were triumphant, chatting on QQ, chainsmoking and passively watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And I, too, was triumphant, though with Lisa out of commission and the teenage cowboys lost in the interwang, I had absolutely no one to talk to. I went to the bathroom and there I heard a girl weeping in the stall next to mine.

"Are you okay?" I asked. "Do you need help?"

She stopped weeping.

"Hello?" I called.

No answer. Perhaps I'd scared her sober. I washed my hands and returned to the bar.

It makes for an odd social scene, Nanchong. Nobody wants anything to do with me unless I've been introduced by an affluent Chinese woman. Without Lisa, the only affluent Chinese woman I know, I was powerless. I sat watching the salarymen play their dice games. A college kid ushered his girlfriend into the bathroom, where she vomited loud enough for all to hear, and then he ushered her back to his table for more drinks. A gentleman.

I began to daydream. I can't play acoustic guitar here forever, I thought to myself. That's background music. That's Kenny G. I ought to put a band together. Maybe get Poodleface to manufacture some synth-pop beats for me, enlist those hyperenergetic Mennonites to play percussion, hire Jacob to do some popping and locking and heckling. Something to get a reaction out of these people. We'd call ourselves Kung Pao Panda and show up at the Jack Bar in glam sunglasses and funny hats. We'd gain a steady following in Nanchong and move onto bigger and better: Chongqing, Chengdu, Changsha, Shanghai, Beijing. Then we'd succumb to substance abuse and spend the next two decades pursuing ill-fated solo careers, paying off our alimonies with the proceeds from our Greatest Hits box set. That could be fun, I thought to myself. And then all of a sudden it was closing time. The cowboys removed their hats, the strobe lights went out, the cavemen dragged their booze-clubbed cavewomen out into the street, and the saloon doors hit my sorry ass on the way out ...

Saturday, April 17, 2010

The Bling Dynasty

Lisa called on Thursday night to tell me that we had "business" to discuss. I showed up at the Jack Bar around ten, and she set out my usual two bottles of Bud Ice. She told me to sit so I sat. I was expecting bad news, probably the long-anticipated termination of my duties as the Jack Bar's official court minstrel. But instead, she gave me an offer that I couldn't refuse.

"New apartment grand opening," she said. "Heavenly Peach Blossom Lifestyle Development. You play two song. Only two song. We pay you $100 U.S. dollar."

Of course, I belong to the monastic order of the Peace Corps, so I couldn't accept the money. But I wasn't interested in making bank anyhow. No, this was the sort of gig I was more than happy to do pro bono - the sort of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that only comes once a week if you're a foreigner in China. A backstage pass to the heart of Chinese opulence, a journey to the center of the housing bubble, a lo-fi interlude in the middle of a high-tech freak show.

"I'll do it," I said.

The next day, Lisa called me and told me to meet her at the front gate in five minutes. I was naked at the time and woefully unprepared, so I tossed a pair of clean underwear onto the radiator and frantically scribbled some lyrics and chords in my trusty green Chinglish notebook.

I had spent the afternoon deliberating what songs to perform. Theme: houses, apartment complexes, construction. Mood: snide, cheeky, tongue-in-cheeky. I judiciously ruled out "The Roof is on Fire," as well as "Grave Architecture" by Pavement. "Burning Down the House" wasn't going to fly, and sadly, neither would my dad's tasteful suggestion, "The House of the Rising Sun." I needed something sweet and melodic but subtly jeering, the sort of inside joke that only a bona fide laowai would get. Finally, around 4 PM, it came to me: "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Two cats in the yard. Perfect. It was a bit out of my vocal range, but so are all the songs I sing.

For my second number, I decided to go with "Long Way Home" by Tom Waits - not exactly relevant, but with lines like "money's just something you throw off the back of a train" and "let's go out past the Party lights," I figured I would get a chuckle out of singing it, even if nobody else did. By the time I'd finished writing, my boxer-briefs were hot to the touch and I was ten minutes late.

One of the Inner Mongolians sat behind the wheel, Lisa in the passenger's side.

"We go to banquet first," she said.

"Hao hao hao hao hao," I said. "Good good good good good."

Chinese banquets are the panopticon of dining rituals. Fourteen people in a brightly-lit room, crammed elbow-to-elbow around a circular table with a not-so-lazy susan spinning round at 120 RPM. Everyone can see everyone else, but all eyes are on Mr. Laowai. The Asian world wants to know: can he use chopsticks? Ordinarily yes, but banquet chopsticks are oversized and extremely slippery, so someone eventually claims Mama Bird duty and puts food in Mr. Laowai's bowl. There is an overabundance of beer, if you're lucky, and rice vodka if you're not. Everyone toasts everyone else. If you have fourteen people at the table, that adds up to 91 toasts. Things can get sloppy very fast.

Our guests of honor were from Heilongjiang Province, the beak of the chicken-shaped Chinese landmass. Although Heilongjiang is practically cosmopolitan compared to lowly Nanchong, the out-of-towners were even less tactful around me than my Nanchong entourage tends to be.

"Whoa, a laowai. Can he speak Chinese?" the b-boy in the gorilla sweater asked Lisa.
"Yes," I said. "I can speak Chinese."
"Holy cow, a foreigner who can speak Chinese. Now I've seen everything. Can he use chopsticks?"
"Yes. I can use chopsticks."
"Wowzers. Amazing. Where is he from?"
"I'm from America."
"America. What does he do?"
"I am an English teacher."
"How much money does he make?"

And so on.

I was the center of attention for a short while, but after it was established that I could speak passable Chinese and feed myself without making a mess, everyone seemed to grow bored of me. There was a Cavaliers game on the big screen, so the men zoned out watching it, breaking the trance every so often to shout "Good ball!" or to express their admiration for the legendary Lei-bu-lon Jei-mu-si.

One by one, the men toasted me. I wish you happy every day. I wish you colorful life in Nanchong. I wish you find beautiful Chinese girlfriend. The tempo picked up. The men began touching each other below the belt. Everyone kept poking fun at the b-boy's beer belly, and he responded by laughing triumphantly and beatboxing while playing his gut like a bongo drum. So when it came time for me to toast him, I patted his belly and wished him and his baby a long and happy life together. He chuckled, but he didn't smile. A line had been crossed. Chinese ribbing is one thing, but a fat joke from the obesity capital of the world is another. I made my escape and ran over to toast the elderly couple who were smiling bashfully at me from the other end of the table. I downed my beer and they downed their walnut milk. We all smiled bashfully. Then it was time to go. The Inner Mongolian grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out into the hallway. I shouted a frantic farewell but everyone was too drunk to notice.

The Heavenly Peach Blossom Lifestyle Development was so bright that, from a distance, the murky Jialing River looked downright resplendent. Searchlights darted back and forth across Nanchong's low-hanging heavens. Faintly audible: a stubborn beat, the voice of a circus barker.

We arrived. The Inner Mongolian parked illegally and a policeman came running over to scold him. But he indicated the laowai in the backseat and the policeman nodded and walked away.

We made our way up the red carpet.
"Did you drink too much?" asked Lisa.
"Chinese beer? Impossible," I said.
"Are you nervous?"
"Me? Never."

If the former was a slight fib, the latter was an outright lie. Even by Chinese standards, the crowd that had assembled to christen this residential behemoth was truly gargantuan, in the thousands, easy. The Volkswagen insignia was plastered up everywhere, and there was a trio of Volkswagen SUVs rotating on platforms, barely dressed xiaojies caressing their aerodynamic curves. The jumbotron on stage was looping a montage of a Volkswagen GTI Hatchback skidding up and down a rain-slick mountain road. The circus barker was whipping up a frenzy, but the only word I could make out was Da Zhong Qi Che - Volkswagen.

There was a visible divide between the people on the inside of the velvet-roped stanchions and the people on the outside. The out crowd was the same riffraff I usually encounter down by the bus station: old timers in filthy suitcoats wielding bamboo sticks and swollen duffel bags. Wielding ducks, wielding chickens. I passed an old man chewing a quid of tobacco - a quid of tobacco! The out crowd was very Ming Dynasty. Meanwhile, on the inside of the stanchion, it was all champagne and mini-cigars: The Bling Dynasty.

My opening act this time was a magician. At least it wasn't a pole dancer. But he wasn't too well-versed in the ways of magic. He just about strangled himself with his own neverending handkerchief. The MC saw me and came rushing over.

"Hello, please to meet you," he said. "I am MC Li Zhong Bo. What is your name?"
"You can call me Pan Da," I said.
"Oh, you speak Chinese."
"Sort of, yes."
"What is your American name?"
"Keith," I said. "K-E-I-T-H."
"K-I-I-G-H."
"K-E-I-T-H."
"Okay! Okay! Kitty!"
"Keith."
"Kitty!"
"Kitty."

He noticed my Chinglish notebook.
"What is this?"
"My music," I said.
"Cannot use. We have no," he said, searching for the word. "We have no ... thing."
No thing. Shit. I would have to play two songs from memory. So much for the two cats in the yard.

The magician, deeply ashamed, left the stage with his neverending handkerchief between his legs. It was my time to shine. The MC summoned Kitty to the microphone, and I Obama-trotted up to the stage.

"Our foreign friend has come tonight to entertain us with a few songs!" he said. "Now, what is your name?"
"My name is Pan Da and I am a laowai," I said into the microphone.
"This is Pan Da and he is a laowai. Very good. Pan Da - is that your Chinese name?"
"Yes. I am a national treasure."
Someone coughed.
"I see. Well, Mr. National Treasure - what kind of music will you be playing for us tonight?"
"American rock and roll."

There is footage floating around of Bob Dylan performing "Mr. Tambourine Man" at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. He was young back then, and widely believed to be the Second Coming. So the crowd is awestruck and silent for the whole seven minutes, all these bucktoothed boys with wheat-colored hair sitting at Dylan's feet, blowing dandelions and musing quietly to themselves. The haunted, frightened trees? - one hand waving free? - circus sands? - what does it all mean? Meanwhile, a dust bowl wind blows havoc into the banners and stage curtains, and warbles the hell out of Dylan's already warbly voice.

Now, I'm not comparing myself to Dylan by any means, though I am disheveled enough these days to bear a passing resemblance to some of his latter day incarnations. But for all the glitz and pyrotechnic Volkswagen displays, the grand opening of the Heavenly Peach Blossom Lifestyle Development turned into the 1964 Newport Folk Festival the moment I started playing. Which is not to say the audience was awestruck. They were perplexed, slightly bored, somewhat uncomfortable. And they were dead silent. I played two Beck songs that featured a combined total of three chords. I played them because they are dear to me, and because they are simple - in front of all those people, I just wanted to leave the stage with my face intact. At the end of Jackass, the MC had to bark at the crowd until they applauded, and midway through Beautiful Way, he barked at them again, so that the second verse was drowned out by microphone feedback and a listless round of clapping. And then it was quiet again, just me and Lisa's beautiful thousand-dollar acoustic-electric, me and my three chords, and my warbly voice warbling in a wind that had come down all the way from the Himalayas just to mess up my hair.

I bowed and left the stage. I put the guitar away and the Inner Mongolian grabbed me by the arm.

"Now you play at Jack Bar, okay?"
"Okay," I said.

The next act passed me in the aisle: a very tall man with a very small bicycle. Later, at the Jack Bar, my opening act was a pole dancer.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Choose Your Own Adventure #639: Passive Attack!



1

You are an English teacher in an overcrowded but unheard-of Chinese metropolis. You teach 500 students a semester and many of them have never seen a foreigner before. They all want to be your friend, but how does one go about befriending 500 people, exactly? Beats me. Beats you.

Turn to page 36.


36

Your student invites you to The Blue Note on a Wednesday night. It is International Night, she explains, and it is very important that you show up. You would like to join her, but you are contractually obligated to teach Oral English at eight the next morning. You explain your predicament and politely decline her invitation, offering to hang out with her over the weekend. But she is not pleased. She sends you a phone-clogging barrage of text messages, one of which reads, "oh my god.. stupid panda, you had better come right now and bring your friends." She then rapid-fire calls you for the next hour while you're lying there in bed. Finally, there comes a passive rapping at your door, followed by an aggressive pounding, then a passive-aggressive I-know-you're-in-there knocking. The lights are out. You are shirtless and in your underwear. It is 1 AM and you must teach in seven hours. You have no idea how she found out where you lived. You don't answer the door and after a while the knocking ceases, though you can hear her high-heels clacking in the stairwell until you drift off to sleep.

Turn to page 43.


43

You feel somewhat guilty, so you try to gloss things over by meeting your student and her friends at The Blue Note the following Saturday. Jacob is there. He holds out his hand and you extend your fist, then you switch, then switch again before you finally agree on a clammy handshake. "Smooth," you say. Then you are suddenly set upon from all sides by angry students. It is a passive attack - incidentally, the title of this book, the 639th edition of the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

"Why are you so late?" your student shouts in your ear, barely audible over the slutty flatulence of Britney Spears.
"Late?" you shout back, smiling. "It's only 9:00!"
"...!" she shouts. "...!"
"What?!"
"Why you no come last week?!"
"It was late! I had to teach!"
"That day is very important!" she shouts. "You let us down!"
You smile and shrug foppishly. But she isn't smiling.

A second student starts shouting in your other ear, the one that has been plugged up for a month now.
"What?!" you shout.
"We are very angry you no come last week!"
"It was late! I had to teach!"
She pouts a bit and shouts, "It is very special night! You must come here!"
"I am here!"
"Yes," she shouts, "but that night is very special!"

The owner of The Blue Note gives you a couple of free drinks and, given the circumstances, this is a good thing. You take a sip. It might be champagne, but you're not sure - not sure, that is, until you spot the bottle of wine hiding behind the watermelon/pineapple fruit platter, and the two-liter of Sprite next to it. You are drinking a Sprite and wine cocktail.

"How is it?" asks Jacob as you ganbei the rest of your glass.
"It's not bad!" you shout, to the approval of your hosts.
"But it's not that good either," mouths Jacob, and you both laugh, and everyone at the table cranes their necks to see what it is the foreigners could possibly find so funny about Sprite and wine.

Turn to page 47.


47

A student - neither Jacob's nor your own - sits down next to you and starts talking about guitars. He has been playing for two years, he says, and he loves the Backstreet Boys.

"Cool!" you shout. "My sister used to like them!"

Whoops. You don't want to insult the poor kid, so you add, "I mean, when she was thirteen!"

Even worse. But he doesn't seem to notice. Instead, the kid changes the subject completely, as Chinese youngsters are wont to do.

"Now you sing an English song, OK?"

You furrow your mouth, if that is possible. You're not ready for karaoke. The Sprite/wine cocktail hasn't kicked in yet, and it won't kick in even if you drink twelve of them (which you do, eventually) because it is 90% high fructose corn syrup. You don't really answer the kid one way or the other, so he runs off to talk to the DJ. Shania Twain fades out and one of the waitresses makes an ominous announcement. Everyone starts clapping and you find yourself on stage with a microphone in your hand. You wait for the music to start - Hotel California, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, You Are Not Alone - but nothing happens. Everyone is staring at you, waiting.

"Where's the music?" you ask the DJ.
"No music!" he shouts. "Sing!"
"Sing what?"
"An English song!"

You explain with a violent shaking of hands that a cappella isn't going to work. He rifles through his CD wallet.

"You know 'I Don't Know?'"
"I don't know 'I Don't Know,'" you say. "Is that a song?"
"You know 'Take Me To Your Heart?'"
"I know it, but I hate it."

A student runs to your aid with his cellphone. He shows you his MP3 collection. The DJ plugs the kid's phone into the PA system. You settle for your favorite band's least favorite song: "Creep," by Radiohead.

You pace back and forth across the stage. The microphone does not appear to be turned on. The crowd applauds when you forget the second verse and claps wildly when Thom Yorke sings the high parts, though your own voice does not register on the monitor. As you bow and return to your table, one of the waitresses hands you a commemorative Year of the Tiger Beanie Baby that you totally forget to bring with you when you leave The Blue Note some five minutes later.

Turn to page 52.


52

You and Jacob find refuge in a nearby shish-kebab joint. Much has happened since the last time you spoke with an English speaker. The president of Poland was killed in a plane crash. In America, a castrated version of health care reform passed into law - and in retaliation, Kentucky Fried Chicken unveiled its 1,245-calorie Double Down sandwich. So you and Jacob launch into a discussion, somewhat serious, somewhat absurd, totally cathartic. But somebody has followed you from the club. He sits down at your table. He interrupts with questions like, "What is your happiest thing in China?" and "Can you use chopsticks?" and "Do you want a Chinese girlfriend?" He latches onto words like "fuckin' A" and "clusterfuck" and murmurs them under his breath to commit them to memory. He laughs loudly when you and Jacob chuckle, but the moment the conversation shifts to Obama, your third wheel's mood sours and he calls for the check. Thus ends the night. As Jacob flags down an oncoming taxi, it occurs to you that, although you have seen him several times a week, you haven't really talked to the man in months.

To grab a couple more shish-kebabs for the road,
turn to page 87.


To head straight home and have yourself a nice long sulk,
turn to page 91.



87

The shish-kebab place has sold out of shish-kebabs.

Turn to page 91.


91

You head home and have yourself a nice long sulk.


THE END

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Knives Out

I was late for my date at the hospital, so I folded up my umbrella and started trotting through the rain. A beggar saw me coming and ran alongside me, riding my shirt like a cornerback and thwacking my gut with a crock pot full of damp, crumpled bills. As I juked past him and sprinted for the endzone, I slipped on one of Nanchong's randomly placed patches of Teflon-slick sidewalk and only narrowly averted arriving at the hospital by other means.

The lovely Dr. Gao was waiting for me on the doorstep of the emergency ward, and I was happy to see that Jacob had tagged along. I held out my hand and he extended his fist, then we switched, then switched again before we finally agreed on a lackluster fistpound. "Smooth," said Jacob. Then we noticed the gurney behind us, and the man thereupon, and the two blood-spattered EMTs waiting for us to move. We jumped out of the way and they hustled past. Smooth.

Every so often, the Peace Corps sends us on a mission, and they like to keep us guessing as to what excitement it will entail. Over the weekend, I learned that Dr. Gao was coming to visit. I knew that I was to meet her at the Nanchong City Hospital, and sensed that I should probably clean my apartment, which I managed to render livable by 5 AM on the morning of Dr. Gao's arrival. But I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't anticipate a tour of the rheumatology wing, or a visit to the Intensive Care Unit, or that we'd be taken backstage into a room full of lab technicians squinting into ominous-looking vials of infectious disease.

The hallways had that salty ketchup smell that I've come to associate with hospitals of the developing world. I guess blood smells like salty ketchup - or at least blood was the most obvious culprit, because there was a lot of it everywhere: red splotches on the walls, patients lying around with open wounds, vials of blood flying all over the place. The halls were jammed with people in various states of surgical disrepair - bandaged eyes, wrapped limbs, an old man smoking a Shuangxi through the slit in his facemask and wheeling his IV around in circles. Everyone was standing, except for those confined to wheelchairs, and the babies, who were being held. Bumping my way down the hall, I was reminded of Radiohead's Knives Out video - flurries of doctors waving around charts and x-ray film, ghastly operations being performed in plain view, bizarre Michel Gondryesque gadgetry whirring and whizzing, projecting monochrome displays of the inner workings of body and mind. I followed Dr. Gao, rotating in a slow circle as I went, taking it all in.

The hospital director dropped whatever trifles he was busy with (a kidney transplant, a triple bypass, whatever) to show us around. He rushed us through several operating rooms so he could show us the good stuff.

"This is a Toshiba, from Japan. Very high quality," he said. "This blood scanner is Architect brand. Made in USA. Top of the line, second to none. Bar none."

The machines were impressive, whatever it was they did. But every time we left a fluorescent-lit room full of humming electronics, we found ourselves back in the grotto of the convalescents. All was dull gray, children screaming, the smell of salty ketchup. There were hordes of people lined up to get their prescriptions filled, jostling each other and shouting at the girl behind the Plexiglas screen - for a moment it felt like we were back at the Nanchong train station. We entered a room full of oxygen tanks and little plastic boxes with black accordions inside and clear plastic tubes coming out of them.

"This is sucking machine," said Dr. Gao. "It is for ... suck ... suck out the sputum."

The people we passed in the halls were surprised to find a couple of foreigners in their midst, but they didn't HAH-LOO us or stare for very long. The mood of the place was too somber even for laowai ogling. In the rheumatatology wing, a dashing young Indian resident came running over and grabbed Jacob by the arm.

"What's wrong? Can I help you?" he asked.
It was one of Jacob's students.
"Naw, I'm aight, Sanjay," said Jacob. "We're just on a tour."
Sanjay let out a high-pitched giggle, the wonderful sort of laugh you seldom hear in this country, and returned to his patient. But you got the impression that he'd have lopped off Jacob's arm in a heartbeat.

We waited for the elevator to take us up to the 13th floor, where the Intensive Care Unit was hidden.

"So, remind me, Jake," I said. "What does an Intensive Care Unit do?"
"They care," he said, "intensively."
"This is going to be unpleasant, isn't it?"
Jacob shrugged. "It's a Chinese hospital, man."

The crowd pushed Jacob and Dr. Gao onto the elevator, along with thirty other people. One of the doctors urged me to get in, but the elevator was sagging too much for my comfort and I watched the doors close in front of me. Then I waited for the next elevator. Though I was the first person in line, I was one of the last to get in. The elevator started sagging a bit, then dropped a full inch when a doctor rolled his patient in. The patient was unconscious and his face was covered in blood, plastic tubes snaking out from his nose and arms. With each stop, people jostled each other to get in and jostled each other to get off. At one point, someone shoved me so hard that I very nearly toppled over on top of the patient. I was happy to get out of the elevator, but less than enthused to find myself in the ICU, where the doctors had us slip on little plastic booties.

There were twenty beds and all of them were occupied. Most of the patients were elderly and all of them appeared to be unconscious. The sleeping faces reminded me of all the grouchy old Chinese shopkeepers I've grown to know, but they were devoid of all the loogey-hawking, profanity-muttering animation I've grown to love. Family visitation hours were from 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM, said Dr. Gao. A college kid - part of Jacob's entourage - started snapping pictures of us. I can't imagine that the photographs turned out very flattering. I must have been shielding my eyes from the flash in the first photo, and staring glumly at the floor in all the others. I wanted to leave. I wasn't comfortable being privy to such a private moment. Who could imagine what all these old timers had lived through, only to wind up here, in this sterile room full of bleeping state-of-the-art Japanese life-extending devices. A secretary from my school tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to one of the beds, in which a badly burned child was curled up in the fetal position. "It's a child," he said, and I nodded, saying nothing. A nurse stood beside the child, patting his back to the rhythm of the pulse meter. The director cleared his throat and pointed to a blanketed object in the corner.

"New medical ventilator," he said. "Bird VIP. Top of the line. Bar none."

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

The Higgs Boson Fruitcake Switcheroo

"Throughout the ages the Chinese have had only two ways of looking at foreigners. We either look up to them as gods, or look down on them as wild animals."
-Lu Xun


Nanchong is home to some 1.2 million souls and 99.98% of them are Han Chinese, which means (according to my second grade math) that there are roughly 240 minorities in all of Nanchong. Granted, some of us weren't counted in the last census, but no matter: 240 feels about right.

There are perhaps as many as twenty Westerners in town. Four of them are Mennonites and three of them are Peace Corps volunteers; five of them are evangelical Christians with beards, studying Mandarin at the Normal College; there are six or seven freelance teachers that I have never met, but whose sex lives are the stuff of legend; there is an Italian named Fiero who owns a coffee shop downtown, and then you have Ricky and Sadiq over at the Medical College. We are a small group, but not a tight one. Most days, I don't see any laowais at all. When I get home from work and glance in the mirror, I'm surprised and a bit disappointed to find that I am not Asian.

Most of the minorities in Nanchong are Uighurs. Uighurs are Chinese citizens, but they aren't really Chinese. They eat noodles instead of rice, lamb instead of pork, and they speak Mandarin instead of Sichuanese. The Uighurs have a monopoly on the local ramen racket, but their relationship with the Han Chinese population is strictly business: you buy noodles, we serve you noodles. One would think that as fellow outsiders, the Uighurs and I would share some sort of camaraderie, but whenever I swing by a Uighur noodle joint for a bowl of beef ramen, the cooks watch me eat and laugh at me. I don't really mind. I suppose when the world is staring at you, you've got to find someone else to stare at - and at the moment, I happen to lie at the very bottom of the chain of normalcy.

So even in Nanchong, you can find little pockets of diversity here and there if you know where to look for them. But 99.98% of the time, I lead a Han Chinese existence. For the past nine months, I have played by Han Chinese rules. I've learned what is polite and what isn't: loogeys are fair game, as is cutting in line, as is holding your baby over the sewer drain to take a crap - but don't even think about leaving your chopsticks standing upright in the rice bowl. I know a billion ways to modestly refuse a compliment. I can sense when I'm about to be screwed over. On a good day, I can talk a peddler down to half his original price. In short, I have adapted. But the longer I live here, the more perplexed I am by foreigners. I'm not quite sure how to act around Americans, and in the rare event that I find myself caught in a pickle with someone who isn't a local, I'm at a complete loss for what to do.

For your consideration: I was on my way to dinner the other day when I was corralled by a Uighur cake vendor.

"No thanks," I said, and kept walking. The cake man blocked my path with his cart and told me to check out his cake. I stopped and gave it a look-see. It was a mighty odd cake alright: the thing was as long as a Blimpies party sub, with dates and berries and little ears of baby corn embedded in the bread. But it wasn't exactly my cup of tea, so I said bu yao and started walking the other way. But the cake vendor grabbed hold of my sleeve and wouldn't let go. Then he whipped out a knife and started cutting the cake.

I shrugged. Why not? It was just the sort of overaggressive salesmanship I'd gotten used to in China, so I knew what to expect. I figured I'd wind up spending a bit of dough I hadn't planned on spending, but I'd probably get my money's worth.

"One liang, three bucks," said the cake man.

I nodded. "I'll take one liang, then."

He finished cutting the cake. Then he pulled out a scale and weighed the slice - and Large Hadron Collider be damned, because right there and then, before my very eyes, the cake man must have found the elusive Higgs Boson, for the cake had suddenly acquired ten times its original mass.

"One jin, thirty bucks," he said flatly.

I should've seen it coming - the oldest trick in the book, the Higgs Boson Fruitcake Switcheroo. And now the cake man had me in a bind. The masses were already gathering around to observe the transaction, and if I refused to pay, he'd simply have to cry thief! and I'd be screwed. Which is just what he did.

"I don't want the cake," I said, and turned to walk away.

"Thief, thief!" he cried. I stopped in my tracks.

"You're the thief," I said. "You're trying to cheat me."

"One liang, three bucks!" he shouted, then he pointed at the scale. "One jin, thirty bucks!"

"I never wanted that much cake in the first place. I wanted one liang. Three bucks. I told you that," I said. "Do I look like some kind of idiot?"

An ooh from the crowd: this was getting good. The people came in droves. As I pleaded my case and shook my fists at the heavens, the old ladies around me grunted and nodded their heads approvingly.

"But I've already cut the cake," the cake man said. "There it is. You asked me for one jin and I cut you one jin. Just pay for your cake and there won't be any trouble."

"I can't afford it," I said.

"You can't afford it?" said the cake man, raising an eyebrow and smirking.

"I don't have that kind of money."

"How much do you have?"

"Five bucks," I said, "and I'm only going to give you three."

"No, you're going to give me thirty. Because that's what you owe me."

"In my country," I said, "we don't buy fruitcake. Your grandma mails it to you for Christmas."

Laughter. By then, the crowd had spilled over into the street, and they were unanimously on my side. Red-faced and scowling, the cake man put down his knife and stepped up to me. We were standing face-to-face, chest-to-chest. He didn't speak. Someone in the audience shouted, "Why are you cheating our foreign friend? Just cut him a smaller slice!" I gave the crowd a thumbs-up and grinned at the cake man. He stared at me for a long time.

"This is funny, isn't it?" I said to him.

"There's nothing funny about it," he said.

I laughed. "Well, I'm not really hungry anymore. So I'm not going to buy anything. But you know I didn't want thirty bucks worth of cake," I said. I gestured toward the crowd. "They know I didn't want thirty bucks worth of cake. So I'm going to leave and you're not getting any of my money."

The crowd seemed proud of me. I thought they were going to give me a standing ovation. But they just watched me ride off into the metallic Nanchong sunset, nodding to themselves. Meanwhile, the cake man, sensing that the sidewalk across from the university was no longer a good place to do business, lit up a cigarette and rolled his cake cart on down the road.

I got some dinner - sweet and sour cabbage, a bowl of spicy pig intestines - and sat there thinking about what had just happened. I replayed the confrontation in my mind. I felt no sympathy for the cake man. He had tried to rob me blind and, all things considered, I thought I'd handled the situation pretty well. But in retrospect, it was Chinese crowd dynamics that puzzled me.

It starts with a couple of rubberneckers. Those rubberneckers attract more rubberneckers, and pretty soon you have a full-fledged mob of staring humans. A Chinese crowd can materialize in instant and disperse just as quickly. In China, crowds gather around fights, car wrecks, mahjongg games, and foreigners who have made the mistake of remaining in one place for too long. It is one of the eeriest things in the world to watch - or to be watched by - a Chinese crowd. Emotionless faces, a low murmuring, row after row of staring eyes. Should the situation turn violent, no one will break formation to intervene. Should someone get injured, no one will help. The Chinese crowd is a weird organism, indeed - a creature that does nothing but hover in one place mumbling to itself until it is dissolved by pure boredom.

Generally speaking, Chinese crowds are a harmless nuisance. They get in my way and turn me into a stammering wreck. They look me over and talk about my body hair, my clothes, the size of my nose. But this crowd had urged me on. They stood up for me. If things had escalated any further, I have no doubt that some dude in a crusty suitcoat would have stepped up and put the cake man in his place. And that was precisely what puzzled me. I have been cheated in the past by Han Chinese junk vendors, but not once did anyone raise a finger in my defense. The crowd just stood around watching my money evaporate. Only after the fact did a couple of old ladies rush over to tell me that I'd been gypped. But my showdown with the cake man was different somehow. He was an outsider and I was an outsider. In a sense, it was something of a cockfight, a roadside sideshow, a form of cheap entertainment. But this time, the crowd was emphatically on my side. They wanted me to win. They didn't want the cake man to take my money. I was a laowai, but at least I wasn't a Uighur. I suppose it all boiled down to a kind of relative racism. As a Westerner, I am an unknown variable. I am a god, or I am a wild animal. The Uighurs, on the other hand, have a definite reputation here - and it is not an altogether positive one. I empathize with them. It's tough being an outsider. Who wants to be a wild animal, after all? Or a god, for that matter?

But what do I know? I'm generalizing. Guessing. Imagining. When you're living abroad, sometimes the only way to make sense out of anything is to generalize. But then you sit in a park on a Sunday afternoon with your moleskine and your cigarettes and your half-empty bottle of beer, and you watch the people pass, hundreds upon thousands of them. They stare at you and you stare at them. Foreigner, they say. Chinese person, you think. Chinese person. Chinese person. There are so many people in the world, and who knows a damned thing about any of them?

Monday, April 05, 2010

Pigeons in the Park

I happened to be in Chongqing for the first annual Laowai Erotica Poetry Slam. We set up shop in the most neglected corner of a Starbucks, the one across from the animatronic pirates in Wan Da Plaza. All around us were Chinese coffee shop scenesters: college girls, young professionals, salarymen napping with Frappucinos stalled en route to mouth. We waited for a couple old foreigners to leave and then we slammed. Josh opened with a pair of raunchy limericks, then Erin gave us all a Large Hadron with a free verse poem about body particle collisions. Finally, it was my time to shine. On my walk up to the podium, I found myself, as usual, proofreading something I'd scrawled on the back of a Subway receipt. My offering was called "Pigeons in the Park."

After I'd finished reading, there was complete silence. Vijay ran off to the bathroom to vomit. Josh yanked at his collar. A handful of claps.

"Points for creativity?" someone offered. And all fell silent again.

Perhaps I had crossed some unspoken line. Perhaps my story had proven too erotic. Or perhaps it wasn't all that good. Flustered and ashamed, I bowed to the audience and returned to my pleather seat and sat there listening to the rest of the throbbing what-nots and dripping what-have-yous. All and all, I was a bit grossed out.

Milling around Wan Da Plaza, we came across a band setting up on the riverfront: a couple guitarists with Korean mullets and a drummer with an electronic trap set. They warmed up for half an hour, then they shuffled fifteen feet to the right, replugged all their rock paraphenalia and warmed up for another half-hour. A mosh pit of police gathered around the band, but I couldn't tell whether they were digging the music or warming up their truncheons. The band saw us - they muttered laowai and shouted HAH-LOO! - then they launched into the first verse of "Welcome to the Jungle" and followed it up with "Hotel California," at which point we wandered off and found something better to do.

I have mixed feelings about Chongqing. I can't recommend it. My hometown of Nanchong is a foggy place, but the Chongqing fog is of a more sinister palette: DDT white and coaldust grey. Despite the fog, as a foreigner, you are not invisible in Chongqing like you are in Chengdu. In Chongqing, a city the size of New York, strangers will still mutter laowai as they pass you, and shout HA-LOO from a safe enough distance.

After one last coffee with my erotic Western crew, I set off for the bus station and meandered for an hour along the dusty sidewalk that traces the sandy contours of the Yangtze. Eventually, I felt the need to drop a deuce and waddled into a seventeen-story business park looking for a squat toilet to clog. No options presented themselves in the lobby, so I took the stairs to the second floor.

"Excuse me," I said to a businessman waiting for the elevator, "but where is the ce-suo?"

He did not deign to acknowledge my existence. I stood there for a moment with my beard, my gnarled Irish half-fro, my trippy Radiohead-shirt-and-suitcoat combo. I cleared my throat. Was it not enough? I walked a circle around the man to make sure he was real. But he didn't see me. A bell chimed and he stepped into the elevator.

I walked to the end of the hall and found myself surrounded by police officers.

"Excuse me," I said to the whole regiment, "but where is the ce-suo?"

"What? What?" said Lt. Wang. "Oh! The chay-suay ... Try the fish place across the hall."

"But their doors are locked," I said.

"Then open them."

"But they're locked."

A heavy sigh. "I will help you."

It was 9:30 in the morning and the owner of the fish place was sleeping, but he jumped to his feet to let me in. I thanked him and he said it was nothing. I shut the bathroom door behind me. Then I squatted before the squatter in prayer, for there was paper.