一个美国游客眼中的北京， 请仔细得一个一个字地阅读
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<B>Thursday, August 15th, 2002
I Never Wanted to Be a Bad American:
Exploring Beijing Against Better Judgment</b>
I stepped off the plane in Beijing, and even though the terminal was still clinic-white, and the airfield was no more exotic than the ones outside DFW, I was already feeling very foreign and lost. My wife was there, and she knew her way, so that was my security blanket. And I never wanted to have a security blanket, either; this was a vacation for Christ's sake. As I followed the other disheveled passengers, I tried to find something that looked discernibly Chinese, something to spark the interest inside me-- though, of course I'm sure I was really looking for something American, like a Coke machine or someone complaining about the service. I may physically have been in Beijing, but my head was still on Western time.
We had flown from Chicago 14 hours previously. O'Hare had fucked up our seats, but gave us business class to compensate. I'd never sat in business class: they have little televisions on the seat backs, lamps, overhead compartments that you can actually use throughout the flight, leg room; they also have people asking you which wine you want, "French or Italian?" I chose French, because it was red. The flight attendants came back to me not less than 10 times during that flight to ask me about drinks, food, blankets, and my general comfort level, and I'm sure they were checking on me when I slept. They smiled a lot (except for one lady, who I'm sure was on to the fact we weren't 'real' business class flyers). It was my last contact with the synthetic world for two weeks.
The Beijing airport didn't look as shiny and bright as O'Hare. They had no inter-terminal rail transport, and even though the Revlon and Shisheido booths at the duty free shops were busy, I was sure that Western cosmetic gloss was going to be scarce here. China taught me a few things, one of which being that covering your bad spots was doomed to failure in a society where smooth journeys and quiet cab rides were luxuries. People there simply do not depend on good days, or even eventful bad ones, and as a result, time passes slowly and uncomfortably for outsiders accustomed to frill. But I'll get there soon enough.
We met my wife's aunt and uncle outside the baggage claim. My wife was born in China, and I was sure she would be emotional upon seeing her relatives after so long, but just like most of the other greetings between Chinese people I witnessed, a handshake and hello sufficed. I would later find out they had to call in several favors to get days off to spend with us (her uncle told me that outside of a few days during the Spring Festival, he receives no vacation).
In Beijing, we stayed at a house owned by my wife's uncle on the outskirts of the city. Beijing is incredibly large-- driving across downtown took about half an hour. Of course, most people don't have cars, so the streets are full of bikes, motorcycles (often with huge baskets attached to the back to make them look like giant tricycles) and cabs. All the cabs in the city are very small, and the one we took from the airport to our place used my stabilizing gravitational force to try out some acrobatic moves on the highway. I can say without a trace of irony that Chinese drivers are the most daring in the world. The basic rule of the road was that as long as you didn't kill anyone (or get killed), anything went. Cars honk not to protest a cut-off, but to warn any approaching vehicles around the blind corner to slow down because your driver is in the wrong lane trying to pass a semi. If you are in a Chinese city, the honking is ceaseless.
My first taste of real Chinese cuisine was in a restaurant near our place. The restaurant was apparently a local favorite, and very crowded. But then, every restaurant I saw in China was crowded. People loiter outside, smoking and peeling unidentifiable fruit and letting their kids wander into the street, while honking cabs look the other way and shoeless postcard vendors follow around anyone who looks like they might be able to afford air conditioning. And Beijing was hot that night, with humidity approaching saturation. We entered the restaurant through hanging plastic arms, and I knew I had arrived.
Restaurants in China, in bigger cities, offer separation from the common masses if you so desire. Shoes and shirts were very optional at this place, which was apparently famous for its duck. The local folk eat downstairs, and businessmen and wealthy foreigners eat in air-conditioned private rooms upstairs. In many ways, it was like eating at the Italian place near my house in the US, with the back room for VIPs, except nobody stared at you because you were white at the Italian place. If any of you are planning on visiting China, prepare to be gawked, pointed and giggled at from afar. That doesn't mean Chinese people aren't hospitable (far from it), but they did seem pretty curious about me.
I ate so many things there, though I didn't eat dog and I didn't eat brains. At one point, I had to pull the lame tourist card and stick to egg and tomatoes as my new friends ate streaming bowls of canine; elsewhere, I merely watched in amusement as my father-in-law made his way through the gray matter (though closer to white) of a pig. However, my first night in China was far less shocking: sweet-and-sour fish, Beijing duck, barbecued pork intestines, fried celery, a couple of vegetables I couldn't name, and three or four glasses of local beer (Xinjing, connoisseurs). Nobody drinks water in China. It's hot tea, beer or hard liquor. Everything was hot there.
My wife Jing's cousin Fei Fei was very interested in America. He wanted to go to college there, but had yet to complete his trade school for a degree in computer science. He asked me to sing with him as he played some guitar. He didn't really know many tunes, but I obliged once we went home. We sang "Tears in Heaven," and even though I didn't really know the words, I'm sure he didn't either.
Western objects of all kinds were idolized in China. Pop music was only part of the fascination, as I saw many young girls wearing t-shirts baring Snoopy, ice cream, and words like 'cute' and 'star.' Beijing girls looked a lot better wearing that stuff than the mallrats here, and their boyfriends seemed to realize this. Boys there tended to wear black, and opt not for tattoos and piercings, but chain watches and meticulously groomed flattops. And though Western perennials like McDonalds and Nike (bootleg, of course-- we visited entire marketplaces of fake brand merchandise) were easy to find in Beijing, the kids still seemed very much outside the kind of hip culture I grew up with. People went to McDonalds and wore fake Nike not because they wanted to fit in, but because doing so was a sign of status. My wife's brother once asked me if I wanted to go to KFC for lunch, and his confused look after my refusal almost made me change my mind.
Our house was quite small, more like an apartment in style (and was part of a high-rise building). I was surprised to find that the shower and toilet occupied the same 3x5-foot area, and that if you wanted to do either, it meant living with a little old water scum on the floor, or septic odor. Lame American Tourist made an appearance practically every time I entered a bathroom in China. The one in our Beijing place turned out to be the best one I saw there. The one at Jing's parent's place didn't actually contain a toilet, rather a small sink-like fixture on the floor, beneath a few meters of pipes and levers with which to operate the water. The public toilets in their village Yao-Pu were basically concrete shit storage houses, replete with a little spilled inventory on the floors and an overwhelming vapor. Jing's brother remarked how clean the one near their place was, which shocked me. But I still ate dinner.
China had a way of exposing all the luxuries I take for granted. And it did it mercilessly, as I toured Beijing, and later traveled south to the province of Guizhou, in the heart of the mountains. I was always surrounded by scenery so colorful and different from anything I'd seen before that I was lulled into a state of constant confusion, though learning to accept my fate. I trusted that everything was fine, basing my claim on the fact I had not yet been killed in a cab. City life was a case of finding new food and new people trying to sell exquisite batik and painted calligraphy around every corner, yet physically demanding because of the heat and unfamiliarity. I ate barbecue lamb with so much pepper that it made my nose bleed to smell it (and tore up my intestines for days-- but it was very good, and the beer made it even better). I was slapped in the face each time I instinctively expected air-conditioning and ice water, yet rewarded with pixie girls in 'star' t-shirts for doing nothing more than being white.
After a few days in Beijing, we flew south to visit Jing's parents. They lived in a small village, called Yao-Pu, which was about 15 minutes from a larger town called Anshun City. Anshun looked like Beijing, though slightly less crowded (but with a lot more chickens and water buffalo in the streets), and certainly much smaller. Most big cities I visited seemed to be designed in a circular fashion: the center of town contains a square or park, and the surrounding rings are filled with shops and high-rise apartments. The general look of Chinese cities is not terribly modern, and I get the feeling that having art-deco office complexes isn't a priority when most people don't even have AC (and central heating doesn't exist). The coolest thing about Anshun was the street markets and local food. Everyone wanted to sell me something, and they often followed me for a block or two with their stuff. One photographer followed me completely around a waterfall, until I gave in and anointed him our private pressman (i.e., stopped yelling at him every time he took our pictures).
Yao-Pu was a different story altogether. This was a village in the traditional sense: beyond the badly maintained apartment buildings were fields of corn and rice, and dirt roads to the mountains. I found my way around, and was happy to let the kids trailing behind laugh at me when I said "ni hao" ("hello") or "wo se Mei Guoren" ("I'm American"). The four kids who followed me during my time in the village were embarrassed when I photographed them, but insisted on staring at me from afar. While there, I spoke to a class of about 50 Chinese high school kids (Jing's dad actually owns a school there), and the pattern continued: all eyes glued to me, but fantastic shame when speaking to me or coming closer than from their desks. One girl asked me to sing a Western song to her afterwards, and I sang "Jingle Bells" (the first thing I thought of). She placed her hand over her mouth, smiled, and then clapped in rhythm with me. I think that of all the people I met in China, the curious kids were the coolest.
Jing's brother Xin was a gambler, hard drinker and general gadabout who knew all the best places to hang out and get piss drunk. My last afternoon in Yao-Pu, we went with a friend of his to another nosebleed barbecue place, where I quickly downed a bottle of beer to lubricate myself in preparation for the meat. That impressed Xin, and he motioned for the owner to bring me three more. Beer bottles in China are not like here-- they're a lot bigger. And Chinese people exist in a seemingly never-ending cycle of walking, drinking, eating, and more drinking. Most shops stay open until about 1 or 2 in the morning, and if there aren't any customers, shop neighbors pull out a mahjong set and gamble and drink the rest of the night. Xin left the part about working out, and most of the time I spent with him involved doing shots of whatever hard liquor was available (Moutai was the best stuff, Xin's fermented plumb concoction probably the worst).
The last thing I did in Guizhou was travel to Anshun to speak with Jing's father to a government official in charge of education about obtaining some land on which to build a new school. I was to play the part of the wealthy American investor, and we were to convince the official that he should give us the best price for the land. Mostly, I listened to this official, in his static heat-lamp of an office, expound on any number of reasons why he shouldn't give us land, and as he smoked I kept wondering why he was so skinny for man who had obviously accepted many bribes. As I heard from not a few people, the government is corrupt, and though some people are able to get along with their businesses, any significant dealings will probably involve a night on the town and several thousand Chinese dollars in bribes. Jing told me that her father had most likely already bribed him, and that this conversation was a formality. That night, we went to the best restaurant in Anshun, where I handily beat him in shots (thank you, Xin), and everyone walked away happy.
I saw a lot of things in China that I wasn't prepared for, and if I learned something there, it was probably to do with the constant state of saturation and convenience I live in here not preparing me for the trip. I missed things in America, but when I stood in line at the airport in Beijing on my way back, hearing the tourists talk about how wonderful the Forbidden City was, and how they saw people selling socks on the corner from their bus, I just thought they sounded like assholes. Sure, the Forbidden City was nice, but it was hot as hell, and it was full of fat Americans like me complaining about it. And I really don't remember as much about it as I do the embarrassed laughter of the quartet in the village, or the urine, or the shots in Yao-Pu. I'll go back, though, and it will be nice to feel a little less foreign.
Huasing Association 1999 - 2013