Blast from the Past

now for something completely different:
the below piece was written by my fried ben (aka bing) who is a much better writer than me. when i first met him in beijing may 2002 - i had just arrived in china with intensions to be here permanently. thankfully, he gave me an alias - alinestra covelia (aka allie). if you'd like to see photos from this time, check out ben's site. and now without further delay (since his piece is quite long), i give you life in beijing from two years ago:

may 1-5, 2002
I remember Labor Day in Britain was celebrated by most people with a welcome 1-day long bank holiday, although from the news you would never guess it. The news usually focused on the somewhat more unusual events passing off in London and other large European cities, where socialists and communists would emerge to demonstrate, sometimes peaceably, sometimes violently, against the capitalistic social model under which the world once again finds itself working (with due apologies to Marx and Engels).

China's Labor Day celebrations were a little different. In the Chinese working calendar, there are three substantial holidays. Labor Day (May 1st) and Chinese National Day (Oct 1st) were recently extended by government decree to allow China's office workers and laborers a whole week back at home, and Chinese New Year (lunar new year) usually lasts for two to three weeks.

Labor Day is termed Lao Dong Jie (Worker's Holiday) and, given China's socialist status, is a somewhat more positive holiday than back in Britain. There were no riots. There were no bombs. The McDonald's of Beijing rested peacefully knowing that they could continue to offer their usual high quality food at affordable prices to an unsuspecting public without fear of being taken for an effigy of capitalism. (Although whether this is a good thing or a bad thing I am still not sure.) During my adult life, I have not been a fan of McDonald's ever since they opening up a branch in Durham, from which I bought Chicken McNuggets and became ill as a result. Comparisons to Burger King and other more respectable fast food chains hammered home the lesson to me that McD's was selling repackaged gristle to their customers at the lowest possible prices.

Happily, from my point of view, McDonald's in China is not as great a success as it might be. The major obstacle to their success is that the food prices in the big cities are already very low. This means that most restaurants can offer comparable dishes to McDonald's but at competitive prices (as opposed to America, where the fast food chains tend to sell at a lower price than diners and other sit-down restaurants). Although some children love McDonald's, many adults will only stop there when convenience (not economy) so dictates. Certainly after my arrival in China and my acclimatization to jiao zi and guo tie, there has been little call for me to return to the McByProducts of yore.

I also quit my job just before Labor Day, though you may rest assured that the reason for this was not a childish attempt to be funny. To be honest, my Qinghua University half term examinations had left me somewhat down in the dumps for my poor showing. I won't bore you with the marks – rest assured that you would hoot and jeer in derision upon hearing them – but the end of it was that I could no longer afford to sacrifice an afternoon each week to go teach English. After all, my English was good enough and I was not here to improve my teaching skills. Rather, I was paying the hefty sum of 2000 USD per year to improve my Chinese, and I was damn well going to get the money's worth from Qinghua. Furthermore, one of my extensive (let's say, two) contacts had managed to hear of an invigilating job at the Beijing Language and Cultural Institute, and this not only paid more, but was closer and much easier to prepare for (the main drawback being that I was not expected to develop fun and interesting person-to-person relations with the examinees).

Alinestra happened to drop into Beijing at around this time, and took full advantage of my free time to demand that I guide her around the city's fun spots. In actuality, I should tell it like it is, and say that she hauled me along to the places of interest to her. Nor did she play the helpless stranger alone in a foreign land, either – our first compatriots in this mad crawl were a series of French girls whose acquaintance she had made earlier at some dimly sinister gathering. Thus, fueled by drink, allergy medicine, and large quantities of blood-born gender-specific hormones, we embarked to varying degrees of consent on THE RELUCTANT CLUBBER'S CRAWL.

The Banana Gambit
Our first stop was Banana, one of many typical dance clubs now mushrooming in Beijing. This is pretty normal so far as international fare goes - people are frisked at the doors, and the oppressively loud dance tracks are well audible even three floors down from the club itself. Interior ambience is nonexistent because of the music, atmosphere is recycled exhalations and deodorized bodily scents, and the drinks (as expected) are astronomically expensive. In addition to the inadequate lighting, there was an impressive strobe array overlooking a central mosh pit of sorts. It was into this that I forced myself in a hedonistic headlong charge, determined to sample the full cultural osmotic intake of the club environment.

There was a guilty secret that I had originally thought to hide from Alinestra - this was my first time in a club of any description. Actually, this was not such a bad secret, because it is not entirely true. The full story is that this was my first time in a club that was not a gay club. One previous expedition out with a few classmates and a pair of teachers led (one way or another) to our being turned away from every single regular club in Derby, mostly on account of us not having enough women with us. The only club that allowed us in was a fairly subdued environment called C-----'s, which was virtually empty apart from a guy in a business suit dancing on his own, and two women doing the slow and sensuous.

It wasn't until the night wore on that we became fully aware of the exclusive nature of the clientele. At this juncture, as realization dawned upon us, positions were taken up near the bar and all available barstools were firmly occupied by the more fainthearted amongst us. Ever the studious bystander, I remained standing and attempted to observe objectively what differences homosexual mating rituals might evince to heterosexual ones. Depressingly, they were pretty much the same - a mixture of vague unfocussed lechery and all-too-focussed lechery. But I digress.

Banana sold beers at the ridiculous price of 40 yuan a throw (around five US dollars). They also sold seating space - you rented a table for 300 yuan (37 USD) or a private room for something like 700, and in this way you had some assurance of a safe place to which you could stagger back after milling in the swelling crowds or headbanging like a lunatic for half an hour. We went outside for drinks, where an enterprising greybeard had set up a bottled drinks stall. There, water cost 3 yuan per bottle, a depreciation of 90% from intra-nightclub prices, and here Allie told me of her drug taking past. As it was, her past was not spectacular - certainly nothing on the pyrotechnically dazzling scale of Denise's biochemical experiments. Allie smoked nicotine (though she was trying to quit gradually) and had tried ecstasy once, but this was the limit of her adventures and she had no inclination to further them. She recalled that her one single attempt to negotiate ecstasy had ended in extreme paranoia and strong physical discomfort.

Unlike Benway, who had wholeheartedly endorsed all chemical experimentation as necessary to having a full and balanced picture of the situation, Allie shared my view - that any "fully balanced picture" requires objectivity and a clear view, free from outside influences. With drugs acting in such a powerful and direct way to influence your perception, you can never be sure afterwards what proportion of your judgements is your own, and what proportion is the effect of the drug. Therefore, although experience is valuable in many cases of judgement, in this particular case it can be clearly harmful to your ability to judge objectively.

Alinestra listened to me enumerate our stance and laughed, stating that I was probably drunk. It was good to be with her.

The return to the third floor brought a startling experience to me - in passing a man at the railings, I felt a single, sharp pain in my arm, just on the inside of my elbow. I recoiled, and immediately turned around, ignoring Allie's querying squawks, heading for the better visibility of the entrance foyer where I could examine my wound better. I remembered the tales I had heard, of HIV infected blood being injected randomly into passersby by infected individuals. Several such cases had been recorded in Wuhan, Chengdu, and Xian, although as yet no serious attacks had occurred in Beijing.

Fortunately, there was no puncture mark – only the charcoal smudge of a carelessly wielded cigarette. With a sigh of relief, I wiped it away and told Allie the full story.

"No way," she said, eyes wide as saucers.

"Way," I responded.

"Oh my God!" she said, appalled. "Are you serious? Has it happened in Beijing recently? When was the last time this sort of thing happened? I hardly feel safe now. That's ruined my whole evening."

I refrained from imparting to her the knowledge that this was the major reason behind my not going to this sort of place. The Great Dane had a different story to tell of Banana, however. Women seemed drawn to him as bears to a flank steak, though by what mysterious force I have never been able to guess at. Nevertheless, perhaps by virtue of his wealth, good looks, extreme height, or even boyish sense of humor, women of all nationalities tend to take a liking to the Great Dane. This was to hold true even in the zero-visibility, semi-toxic environment of Banana. The Great Dane was on one occasion approached by a blonde overseas student who introduced herself as having three major skills - guiding tours of Beijing landmarks, dancing in places like this, and having vigorous sexual relations with handsome foreigners for 600 yuan (75 USD). Great Dane apologised, saying that although this was his favorite hobby too, he pursued a policy never to fiscally budget for it - in other words, he didn't pay for sex.
Matters progressed and, with concessions made on both sides, the end result sounded like it was mutually acceptable to both parties.

At least with Alinestra hanging around, people stopped asking me where I came from and whether or not I was half-foreign (which isn't really true, at least genetically). She, with her fully foreign face and mannerisms, drew all their attention and unwelcome stares and questions. Banana also appeared to follow the industrial viewpoint that none of the ignorant locals can do anything right - all their professional dancers were well-defined, scantily-clad westerners, evidently brought here at great expense to convert and educate the natives. Whilst somewhat disconcerting, I pondered on this and decided that it was a mute testament to the sweeping changes across China's economy right now. Once you allow foreign competitors, you allow your own people to choose amongst other goods and products, which may very well be much better than what your own industries could produce. This was good news both for traders and for consumers (who are thus able to sell more and buy better respectively) but the biggest loser was the domestic industry. The northeastern quadrant of China, for example, used to house the nation's greatest industrial bases, but was now rapidly turning into a rust belt with government funding cut back.

At this juncture I fell off my chair. Whether this was from the profundity of my thoughts or the degree of my inebriation, we shall never know.

OFFICIAL: byebye nanjie

a moment of silence.

its finally happening: nan jie is coming down! nan jie is coming down! (and maomingnanlu in shanghai! what the hell are they thinking?!?!). city weekend magazine published an article on it. upon hearing this from my boss (?!?? - why he knew beats me) i immediately sat down determined to sms everyone in my phone (fyi: thats 221 names) that i was going to finally join the masses tonight and get wasted from nan jie oil. this is truly the end of an era and a famous pass time. IMAGINE: taking away football in the US! sure people will survive but what the hell will they do on sunday nights? (or wait, didn't they move football to monday nights or something? hmmm things to do: football - sunday or monday?) where will all the wudaokou students, beijing bums, and people like me go for pre-party?

and now lets take this to a more serious point:

but let me confide a little something about my puny brain. i am genuinely mourning the death of nanjie, for the sake of the hoards of young (and a handful of dirty old men) who live on the 5rmb beer. but how do i feel about it deep inside? methinks change is good. kind of like burning a forest to make new plants grow... i suspect this will motivate bar owners to get creative, think critically and analytically about where to place their next watering hole.

try this

carnival!!

in a country where a wall will crumble within the year of being built, clothes fall apart in the washing machines upon first wash, houses are held together by cardboard and chewing gum, bicycles are held together by rusty recycled wire, the airlines are some of the worst in the world - would you go on that country's assembled roller coaster? (this person feels the opposite of me, scroll down to the third paragraph.) this was my first thought when mazil suggested we spend sunday evening at the world carnival. jia li was like a little boy skipping around the apartment in his underwear chanting "carnival! carnival!". that convinced me to skip the regular crowd at alfa and risk my life and go. my 3 cousins, mazil & jiali, ben, and new irish friend derrek (his brother is good friends with my mom, i introduced him to the group last week when he arrived, he's settled in nicely and even snogged piao piao on saturday night the bad boy! apparently she couldn't resist his reddish hair...).

on the subway we drilled derrek for details on his kissing session with piao piao - apparently they did it more than once! and they were going to meet up after the carnival! ooooooo!!! actually to be honest i find the whole thing kind of yuck. i mean, piao piao is a beautiful girl. if i were a guy i'd probably want to bone her within the first few hours of meeting her. or even weeks. but i dunno, perhaps i say this with the influence of my growing disenchantment of my friend's lack of sincerity, but i have a knot in the back of my throat whenever i think about her (and no it aint ben's meat wand poking the back of my throat). why why why would i say this? well its somewhat of a new revelation, but a couple weeks ago she blatantly took credit for something i lost blood and sweat over. (hahaha man i'm getting good at exaggerating). i'll give the quick version, in one breath - ready? 1, 2, 3:

last year during sars with all the clubs and bars closed and the city completely deserted i came up with the party of the year which was to throw a party on the subway with my own concoction called "sars" which could make even a russian drunk and the premise was to take a shot at every subway stop which meant that by the 6th stop we were lit (and yes i drank that time) and the people who were brave enough to go loved it so much that they still talk about it 15 months later and piao piao said at the group dinner just a couple weeks, "even though i came up with the idea i decided not to go last minute because i lacked the courage"

*stab to the heart*

anyway. so well. yuck. moving on.

the carnival was not how i (pessimistically - got to work on that) predicted. it was clean! and bright! and completely imported from germany! and i'd never seen the chinese happier! they were yelping and running, clutching big stuffed dolls they'd won tossing rings, taking photos in front of the ice cream vendors (not sure why, perhaps the funky lights?). i only went on one ride as it was more fun to watch the people than the rides (actually the truth is the first ride i went on spun and spun and spun and i felt like i was hung over and green for about 2 hours after). the night ended at mcdonalds and a very happy and tired group of friends. it was definitely a great day in beijing.

bastille beijing style

last night the french in beijing did something with such openmindedness that i had newfound respect. usually the french are very clique-y - not to generalize, but its true. i should know since half my friends are french and i still find myself outsted and made fun of for my citizenship (just the other night we were having a ju er dinner - 15 of us - someone asked me if i had tried a champagne from california and before i uttered an "uh" piao piao says, "she wouldn't know shit about good alcohol because shes american," which was followed by chuckles from other french around the table). no i don't appreciate it, but it keeps me in check, builds good emotional armor, and marinates my sarcastic humor. now you might ask me as i ask myself why i choose this kind of company and thats a whole different discussion. but for now, i'll leave it as: its my choice.

bastille day. excuse to party + the french = fun fun fun. they threw the first ever block party open to the public (for years their events had been closed off from everyone BUT the fellow french. in this event everyone and their grandmother could walk in) in beijing. now, i might not have learned shite about the meaning of bastille (something to do with a castle...????), but i will certainly relate the day to good music, sweat, and cheap alcohol that even a stupid american like me could discern was nasty and had more sugar than grapes. my usual clique wasn't there, just me, ben, seb, gina (my favorite person in beijing), and her friend. in a way i was wistful for the rest of my usual friends to be there but theres a wind of change blowing, people are starting to shift, move away, change jobs, change friends. and so once again, the transistory lifestyle of beijing lives again!

manila here i come!

i've just been told by my boss that i'll be sent to manila for training for one week. it just so happens that my birthday is that week (hint: the week of august 1). YAY! anyone been to manila? anyone want to meet up in manila? i hear nightlife is fun with a side of madness, just how i like it.

night of elegance, all for 2800rmb

yesterday's social activities for a work night were highly unusual for me - showing how beijing has growing varied choices for passing time and socializing. i went to a wine tasting at a friends house! (what is more odd is that i don't drink - i made an exception last night though) it was the real deal - representatives from montrose gave us a lesson on drinking/identifying wine. ramy and e showed up as well. i was excited to see them since the day before, july 5, was their one year anniversary. they had celebrated by dining at the courtyard, once voted to be one of the top 50 best restaurants in the WORLD! (i personally think the tiny dirty xinjiang restaurant in my hutong is the best, but frommers was unavailable when i tried contacting them last they were in china). ramy told me at the restaurant people kept giving him and e looks as they held hands on the table. whats worse is the onlookers recognized ramy from tv (ramy heard them whispering) - but ramy said there was no keeping a secret on an important night (all together now, "awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!"). anyway, for some reason i get in the silliest of moods when ramy is around, so i played a mean trick on some of the people sampling the wine. since the room was lit only by candles, i figured glass of diet coke amongst the glasses of wine to be handed out would be difficult to differentiate. so ramy and i stood giggling and almost spilling red wine on the french carpet as we watched an innocent girl take the diet coke incognito, take a deep whiff, and mumble to the person next to her, "this smells lemony!" well, her reaction from sipping the guk was very reasonable - she didn't freak out, but smiled to the person next to her and said, "this is coke. i'm sampling coke." (note: i'm laughing out loud right now. my assistant does not look amused that i'm having so much fun at the office). anyway, i left soon after that for an 8pm dinner date.

piao piao treated all those who were at the hospital with her during her accident to an expensive french dinner last night. There were 9 of us: piao paio, ben, emelie, scot, myself, jiali, mazil, ludo, and french girl who i still dont know the name of (in the entry describing piao piao's accident i called her 'random girl' as well). i was reluctant to order anything since i was STUFFED from the wine tasting (i'm a sucker for finger food) but piao piao insisted i order something. ugh. thinking about how full i was last night makes me shudder. but oh so worth it! it was a lovely evening under the polluted beijing sky, good friends, french food, perverted jokes ("mazil i dare you walk past that guy and fart"). ben and i took off when the rest of the gang went for drinks - you'd think that we'd go home and do the holy naughty but no, he passed out as i sat in my underwear and watched a collection of "the best commercials in the world."

question from a reader

QUESTION: do your friends know u r writing so openly about them? i feel like such a voyeur... i love it! :D incidentally i have a friend whose name is also jiali (tho not sure if it's same chinese characters) but my said frind is a she... and, my brother is also gay - he's lucky that he doesn't have to marry someone else to get a greencard... maybe he'd for love - ha, gay marriage - talk about "extra- ordinary" and "ultra-ordinary"...

ANSWER: no, my friends have no clue, but then again i've also changed their names (although i guess if you're in beijing for some time you might spot some of them......... damn...). to be honest i don't think they'd care one bit that i was writing about them, but i prefer not to tell them as i would censor myself knowing they were readers (so hey! if any of you are reading this don't tell me!)

and though deceiving sometimes, jiali is all man.

and i hope that in my lifetime gay marriage will no longer be thought of as "extra/ultra-ordinary". kinda like how some white men used to think black people were good only for slavery and consuming watermelon 50++ years ago. that was ugly. and unconstitutional. believe me, gay marriage WILL be legalized eventually. if not, then i'm changing my nationality to the netherlands.

moore independence

i helped throw a bbq party on sunday which i didn't even attend - mazil told me i had 30 people pissed off with me, including my 3 cousins who managed to leave my mom's house where they're staying and venture past the tv with HBO. i had sent everyone texts the day before to only my good friends announcing the independence day bbq at the courtyard behind my place - nobody knew how to get there so apparently they all went to my house looking for me to tell them. my mobile was turned off so mazil had to keep answering the door in his underwear and hangover to direct groups of people to the location.

where was i you ask?

*sigh* i didn't want to use this blog to talk about my relationship, since there is more to my life than my man, but he's been permeating my thoughts recently. perhaps because his parents were visiting for the past 2 weeks and stressed him out, or perhaps because he and i have been watered-down for a couple months now, or perhaps because ben and i NEVER, EVER spend a moment alone except when sleeping, or perhaps because we're never alone, we never have any "quality time" together, or whatever excuse most couples can pull out of their ass to make for a wilting relationship, ben and i are on the rocks. sunday, independence day (hehee, not that it really matters to me, to be honest), ben was cutting a melon. i decided to take initiative, reached across him grabbing one of the halved melon, and put in in a plastic bag then fridge. during this time i was chatting on about god knows what - probably my usual mindless chatter like "this new madonna song makes my ass shake without me wanting it to - is there a song that makes you do that?". in short, i was in a good mood. he stiffened when i made my casual gesture of reaching across and for all you gutter-minded folks out there stiffened does not, unfortunately, mean boner. after putting the melon in the refridgerator i returned to ben crouched over the melon and chopping, and asked him what was up his butt because it certainly wasn't my finger... giggle. he replied, "why do you always have to take over". i cleared my throat and said, "whatchoo talkin bout bowler hat boy?" but i was starting to get peeved already - ben is ultra sensitive to things, which can be great normally - me likee sensitive boys - but in situations like the i felt coming on, could make me very very very very very angry.

he explained: he hated when he was in the kitchen and i would go in and "take over", similar to me bagging the melon. ugh. writing this is already making me squirm - it drives me nuts to argue over trite things like this. anyway, i blew up at him, saying he needed to toughen up and i was in a good mood and was not taking over and was just trying to help and blah blah blah. so he stormed out. and i went shopping. hahahaha! how cliche eh? i turned my mobile off, just 45 minutes before the bbq was to begin, hopped on my bike, and went shopping. then i went to the gym. i ended the night at a friend's house watching michael moore's farhrenheit 911 (excuse spelling) in celebration of july 4th. ironically, half the people there were at the bbq and asked me where i was. i was a little afraid as i turned my mobile phone on and received about 20 sms's asking where the hell i was, how to get to the party, how was the party, when would i arrive - all sent around 3pm that day.

i'm such a bad friend. but at least i spent independence day INDEPENDENTLY! (groan - that was terrible. don't even laugh.)