a big let down

I have been living my life in a bit of a bubble...

Eating at the same gaifan restaurants, hanging out with the same laowai people, trying to find jobs in the same foreign places.

After the horror that was 2 weeks ago--post still to come--I was excited to get out of the doldrums.

I have been teaching, in some form or another for going on 4 years. Tonight was the first time I had a student ditch--Now for you students out there, block your ears--and it was nice and liberating. I knew I was getting paid, and I had an extra free hour and a half on my hands.

So I went to my favorite, nay, the most convenient restaurant near my apartment. I finished my gaifan, and prepared to leave. On my way out, a group of five laoren came in, and invited me for a drink.

Those who know me, besides my parents, and dare I say it, though I know it will know it will do no good, block your ears, you parental units, you who of all things knowledgeable are known, block your ears. As I was saying, you who know me, who are not related to me by blood, know that I am not one to turn down a drink, a strange smelling pot of soup, an elephant ball full of strange meat, and by ball, I mean sack. (With this distinction, I have to ask...what is an elephant ball, if not an elephant sack? A small plastic sphere, where tiny elephants are contained? Whereby these tiny elephants are able to roll themselves down to a basement darkness unknown by almost all normal-sized pachyderms? I realize now that I may have digressed.)

I sat to drink. After my time in Ningxia, I had been prepared. I could drink beer before Ningxia, but Baijiu was a learned skill from that time in my life. Say it with me, as would Shakespeare, learn ed. Not learned, by any means...but learn id.

We sat, we drank. One of my hosts pointed out that our boss host was a policeman. By the revealer's face, I can only assume I was supposed to be shocked and disgusted by this...but nay, my father is a judge, and you need to muster something much higher than a simple policeman to shock this one.

So I drank with the policeman, acknowledging that we had lived in the same building for 6 months without me knowing. After this fact came to light, I spent a huge amount of time, relative to drinking, remembering all their faces.

I kept trying to secure their phone numbers. To know a policeman, who works in my neighborhood, is a huge windfall. (Oh, you're robbing a liquor store? Oh, but you know Policeman Wang? No problem...we'll see you at the gaifan place.) But they protested. If you have a problem, all you have to do is knock, they said. As a fairly Buddhist fellow, I could not help but to agree.

So we sat and drank, and drank and sat, and only since sitting is more comfortable, we sat as much as we drank, and it all turned out about equal.

Then we said "Zouba!" and turned to leave, as that is what zouba means.

We reached the intersection in the road where we would all turn the same way. It was at that point I realized that racism cuts both ways. Negative and positive. They clearly thought that I was a laowai from their building, while in fact I was a laowai from another building. So we walked apart, most likely never to see another again, since there is roughly a million people in my block.


God, let that policeman remember me.



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Glossary

gaifan (n)--literally left-over rice, refers to a single serving of Chinese food served over a bed of rice.
laowai (n)--literally old foreigner, somewhat derogatory term for...you guessed it...foreigner. 'Cause we look so old.
laoren (n)--same lao...old people.
baijiu (n)--literally white liquor, most likely the worst alcohol on the planet. Made from sorghum, once one has had a hangover from this nasty stuff, they are able to smell a bottle being opened from 100 yards.
zouba (interjection)--let's go!

wow...hiatus. and soda.

I figure at this point no one is reading this blog, and for good reason...not posting in a month in a half (two months?) will wreak havoc on a person's readership. But some things I have come across recently need to be commented on.

One of the first happened when I went out the country for a celebration with the director of my company. I'm often dragged along so the clients can see that this organization has real clout. I mean, what more could you ask for than a big (for China) bearded foreigner? As the festivities began, things were traveling along the same old path. Baijiu and beer were produced, and the jinging (or showing respect by toasting the person and both of you drinking) began. Then the games began.

This is where things took a turn for the weird. We were drinking with a few people from my organization, and probably 8 farmers, half men, half women. The women, instead of drinking baijiu or beer, procured liter bottles of soda (Future Cola, an even nastier version of Coke), and proceeded to drink that.

Now at first, I enjoyed seeing the use of such a vile beverage (second only to baijiu) as a punishment. It seems to me that a drink with that much sugar should only be used for such a teeth rotter of a torture. But as the night went on and these women farmers drank more and more of it, I began being unable to imagine drinking that much soda. At a certain point, they called over their children to help them out. It was bizarre to seeing kids helping their parents out in a drinking game, but they enjoyed it. But only up to a point. After two glasses of sugary goodness?, he decided he'd had enough and refused to drink more. Score one for health.

Things in China have been going well, and I'm sorry that I haven't been writing. But life is good. In less than 2 months I'll be back in the States. I already miss it.

my birthday

After a harrowing night of drinking and hotpot (yes, hotpot) I was informed (again, see the previous post) that I would be traveling to the country on Saturday. Disappointed that I wouldn't be able to sleep in, I woke up hung over for a rollicking, incredibly bumpy ride into the country-side.

First thing I encountered of notice was this interesting plant growing next to corn in a farmer's field. Interesting...very interesting. I was told it was hemp, and only used for the rope and oil that is extracted from it. It was not 大麻 which those leaves might bring to mind.

We were taking a Beijing professor on a whistlestop tour of the country side, so we stopped at many places. The second was a village on the top a rise in a sweeping land. It was breathtaking.

After contemplating the view for a few minutes, we went inside to have ostensibly have lunch. Much to my surprise, my coworkers brought in a western style cake, complete with heaps of frosting. My friends were upset there weren't 25 candles, but I told them it would be okay. We ate the cake, and then started to play drinking games. Beer and sickly sweet frosting are delicious! After a few drinks, we ate lunch for real, which really was delicious...I just didn't quite like the order of the courses.

After that, and a few more beers, we hopped back into the car, and traveled one of our driver's homes where a group of college volunteers were staying. Drinking many beers and then getting into the backseat of an offroading SUV is never a good idea. But I was able to maintain composure.

For much of the time we drove next to an irrigation ditch which flowed throughout the countryside. It is by far and away the most water I've seen in Ningxia up to this point. It must have gone for miles, and in at least two places crossed valleys in huge aquifers. I cannot imagine the amount of physical labor that made this amazing construction.

Finally we arrived at the second village, and immediately I was pulled into another game of liar's dice, but thanks to some luck and some skill (if I say so myself) I was able to escape relatively unscathed.

We returned to Yanchi at about 3 and I rested for a few hours before I was picked up (again, not my plan) and taken to dinner. My plan was to have dinner with my friends at the office (read those do not make me drink), instead I went with a driver to meet his friends in a restaurant while my evening hangover set in. As the night went on, and the room filled with cigarette smoke, my mood steadily worsened. They had gotten me another cake (this one had happy birthday in English, as well as a dog! [my chinese zodiac sign]). This one I convinced them to eat after the meal. We played liar's dice again, but I refused to drink very much, so by the end, I was watching a bunch of drunk Chinese people speaking to fast for me to understand playing drinking games. Just the way I wanted to spend my birthday.

That curmudgeonenous aside, I'm sure they meant it to make me happy, so I tried to force a smile. Unfortunately, many of you know what a great poker face I have, so they may have had an idea about how I felt.

At least now I'm 25...and you know what that means...Hertz baby! Yeah!