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Published: March 30th 2008
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China is fun enough on your own. Throw in 3 friends with the stones to sac up and fly across the world for a visit and a journey to China's 4 corners (sort of) and it's downright epic. As my friends in Chengdu can attest, I had been dying for Aikes, Steve and Hannah coming out and seeing my life in China and I can promise, it did not fall short. Upon hearing that Gross had given up drinking (whaaaa??) I reacted the same way everyone else has over the last few months - he'll wake up in the gutter tomorrow morning. But, not only does he have the willpower of a saint to not stray in the face of the kind of abuse he takes from his alcoholic friends, but he isn't any less fun than if he were blacking out and coming to in random houses on Cape Cod raving about scavenger hunts. Besides, when he lit the filter of a cigarette and violently vomitted in the road, you'd never guess he was dead sober. Over the next few days we reacquainted Steve and initiated Aikes to the celebrity, debaucherous lifestyle that is being a foreigner in China. Throughout
all the K-KTV to
yang rou chuanr on the street corner til 8am, to noodles delivered straight to our beds, we somehow lost the motivation to hike mountains in the countryside - huh, go figure. For more comprehensive detail on what exactly went on that weekend, please go directly to hell - what happens in Chengdu KTV stays in Chengdu KTV. Though I gotta say, watching Aiken's eyes light up and hearing him berade Steve for not telling us sooner how awesome China is made me feel better about my decision to blow off the real world one more time and move out here (not that I ever really doubted it in the first place). And plus, finally seeing Steve-o and Goodman mutually embarrass each other with their equally boisterous Chinese helped me understand why I'm friends with these guys in the first place.
From there I figured if Aikes and Steve were headed to Beijing, Aikes would need a
baijiu drinking partner to help wash down all that roast duck. Plus, considering Hannah would be stepping off a plane there, I figured I should probably be there to let her meet us in the most ridiculous fashion possible.
If only Steve's friends "Wilson" & "Jason" hadn't put in such a poor performance that night, we could have done some serious, irreparable damage to Hannah's pysche as well as avoid some unpleasantness and unneeded fraudulent behavior. Well, I guess Hannah can always handle our charades, whereas Mr. I'm-An-Enlightened-American-Living-In-Europe (aka. Raging Douchebag) certainly walked away from our dinner with some emotional battle scars.
I guess the CCP's God-playing weather manipulator has been put into effect because we actually got to see the Beijing sky and got the fantastic weather needed for breaking and entering into historic landmarks. But really, all that the confused authority really needed to know wasn't exactly how we got in to that closed off temple, but just that we couldn't get out. And while a 2nd trip to the Forbidden City proved it really is as boring as I remembered it, an armed guard blockade of Tiananmen Sq for "communist elections" (i.e. baton distribution for clubbing Tibetans) certainly added some spice. And a 2nd hike of the Great Wall, this time with 3 of your best friends, proved it really is a amazing site worthy of returning again and again, even if it's on 2
hungover hours sleep and there's a ticket booth every 100m and the your driver is playing chicken the whole trip there and back. Maybe had Steve just flipped out on her the way he constantly berated our cabbies (let's just say he set Sino-German relations back at least a generation) and the peasants on the street then she might have actually listened to him.
From there it was time to say bye to Aikes (until he liquidates and moves back to China in the coming months) and head down to tropical Shenzhen to do my best Derek Zoolander impression. A Special Economic Zone just on the other side of Hong Kong, Shenzhen was created out of dust 28 years ago as a big "screw you Hong Kong, we can just do it ourselves." Now it's a soulless city where people come to simply make some money - like me. Basically, I got paid a month's salary for 2 days of standing around at a furniture trade show flashing a big caucasian smile for roughly 1,000 pictures and pretending to be an Australian who had a clue as to why I was even there. But after a read through the
shocking
Chinglish brochure, I discovered that this company was basically selling a few planks of wood nailed together and a storyline of how relaxing Australia is, which made me feel a lot better about taking their money. Thank God none of the customers understood English, cause one look at this shoddy "marketing piece" and you could smell the farce faster than you can say "Chengdu smoke-filled teahouse, hairbrained scheme." But this gig wasn't as easy as it sounds - pretending I couldn't speak any Chinese and not hitting on the harem of cute Chinese girls running around truly tested every fiber of my patience. I gotta say it was quite a relief to let loose a barrage of pent up Chinese on the hotel manager that charged me $20 for a single load of laundry.
Next, it was time for one last reunion with Steve-o, the Hoagster (summer in Beijing) and John Mo-fo-in' Hilton and for this, I actually got to leave China! Well, sort of - I still maintain Hong Kong is not China. Since all of us had already seen the obligatory tourist sights, this trip was more about the escape to the middle of nowhere. Middle
of nowhere in Hong Kong you say? That's right, because just a 30 minute ferry can have you on Lamma Island, where the beaches outnumber the people and you'd swear you were back in the 'nam with Beck fighting Charlie instead of right next to the most densely populated city on earth. Hanging out with a bunch of emotionally unstable hippies on a deserted island isn't an experience you can get from every world class city. I had always wondered where wealthy Hong Kongers could escape to from their 'barren rock' on weekends and if nothing else, this trip certainly gave me a better appreciation for many faces of Hong Kong.
And while I could entertain with stories on Hong Kong Island of Philipino hookers and cover bands or Indian food and late night kabobs, it was my new familiarity with Mainland China that has helped me see the city in a whole new light. From the minute you cross the border, you can sense the vibrant, international pulse of a western city which, after my experiences this year, can be confusing to the point where you long for the familiar chaos of China. Because Hong Kong is very
Chinese in atmosphere, yet western in action, the gray areas were difficult for me to get a grasp of. China's chaos might be crazier, but at least it seems to follow a discernible pattern of craziness. Throw in the fact that in Hong Kong, English is ubiquitous, the Chinese is the incomprehensible Cantonese dialogue, they use traditional characters and are free from the kind of communist propaganda that's omnipresent in the mainland and I felt like I was in some parrallel universe where up was down, hot chocolate was cold and the South won the Civil War. In learning small pieces of Cantonese, it was easy to see why Chinese is the most
ridicured rangruages in the West - so much of it is so unpronouncable that Chinese characters cannot be used and must be replaced by a phonetic spelling. And considering that the rest of the world knows China mostly through the high culture of Hong Kong and the low culture of poor Guangdong province immigrants, it's easy to see why the rest of mainland's culture and language is still relatively unknown. It was interesting to hear how Hilton (Mr. Hong Kong, himself) longed to return to China and reminded me why it's not quite the city for me, at least just yet. But, I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens when I finally, at long last, do decide to rejoin the real world.
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