Day 5


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Asia » China » Beijing
May 24th 2014
Published: May 24th 2014
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We had a full day of class – Economics in China. After that, the program coordinator (a fellow Trojan) invited me to a USC networking event downtown. I met her at work, and we rode the subway together to the Sofitel hotel downtown. It turned out to be a wine tasting event and alumni networking, and they had about 25 New Zealand wineries pouring wine. We met a few people, and when the event ended around 8:30, a few of them invited us to grab some McDonald’s downstairs. As we were walking out, someone else said we were going to Fred’s Burgers. When we ended up in the hotel lobby with our group, a few people decided to go home instead, and we were left with 5 of us, none of whom knew where the burger place is. Fortunately, Cleo was with us (the program coordinator), who has lived in China the past 3 or 4 years, and guided the way.



A quick note on Cleopatra: her Chinese name is Hua Mulan (as in Mulan, the Chinese warrior princess in the Disney movie). She grew up in the backwoods of Florida, where she lived until she attended USC. She is African-American, has liberal viewpoints on social issues and conservative viewpoints on fiscal and economic issues, and is very outgoing. She decided to learn Chinese her sophomore year of college at USC and planned to move to China after a school trip here. Once she graduated, she moved to Beijing and worked for Peking University. She speaks fluent Chinese and the locals love her.



The others that ended up in our dinner group were 2 current masters students from USC in urban planning that are here on an internship for the summer. It was their second day in Beijing. One guy was big, loud, gregarious, and drunk – the stereotypical American. We soon found out he was a trust fund baby, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The friend was his sidekick that kept him out of trouble.



The last one in our group, the Tea Party supporter: He was in his 40’s, on the 6th month of his 1 year contract in Beijing, and was the most sarcastic person I have ever met. He had a quick wit about him, but was also very political and assumed everyone shared his same viewpoints.



Since none of us knew the burger joint, Cleo took us to her favorite burger spot. We walked in and she knew everyone in the bar. The three guys all had open wine bottles, and they told us at the door that we couldn’t drink them. Everyone agreed, and we sat down to order. It wasn’t long before Cleo and Tea Party got into a loud, heated political debate. Trust Fund leaned back and asked me to intervene. I told him I don’t have a dog in the fight, and that he started the conversation so he should intervene. He opened the bottle of wine, slammed it down on the table, told everyone to drink and that he’s buying shots. The manager was on us in a second and said he was going to charge for the bottle of wine since we’re drinking it in his bar when he told us not to. No one except Trust Fund took a drink out of it, so Trust Fund said, “Fine, how much?” The manager didn’t like Trust Fund and was trying to push his buttons, so this pissed the manager off even more. The manager said 200 ($35 – WAY too much). Trust Fund threw his card down and said “Fine – I have a trust fund.” The manager kicked us out at that point, which was ridiculous. Trust Fund was being an obnoxious American, but we were in an all-American ex-pat bar.



Cleo was furious, as she frequented this bar weekly. We moved on to another burger joint in Beijing, which wasn’t close. Trust Fund, in his drunk stupor, kept apologizing every five minutes, forgetting he had just apologized. When we get to the second restaurant, Cleo is still fired up about getting kicked out. A neighboring table came over and told her she is louder than the music (we were sitting in the bar, though…). She quieted down, we’re all getting tired, and we talk about how we’re going to get home from where we are. Tea Party asks to take a cab back with us, and Cleo responds, “I have to be blunt. I really don’t like you.” The table goes silent, gets REALLY awkward, and we still don’t even have our food yet. After a minute or two, Trust Fund blurts out, “Guys, I am so sorry for getting us kicked out…”



Finding a cab back took forever. The cabbie dropped Cleo off first, and I didn’t realize I was going to be in a cab by myself for about 15 minutes at midnight. I was so relieved I didn’t drink much that night, and that I had been paying attention to street names and landmarks throughout the trip so I knew we were heading in the right direction. Cabbies don’t speak a lick of English.



I finally made it safely back to the hotel around 12:30. Tomorrow is the Great Wall!!

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