saturday night fever

Yesterday's happenings, when looking back on it, there transpired a series of events that can only be described as an epic adventure that one day will become a tale of the ancient myth that my life will surely become. Thank God, cuz Lord knows I was starting to run out of things to write about. Be warned, this is going to be an extensive entry, and you might want to go to the bathroom before we leave home. I don't think there's going to be anywhere to stop once we get on the road.

The events of the day which set this journey ablaze began at 2:30, when we all headed over to this hip, trendy art gallery district to wander the hallowed halls of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse district converted into this post modern bastion for some pretty fascinating stuff. My mental concoctions inspired by that trip are ones which will hopefully be documented here for you all to read, but without concrete examples to supply much needed stoking to the fire that are my emotions during sojourns to art galleries, they loose a lot of their potency. However, the one thing I will well you about the art galleries was that I saw the best graffiti I've seen in a while, simply because of the ridiculousness of it. One said "walls are monsters" while the other instructed me to "do the death monkey." They made me smile. Regardless, after the art galleries, we managed our way down to Wangfujing, a priced-up shopping district where we hoped to eat dinner before our, obvious, Saturday night interaction with the Beijing nightlife. Here's where our story gets good.

Wangfujing is actually a pretty cool shopping district... if only I had the $300 to buy a shirt in any of the trendy, international brand stores. From Paul Smith to Dunhill (regrettably the fashion company, not the cigarette brand) to Nike, even dabbling in a few Mont Blanc pens and a VW dealership, this mall was clearly a haven for the wealth of foreigners to come, support the growing Chinese consumer economy and generally get themselves all flied up in the largest collection of hot threads I've seen in a while. Needless to say, I wished I was about $100,000 richer. But, like being at Vegas strip show, I could look, but no touching. Other than wandering around the mall, there wasn't much a bunch of broke-ass college students could really do here. Oh, this does bring me to an interesting observation I have made about being in China, a little shallow, but it makes me feel good. Whenever I'm out in public, largely this happens in the subway stations but it's happened numerous times elsewhere, I always find myself catching eyes with Chinese girls who are clearly with their boyfriends. Now, deep down inside I know that, despite what I'd like to believe about my radiating magnetic sex appeal, they are probably looking at me because I'm a white guy in China. However, I still like to pretend that they are totally undressing me with their eyes and saying to themselves "I'd leave my boyfriend for a night with this stallion." Eh, a guy can dream, can't he?

After departing the mall, we began walking towards a restaurant for dinner, abandoning our previous notions of going to the Outback Steakhouse for a few comforts of home and, a most likely, overpriced steak dinner. We eventually find our dumpling house, but not before a few trials and tribulations. First, we walk past this absolutely gorgeous Catholic church right smack in the middle of the shopping district. While a holy house such as this seemed rather out of place surrounded by kiosks of commerce dripping with neon lights and, if I'm not mistaken, down the road from a McDonald's, it was one of those moments where you find a strange sense of emotional peace in the beauty of something amid the consumer overload that modern life has brought. Where it not what happened next, that feeling might have stayed longer than 4 and a half seconds. Oddly, there was a cement truck making a valiant attempt at a three point turn in a space that hardly looked big enough for it to even fit lengthwise. As I, along with everyone else I was rolling with, walk right by it, the truck lets out a cacophonous explosion as it backfires. The bang reverberates inside the courtyard of the church we were across the road from and leaves all of us momentarily deafened in the right ear. It was one of those moments that just shocks you to your core and makes you kinda wanna throw up afterwards. It was not a happy surprise, but a good story for the book of life, and one that I can safely say, few people have been through. If the night had ended there, that still would have provided three decent sized paragraphs of blog material. That would have been nice.

Dinner ended and our Saturday night shenanigans began in full force. A trip over to Sanlitun, a bar district if I haven't told you about it before, resulted in rampant displays of fresh moves juxtaposed with awkward dancing at a bar called Shooters famous for, as you may have guessed, its deliciously small volumed, high alcohol content drinks. After a few drinks there, and some impure thoughts about the girls at the table across from us who turned out to be 17, we moved on to a reputably hot club called Babyface. But, as many things in life turn out to be, the journey was half of the story. We get in a cab on the packed street and try to drive towards the next stop of the night. However, we shortly come face to face with a cab driving straight for us down the wrong side of the road. This wouldn't necessarily be as big a problem as it ended up being had there not be a metal divider separating the two sides of the road. What was he thinking. So our cab driver, obviously being an incredibly resourceful individual, begins to back down the road, and changes lanes. So we are now backing down wrong side of the road, traveling with traffic, facing the cabs in front of us. Continuing in the vein of the night, there's a first time for everything in China.

We arrive at the club Babyface, and already I'm a fan of the decor. It's kind of got this royal black and red thing going on. Sleek, black tiles covering the walls, red carpet lining the floor, crystal chandeliers and silver strings of beads accenting a lighting scheme that played up the techno modernity of it all and played down the underlining feeling that you were in a 15th century English castle. Had it not been for the 35 yuan beers, I could have done some real damage at that place. Just to put this in perspective, the beers at Shooters were only 10 yuan, so you can imagine my upset to find out I had to pay three and a half times that here. I should have known it would be a rip after I found out that they didn't even serve any brands of Chinese beer. Sidestory. So our new plan is to find wherever the nearest convenience store is to the club we are enjoying (surprisingly, it's most likely a 7-11) buy cheap, shitty beer inside there for 2 yuan, and drink it outside the club in the street, because there are, much to the enjoyment of the alcoholic inside me, no laws against public drinking on the streets of China. Back to the story. Oh, the bathroom attendant in the club is possibly my favorite person ever to work in a bathroom. The first time I went in there, walking behind a string of girls I had come with, as I was washing my hands, he told me that he "thought the girls I was with were very beautiful" (a rough translation). The second time I went into the bathroom, he gave me a lollipop and told me to give it to one of my female friends. He was a nice man.

I get out of the bathroom and am suddenly caught up in a whirlwind of reclaiming coats and hailing cabs to venture to another club of which I am still not sure of the name. As far as I can tell, only one person in our group knew where this club was, or at least the name of it rather, and, unfortunately, it wasn't any of our cab drivers. I guess one of the guys thought he knew where it was and told one of the cabs because I was in a cab that was told to "follow the car in front of you." After driving to an area of the city that can only be described as a financial district peppered with the usual construction sites that accent this city, we got out of the cab, convened with the rest of our crew, and most of us planned to go home. Once again, if only my night could have ended here, I'd still have 5 and a half decent paragraphs of material. But in order to convey to you the full extent of the shit that went down yesterday, press on we must. So I, along with three other people roommate included, hailed a cab and began to make our way back to Beida. Which clearly wasn't so much in the cards for us. I must emphasize that I am extremely cold, dressed thoroughly inadequately for a night on the town, and am no where even close to drunk, which is fine, cuz the cab driver was inebriated enough to cover the 4 of us.

Our intoxicated cab driver, driving about 10 miles an hour through the city, clearly has absolutely no idea where we are going. He obviously knows the rough area, but I find it impossible that he "forgot" as he so eloquently put it, where the cities largest, and most well known university, is located. A cabbie, clearly taking you for a ride, is a cabbie not worth sticking with. So we get out of the 6th cab I'd been in since about 5pm, and find another one to take us home. We know that we're relatively close to school, we just have no idea exactly where it is and it's obvious not within walking distance (meaning it was more than about 20 feet away from where we were standing). Finally we made it home, apparently well after our friends did, despite the fact that we got into the first cab that left and most of them were still deciding if they wanted to actually make more than a cursory glance at their surroundings to find this place.

So there you have it, a tale that rivals Odysseus' perilous journey home after the close of the Trojan War. Sure his involved a lot more sex on the isle of Calypso, but he didn't get to eat the most delicious dumplings I've ever seen, which, in the end, is all that this story was really about. Sorry to take up so much of your time, but I at least hope you cracked a smile a few times during this story. If not, the full price of your admission will be refunded and your wasted time will be credited to your account. Just come find me after the show. I'll be the guy in the back trying to open the safety seal on this bottle of Children's Tylenol.

there's a rumbly in my tumbly...

happy endings

I just got out of a largely disappointing shower. There’s a good mental image for you: me, all soapy and naked in the shower. I think I just turned myself on. So, that should fill those long, cold, lonely nights I’m most certain you are plagued by. No thanks, the happiness I get from the knowledge that you might be relieving your sexual tension with me in mind is more than enough. But in all seriousness, my shower was extremely unsatisfactory until it finally got warm at the end, kind of like sex with an 11 year old boy from Thailand. It was totally down for one of those hot and steamy showers. You know, the kind where you feel like the top layer of your skin is melting off but you don’t care that it hurts because it feels so good and you kind of like the pain, you bad boy you? Instead, this was just cold and depressing, like Margaret Thatcher’s industrial expansion policy. Seriously, Maggie, what a let down.

Blogger is inaccessible right now. Which means that I’ll have to write this in word and, by the time you read it, much like acid washed jeans or a pair of L.A. Lights, this will be outdated. But nevertheless, I have some long overdue stories to tell, stories which, akin to a Sunday night Cops marathon, promise to both amuse and delight with the misfortune of others. (Note: No people were harmed in the making of this blog, only a few dignities here and there).

Some night this past week a group of people on the program went out to a restaurant just off campus to eat Peking Duck and indulged in a deliciously delectable dining discourse (P.S. I love alliteration). I really can’t remember what day though. I’d venture a guess to say Sunday, but I’m pretty sure my excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol during my collegiate carrer have destroyed my short term memory like it was the Berlin Wall circa 1990. No matter, I still remember the important details of the meal, which is all that matters in life, right? As many good stories go, this one occurred in the bathroom.

So at one point during the meal, as is natural, I had to make my way to the pissery to relieve myself, cuz no one likes eating with an uncomfortably full bladder. I open the door and the dank stink of urine smacks me in the face like Ike Turner. Needless to say I was more than mildly disgusted, but this is China, so the overt smell of bodily fluid has become somewhat mundane at this point. Regardless, I approach the urinal and begin to do what comes naturally in front of a urinal (I’ll give you a hint: pop n’ lock is not the answer). As would be expected, a Chinese guy walks up and positions himself in the urinal next to me. However, he elects to stand an in appropriate foot and a half away from the urinal. I dunno if he was training for some urinal peeing distance record or what, but it was entirely unnecessary and made me more uncomfortable than that time I saw You’ve Got Mail in the new Concrete Megaplex sitting on a G.I. Joe action figure the whole time. Whoever decided to make an entire movie theatre out of concrete really should have thought that one through more. Anyway, as we were peeing, I began to forsee that a problem would arise somewhere near the end of his urinal experience. As any guy knows, or any underage girl who’s been with R. Kelly, when you arrive at the end of your time in a bathroom, the velocity of your stream, as well as the distance it projects, tends to diminish. A Chinese man standing a full 18 inches away from the toilet will no doubt give the floor a good washing in his own urine before the day is over. Which is exactly what happened to this man. As he finished peeing, he began to wiz all over the floor with seemingly no qualms or regret towards his complete disregard for common bathroom etiquette. I was more shocked at this than I was at Kevin Fedderline’s music career. ZING! But the story contines.

The only other table in the room we were in was a table full of Chinese men obviously getting drunk as they were ordering large bottles of Qingdao by the case. The only way to describe these men is that it legitimately looked like we were sitting next to a meeting of the heads of Beijing’s underground crime syndicates. During our meal, one of them, obviously plastered like drywall, gets up and begins to sing. Politely, and having no idea what the fuck was going on, we applaud at the end of his song. The Chinese mob bosses then begin to encourage us to sing. Naturally, we break out into Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” because what other choice did we have. Never have I had more fun singing “Don’t Stop Believing” than to a group of Chinese men in a restaurant while eating Peking Duck, and believe you me, I’ve had a great deal of fun in my life singing “Don’t Stop Believing.” One of the men, after our song, asks us if that is our national anthem. No, Mr. Chinaman, but it clearly should be. I thought the Eurovision Song Contest was over, but clearly I was wrong. The guy who was signing before gets up for an encore and begins singing some Chinese folk song directly to us. Like watching Memento for the first time, I had no idea what was going on. But all in all, it was a good time, dinner and a show.

Ok, I just took a break to watch some of The West Wing. I bought the entire series at this mini-mart on campus called Wu Mei for 426 yuan (just over $50 US). If life outside my room was an immune system, The West Wing would the AIDS slowly destroying it.

The next of my two stories for this evening comes from Tuesdays journey through the hutongs of Beijing. For those of you who don’t know, I guess the best way to describe a hutong is and old community settlement in Beijing that is essentially a collection of side streets and alleyways. Very quaint and interesting to stroll through. I don’t know if it was just that it was winter or that the hutongs really don’t get many tourists, but we were rather conspicuous as the only white people in the immediate vicinity, shining beacons of Western capitalism. Yet, the overabundance of Engrish (such as “Our restaurant make happy time,” an actual sign I saw on one of the restaurants) would lead you to believe that this area would be teeming with tourists. I think the valiant attempt at proper translations on the menu at the Chinese Muslim place we ate at took the cake. The food was absolutely divine, but it was difficult trying to decide between the “Moving Meet” and the “Beef Creature Seeking Refuge.” But somewhere amid the putrid bathrooms that reaked of moldy excrement, antique opium pipes, and Ms. Lee’s Massage Parlor (definitely a front) there shines another story worth documenting. It’s short, but it accurately captures the foundation of China’s economy: misunderstandings with white people.

We walk into a barbershop because Pat spontaneously decided that needed a haircut there as opposed to the 14 other barbershops we passed in the hutong. The sing on the outside said, “The second floor is a bar.” I got really excited, because we all know how much I love drinking before the sun goes down and how a beer makes waiting for anything a little more tolerable. Which brings me to my next point: they totally should put a bar inside the DMV. Think about how much happier people would be waiting to get their license renewed if they could throw back a couple Jack and Cokes or pound a few shots of tequila before getting up to the window. Actually scratch that thought. People are generally pissed off when they go to the DMV, so I feel like getting a bunch of frustrated citizens all liquored up would be a bad call. Especially given that a pen can so quickly become an impaling object and we all know how many pens the DMV carries. Moving on. So when we get inside, we ask if there really is a bar upstairs. The woman working the reception desk had a look of shock on her face, as if we had just told her we purchased the Showgirls VIP Limited Edition collectors set, complete with Showgirls shot glasses, Showgirls playing cards, and years of ridicule and shame. She responded, “I dunno if it’s open. I have to make a few calls.” At this point, it dawns on us that the shocked look on her face and the “calls” she had to make would lead us to a situation where we’d get caught with our pants down… and a Chinese hooker on the end of our knobs. We quickly canceled our request to go to the bar and quietly took a seat before we caused any more unintended solicitations for sex. It was awkward.

As always, there are more stories from the Beijing Opera that is my life, but merely anecdotes that do not themselves warrant their own post. Thus, I encourage you to check back soon cuz, like a hot and healthy shit, this just gets better ‘till it’s all gone. I leave you with this parting question: if things are always “the best thing since sliced bread,” what was the basis of comparison before bread was sliced, and moreover, how long has mankind been slicing bread, and surely can’t we find something better to start comparing things too? The mind wonders.

join me for a drink at The Silken Shag...

crossing things off my list

Unfortunately, much to your disappointment I assume, I don't have an enthralling epic tale of drunken debauchery or hilarious misunderstandings between myself and the population of Beijing to tell you tonight. Instead, against the backdrop of some smooth jazz courtesy of Miles Davis, I have many existential ponderings on life, the universe and everything, that much like a Cleveland steamer, I need to get off my chest.

Life is a series of small adventures. I know that sounds arcane, cliche and the kind of thing you would find printed one of those cheesy inspirational pictures you can find at those kiosks in the mall for $19.99. You know, those ones that say "PERSEVERANCE" and have a completely disjointed picture of a cliff with a lighthouse and waves breaking on the rocks bellow. I've never understood those anyway. But in all seriousness, life is a series of small adventures strung together that serve to shape the person you are based on how you approach your discovery of the unknown. Obviously, some have greater significance to your life and pose much greater risks and rewards for embarking on them than others, but in the end every step you take is another one towards the unknown. We all have assumptions of what is going to happen to us in life based on previous experience, the McDonald's effect as I like to call it. McDonald's was established on the basis of repetition and similarity. You know exactly what you're getting when you walk into a McDonald's anywhere in America, largely the world over too. It's an ingenious business plan and that was what sparked the initial appeal of the restaurant. People go there for the comfort of knowing that they can, at any time, anywhere in the world, get a Big Mac and a Coke and it will taste the same in Boston, Boise or Bangladesh. The point of all that rambling was, life is not like McDonald's, as much as some people pretend it to be. We assume we know what's going to happen to us during our day to day activities based on previous experiences, and, by and large, we're right. But in reality, we could walk down the road and get hit by a bus or run into someone at a coffee house who turns out to be our one true love at any given moment. Sure none of those things are very likely to happen in the grand scheme of things, but it is entirely possible that they will, and perhaps one of the reasons they don't is because no one is fully prepared to dive head first into the adventures that life proposes (well, not that anyone would want to be hit by a bus. That would be a terribly unfortunate fate.) I think being abroad, thrust into an entirely new situation in life has made me realize that most of people's lives are spent squarely inside their "comfort zone," unwilling to venture to far outside or put yourself out there too much for fear of the consequences of the "unknown." I've been to and lived in China before, but never with this kind of freedom and never for this length of time. But instead of being something to avoid, people should embrace the unknown because those are the surprises, big and small, that make life a pretty fantastic institution, in my humble opinion. I arrived at these ruminations a few days after settling down in Beijing but have firmly cemented them as the initial "tourist mode" of being in a foreign city begins to wear off and I slowly come to the realization that I'm going to be living here in Beijing for the next 3 and a half months. I don't quite know what all this means yet, or how this notion will ultimately begin to shape my approach to studying abroad and my interactions with the people that I meet, but it's something to consider for now.

(Side note, cuz we all know how much I love my side notes: So I just went to the bathroom between paragraphs and when you turn on the light in the bathroom it flickers on and off for about 10 seconds before settling down. Most people would be annoyed by that I feel but I'm kind of into it. It makes me thing that a little techno dance party is going to happen before I pee and I get all excited and into it. But alas... my dream can only last so long...)

Speaking of McDonald's (wow... like a high school pregnancy, that connection to the earlier paragraph was incredibly unplanned) I actually do have a story about McDonald's from last week that I've been meaning to find a way to sneak into an entry at some point. Fate works in mysterious ways. Anyway so last week, before our late night class on Wednesday, a bunch of us, needing something fast to eat and craving a delicious injection of processed meet and preservatives, walked down to the McDonald's that's not too far from campus. There wasn't anything typically exciting about the food, except for the fact that McDonald's in China carries fried chicken, and we all know I loves my fried chicken more than I loves my liquor... and as evident from my previous posts, we all know how much I loves my liquor. But that's beside the point. The point is we definitely got stared at more than usual for breezing in and out of the restaurant in about 20 minutes. As we all know, the rule of thumb is "you don't spend more than half an hour in a McDonald's." "Why" you ask? a) there's no reason to and 2) the only people who do that are hobos in New York City down on 12th and Broadway who manage to squeeze in a nap in those 24 hour McDonald's, but they usually get kicked out soon enough anyway. And you, sir, may I remind, are no hobo. But in China, as the only interesting reading I did during my City and Regional Planning 101 class Sophomore year told me, McDonald's is more of a social hang out spot (clearly with a matching decor to accompany such a lifestyle). But this is most definitely true, as hardly anyone left while we were in the restaurant and most of these people were there when we arrived. One guy was definitely just maxin' in the corner with his little kid that I totally wanted to steal... but more on that later. This really isn't the time or the place to be discussing my secret desire to steal a Chinese baby and raise it as if it were my own. He might catch on that we're entirely different races eventually, but by that time, we'll be well on our way back to America and long down the road towards our joyous life together, me and my Chinese baby. Again with the ramblings. The point is that it was just interesting to see this in action. I mean, we usually get stared at like we have a penis coming out of our nose or something, but this time we were definitely getting the "what are you doing? this is purely illogical!" stare vs. the "look, look! white people!" stare. It was just fascinating to see this in action. I mean, I didn't feel bad, cuz we totally invented McDonald's which means we can pretty much do whatever we want to inside and it's socially acceptable... well... next to that time I stripped butt ass naked and decided to propose to McDonald's a venture into the fashion sector by creating a prototype of fully edible clothing made entirely of McDonald's products. I called it the McSuit. I don't know why it didn't pan out but the cops didn't seem too impressed either. It was just interesting to see another approach to the institution of McDonald's. It's funny, but it makes you think.

Well, on that mind tingling note I think I'll close this for now. Partially because it's 3:30 am, partially because I really can't find a clever and witty way to work in anymore of the things I wanted to write about without forcing it out like a hefty colon of constipation. Wow, I make entirely too many poo jokes for someone who is, in theory, the future of America. No one should ever give me that kind of responsibility. Ah, whatever. I'm sure even Shakespeare made is fair share of poo references that got lost in translation from Old English to today. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in the original reading of Romeo and Juliet, "What light through yonder window breaks" was supposed to read "Here, milady. Haveth some poo!" At which point Romeo began flinging about feces in celebration of finding his one true love. But I could be mistaken.

that is not what she said and you know it...

weekend warriors

So the Internet has crapped out again and I’m avoiding my reading like it was the smelly kid in class. You know that kid who not only smells like moldy cheese stuffed into a hockey equipment bag but whose stench also clings to anything it touches including your very skin so no matter what you do you’re still gonna smell like that until you scratch off the top layer of your epidermis in a shower or molt like a snake. If you don’t know this kid, it means it’s probably you. Which means I must once again MacGyver myself a post in Word with the hopes that it will make it online sometime in the not too distant future. Small victories. But a lot of blog worthy material has occurred in the past few days, material which obviously must be documented and will no doubt destroy my future political career, but, hopefully, that of anyone implicated in, and associated with, the events that transpired. Who am I kidding, that road in my life was closed a long time ago.

Capping off the first week of classes was our first of many weekly Chinese tests. Which obviously meant that there was no going out on Thursday night. However, the test provided a plethora of reasons to drink our sorrows away on Friday, reasons that go far beyond the normal, day to day pain of living that usually provides the impetus for my alcoholic misadventures. We ventured out to a somewhat classier bar than the watering holes we frequent near the Beida campus. The place we spent most of the night at, obviously closing it down at 3am as is our style, was Bar Blue, which had what I, much like my affinity for slathering my naked body in pancake batter, have secretly desired to own my entire life, a light up floor that was, unsurprisingly, blue. The club had a pretty hot set up. There was a lounge section upstairs which had a few TVs that, when we first got in there, were showing cricket highlights of a match between England and Australia, which made me happy. After the highlights ended, they started playing episodes of Jackass, which raised many questions, most predominantly “why?” There aren’t any particularly good stories from the bar itself, mostly post drunk shenanigans.

So we leave the club and myself, Ping, my roommate, and Pat, the cat from BC, decided to get food at this place that was right by the exit to the building the bar was in, cuz lord knows China’s lack of 24 hour diners won’t stop me from gorging myself when I’m half cockeyed after a night of drinking. So we get what can only be described as a lamb burrito. I think it was Turkish food, but really I’m just making that up cuz it sounds good. It was lamb, peppers and a sauce that must have been made out of liquefied crack rocks it was that good, all deliciously wrapped up in a convenient, portable tortilla. I’m fairly confident there were other things all up in there, like lettuce and tomato, but it was half past drunk when we got them and the ingredients to this culinary concoction were largely inconsequential. It could have been person caked in cat poop but as long as it tasted good, I would have eaten it. So as we’re walking and eating Ping, drunk out of his gourd, starts chatting up this random girl who happened to be walking in the same general direction as us. I’m pretty sure he was too drunk for creativity, because his lines consisted of “Where are you going?” and “How do you pronounce your name?” It must have worked because he got her number, surprising the masses more than the OJ verdict. We never saw her again. Then I took as piss in a construction site and we went home. If this was the only late night adventures of the weekend, I’d still consider this a weekend for the books. But like pee in a swimming pool or posthumous 2pac albums, there’s always more.

Last night, I legitimately hadn’t planned on going out. However, being the little social butterfly that I am, I got sucked into another night of cruisin’ and boozin’ down on Wu Dao Kou at a place called Propaganda. Somewhere around my 2nd Flaming Dr. Pepper of the night, I lost my original plan of pacing myself and keeping the drinks to a minimum. Once again, this is the kind of club that has a lounging area on the first floor and a hot city dance club in the basement. We definitely cut up the dance floor like it was an expired credit card. Side note for those of you to whom this is relevant: I definitely saw a girl wearing an AIESEC t-shirt in the bar. I would have said something to her had I not been on my way to Regretsville and she on her way to bathroom. But at least I know there’s someone in AIESEC in Beijing who goes clubbing. Anyway I digress.

After working up quite an appetite re-educating the population of Beijing on what the word “dancing” really means and bringing copious amounts of sexy back, Ping and I ventured into the street to pick up some meet on a stick form a street vendor. But clearly, we couldn’t just buy food from him and leave like normal people. We had to stay outside in the freezing cold for about an hour and get him to tell us his life story, all the while, drinking 2 yuan beer from the 7-11 that was next to the club. I definitely tried to speak to him in Chinese, which was a terrible life decision given that I could barely speak English at that point. To make a long story shortish, Wang Bing is now my new favorite person in Beijing, a fact I reminded him of numerous times, both in English and Chinese, last night. The smooth operations of the night, however, were soon disrupted when Mr. Empty Wallet showed up and made us a heaping bowl of problems. I’m still incredibly disturbed by this, because that means I either a) gave a shit ton of unnecessary money to Wang Bing or one of the many other people I financially interacted with last night, b) got robed by someone who took my wallet out of my pants, removed the money but then replaced my wallet so I wouldn’t find out until the most inopportune moment or c) dropped well over 500 yuan at the bar, which seems damn near impossible. Regardless of the reasons, which, like David Copperfield, the magician not the Dickensian waif, amaze and mystify me, we were broke as a joke with no way to get home other than the bipedal mobility we have so thankfully been given by years of evolution. So, after being lied to about the existence of an ATM anywhere in the vicinity of the bar, Ping and I end up power walking it home at 4:30 am, which was incredibly unfortunate because I had just purchased the most uncomfortable yet fresh looking shoes at the Silk Market earlier in the day. Long and short of it, we finally get home and there was much celebrating in the form of passing out on top of my computer being too drunk to move it to the floor.

I need to stop having such an exciting, fast paced life because there is definitely a hidden weapons cache of material I have to write about, largely falling under the category of personal reflection and observation rather than the hilarious documentation of my antics in the Orient. But for now, those, along with stories of McDonald’s and karaoke, will have to wait until later, because it’s 1 am and I still have some reading to finish off like I was Lu Kang and it was Johnny Cage at the end of a match in Mortal Kombat. Plus, I need to give you time to stew in your jealousy so I can fully appreciate my study abroad experience. Until we meet again.

i kid because i love…

24 hour party people

With the advent of the Internet, mankind had discovered a way to communicate instantly with his fellow human through a carefully maintained network of servers and computers. Researchers predict that the internet will, one day, be a necessary tool, vital not only in the military, political, and corporate sectors of society, but also in personal, everyday life, mostly, regrettably, for voyeurism, expressed largely in the form of YouTube and porn. Today's post is brought to you by the Internet, helping you live vicariously through other people since the late 1980s.

So I have a lot to write about, given that I have an entire day free today and a steaming pant load of nothing to do, I figure I'll spend today doing a little Internet housekeeping, of which includes blogging (as per usual). And since I have started a list so eloquently titled "Things to Blog About" on my computer, why not knock some of those off as I entertain you with tales of my life since Tuesday. Since clearly, in the fast paced, globe trotting, "oil billionaire partying on my 240ft solid gold yatch in Saint Tropez" esque playboy life that I lead, a lot has happened in the past 48 hours.

Last night, we went out for one of the kids on our program Jim's birthday. Which can only mean one thing: a loss of the meaning of the word "moderation." Interesting fact: Wednesday night is ladies night in Beijing, which means they drink for free (or at least the first 4 or something). Needless to say, last night is, while not the first, probably the strongest desire I've had to be a woman in recent memory. Anyway, enough of my trans-gender escapades. So we started off the night in Zub (the club which contributed to my gastrointestinal downfall the first day of the program) which, shortly after we secured ourselves the booth in the back of the club through some cross-cultural negotiations, became the place to be in Beijing apparently. It was kind of a trip chillin' in, as I called it, the VIP Lounge in the back of the club. I lit up a cigarette, leaned back on the plush leather couches, and instantly felt like Biggie in Big Poppa, in the back of the club, mackin' hos, my crew's behind me. The place was packed, wall to wall, with people. It took me like 20 minutes just to get up the bar at one point. The club has a pretty good mix of attracting people of both the Chinese and honky persuasion, so that's nice, cuz we all know how I loves my Chinese women and blend nicely into a crowd of pasty faced Europeans. So that's where the party began, but most certainly not where it ended. After several bottles of Qingdao and a shot of Absinthe (cuz like picking at a scab, I couldn't resist), we moved on.

The divine plan of the night was to go to this gay bar called Alfa somewhere by the Worker's Stadium in Beijing. I was totally down to go to a gay bar because a) I've never been and b) I wanted to know what a gay bar in China is like, cuz my first guess would be somewhere between feeling like your going to puke and pants wettingly hilarious. Pros and cons, we get to the bar and the place is deserted. Like someone found a dead rat in their taco the week earlier deserted. Which was kind of a let down cuz I didn't get to see any gay Chinese people, but at the same time it was awesome because we basically owned the bar. We snagged the Bohemian Palace, again in the back of the club cuz that's just how we roll, and lit that place on fire! Rounds of shots between me, one of my roommates and this cat from BC. Hookahs, of course at my suggestion, cuz no party is complete without a hookah or three. Dancing like it was going out of style and drinking like prohibition was back. All in all, several hours later when we finally left because the place was closing and they basically had to force us out the door, I was ready for bed. But if only the night could have ended there.

In the cab ride back to Beida, myself and these two Asian girls, Jenny and Winnie, all suddenly get hungry at exactly the same time. It was actually more one of those drunk things where someone mentioned food and, like a Tamagotchi in 6th grade, you have to get something. So we get back to the gate of the campus and walk clean across the university (which is big if you didn't know that) to a street where we assume there must be something open. Clearly a terrible life decision. We end up wandering around the streets of Beijing at 4:30 in the morning trying to find any kind of 24 hour restaurant. It was actually kind of cool because the city is usually packed full with people and cars but at that time of the night it was deserted and majestically peaceful. Plus I got to walk clean down the middle of the road and feel like I owned the city, which is one of my favorite things to do in life. Small victories guys. Anyway, we ask about three different people and they all tell us "oh sure, there's one down this way." Lies. Eventually we jump in a cab and ask the driver to take us somewhere. We end up in this absolute dive 24 hour noodle restaurant where all they have is this one dish and nothing else. We grabbed a table in the back of the restaurant next to these 4 Chinese people who were all sleeping and housed three bowls of, what I can only describe as immaculate, noodle soup. It is my only hope that the Chinese name of that dish translates into "Bowl of Happy American Fun Times Delicious Noodle." If it doesn't, it should. I guess noodle restaurants are the equivalent of diners in America. All in all, it was a pretty perfect end to a night and well worth the excursion we went on to find it. Another chapter in the book of life.

Ok I totally had a shit ton of stuff to post about today, but I didn't anticipate my story of last night being so down right entertaining to write and taking so long. Blog, akin PCP, can lead to overdose if taken in excess. So, unfortunately, I'll have to wait until my life is substantially less thrilling to scratch things of my "To Blog" list. Keep on keepin' on.

blue kamikaze...

a spoonful of sugar

Another day in China. Still no Internet. But, like a steaming bowel full of taco shits, my blogs are impossible to hold in. So I bring to you the next installment of my saga in China. Hope you enjoy.

Classes, much to my begrugement, started on Monday. Our schedule is really interesting. Class days are Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are reserved for internships, which I, respectfully, declined to sign up for. I’m not sure if I’ll get academic credit for it once I get back to school so, like climbing to the top of the transformer, the electricity thing, not the giant morphing robot, I figure I won’t chance it. If worst comes to worst and I really feel like I’m missing out, I’ll try and get one just for s & g (shits and giggles). Each class only meets once a week for 3 hours. So it's kind of like taking all seminar classes for a semester... that’s fun.

Other than doing the typical tourist ventures the first few days being here, you know, Forbidden City (not so forbidden anymore), Summer Palace (not so Summer this time of year), and Tiananmen Square (not as full of political dissent these days), until today, life at Peking University was a little too mundane for me. Cuz we all know I like my life like I like my Liberace, flash, gay and with a grand piano! But today I seem to have hit my stride. Maybe it was because we went down to the Silk Market and bargained our asses off like it was going out of style. And it was possibly the funniest excursion I have been a part of since that time I went to exhume Lenin's tomb... the Beatle, not the former Soviet Union's iron fisted political sovereign. A few stories, shall we?

On numerous, non-consecutive occasions, I was grabbed while walking around the market and forced to look at things I clearly didn't want to buy. One time this woman wanted me to look at women's clothing. She told me it would be a good gift for "pretty girlfriend." When I told her I didn't have a girlfriend, she advised me to buy it for my mother. I told her my mother was dead. I'm pretty sure it was the most awkward moment that woman had ever experienced in her time at the market. I was glad to have provided her with that.

I was essentially body checked back into a stall when I tried to walk out on a price that was too high for something that I didn't really want in the first place but somehow got coerced into bargaining for. I didn't know a small Chinese woman could generate that much momentum, but you'd be surprised what harnessing your inner Chi can achieve. In the end, I admired her irrational exuberance and very physical, hands on, defensive lineman sales tactics and caved. Plus she dropped the price another 70 kuai.

I bought a giant belt buckle that says "THUG LIFE." There's no story to this. Only a million reasons why I needed to own that as soon as possible and an equal number of questions as to how I managed to live life so far without it. I am fulfilled.

In many attempts to get me to buy jeans and shoes, stall workers would tell me, when I told them I didn't need any and I already had them, pointing to what I was wearing, that I needed more because my pants and/or shoes were a) too old, b) too expensive, or (my personal favorite) c) too ugly. Cuz "You know what, Chinese market worker, these shoes are ugly, and I never full realized it until you so eloquently pointed it out just now. I'd like to replace them" is the natural response. I dunno where they get these people but I wish they'd get more... and I'd kind of like to buy one.

I saw some whitey paying $40 US for a watch that he probably could have got for $4. It's not that this was particularly funny per se, although the misfortune of others does tickle me like Mr. Tickle from the Mr. Man books would, all tickley and the like. It's just that seeing other people get hosed that badly doesn't make me feel as bad about the 10 or 15 kuai I got swindled out of.

I guess those are the highlights of shopping today. In a few short hours we managed uncover the hidden nuances behind bargaining. (Side note: A giant cockroach just scurried across our floor just now. I saw him with my peripheral vision, my most favorite of the bodies natural talents. Random but I thought you should know the kind of squalor we're living in.) The key is, in a way, to be the biggest douche you possibly can without resorting to physical violence with blunt objects. (Side note #2 (there's a lot of stuff happening around me now... and a lot of parentheses): my roommate just let out a huge fart in his sleep and it stinks like kim chee but still made me smile cuz people farting in general is hilarious, but people farting in their sleep is the kind of humor that makes you realize God is really an 8 year old boy. They totally don't know they just farted but everyone else in the room does because they were asleep and couldn't hold it in or convert it into an SBD (silent but deadly).) It's the only situation I've been in where you should act like a pushy, pretentious, snotty American who refuses to pay full price for late pizza and trust no one. It totally works and you don't actually feel bad about it. It's a good frustration outlet. Anyway, I think I've found the more adventurous group of people on the program, my kinda people, and I'm planning on sticking with them for a while. Hangin' in a chow line, good times!

So I just saw the cockroach again out of the corner of my eye, watched him wander around for like 5 minutes and kinda just ran out of steam on this post just now and, obviously, I have a lot to write about now that, like the I don't want to start down a road that I'm not going to be able to finish... also I somehow just wrote the word finish backwards, flawlessly on the computer... I didn't even know I could do that. So with that, I bid you good day sir and encourage you all to think of me as you make sweet sweet love to that Filipino shemale tonight. Don't fight it, you know you're going to.

P.S. When I started this post earlier today, we didn't have the internet set up in our rooms. Now, we do. Hooray for Internet!

all the little Whos in Whoville...

it came from the east

Even though we don’t yet have the Internet in our rooms, I figured I’d take this brief moment free time I have right now to write my first post from China. So exciting I think I just peed myself. And I know you did too.

It’s been an interesting 48 hours in Beijing so far. I almost can’t believe it’s only been 48 hours since I landed here. I guess that’s because I had a bit of a psychological, and abdominal, journey yesterday. But more on that later. So my flight was, as expected, full of a lack of sleep. My inability to sleep on planes, even in my new, sleep deprived narcoleptic college state, has yet again succeeded in being the bane of my existence. 12 hours is a long time to be trapped in a flying metal tube speeding halfway around the world with very little to entertain you except for your iPod and the in flight move (note: The Guardian with Kevin Costner and Aston Kutcher is possible the worst thing ever documented on film since that time I videotaped myself dropping a dookie onto hardwood floor). Maybe that’s why I managed to finish the entirety of The Tipping Point before I landed in Beijing. But no matter. Flights are a terrible source of entry material anyway.

After landing in Beijing and dealing with all of the introductory fluff that comes with these study abroad programs, myself, being the raging alcoholic that Cornell has created, decided to join the select few people who wanted to venture out in the first night of the program. Mistake number 1. So we meander down to the street where the bars are, stop of in one place, which was curiously placed on top of a bookstore. And when I say on top of, I don’t mean like, “unfortunate apartment above the porn shop in the ghettos of Chinatown” on top of. I mean like, first floor: bookstore. Second floor: bar. A natural pairing if I’ve ever heard of one. So we grab a table, me and 8 other people, and order a round of drinks. Drinks which happen to be full of ice. Mistake number 2. We clean those out and decide to move onto a different bar, you know, to spread the wealth. Sidenote: this bar we were at, Lush, had absolutely the best compilation of music ever. I, however and as to be expected, was clearly the only one feeling the “Now That’s What I Call Music Vol. 2” selection of songs they were playing. But who doesn’t love a bar that plays old school Nelly followed by a little Puff Daddy (before the P. Diddy changeover) with some good ol’ Mase to wash it down?

But I digress. So we roll on down the street to this club called Zub. A hot little basement number with a funked up groove all simmering in burgundy atmosphere. So, in China, most clubs get deals with certain companies to “sponsor” a night. Meaning that they get the drinks on the cheep provided that they push them hardcore to the patrons (read: whitey). Everything from signs to waitress costumes is fair game. One waitress even handed me a balloon, which I thought was a pretty sweet door prize. It becomes kind of disconcerting, however, when all you want is a beer yet these waitresses, dressed straight up like anime characters completely with orange hair, are pushing these strange concoctions on you that you don’t actually know what they are because not only is the menu not in English but you also have no idea what they are saying because even regular English doesn’t break through the din of a club so well, let alone broken English.

That night at the bar was sponsored by Jagermeister, which means all things Jager: Jager Bombs, Jager Monsters, and pretty much anything else you can think of to mix with Jager (the results were shocking). So after a few of those, and a couple shots of the worlds most delicious Vodka (Grey Goose ain’t got shit on 42 Below), the fun kicks in. Mistake number 3. And by fun, I mean my journey towards making good friends with the toilet. We were on a hugging basis by the end of the night. At the time I figured it was just a romp down to Ye Olde Boot ‘n Rally, which took me off guard because the Boot ‘n Rally doesn’t usually open until a lot later in the night and I wasn’t even that drunk at this point. Little did I know.

Cut a long story short, we get back to where we’re staying and I’m all like “Glad that’s over with” and my intestinal track is like “What you talkin’ bout Willis?” and I’m all like “Garry Coleman? What are you doing up in my stomach?” and my stomach is like “Lemme show you!” For the next 5 hours it shows me. I spent, like clockwork as if I was part of the German railroad system, very 45 minutes in the bathroom hanging dry wall and laying down the nastiest diarrhea I’ve ever had in my life. I’m talking like brown + water ‘rhea. At this point I start having these feverish dreams of people in the program trying to take care of me and a mass epidemic of stomach flu hitting the entirety of China mixed in with plots to creat large, mousetrap style contraptions designed to kill people who walked into my room. And really complicated, entirely unnecessary ones too. I dunno man, it was weird. Needless to stay, I spend the next 24 hours in my bed, missing day one of the program (thankfully there wasn’t much to be missed) and trying my best to hold down even water. I’m guessing there isn’t one factor to blame, but, rather, it was a combo platter of a lack of sleep, jetlag, close quarters in a plane for 12 hours across the Pacific, and drinking. But, I’m back on my feet now and relatively recovered.

Once I have a bit more time to synthesize my experience here so far I’ll write more on that, but I figured for now I’ll just entertain you with my wild exploits halfway round the world and leave the rest to the imagination.

and he told me that’s what he wanted…