The 2nd of July was a Friday that coincided with the arrival to Beijing of Georgetown Ultimate captain Tim Huether, who was in town on vacation for a couple of days. Tim is a tall white guy who has never studied Chinese and thus provided a break from the people I normally hang out with, a.k.a. shorter Asian girls and awkwardly sized white guys who speak better Mandarin than me. We manage to arrange to meet up at Paddy O'Sheas, the premier Irish pub in Beijing, to watch the Brazil-Netherlands world cup game that night. I was having dinner near BeiDa with Vivian at the time. We decide to share a cab which would drop her off in Wudaokou to hang with other friends, and take me to Paddy's.
We reach the vicinity Wudaokou with no trouble, but on this Friday night, Wudaokou was inexplicably epically congested with traffic. We were probably stuck at the same light for 20 minutes. Finally Vivian goes out and walks. Alone, I try to strike up a conversation with the taxi driver. He gives very grunt, noncommittal answers to my queries, and I finally get the feeling that he is very frustrated, understandably so, by the traffic. To our right is a bus lane, extra wide so that buses can pull over and pass each other. The lane dies though and I saw a sedan trying to merge into our lane, between a bus and our taxi. He and my taxi driver clearly are aware of each other, but nonetheless unwaveringly proceed at a crash course for each other, only they proceed at the snail's pace allowed by our traffic. I am fully aware of the inevitability of a collision and sit there just stunned that these people are being so stubborn. So the contact comes, and yet they still both push forward together, essentially wedging the sedan. Finally the cars can go no further and they stop. Utter silence ensues for 10 seconds. The sedan driver breaks the standoff, asking my driver "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" My driver responds with something along the lines of "You started it. I have the right of way. You're just being stubborn." The next few exchanges were full of explitives. I don't even know that many Chinese swears but I understood these and I was scared. The driver gets out and assessses the damage, calling his taxi company. This whole time these guys act as if completely oblivious to the fact that they're clogging two lanes including a freaking bus. Now other people, including people on the bus, start yelling and the sedan driver backs up to make way for the bus. I give up hope that this driver will take me to Paddy O'Sheas and try to him, but he graciously refused payment. I don't fully understand the dynamics here, but I have a theory that the taxi company will compensate him for this accident more than a few hours of working would. Perhaps he deliberately got into the crash. More likely though, it was a case of road rage where there were no winners.
Surveying the crowded Wudaokou scene, I made the regrettable decision to jump on the subway towards Xizhimen, with the idea of getting away from the traffic and finding a cheaper cab ride. I was quite frustrated at this point though and definitely felt rushed while waiting 10 minutes for the subway. By the time I got to Xizhimen, the game was well underway. Running out of the station, I saw a cab letting off a passenger from across the street. I sprint to it and immediately run into a thick metal wire that was being used to lock a bike. Doubling over in pain as my shin started to bleed, I was effectively disabled for 10 seconds. By the time I looked back up, the taxi had disappeared. I subsequently spent the next 20 minutes looking for another cab to hail and utterly failed. If I went too far down the road, people would jump ahead of me and cut me off. If I went up the road, full taxis would pass me by before dropping their passengers off right where I had just come from. Finally I aggressively beat a girl to a taxi and was so frustrated I didn't even feel bad about it. I tell the driver to take me to Sanlitun and he doesn't quite understand where I want to go, which is odd cause everybody knows Sanlitun. Then he tells me that he's going the wrong way and can't take me. I sit back stunned. Taxi drivers in Beijing don't like to turn around, but there was a wide intersection right up ahead where he could U-turn. Besides, we were actually facing south, the right direction, although he wanted to go a bit north to catch the ring road. So I yell at him that I've been looking for a cab for the last half hour, that I'm really late for my meeting, and that I'll pay him double. Amazingly he remains obstinate. I plead for about 5 minutes before giving up and swearing at him in English. Leaving the cab, locals were waiting right outside to jump in, like vultures waiting for a prey to die.
It takes me another 10 minutes to catch a cab on the other side of the street, and luckily this driver knew where I wanted to go. The only problem was I didn't really know where I wanted to go because Paddy's is located right before the entrance to Sanlitun. I spot it a tad late and tell my driver to pull to the right. He has to cross two lanes to make this happen and I nearly experienced my second car crash of the night. I finally make it to Paddy's and meet up with Tim and his friend Eric. We witnessed the feisty Dutch team come back from 1-0 to beat Brazil and met up with fellow Georgetown Ultimate player Danny Mahoney. We then went bar hopping in Sanlitun, which I had not done since an epic night 2 summers ago, and gave Tim a very thorough view of nightlife in Beijing. We ended up at this hidden Belgian Beer bar / pizza joint called the Tree before I packed it in near 3am. The thing was that I had work the next day, a makeup day since I would be going to Shanghai later in the week. Stephanie had laughed when I said I'd try to be there by 9:30am and she proved prophetic, as I slept through alarms and woke up at 11am, feeling pain in both my head and my shin. All in all it was a rather embarrassing ordeal.
After getting off work though, I took just quick nap and a ramen dinner before meeting up with my friend Wendy at, of all places, the Tree. Vivian and Joan were also coming to Sanlitun in order to watch the heavily hyped Germany-Argentina match. My cab driver was very friendly this time and we had a good discussion, although I was confused when he asked me if I was going to see Zhou Jielun. I didn't recognize the name and thought he was telling me about what kind of Chinese music I listened to, which was next to none. I told him that I knew a little about Cantopop and the 四大天王。 Wendy was with her program friends which included Emily Haskel, whom I had met through Joan at a hotpot dinner. The Tree had no TV so we left for the Saddle Cantina, where Vivian and Joan awaited. I had forgotten that Joan and Emily knew each other (same elementary school) so when they ran into each other at Saddle, things got a little crazy. The Cantina, located in a sizable compound with a courtyard, was packed, courtyard included. Standing room was hard to find. All in all there may have been 200+ people, an even split between locals and expats, watching that game. It might have been the largest crowd with which I've ever watched a game on TV. Filipino-American friend Beatriz was also there and she made friends with the Filipino manager. This friendship procured her a few drinks, but evidently she also bought a few herself and showed all the symptoms.
Unfortunately Argentina got their butt kicked. We went off to Latte, a club past Mix and Vic's and the Worker's Stadium. Incidentally the Worker's Stadium was lit that night and Vivian told me that Jay Chou was performing there that night. Suddenly I remembered my taxi driver and realized that he was referring to the Taiwanese superstar Jay Chou. This belated understanding.... well I thought it was cool. Anyways Vivian, Joan and Beatriz, who collectively look quite Asian and were well-dressed, went into Latte first. I was part of a later group that was both more White and less well-dressed. The club had security like an airport and when we all went in, they actually ushered us aside. We argue our case when it becomes apparent that they do not intend to let us in. One girl berates the security people in Chinese, accusing them of being racist - I humorously stayed out of this encounter, but did also argue my case saying that "my wife was inside." For some reasons my comments were ignored. At one point some people in our group simply ran past the bouncers, and I later politely requested to go in and they finally relented.
That encounter took place in the wee hours of July 4th. The next day, Vivian had organized for 40 people associated with Global China Connection to go to an outdoor event thrown by the American Chamber of Commerce. The event was in prime real estate and had good food and atmosphere. The whole event felt like it was in the US. However the weather was brutally hot, right around 100 degrees, all of which we spent outside. We hung around long enough to hear the band play, walk inside an art gallery and paint some pandas before Vivian, Joan, Beatriz and I cabbed it out to San Li Tun - which if you're counting at home, was the 3rd time in 3 days I ventured to that famous street. I believe we ventured from a Starbucks to a bar to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. While everyone was bemoaning the heat and our collective exhaustion, I ordered one of the best drinks ever, a Vietnamese coffee. I rarely go to a Vietnamese restaurant without getting their condensed milk iced coffee. Halfway through the drink, as everyone else was making plans to cab it home right after dinner (6pm) I declared that I was going to stay out. The girls looked at me as if I was crazy but granted me autonomy.
I texted all of my friends to see what they were up to. Amy said she was coming to Sanlitun to have dinner in an hour. So I bummed around Sanlitun Village, which is quite a hip place. I took photos of my panda in cool places and walked into expensive clothing stores and feigned interest. Dinner with Amy and her friends was fun although I didn't eat because I didn't feel the need for a second dinner, even on July 4th. Afterwards we went out to this large Jabulani soccer ball that Adidas had erected and I asked a random Chinese passerby to take a group picture of us. After she finished, she asked Amy in English if she went to HKIS. Stunned, she said yes, and we learned that this random passerby's nephew also went there and she somehow recognized Amy. This would be the first of many small world moments I would encounter in the coming weeks, but wow, what are the odds of that?
Then I walked 15 minutes to the subway, took it to Tiananmen Square, and walked around for over half an hour before I got ahold of Tim and made it to his hotel. We got some beers and discussed July 4th, China, Russia and bros before parting ways after 1am. All said and done, I undoubtedly spent more waking moments in Sanlitun than at home that weekend. The next day would not offer much rest as I flew to Shanghai....
No comments:
Post a Comment