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Dec 19, 2005 09:00 PM Russian ladies and Chinese cabbies
Beijing winters can be brutal, but in early December, it’s still a pleasant cold. Or maybe it just hasn’t been cold enough long enough. In any event, walking to work today seemed like a good idea. I live near Jianguomen Station, which is a forty minute long brisk walk to my job in Beijing’s World Trade Center district. I didn’t even need to wear my gloves. My only companion was my IPOD and whatever random music it chose. Along the way I of course passed child beggars and Tibetan vendors, con artists and DVD salesmen, and one other interesting person.
As I approached the Silk Street Market (no explanation needed for Beijingers. To all of you not in the know, this is a big building full of vendors selling knock off designer clothing to tourists. Much fighting and haggling is involved in this process – it sometimes even gets physical), I saw a middle aged Russian woman having difficulty with a taxi driver. I saw she was going to stop me, so I took off my headphones and walked up to her first. She shoved a keycard from a local hotel in my face and started talking in Russian. Of course I knew what the problem was right away, and to my surprise, I instantly remembered how to say "I don't know" in Russian. She asked me for a telephone - I produced one. She told me someone at the hotel spoke Russian - I said something about letting me handle things, and I think she got the idea. The hotel operator came on and I explained the whole situation in Chinese, handed the phone to the cabbie, made sure he knew where the hotel was, and told the Russian lady everything was ok. She said "thank you", I said "you're welcome" - and I put on my headphones and walked off. After getting over the initial good feeling of helping a stranger, I realized the whole ordeal happened without any English.
As a diehard native New Yorker, I am amazed at how easily I am becoming a Beijinger. In many ways, these two cities are a lot alike. There are different languages and different types of people all over the place. People can be typical big city folk, busy and rude at times. But there exists a certain local person who is comfortable and content and nice and friendly. Where I live, just a ten minute bike ride from Tianamen Square, me and the locals drink beer for lunch, stay up all night playing cards in the moonlight, and wander to the store in pajamas when we’re too lazy to put our clothes back on. The taxi drivers love to laugh and talk about any subject with anyone (I learn a lot of Chinese from them…) And, of course, the most obvious similarity is the most delicious: Chinese restaurants, authentic and yummy, on every block.
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Dec 19, 2005 09:00 PM An American Ex-Pat Living in Beijing by Tony Watkins
An American Ex-Pat Living in Beijing by Tony Watkins
http://commalove.podomatic.com
Beijing is either a wonderful city or a polluted mess, depending on where you live and where you go. When I first arrived here, I lived in a dorm building with Korean students and Korean food and Korean groceries available 24 hours a day. I quickly moved to a three bedroom walkup in an old communist style apartment building, where I lived with a Chinese girl and a Thai guy, both students with me at the Beijing Language and Culture University. We lived near the Wudaokou subway station, way out in the Northwest of Beijing, far away from the hustle and bustle of the center, but full of clubs and bars for all the foreigners.
Coming from Korea (where I lived for two years), Beijing didn’t seem crowded and didn’t seem polluted; being a New Yorker, Beijing didn’t feel noisy and it didn’t feel busy. The one thing that struck me most was the bikes. I’d bike to school every day with a pack of Chinese people in our own bike road, not lane. We’d stop at lights and follow the traffic cops directions. Stay to the right except to pass, and usually bike at a sane speed, not at top speed like we New Yorkers usually do.
BLCU was full of foreigners. I was in the Westerners class; they divide up the classes based on your passport, so we had a few Asian faces, but no Asian passports. The teachers and the students spoke English and I was annoyed. I wanted to learn Chinese! So I transferred out to the Asian class and studied with the Koreans and Filipinos and Indonesians. Why the school thought Filipinos and Americans shouldn’t study together never made any sense to me.
After my four month Chinese program was up I stopped working part-time and started working full-time teaching English. It’s the typical ex-pat job, one I’m used to and pretty good at. I moved out of the communist walk up and into a 200 year old house in the hutong, in one of the nice courtyard style layouts. My house is renovated, and the courtyard has obviously fallen from it’s former glory somewhat but it’s cool as hell for a guy who grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
In the mornings I open the door and chat with the old lady who lives next to me. She had a stroke and has trouble walking, and I see her pause and deal with headaches or something from time to time, but she’s one of my best Chinese teachers. We sit outside, or in my house or hers, and chat, drink tea, and I try to understand. She can’t speak a word of English, like almost everyone in the hutong.
Across from me is a little girl and her family. Sometimes they invite me over to eat hot pot outside and drink beer and baijiu (58% alcohol) and smoke cigarettes for lunch. I decline on the baijiu and cigarettes, but I have to drink the beer. Getting to work becomes difficult on those days…
The people here are all friendly in a crazy way. Most people don’t seem to work to much – if at all. We play cards and mahjhong and you can see beer being consumed at almost any time. The main restaurant here is the best I’ve found in China, and almost the cheapest. Kung Pao chicken is about one dollar, and of course theres no tax and no tipping. Hutong people have a long history of being lazy and enjoying life, so this is the best place to live. Rich Chinese and most working foreigners live in high rise apartment buildings with doormen and pay much more rent than me. I think they’re out of their minds.
But at night, it’s a different story …
The Hutong at Night
Young prostitutes walking back to their little massage parlor in the hutong carrying one piece of corn in a bag. It's six in the morning and I'm not sure if they've been up all night or are just getting started. Actually, I'm not sure what their job is, exactly. I think they do massage and actually cut hair in addition to “the other”. I mean, I'm sure they do “the other”. Some of them might actually cut hair, too. They work in fully functioning hair salons or obvious fronts. Walking home each night from work, I pass through a gauntlet of these "hair salons" with spinning barber poles and girls inside. Sometimes they call out to me, but usually they just sit there looking bored. In one, they've got a couch and a TV and a back room, and only one hair cutting chair in the front for show. The girls lounge on the couch hugging stuffed animals, watching TV and waiting for customers. They seem cute and child-like, just young girls having a slumber party or something like that.
Being in Asia for several years, this kind of stuff isn't alarming any more. It was almost the same in Korea, maybe just a little less open, but still easy to find. China is all out - in every hotel I've ever stayed in in china I've been propositioned. Usually just a phone call asking about massage a few hours after you check into your room - but the message is clear.
I remember being a little kid in the seventies and eighties growing up in New York City and driving on 10th avenue and 11th avenue and the West Side Highway going to school and seeing the hookers out and about in the early morning. I remember a fat one who was topless right there on the sidewalk. All the kids on the bus pointed and giggled, and I remember understanding the whole deal, understanding about sex and prostitution from a purely intellectual standpoint. I remember the disgustingly huge black breasts, and thinking it was funny and ridiculous and not at all appealing. I couldn't understand what was interesting or tantalizing about any of those 11th avenue whores, other than being comical.
I remember being a young man and visiting Amsterdam and seeing the red light district. We walked down a small dead end street that had black hookers on it, and i remember seeing families and children strolling and looking and thinking it was very weird. Some tourists were making monkey noises and black jokes, but the hookers on the other side couldn't hear. I suppose those tourists were horrible racists, but maybe they wouldn't have acted like that, or made those comments, about regular people - just about prostitutes.
I know all about the gangs and the mafias, the kidnappings and the rapes, the drugs and disease and all of the awful things associated with prostitution, especially in Asia. But the ones I see here in the hutong, the ones I’ve seen in Bangkok and everywhere else in Thailand, the ones in Amsterdam, the ones I remember from my childhood in New York, and the girls handing out small bottles of energy drinks in Korea trying to get men to come to “room salons” mostly seem in a good mood. At least, they’re always laughing!
Keep on Keepin’ On
So I keep on keeping on in Beijing. My life here is much more ordinary and boring than it ever was in New York. I go to work and go home, usually eat in the same restaurant, watch DVDs and write my blog, try to study a little and spend most of my time alone or with my girlfriend. There’s no bars, no raves, no clubs and parties, no friends and activities all day and all night. But, I’m happy . . .
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