Zhongguo Uber Alles

Believe it or not, I don’t usually get to hangout with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) chief ideologues and discuss Marxist-Leninism, Maoist ideals, or communist paradigms in the Twenty First Century. But I really want to. Sure, the big bucks are in pushing widgets, but buying hearts and minds is so much more fun.

By Chinese standards my communist credentials are not pure. However, when I lived in Texas I voiced the opinions that there should be shelters for the homeless, recycling is a good idea, and better access to healthcare would probably benefit America. I was promptly labeled a Pinko. So my dear comrades will have to meet me half way.

I say all of this because the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the even more exciting People’s Consultative Political Conference (CPPCC) earlier this month, followed by the US Congress passing a healthcare reform bill, has raised my fervor for socialism. By the way, I’m sure Glenn Beck could make a connection between the two Communist political meetings in Beijing and the Democrats passing the healthcare bill, but I’m just not as smart.

Word around the karaoke bars is that the leading Politburo candidates Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are poised to take over the government from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao in 2012 and everyone is jockeying for position; I’d like to join the fray. Here’s how I can help. I know a thing or two about public relations, marketing and politics, and I think I could help the incoming leaders define their platform and inspire a new generation.

In the United States political slogans and the pithy ideas they represent are great for election campaigns, but they are promptly forgotten the morning after the votes are tallied. Remember “Change we can believe in”? Eighteen months later I’m still waiting for change and I still don’t believe.

In China, on the other hand, where they have efficiently done a way with the whole electoral process and skip merrily ahead to making policy and solving problems, political slogans are the CCP’s mission statement. They are useful for codifying the Party’s values so everyone is reading off the same script and knows at any given time exactly what they should be paying lip service to.

In the PRC, ideology is serious, and they need professionals to keep the Party spinning in the same direction. I’m just their man. I dream of having heated brainstorming sessions at the Party School just a few long nights away from our pitch deadline when we have to come up with that perfect slogan and supporting campaign. We’d go to the white board and list the ‘hot button issues’ along with the driving adjectives, critical verbs and other words that would optimize search results in Google; I mean Baidu. Then we'd package it in some memorable language.

China is wonderful for these slogans, even as far back as a few hundred years ago they were in place. Han rebels fighting the Manchus bandied the catchy phrase "Fan Ching, Fu Ming" ("Overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming"), which you got to admit wouldn’t have made a bad bumper sticker. When the CCP came to power Mao’s idealism and poetry ran wild with all kinds of slogans. They are too numerous to list here, so I will simply summarize as: “Better dead than not red!” And like any good corporate leader he went to town to ‘action that statement’.

Moving a long, I’ll try to quickly summarize over twenty years of CCP jargon before describing my own ideas for new campaigns. Don’t worry; when I get there I’ll spare you the supporting demographics, consumer surveys and SWOT analysis used to justify my thoughts. However, I can produce a lovely Power Point deck if necessary.

The Deng Xiaoping era – Two quotes by the former paramount leader summarize "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and the introduction of sweeping economic reforms. The first was “It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.” This meant being ideologically pure was no longer more important than, say, having a basic understanding of macroeconomic theory. But after a team building exercise in Tiananmen Square went horribly awry in 1989, some cadres were unclear where that left reforms. So a couple years later Deng went on to clarify his thoughts with “To get rich is glorious!” After that, the capitalist road in China was an eight lane super highway with no speed limit.

The Jiang Zemin era – More of a pragmatist than a wordsmith, Jiang pretty much rode Deng’s verbal coattails until late in his career when he suddenly became worried about his legacy. Deciding he should contribute something to the Communist lexicon he bet heavily on his “Three Represents”. Oddly enough this is when The People’s Daily also started populating its website with scantily clad runway models, I guess Jiang’s wisdom didn’t do much for circulation. In a nutshell, the “Three Represents” state that the CCP should “be representative to advanced social productive forces, advanced culture, and the interests of the overwhelming majority”. Or in other words, “since we have a bunch of capitalists in our country now, we might as well invite them to join the CCP, otherwise they might get their own political agenda.”

The Hu Jintao era – If you’ve spent more than a month in China with out hearing about a “harmonious society” please tell me your secret, because except for Taco Bell’s talking Chihuahua this might be the best marketing campaign ever. If a billion people can coherently regurgitate your brand message you’ve done something right. “Harmonious society” is closely linked to another Hu era catch phrase, “scientific development”. Both essentially aim at the idea that when you introduce capitalists to your system you start having winners and losers, and the losers need to be taken care of. After all, no one knows better than the CCP that “the meek shall inherit the earth”, and they’ll probably do it with a machine gun.

By the way, as a footnote to “harmonious society” check out Wikipedia’s entry on the topic. The wiki quickly raises the corresponding issue of “river crabs”, an interesting sign of the times.

OK, so let’s get back to my dreams of creating the slogan to describe the political platform of the eventual new leaders of China. Not that they would necessarily need one to get the coveted positions of Party Secretary and President, and Premier, but it wouldn’t hurt.

When thinking about what they have to communicate and how they can galvanize the CCP and Chinese society let’s consider the coming ten years. Right now China and its leadership are riding high; clearly the PRC is continuing to ascend. However, there are fissures in the system, economic bubbles could burst and then the leaders will likely have to fall back on nationalism to maintain its mandate. This has been more or less true for three decades, but the red star over China is perhaps reaching unexpected altitudes in the wake of a global financial crisis and the relative decline of American power.

In short, things probably haven’t looked this good for the rulers of China since before the damn Limeys showed up on their doorstep with high ideals about free trade and narcotics. Therefore, the next all-encompassing CCP slogan will probably be a careful mixture of pragmatic appeals to materialistic greed or necessity (depending on which socio-economic bracket you fall in) backed by a triumphant return of chauvinism matched with a healthy dose of authoritarianism.

To summarize, the message needs to say: 1. China has returned as a superpower, 2. Never forget the CCP got us here, 3. Problems are unavoidable, but we’ll continue delivering the goods no matter what, so don’t screw with us.

I have a few suggestions; I was partially inspired by the Olympic theme of ‘One World, One Dream’ and the World Expo theme ‘Better City, Better Life’. But also in true modern Chinese fashion some intellectual property was borrowed from other successful political messages and adapted to the local market:

• Glorious Civilization, Glorious Century – while forward looking, this trades heavily on the uniqueness and longevity of Chinese culture.
• 3 to 3 (Unity, Strength and Will creates Security, Prosperity and Respect) – a Chinese audience always appreciates employing numbers and symmetry, and it saves the writer from having to be truly clever.
• Zhongguo uber alles – It’s not subtle, but it’s refreshingly militant; it also has the added benefit of being a tested and proven winner.
• Liberty (sort of) Equality (mostly) and Fraternity (sometimes) – This doesn’t exactly role off the tongue, but it is steeped in a revolutionary tradition and a moral relativism that could be appealing to a mass market.
• We are many, so there! – Inspired by E pluribus unum (Out of many, one) this just comes right out and tells it like it is.

When thinking about this topic I invariably came to the conclusion that I might as well look to the true masters for inspiration, and this is where Madison Avenue meets Zhongnanhai.

• The CCP, when you absolutely, positively have to have a government (inspired by Fedex)
• Just do what we say! (inspired by Nike)
• Don’t think different (inspired by Apple)
• We bring good things to China (inspired by GE)
• We try (inspired by Avis)
• Have it our way (inspired by Burger King)
• CCP is it! (inspired by Coke)
• you’re lov’n it (inspired by McDonald’s)
• We’re not evil (inspired by Google)
• Probably the best government in China (inspired by Carlsberg)

Well, that’s all I got. But I encourage everyone to play along and send in your suggestions. The editorial team at Red, White & Blue in China enjoys reader participation.

About Peters, Dicks and Booms…

My friend’s father gave her the best advice I’ve ever heard any parent give a young person when she graduated from college and prepared to enter the work force. It was: “Get ready to be disappointed, people are stupid!”

Truer words have never been spoken. I remember when I was young and naïve, I assumed ‘experts’ and other people in positions of authority, like say, my bosses in various jobs, journalists, cops, doctors, politicians, etc. had attained their ranks, titles and other powers because they were smart, capable, skilled and earned their credentials through hard work. Boy, was I dumb.

I’m jealous that my friend started her career with a level of enlightened cynicism that usually takes years to cultivate. I’ve been privileged to be educated by and work for some brilliant people, but they are comparatively rare in my experience. Sure, not everyone is ‘brilliant’, but I’m starting to get the impression that just being competent is sadly rare.

Here’s why; it seems to me the farther you go up any chain of command people stop paying attention to quality performance and longevity in a position and start paying more attention to politicking, covering their ass, and building an exit strategy. I know, this is hardly news to many readers, but it’s worth writing about anyway.

Why do I draw this conclusion? First, there’s the Peter Principle that states, "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his/her level of incompetence." For example, the excellent factory worker or salesperson that gets promoted to management even though they have no clue how to manage. It’s a well-known phenomenon anyone who has ever had a job has probable experienced it.

Second, there’s what I call the Dick Principle, which might have already been postulated by someone with a PhD in organizational behavior or some other worthy social science. If it has I ask my faithful readers to please let me know so I don’t falsely claim any credit. The Dick Principle states, “Hierarchies tend to be filled with so many examples of the Peter Principle who attempt to prevent their incompetence from being exposed through negative behavior (lying, sabotage, bullying, stealing credit for others' work, hiding mistakes, etc.) that qualified individuals are dissuaded from wanting to rise in the hierarchy”. In short, this means a lot of worthy candidates elect out of an organization or opportunities to lead because they are completely turned off by their superiors and their organization’s culture.

The Dick Principle seems to be particularly strong in politics. How many citizens look at the US Congress or Chinese Communist Party and say to themselves “There’s no way I want to join that group of assholes”? But it happens in many corporations as well, when’s that last time you heard someone say “I hope I stay with my employer (name any Fortune 500 Company) until I retire because I find its leadership so inspiring”?

Third, there’s what I will call the Big Boom Theory, which is not to be confused with the Big Bang Theory and cosmological arguments based on Einstein’s physics, or a romantic encounter with a sizable member of the opposite sex. Rather, this is a theory on how organizations expand and implode, much like the universe or a large ugly boil.

My Big Boom theory states, “There is a tendency in any boom market for incompetent assholes to become even more abundant at the top of an expanding organization’s hierarchy and eventually the organization falls apart because of a critical mass of short-sighted negative behavior.” This is obvious, when a market, industry or organization is expanding at a dizzying pace the promotion of incompetence is accelerated; therefore their negative behavior is more widespread and insidious. In this model, the incompetents running an organization engage in dangerous short-term thinking and expose their organization to risk.

The Peters and Dicks engage in short-sighted dangerous behavior because they aren’t kidding themselves, they know they are incompetent, so they might as well get as much as they can and cash out quickly before they are canned. However, when everyone around you is just as bad as you are then you will probably never be exposed as a hack. Therefore the bad behavior and risk within the organization increases exponentially until it collapses in the face of rejection from the market, legal liabilities and government inquisitions.

When I think of the Big Boom a few examples come to mind. There’s the financial industry (AIG, Lehman Brothers, et al.) the automotive industry (GM, Toyota, etc.), and the entire print news media industry that failed to meet the challenge of the Internet even though they had over a decade to figure it out, etc.. But of course the list is endless.

So… we have Peters (incompetent leaders), Dicks (leaders who are assholes because they are incompetent), and the Big Boom (organizations that sow the seeds of self destruction in prosperous times because they fill up with incompetent assholes). Now let’s talk about China.

This is a booming market where foreign managers are frequently posted for two to three year tenures and multinationals are localizing as quickly as they can. Hmmm… seems to me there’s lots of potential for Big Booms. As most business leaders in China will tell you, finding and retaining qualified staff is a critical challenge in developing the long-term success of their organization. Here’s a few example the types of talent in China’s job market.

There’s he Tsinghua MBA graduate who brings a Hello Kitty pencil box to a job interview and has plenty of raw intelligence, but she’s never held a job a day in her lif and she expects to enter your company at middle management. Then there’s the codger who still drinks tea out of an old Nescafe jar but is connected with half of the departments in the ministry that regulates your business, he wants to be paid handsomely for reading the newspaper all day because, you know, his value is his guanxi.

And of course, there’s the laowai; they come in many forms. Newbies know everything about their industry and nothing about China, by the time they really start to be worth their fat expat packages they are on their way home again, or to a market that has better quality of life, because not everyone likes to breath air you can shovel. But there’s also the Chinahands, of course these are my preferred group of people, I am one of them, not an elite member but I reckon I’m somewhere between Padawan and Jedi Master. You have to be careful of Chinahands because being able to fluently recite the Dao De Jing and Quotes from Chairman Mao in Mandarin, or just their sheer number of years in the market, although impressive, doesn’t qualify you for a lot of jobs, even if they are offered to you at boozy backyard barbecue in Shunyi or over martinis at the Glamour Bar.

I’m not kidding myself; I’m not a genius. Although sometimes after a dozen shots of tequila I think I’m Superman, but with the mojo of John Shaft andrapier wit of Lenny Bruce. Yeah, that’s right, I’m ‘special’ that way. But I think I’ve leaned a thing or two after ten years working in China and now being roughly midway through my career. With all the Peter’s, Dicks and the potential for Big Booms there are a couple of things I try never to forget.

First, there’s no point lying to yourself or others about your capabilities, eventually someone will call you out, and reality, like payback, is a bitch. A bad reputation is a social disease, it’s fun and easy to get, but maybe impossible to recover from.

Second, as far as I know there’s only one solution to protecting your organization against Peters and Dicks and the catastrophes they create, and that’s culture. Organizations that have postive cultures don't let these guys run things. Peter’s need to be identified and their upward progress halted and Dicks need to be pulled out before they impregnate the organization with their bad seed. And when the good times are booming vigilance is even more important, because it’s the exuberance of a wild party that creates the hangover and other unintended consequences, not sober reflection during austerity.

So, when you are thinking about your organization in China, ask yourself “Has this 20-year boom allowed a lot of Peters and Dicks to slip in”? Sooner or later you might feel the pain.

The People’s Republic of Never Never Land

I find George Will’s arch conservatism dogmatic, predictable and boring. I am unsure of his marital status, but in my mind he is a Stepford husband - a robotic personification of WASP Americana. I wanted to get that cheap shot at George Will out of the way before I move on. It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want.

Regardless of my opinions of George Will’s politics, I admit he is very intelligent and I usually enjoy reading his column when I get a chance. His piece in the last issue of Newsweek was no exception. The Basement Boys is thought provoking, and I assure my chaste readers it is in no way a reference to any kind of pornography.

The article is an introduction to Gary Cross, a Penn State University historian, and his book, Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity. As best I could glean from Man George’s pithy commentary and a quick read of reviews, the book argues that late Baby Boomer and Gen X men are reluctant to ‘grow up’ because of a social deluge of woman’s liberation, permissive parenting, contemporary marketing’s fetish for youth, and the decline of positive male role models in American culture.

In short, American men are a self-indulgent tribe of Narcissistic teenagers grown old. Some hard data is given to support the analysis. The data includes declining male academic achievements, the number of men living at home with their parents (thus the title The Basement Boys), and a rising median age of when men marry.

Generally speaking, I wasn’t terribly impressed by all of this, and the only reason I read this far is because a female ‘friend’ on Facebook posted it and ranted about how American men suck. Whatever, her rants about the paucity of eligible bachelors on the planet are frequent and I don’t usually pay attention to them anyway, but I would if she was better looking.

The comment in the article about positive male role models struck home, and I became fixated. Man George writes:

“If you wonder what has become of manliness, he [Cross] says, note the differences between Cary Grant and Hugh Grant, the former, dapper and debonair, the latter, a perpetually befuddled boy.”

The best way to appeal to my short attention span is to mention movies and TV. Comparing the two Grants, which are obviously incomparable, did help drive Prof. Cross’s point home. Think about it, the Greatest Generation had Clark Gable, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. These were men! You go away on a weekend fishing trip with these guys you’ll come back knowing how to slay Apache, seduce the most beautiful woman in the city, and maybe dispense a little wisdom to some children in between.

They were decisive, active, romantic, brave, tough, resourceful, witty, and masculine. Let’s face it, most men would follows those guys into battle or pray they were lucky enough to have them as a wingman in a nightclub – anybody out drinking with Carey Grant or John Wayne is going to get laid!

OK, then there’s the 60s, 70s and 80s; you have Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Deniro, Al Pacino, Clint Eastwood and Dustin Hoffman, etc. Generally speaking, I have no complaints; they’re all great actors and more often than not their on-screen personas are strong masculine role models; except for Tootsie where Hoffman remarks “I was a better man as a woman…” This might be where the wheels start falling off male role models in Hollywood.

The 80s is a particularly weird decade; you have the rise of Richard Gere’s career right next to Stallone and Schwarzenegger. What is a young man supposed to think? I should wear Armani and accessorize with a 13-inch survival knife in case the Russians invade? INSERT YOUR OWN CHEAP GERBIL JOKE HERE.

From the late 80s, to the 90s and the dawn of 21st Century is suddenly when Hollywood’s dream machine stops producing great male role models. Seriously, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicholas Cage, Johnny Depp, John Cusak, Matt Daemon, Keanu Reeves, Vince Vaughn, Jude Law and Robert Downy Jr.? These all seem like boys grown older. First of all, could you describe any of them as being “rugged”, not likely. Second, think about the characters they play, charismatic, self-doubting, womanizing and weak (if not physically than emotionally). Are any of them someone you want your son to grow up and be?

There are a few exceptions, Denzel Washington is stellar, and the second half of Tom Hanks’ career is as well; less you forget he started on Bosom Buddies. Let me reiterate, I blame Hollywood not the actors for the roles they played. Or to go a step further, I blame America audiences for demanding Hollywood feed us these pretty boys long on looks and short on character.

I owe it to George Will, and Prof. Cross, I have never properly appreciated this phenomenon of American culture before. However, I can readily admit I have heard some discussion on this topic by American women in China. For all I know, European woman are complaining about European men in the same way, but I doubt it.

I hear some (not all) American woman in China say single expat (read American) men in China are a bunch of degenerates with a Peter Pan syndrome, i.e. they never want to grow up. Let me try to summarize their argument, these men:

• Realize that as foreigners Chinese women might find them interesting, therefore shamelessly seize this opportunity to date and sleep with young attractive women.
• Realize that booze is cheap and bars are open around the clock in China, and for some reason expat society in general is susceptible to drunken abandonment, therefore a lot of 40 and 50 year old men party like they are still 20.
• Are far away from family and friends that might subliminally or otherwise nudge them towards marriage, a house in the suburbs, and a couple of dependents to declare on their taxes, and therefore indulge in the first two bullet points.

I am not a woman, so I might have missed some of my and my brethren’s failings, but you get the point. Life in China for American men can seem almost like a long college weekend that lasts for years. Don’t take my word for it; go to the source. The blog China Dirt was a forum for expat women to rant about how much expat men in China suck. The blog has the tagline ‘Could the men living in China get any more retarded? Here are the horror stories from the front lines.’

If you don’t have the patience to scan the blog for estrogen charged horror stories, here’s a review by the City Weekend. The blog seems defunct, either its writers moved home or expat men in China have stopped being lame. I suspect the bloggers moved to greener pastures.

So, where was I? Right, foreign (American) men in China are immature. This leads me to a solution for the Basement Boys. If you are the parent of an unwanted male child residing in your home and you want them to leave (either for your well being or their own) but you just don’t have the gumption to kick their dumb ass to the curb, then buy them a ticket to China.

Here’s why. First, any knucklehead American with a pulse can teach English in China; been there, done that. The money is not bad and you get to meet a lot of girls, be sure to tell your sons this. Second, they will be in good company, there are a lot of slackers, ne’er do wells, and slimy older men to keep them company; everybody needs drinking buddies. Third, man cannot live on woman and beer alone, I know, I’ve tried, man needs entertainment too. Pirated DVDs are $1, so you can get the box set of the Director’ Cut of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and watch to your heart’s content during your 20 hour work week when you are not sleeping with one of your ‘language exchange partners’.

Look, I’m not writing anything any expat in China doesn’t already know. All I am dong is trying to reach out and help the Basement Boys. Writing as someone who is quickly approaching his 40s and who has spent the majority of his 20s and 30s in China, I know this place has the capacity to keep you chin deep in the quagmire of adolescent fantasy, God bless it! But it also has the ability to make a man out of you if that’s what you are trying to achieve.

My first job out of college and out of the purgatory of teaching English was as a chief representative for a small consulting firm in Beijing, I was 26, signed a couple dozen Fortune 500 companies as clients and managed Beijing operations. This isn’t experience I was likely to get back home climbing up the corporate ladder like everyone else. Before that, I backpacked all over China, these were adventures that taught me self reliance, important social skills, and an appreciation for how hard life is in the developing world, all things the Basement Boys could use a big dose of.

God help the millennial boys and their quest for manhood, especially the ones wearing makeup and have more parts of them pierced than an Amtrak ticket.

Sasquatch is Never Going Back to Shanghai

Beijing and Shanghai have a long-stemming cultural rivalry a lot like New York and Los Angeles. However, considering the Chinese sense of history and belonging to their native birthplace, the rivalry between the Northern Capital and the City on the Sea is heightened to an extreme degree. Sometimes Beijing people and Shanghai people flat out don’t like each other.

I am a confirmed Beijingren (aka ‘Beijinger’), or as Kaiser Kuo writes in flavorful soda pop prose "Ich Bin Ein Beijinger". And I am a proud Beijingren primarily because I’ve lived in the city a long time and can see it for its charms. I’ve got past the smoggy air you can cut with a knife, the landmines of phlegm on the sidewalk, and cab drivers who seem to freebase garlic everyone morning before going to work with its odor oozing out of every pour and orifice. You can say I’m lucky.

When I compare the two cities for other Americans I tend to describe Beijing as being 50% New York and 50% Washington DC – it’s the political capital, but also a traditional cultural center because of its historical landmarks, also universities as well as news & entertainment media are clustered in the city. Shanghai, on the other hand, is 50% New York and 50% Los Angeles – it’s the business & financial center of the country and a critical port, but also a lot of fashion and pop art is created there. Beijing is very ‘Chinese’ while Shanghai is decidedly cosmopolitan.

They are both great cities, but as I said, I prefer Beijing. And one of the reasons I do is that on my very first visit to Shanghai I was kicked out of the city within 12 hours after arrival. Dear readers, if you think I am proud of the fact that I can boast being kicked out of the world’s most populous city, well you’re right. By the way, I probably also did it in record time!

As with most good stories, it starts with the words “It wasn’t my fault...”

In fact, I blame my friend Sasquatch. I‘ve mentioned him in a previous posting about traveling to Tibet. After experiencing our own version of Misty Mountain Hop in Lhasa, my hairy friend and I made our way for Shanghai. The following is what happened and why Sasquatch will never go back. But before I get in to the whole drunken fisticuffs, running amuck in the hotel, police interrogation, “get out of town before sundown” story, let me first describe Sasquatch.

In high school Sasquatch was captain of the football team and the wrestling team in a Podunk Midwestern town where such lofty stations were hard won by corn fed farm boys. In college he transferred his athletic skills to rugby; a sport as far as I can tell he loved to play because it is within the rules to drink on the sidelines and deliver an occasional knuckle sandwich to an opponent as long as the referee didn’t notice. In summary, Sasquatch was a big, tough son of a bitch.

Big and tough doesn’t do him justice; he was a force of nature. Sasquatch’s consumption of food, beverage and chemicals was something to behold. For example, he chewed tobacco, but he never used a spittoon. That would have been uncouth. No, instead he swallowed the tobacco juice. And when he was hell bent on numbing himself again Chinese realities, for example while traveling ‘hard seat’ for three or four days at a stretch, he could chew (and swallow) tobacco and smoke cigarettes while simultaneously throwing back baijiu and warm beer. All of this was on a stomach fortified by the magical mixture of Tang and Ritz Crackers; a perfect traveler’s diet that I swear by. I also suspect he had a healthy appetite for mind-bending plants and fungi, but I cannot confirm this.

OK, so Sasquatch was big, strong and had insane appetites, well that’s not all. He also has a threshold for the sight of his own blood that would have made Rambo proud. Once while working a summer job as a welder on a construction site, a large I-beam swung dangerously out of control and gave him a glancing blow across his big square mug. The heavy steal object caught him right behind the ear and ripped half his face off. Surviving damage that might kill mere mortals, Sasquatch was in shock, but conscious. Most people I know would have lay down and waited for the ambulance to arrive. Not Sasquatch, he decided this was a rare opportunity to see what his naked skeletal face looked like. So he and his workmates walked to the bathroom and watched in the mirror as he pulled his face back to check out what lay beneath. That’s a true story by the way.

Yep, a real sicko. Sasquatch was great to hang around with; we had many adventures together. They include gunplay in Yunnan, bicycle jousting in Beijing, an encounter with the world’s ugliest prostitute in Lhasa, and getting thrown out of Shanghai.

So, when we arrived in Shanghai it was about five in the morning after a three-day train ride from Xining that was miraculously cut short by tiny white sleeping pills bought over the counter at the train station. We were bedraggled and travel funked, but ready to see the sites when we hit town. Being good backpackers we decided it was a waste of the cost of one night in a hotel to check in at that late hour. So we decided to go for a walk through the French Concession, have breakfast and start drinking.

First we gorged ourselves on baozi and beer while watching the early morning taiqi practitioners in Renmin Park as the sun came up. And for one reason or another we decided it was a good idea to raise the stakes to Bloody Maries made with ghetto Russian vodka and tomato juice heavily spiced with Tabasco sauce swiped from some five star-hotel. For obvious reasons, I forget the details about how and why we procured all the ingredients. But I assure you it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Anyway, a few hours later we were quit foxed; and I mean blotto! It was noon, a perfect time to check into a hostel and get our money’s worth, so we started looking for accommodations. Unfortunately, we encountered a kind of hostel we hadn’t banked on.

We tried three or four places, no dice; everywhere was full. Facing the prospect of passing out in the gutter, we began to worry. However, one hotel recommended another, and unfortunately I can’t remember its name, because that’s where Sasquatch met his doom.

As we were checking in my friend needed to relieve himself, he was directed to take the elevator to the nearest men’s room on the third floor. After twenty minutes or so, Sasquatch had still not returned to the front desk. I was left waiting and wondering how a guy that big could misplace himself. Then I asked the desk clerk to watch our bags as I went upstairs to look for him.

When the elevator doors opened I was faced with a sweating, bleeding, battle-crazed Sasquatch with his fist cocked ready to knock out the first person in sight. Needless to say, parts of my body puckered. When I asked what happened he told me four men with clubs assailed him the moment he stepped on the third floor and then proceeded to try to relieve him of his wallet, watch and other valuables. Sasquatch took several blows but managed to curl up into a ball and protect his jewels and other prized assets.

My wild friend was raised to believe if you fall off a horse get up and shoot it. Once Sasquatch regained some of his senses he took it upon himself to deliver some Texas-style justice to the perpetrators, including the staff of the hotel - who he was convinced must have been in on the ambush. Insults were thrown, weapons brandished, and my short life flashed before my eyes. It was utter mayhem; I loved it, especially because no one beat me up.

The cops arrived on the scene. I remember being relieved by that, and then I realized they weren’t on our side. For about an hour or so we were on the receiving end of ‘good cop / bad cop’; I guess some things are universal. However, the scrupulous occidentals confounded the police. You see; we didn’t lie. Separately, we gave them our story straight, but they just didn’t want to believe two foreign exchange students got mugged in a Shanghai hostel. I guess they feared it would end up in the Lonely Planet and the flea trap would have been deficit a star, whatever.

The leading municipal storm trooper on the seen insisted Sasquatch and I were drunk. OK, guilty as charged. But he also insisted we made up the whole story and that Sasquatch was mentally unstable. Well, that wasn’t a case I wanted to defend in front of a jury, but we were highly insulted nonetheless. Sasquatch was the victim!

He wasn’t about to take it lying down either. As long as I live, I’ll never forget hearing the words “Run! I’m gonna’ hit the cop.” Well, if that had happened, I wonder if I would be so willing to write about this today. Quickly and diplomatically, I threw my scrawny two hundred pound frame against my monstrous woolly friend and reminded him that they held our passports in one hand and cattle prods in the other. Where was I supposed to run to?

I talked him down, and then the cops were ready to let us go, on one condition. That’s when I heard the equivalent of “be out of town before sundown” in Mandarin. We were driven to the train station and told that as far as the Shanghai police were concerned we never need to cross the Yangtze again.

I don’t hold a grudge against Shanghai. I’m over it. But Sasquatch swore never to return. I miss that freak; the last I heard of him he was a cuckolding collections agent with pending applications to law school. I pity the debtor or opposing attorney who ever runs across him.

The "Other"

In 1993 at the impressionable age of 21 I was sitting in a bar in Lan Kwai Fong thinking about returning to the United States after spending a year in China when I met who appeared to me at the time to be the Obi-Wan Kenobi of expatriates. Mr. Kenobi had spent the better part of 30 years living and working in East Asia and he had a lot of good stories to tell. He even had a British accent like Alec Guinness.

We had a few beers together, he regaled me with his wisdom and I told him about living in Mainland China – a place he had not visited. At the end of our talk, he turned to me and said, “It sounds to me as if you are about to embark on the kind of life that I have had; you are going to have a wonderful adventure. But let me give you a piece of advice…”

Dear readers, I waited with baited breath for this great Jedi Master to impart on me secrets of the Force. What was this one last thing he wanted me to know? And then he said; “One of the most important things you should remember is: never marry a white woman.”

Somewhere across Cyberspace a bunch of guys are laughing if their wives or girlfriends are not in the room while others just called their spouse over to read this. Now, before I lose a certain demographic of readers of this blog, I implore you to please read on as I gallop through the minefield of the topic of interracial dating & marriage.

I’ve always remembered Mr. Kenobi’s advice, mostly because it’s a pretty interesting story to tell. But also because I think I understand where he’s coming from. First, let me interject this: when it comes to love, never say never! In this sense, his advice was really pretty bad.

If you live on the other side of the world for half your adult life it’s pretty hard to avoid dating someone from a different race. I have dated a few Chinese girls, so I’m talking from experience. I also date Western women when they bother to give me the time of day. I have no strong preference either way; if anything I just really like any smart, good-looking woman that happens to also like me. I’m funny that way.

It is only recently that I have come up with a theory on interracial romance. I’m no scientist, but here it goes. What if somewhere in our brains we are hardwired to be attracted to the "other” – someone of a different race, or different hair color and skin tone, or even just someone with a cool foreign accent? The biological argument would be that somehow our bodies know that it’s good to have a deep and rich gene pool.

Early man and woman must have realized that having kids with their siblings and cousins didn’t produce good stock. After all, no one likes a hunchback. So maybe they learned that intermingling with other tribes was a good thing. Unfortunately in early history it was expressed in bouts of raping and pillaging as opposed to speed dating.

I think most everyone can admit the idea of being with someone from a different culture, race, etc. is somewhat attractive. The "other” is mysterious, and that can be titillating, no? I think this is why “gentlemen prefer blondes” and “blondes have more fun”; in North America they are comparatively rare. I bet blondes in Sweden and Switzerland don’t have any more fun than anyone else.

Another argument that suggests we might be somewhat hardwired to be attracted to the "other” is that I notice that people tend to go gaga over kids from a different race. Kids are cute anyway, but in my experience it gets stepped up a notch when people from one race look at kids of another. Of course maybe this is only my perception, but I have discussed this with friends of many colors, and we tend to be in agreement. And, I also think Gary Coleman owes his career to this phenomenon.

But of course there are problems. We are also conditioned by our societies not to trust “the other”; someone who is different than us could be “bad” or “undesirable” for any number of reasons. I mostly chalk all that up to flat out bigotry and jealousy; and I have no time for anyone who thinks like that.

In the end, we can’t help whom we fall in love with, it just happens. But jumping across some imaginary line and being with the "other” can be quite appealing; whether you are a Montague or Capulet, Yankee fan or Red Sox fan, cat person or dog person, or one race or another.

My Religious Experience on the Way to Tibet

In my first year in China I realized one of my childhood dreams; I traveled to Tibet. I’m not entirely sure where this dream came from; it might have been from Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks, or W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. But the idea of traveling to the other side of the world and up the Himalayas to catch a little Oriental wisdom and a chance at enlightenment had enthralled me ever since I was about 16 or so.

My friend Sasquatch and I left Beijing one summer day on a train for Xining, the capital of Qinghai province – a part of China so beautiful the PLA tests it’s nuclear weapons on it. On a mutual dare, Sasquatch and I decided to take the 3-day train ride by ‘hard seat’, the lowest class of ticket available. Back then hard seat was double rows of metal and wooden benches facing each other separated by a small table in the middle. At any one time there might have been up to 150 in a car. Mind you, except for two large young Americans, these were mostly peasants and maybe some university students.

Accommodations were fetid; thankfully Sasquatch and I stayed fairly well lit on a steady stream of baijiu, warm beer and Tang on top of a diet of Riz Crackers and instant noodles. These were things that were all readily available at almost any train station in 1993. To this day, I swear nothing will keep you healthier if you happen to find yourself on a Petri dish / cesspool rolling through the desert. Baijiu kills the germs and the Vitamin C in Tang gives a nice boost to your immune system – we created a cocktail mixing the two, it’s called a Wrench.

Sixty or seventy hours later, we arrived in Xining thoroughly done in by exhaustion. My nerves were frayed, I was filthy, and my digestive system wanted to separate from me and fly back to America. When we hit our hotel room Sasquatch promptly collapsed. I was too excited and after a long hot shower I was almost a new man. It was time to see what Xining had to offer, after all we would only be there one night because we had to catch a train to Golmud the next day before jumping on a two-day bus ride to Lhasa.

The first order of business was food. There was a kebab stand not far from the front gate of the hotel and I descend on it like a jackal after the carcass of a Cape buffalo. This is where my religious experience happened.

Now you might think that after three days without sleep and plenty of bad food and booze I was ready for a hallucination of Christ himself selling kebabs and demanding penance for my misspent youth. Not quite, it wasn’t that kind of religious experience. Although I once had something like that a Grateful Dead concert in Vermont.

This was another kind of religious experience, not one in which I experienced God, but rather where I experienced religion in a new way. I bought a beer and ordered a fistful of spicy kebabs; after I satiated myself greedily for a few minutes I struck up a conversation with my neighbor at the kebab stand. He was also enjoying a beer and a large quantity of kebabs; he looked like a fellow backpacker. Sure enough he was, my new friend was Japanese and he was also on his way to Tibet; he was also very excited about it because he was a monk.

This struck me as odd, I don’t know many sects of Buddhism in which it’s OK for the monks to swill beer and eat meat. It seems to me that’s how one ends up being reincarnated at as dung beetle or something else equally undesirable. So I asked him, “What gives with the beer and meat? After all, you’re a Buddhist monk.” He rather serenely replied, “That’s true! But I am a bad monk.”

OK, this is not the same thing as the Madonna revealing herself to me and granting the power to lay hands on the sick, nor is it Buddha's Four Noble Truths. But it was a bit of an epiphany. You see, I grew up Catholic, and the whole time I went to Catholic school I never heard a priest, monk, nun or bishop declare themselves a bad one. Maybe that would have undermined their authority, who knows? They all admitted they were sinners, but that goes with the territory. For me, it was refreshing to meet a self-deprecating monk who admitted he was weak, but still trying.

The self-proclaimed ‘bad monk’ and his example helped me realize something. On the road to enlightenment or the path to Heaven, or whatever, it’s more about the journey then the destination. We all have our failings, but it’s the commitment to being better and picking ourselves up after we fall that defines who we are and where we are going.

Looking back on that trip to Tibet, I guess I was looking for something, and it seems kind of wonderful where I found it.

“You Don’t Understand China”

From time to time I’ll give out ‘doing business in China’ advice in this blog. I do not have the credentials of scores of other writers who make a living doing this. I have never blown a multi-million dollar deal, I have not had my business stolen from me by a joint venture partner, and I have never gone bankrupt. But I am still young, I might yet achieve the same elite status others who give business advice in China have.

There are four words that every foreigner doing business in China who hears them should sit up, pay attention and get ready to take action. These words are “You don’t understand China.”

Other foreigners who say these words are more likely than not just posturing and are full of bullshit. They probably want to sell you their consulting services. I won’t waste my time with them. In this case, I am specifically referring to when a Chinese person says them to a foreigner.

I equate this statement by the Chinese to be similar in meaning and intent as the protection offered by the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. Defendants evoke the Fifth Amendment “on the ground that the answers that would be given could be used as evidence against the witness to convict him or her of a criminal offense.” This is not just a legal term; in pop culture “pleading the fifth” means “I don’t want to answer that cause it could get me into trouble.” Thank you John Gotti.

There are several reasons why a foreigner might be told “you don’t understand China,” in my experience sometimes what the speaker really means is:

• “In fact, you really don’t know that much about China.”
• “I can’t be bothered to come up with a coherent argument or explanation, so let’s just attribute this problem to your ignorance.”
• “I know more than you, let’s keep it that way.”
• “I’ve done something wrong, but it’s ok because I going to try to cover up my actions with my country’s culture, inadequate legal system or pervasive corruption.”
• “This is China, I’m Chinese, let’s just do what I want to do.”

You see why you should pay attention when you hear this? And for those of you who have not been to China or have not been here long, take my word for it, this gets said a lot. In fact, all you have to do is pick up a newspaper and read some headlines. When The PRC is criticized by the West for human rights, currency manipulation, or almost anything else, invariably the argument that comes back in a statement from the Foreign Ministry is often some form of “you don’t understand China” argument.

This argument is convenient because it is based on the logic that China is unique and complicated, and most Westerns don’t appreciate this enough. All of this is absolutely true. No wonder the Chinese love to say it.

What I take issue with is that the Chinese like to hide behind it; it’s too often used as a crutch to dismiss valid concerns by outsiders. When you do business here, if you let anyone say this to you and get away with it, you probably deserve to lose your shirt.

I have a solution. It’s not the all-mighty green kryptonite that will solve all your China business problems, but it’s a good tactic to use against any colleague, business partner, government official or anyone else who says this to you. You should respond with a simple “explain it to me”.

If after saying this you are told ‘no’ or confronted with a multi-layered attempt at obfuscation, then you know what you are dealing with. That person has no interest in helping you, which also probably means you don’t share a common objective. You will need to deal with that misalignment as best you can. If it’s important enough to you, it’s time to invest in finding someone who can answer your questions. This is where the high-priced consultants, or maybe different business partners, come in.

On the other hand, if your genuine interest in hearing an explanation about what you supposedly don’t understand is met by a real attempt to enlighten you, then you have found someone who cares enough about their relationship with you to foster it with knowledge. Dear readers, such colleagues, business partners and friends are worth their weight in gold. Find them and reward them.

The Ayi from Hell

Folks, I am not a rich man, but I am sufficiently slovenly to invite the assistance of an ayi, that’s a maid to you non-Chinese speakers. True, I live in a one-bedroom apartment that does not require much housekeeping; I could do it myself. But for less than $100 a month, having someone come in twice a week to make the bed, do laundry, iron my shirts and dust a layer of Gobi Desert off my floor is a cheap luxury. That is, until something goes horribly wrong, and you wake up one day to find Satan with dish gloves and a mop has moved into your residence.

I am not talking about my current ayi; she’s a wonderful woman who barely does a mediocre job and gets paid handsomely for it. Thankfully, she makes my life just a little easier. No, I am talking about the ayi that held my friend and I psychologically hostage in our own apartments with her lunatic behavior. This was a woman who made me live in fear.

In the late 1990s I lived in Huajiadi, which was the local ghetto for foreign trash in Beijing: English teachers, translators, interns, students, and other laowai twenty somethings with their fist jobs out of college. To this day, I still have a set of good friends who were my neighbors at this poor Chinese version of Melrose Place.

Huajiadi was our own little bohemian village of concrete blockhouse apartments. The compound I lived in was decidedly rustic, a family of chickens was raised in the courtyard; so was a small crop of hemp plants. Our apartments were cheap and functional; but even back then my friends and I had ayis.

I will not name the guy who introduced me to her, although he should be drawn and quartered. The woman had worked for him for a year; he very well knew she was a psycho and should have warned me. Instead he mentioned she was a little ‘off’, but a fantastic ayi; he suspected cleaning was some kind of catharsis for her. If that’s true, the woman probably murdered children, bathed in their blood, donned a suit of her victims' decomposing flesh and danced in the moonlight if she didn’t get her hands on a mop and feather duster at least once a day. She had some serious demons to exorcise.

I also share some of the blame. When I interviewed her I could tell right away she wasn’t right in the head. You see, like Gollum in the Lord of he Rings movies, she referred to herself in the third person. Our first meeting went something like this:

Author: “Can you come on Tuesdays and Fridays?”
Ayi: “Yes, ayi can come then, ayi cleans very well! She’s a good ayi…”
Author: “Uhhhh, ummm… ok. Can you start next week?”
Ayi: “Yes, ayi will start on Tuesday.”

I shook it off at the time, but I should have realized then and there I was in danger of having one of my digits chomped off by the crazed woman and might very well get pushed into a pit of lava for my trouble.

Anyway, I hired her, and before things got really bad, I recommended her to a very good friend of mine, we’ll call him Jose. In spite of this, Jose and I still remain friends to this day.

At this point dear readers, you are all probably asking yourself “how bad could she be?” Sorry to keep you in suspense, for starters the ayi’s cleaning uniform was an old-fashion set of full-length red woolen underwear and white sneakers. She looked a little like a matriarchal version of Thing One & Thing Two from The Cat in the Hat. By the way, a handful of the half dozen teeth she still possessed were gold. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.

Here are a few examples of her work before I describe the worst offenses. On a couple memorable occasions I returned home from a hard day’s work to find:

• Most of my dishes taken from the cupboards and stowed in the refrigerator; the ayi figured since I never had any food she might as well put the dishes there because it was the cleanest space in the kitchen.
• My precious few good suits were taken off their hangers in the closet, neatly folded and placed in drawers.
• My pants ironed with broadside creases so when I put them I on it looked like I had two khaki chimneys jutting from my crotch; it wasn’t a flattering look for me.

OK, none of this is that bad, right? The worst was when I came home a little early one day after the ayi had been working for me for over a year and I saw her cleaning the toilet… with my back brush! Pause a moment and think about it. It was an honest mistake on her part; she saw a brush in the crummy little bathroom and drew a conclusion. But, God!

So obviously she wasn’t the world’s greatest ayi, why didn’t I fire her? Because I was afraid what would happen if I did. She knew where I lived and I was fairly sure she was unstable; events unfolded later that further heightened that suspicion. Also, by this time I was only a few months away from leaving China and going back to the US, I figured I could just stick it out.

Jose had his own problems with her. First, there was the cat. Jose was cat sitting for a month or so while a friend went home during the summer. The ayi took one step into the apartment and gave the animal a disapproving look and immediately asked how long the offensive pussy would be on the premises. The ayi, it appears, was afraid of the cat; so much so she might have very well tried to frame the cat in a bit of domestic dooty terrorism.

One day Jose came home to find an enormous turd on the windowsill inside his bedroom. At first glance he assumed it was the cat’s, he was pretty sure it wasn’t his. But after careful inspection, he concluded it could have been the ayi’s. There was no evidence; a team of crime scene investigators didn’t take a DNA sample. But the simple fact was the turd was roughly half the size in length and diameter as the cat, and it would have been a miracle for something so small to poo something so big.

At this point, we started suspecting the ayi was capable of anything. I was grateful I was leaving the country. This leads me to my last ayi story. A couple of weeks before I was to leave China for the second time I took a vacation to hang out with some monks in a Tibetan lamasery and practice my chanting; really. While I was away, the ayi came to my apartment, saw a lot of my stuff boxed up and assumed I’d skipped town without paying her for the last month. She then called Jose at the office and demanded to know my whereabouts. Being the helpful friend he was, he said I left town. Jose’s Chinese was functional, but not great. I think a little might have been lost in translation.

The ayi whirled herself into a fury! She wanted her money; no American slacker was going to cheat her out of her hard earned wages. She demanded the money from Jose, who is a genuinely good guy, so he quickly caved in and agreed to pay. Great, she was on her way to the office to collect. Two hours later, the ayi shows up at a place of business after ridding roughly 10 kilometers on her tiny flatbed tricycle on a hot day. The ayi was dressed in her woolen red underwear and sweat rolled off her face in streams as she berated Jose and cursed me. Jose paid her quickly and got her the hell out of the office.

Within a few weeks I out was out of the country and safely away from the Ayi from Hell. Jose dealt with her in his own way. He moved to the other side of Beijing and told her he didn’t need an ayi anymore.

To this day, I have never bought another back brush.

Either/Or

From time to time the author leaves China, sometimes he goes home for Christmas, other times he travels the world looking for romance, wisdom and a really nice beach. I remember having one of the best conversations I’ve ever had with a woman in a restaurant in Jakarta. I will pass on the fruit of this conversation to you. Those of you who are single can use it on your next date, those of you in a relationship may want to think twice; the author is not responsible for ruining any relationships other than his own.

First some background, although my new lady friend had recently moved to Indonesia she previously lived in Beijing and a mutual friend introduced us, so we had something in common. The woman in question, who I shall call Regine for literary reasons, is a tall blond with long legs who looks great in a miniskirt; she also has a fantastic… brain. Seriously, the woman is sharp! And I like that. I’ve never been overly attracted to bubble headed bimbos, I’ve ogled a great number of them in my time, and will continue to do so, but they are not what sets my heart on fire. For the record, I prefer a nice ass piloted by world-class gray matter.

So we were having one of those ‘get to know you’ conversations. We discussed living in China and Indonesia, our childhoods, and we discussed torture a fair bit. Regine worked in the field of Human Rights and legal reform, so she was a bit of an expert. I, on the other hand, have delusions of grandeur about writing suspense novels, so the subject had mutual interest. For the record, we are both against torture for anything other than a good plot device, but light spanking on any occasion was not entirely ruled out either.

Anyway, the first hour or so of the evening passed quickly, the conversation was stimulating, the food and drink were good, and we enjoyed each other’s company. But we were starting to run out of things to say, when one or both of us came up with an idea for a game. I really can’t recall how it originated, my apologies to Regine if it was totally her idea.

I’ll call this game ‘Either/Or’. It has nothing to do with the book of the same name by the Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard, although the chapter ‘Diary of a Seducer’ is at least a little relevant. By the way, Søren had the hots for some young woman named Regine Olsen, and that’s the origin of my friend’s pseudonym.

The game is played by asking a series of questions with only two possible answers, the person answering the question must pick ONLY ONE of the offered answers. It’s usually more interesting if you explain your answer.

For example; “Who is better, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” If I recall correctly, I answered the Beatles because I love their lyrics and musically they extended themselves further than the Stones. We discussed how the Stones had better guitar rifts and were better party music.

Another question was, “Where would you prefer to vacation, at the beach or in the mountains?” I am a confirmed beach person, lots of good books, an endless supply of cold beer and a sunny beach is my idea of paradise. Regine, I was surprised to find out, preferred the mountains. I remember coming to the conclusion that almost all mountain people are very active and sporty vacationers, they want to hike and rock climb, etc. I think beach people on the other hand tend to be lazier. This is valuable information when men and women are considering each other.

By the way, I believe Regine has the metabolism of a humming bird on crack, she is constantly on the move, she works hard and plays even harder. In stature and behavior I’m probably more like a grizzly; large appetites and bursts of activity heavily punctuated by cozy sloth.

I’ll give one more interesting example from the game, I asked “Who do you prefer, Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant?” For women, this question is which guy (screen persona) do you want to be with? And for men, “which of the two do you want to be?” She said Bogart and I said Grant. Here’s why; we both agreed Bogey is cooler, and he’s a tough guy. But Bogey is usually a dark, brooding, remorseful man who lets the girl get away (e.g. Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon). I’d rather be Grant, star in more romantic comedies and bag Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief), though I’d prefer to be slightly less metrosexual.

We played this for an hour or two and had great fun, especially when our answers surprised each other. We quickly discovered the two of us have a lot in common and got to know each other as well as a guy and girl can over one dinner. I suspect the danger of the game, if there is one, is that you can very quickly learn if you have no earthly reason to be with the other person, and that can make for a short evening.

For example, I won’t be with a girl who doesn’t like dogs. For that matter, the more cats she has the more likely I think she’s probably an ax murderer. I guess this leads me to the conclusion that if Jessica Alba was as dumb as a box of rocks and had 5 cats I wouldn’t even consider dating her; well… maybe.

Please enjoy the game; I hope it works out well for you.

My First ‘Last Night in China’

Expatriates are essentially global nomads. One facet of living in Beijing is the annual round of going-away parties; I have had two of my own. The first was an unforgettable experience, primarily because I witnessed the closest thing I’ve ever seen to an actual miracle or Jedi powers. It is also memorable because I was right when almost everyone around me was wrong. In my book, that makes for a good story.

It was a cold December night in 1993, my first year in China was coming to end and a few fellow North American laowai and I were out to make a night of it. I had arrived in Beijing roughly twelve months earlier to study for one semester; one thing led to another and I took a hiatus from college, traveled to Tibet in the summer and then found a job teaching English in Beidaihe from August to December. For those of you outside of China, Beidaihe is the Hamptons of the PRC; the beach wasn’t at all bad and it had the added bonus of containing a mediocre strand of hemp that grew just along the roadway leading to the shore. More about my tenure in Beidaihe in another posting.

So I was back in Beijing for a few days before heading to Hong Kong and back to New York. Back then we didn’t have Sanlitun, or ‘bar street’ to the uninitiated, we had Uighurville. As the name suggests, it was a section of Beijing where ethnic Uighurs had a conclave, it was in the Weigongcun area of the city and close to the university where I had studied.

I will not go into a long exposition on who the Uighurs are, that’s why God made Wikipedia. But I will add my own footnotes to their history in Beijing. Their cuisine it excellent, it comprises of hardy noodle dishes, roasted lamb and nan bread. For Westerns surviving on steady diet of Chinese food, it was a welcome change to something a little more familiar.

So, as students we tended to congregate in Uighurville, we went for the food but stayed for the nightlife. And what a nightlife it was! The area was a couple of square blocks with a main drag of two dozen or so restaurants that stayed open late into the night. During warm weather, tables and chairs where placed on the street so everyone could eat their kebabs and Yanjing beer in open air and watch a certain amount of mayhem unfold.

Dear readers, if you detect nostalgia in the author’s words, you are right to do so, sadly, Uighurville no longer exists. In 1998 or 99, my memory fails, the city fathers decided to eradicate what was probably Beijing’s only ethnic neighborhood. Ostensibly it was because the whole area was being renovated and a giant shopping mall and new residential buildings were to be erected.

However, many assume the neighborhood was ‘gentrified’ because it was a thriving center for the drug trade and the scene of many late night brawls. Also, in March 1997 ten people were injured in a bus bombing in Beijing, this was only weeks after three simultaneous bus bombings in Xinjiang (the region of China Uighurs come from) and the death of Deng Xiaoping. Uighur separatists were widely suspected for the Beijing bomb and it seems likely city fathers where happy to get rid of a whole neighborhood of what they potentially saw as would-be criminals and terrorists. The PRC government really can be a spoilsport sometimes.

One quick note on stereotyping Uighurs, the author’s favorite Uighur kebabmonger was a man with a nasty scar running diagonally from his forehead across an eyebrow, nose and lip. Rumor has it he sold hashish; I will neither confirm nor deny that veracity of that rumor. While munching on kebabs and tossing back a couple beers together one evening I asked him, “What happened to the other guy.” He very coldly responded, “I won the fight!” My point is some Uighurs are badass mothers.

Anyway, back to my last night in Beijing. So there I was, a worldly 21 year old who just spent his fist year in China, fell in love with the place, and was celebrating his impending departure with a night out in Beijing in a neighborhood local Chinese considered to be something akin to 125th St. in New York or Compton in LA. Me and three other guys had just finished a round of beers and were chewing happily on our first course when a wild man burst into to the restaurant.

Although it was a cold winter night, the man wasn’t wearing a coat and his shirt was ripped and half hanging off him, he was also covered head to toe in dirt and patches of blood. In any other neighborhood this would have been bad for business, to foreigners in Uighurville, this was just some more local color.

As it turns out, my friends knew the guy, he was a friend or cousin or whatever of the restaurant’s owner. The owner impressed upon us we would be doing him a favor if we let this fellow sit with us and keep him from leaving the restaurant. The man in question had just been in a fight in a nearby alleyway and there was concern that if he went back out on to the street something very bad would happen. We all readily agreed this was just the dinner companion for us.

More beer and food was ordered as we quizzed him about the fight. He happily showed us various scrapes and bruises, including bloody knuckles and a series of viscous bite marks on his back that did not appear to have been delivered affectionately. We all congratulated him and stood in awe; this was a man!

By the way, I would be remiss if I forgot to mention that this fellow was heavily intoxicated on God-knows-what. When I looked into his eyes I definitely got the impression that the hamster had slipped the wheel. This makes the next turn of events all that more extraordinary.

After hearing about the high points of the fisticuffs in the alley, we laowai settled into chattering with each other, more beers were ordered, and more conversation ensued… in English. He didn’t speak the language, and I think our friend was frustrated in no longer being the center of attention; he changed that in a momentous way.

He snatched a porcelain bowl from the table in one hand and with the other stretched out his index and ring fingers and waved them in the air. He then proclaimed “I can pass these two fingers right through this bowl. Do you want to see my try?”

This caused a lot of muttering among us. Did he mean his fingers would magically pass through the bowl without breaking it? “No! Don’t be stupid,” was the reply, but he could force his two little fingers through the bowl with a flick of his hand.

I rapidly said that would be amazing and I’d like to see him do it. My companions were bigger humanitarians than I; they all quickly disagreed with me and suggested I shut up. Our friend had obviously suffered enough for one evening; a couple of broken or cut fingers weren’t going to do him a bit of good. Besides, he was obviously off his head on something; it would be cruel to goad him into attempting anything stupid.

I agree; I was cruel. I slapped a hundred kuai note on the table and proudly stated he could do it, so the others should put up or shut up! My character was called into question, but money was put on the table, half of us for and half against.

I have read tales of intrepid explorers marching into the darkest regions of obscure countries and befriending local tribe by saving the offspring of its chief from a terrible fate, or curing malaria with a gin and tonic, or singlehandedly wiping out the enemy tribe armed with only a smart horse and a six shooter. These daring exploits win the undying loyalty of hard, savage men; the explorers become blood brothers and honorary members of the tribe. Dear readers, this was just such a case. When I threw my money down and sided with him without hesitation, our Uighur friend turned and gave me such a look of gratitude and loyalty I think I could have asked him to kill for me. It’s a pity I don’t know what’s happened to him since.

In a flash, the man’s arm ripped through the air and with a neat jerk of his hand, two finger cracked through the bowl and knocked a perfect delta shape chip out of it two inches long, sending it tinkling across the floor in one of the most triumphant sounds the author has ever heard in his life. It was simply amazing. Winners and losers of the wager cheered in admiration. More beer was ordered, a lot more, the bill was paid by the winnings.

How did I know he could do it? Well, truth be told, I really didn’t. I was mostly just drunk and thought it would be an interesting thing to do. However, I did think the odds were on my side. First, never bet a man against his own trick, you’ll probably lose. Second, Uighurs have their own version of Central Asian machismo which is usually backed by some serious conojes. So, I was fairly sure this guy had done this trick before and wasn’t talking out of his ass. As it turns out, I was right.

And that, dear readers, was my first ‘last night in China’. No wonder I came back as soon as I could.

Why I Love Living in China

I can’t count how many times I’ve had someone remark to me “I just can’t understand why you choose to live in China.” It’s interesting to note nearly as many Chinese say this to me as Americans.

For my American friends and family, images of choking pollution and Orwellian totalitarianism immediately come to mind when they think of the PRC; which, if their experience with China is solely via commentary from US cable news outlets or brief visits to the country, is somewhat understandable. My impression of New Jersey based on views from the Garden State Parkway and The Sopranos or the Jersey Shore is not flattering.

I intimately understand why Americans think I’m nuts, we assume everyone in the world wants to live in America. If you prefer a small dose of socialism, binge drinking and the metric system, Canada and Australia are fine alternatives to the Home of the Free and Land of the Brave, but only if you are willing to settle for second or third place.

When the Chinese comment on my choice of country of residence it strikes a chord. They are echoing the sentiments of many Americans; they look across the Pacific, or only as far as pirated DVDs of Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives, and they see the United States as a form of middle-class bliss with the possibility of upper-class Nirvana. And I admit, they have a point. Swimming pools, strip malls, blue skies and uncontaminated milk are indeed nice things. I enjoy them whenever I can.

But then there’s the Siren song of the gritty, vibrant and intoxicating China. In the Jazz Age, when prostitution and opium were till fashionable, Shanghai earned the name the ‘whore of the Orient’. Well, hey, we all have a past.

Nearly a century later, after political and social revolution in many forms, I think China’s status can be upgraded to ‘the MILF of the world’. She’s all grown up now and has her children to look after. With money in the bank and some self-assurance, she’s half respectable; but make no mistake, she’s still a saucy, lustful animal that knows how to show a fellow a good time.

Comparatively speaking, Uncle Sam seems like a wheezing octogenarian high on his own stash of Viagra and cough syrup. But we’ll leave that rant for another time.

Mind you, when I say MILF, I mean it. Every Fortune 1,000 company would like to have her spread eagle and asking for more. But China is no tramp; she can say no, she can play coy, she can even two time you with your closest friend or competitor and still make you buy her dinner later in the week. China plays by her own rules. This, my friends, makes the place really interesting.

Like the sea, or the Wild West, China is a frontier. It’s an incubator for green technology, a battleground for cyber warfare and free speech, it’s one of the last great under-exploited markets for fast moving consumer widgets, and it’s the site of the largest infrastructure projects in world. Whatever you are into, chances are it’s happening in China. And if you don’t know it, look out, because you could get run over.

And that’s what keeps me here. Not only do I have a front row seat to the greatest show on earth, sometimes I even get to participate in a small way. Quality of life is in the eye of the beholder. A four bedroom / three bath in the Rancho de Grassy Knoll subdivision is nice, God bless the American dream. But for a soul that seeks a little adventure, that relishes the prospect of being at the epicenter of momentous changes in human history, one could hardly do better than being in China at the dawn of the 21st Century.

For better or worse, the “interesting times” as mentioned by one famous native of the state of Lu are happening here and now. And being an American adds a certain perspective; awkwardly straddling two great world powers and influential cultures, I am fortunate to see the world through a strange and exciting set of bifocals. I can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Since I’m rambling, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of foreigners living in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Sure, many are here because this is where the money is. But if you find a laowai who has been here a few years or more, I bet you that’s not why they stay. Watching a billion people transform a society from Confucianism to Communism and then to something else is more alluring than a gold rush and more tragic than a freeway accident. The world can hardly keep its eyes off.

I suppose I’ll make it home some day, but for nearly twenty years now I can’t shake the feeling I’m in the right place at the right time.