A Nice, Fatty Slab of Man Meat

BEIJING – Here in China, I get what I want.

When I shout "fuyuan," the waitress comes running across the restaurant to see if I need more dumplings. Outside of Beijing's trendiest club districts, the owner of a bar will not only admit me at any time, but frequently take me to the Very Important Person room, complete with free drinks. People line up just to converse with me on the subway, train or even while eating a bowl cold noodles.

There's nothing special about me, I'm just a foreigner in China. People here treat me with a degree of deference that would be unheard of in America. It's outrageous, really, and I found how demeaning it can be to serve rather than be served; I became a prostitute.

Zack arranged the position. My travel mate through South Asia, not four days out of the hospital (and as it would turn out, only a day away from another visit) sat in the middle of Beijing Language and Culture University Bla Bla bar's courtyard, intoxicated. At his table sat Evan, our American friend, and two Asians. I sipped my first beer as our new friends explained why we needed to leave soon.

"Do you want to drink beer, sing song, meet beautiful women and make money?" the skinner one asked me. He claimed to be Kazakh-Chinese, or perhaps Chinese-Kazakh, and went to People's University here in Beijing.

Zack didn't believe him, but he couldn't say "what's the catch?" in Chinese: The four had been talking past each other for some time before I arrived. The Kazakh wanted us to go to a club in the Xizhimen district, about three miles away. We would earn money because few foreigners go this club, and they want us to talk to the women.

I agreed with Zack, it sounded too good to be true. I wanted to sip beer with my friends, share stories recent vacations, of Laotian drug dealers and Indian computer nerds, not blast off to some crazy club. But the more we sat there, and the more the two pleaded, the more Zack want to go. I said no to Zach and explained to the Kazakh
I just couldn’t take him up on his business opportunity tonight.

Thirty minutes later we arrived at the club. It was a massive structure, attached to the Tianfan Hotel off the Third Ring Road. The club – actually a karaoke bar – rose four feet and was covered with neon strips on three sides. There was a massive enclosed valet area, and our taxi was opened by a man dressed in a pressed, starched shirt.

The Kazakh convinced me to come, as he thought I had the best Chinese in the group, and would be needed to translate. Zack really, really, really wanted to go, and Evan seemed up for it, so reluctantly I agreed to go and look around.

"If things look bad," I warned the Kazakh. "We're leaving."

The first room resembled a hotel lobby, with a large arrangement of fake flowers and twisted branches, and a spiral staircase leading up to the second level. We went upstairs and were led into a room overlooking a dance floor. Standing in the room were several dozen Chinese, all male and young.

"These are all nanji," the Kazakh whispered in my ear. The word means roosters, but it’s also slang for male prostitutes. What? If everyone in the room is a prostitute, who were we?

One of the young men came up to Evan and me, wanting a picture. I obliged, sitting on a red couch with the young professional between us. After he finished another came over with his camera phone, and another. Some spoke to us while getting their snap. Where were we from? How did we get to China? Where did we learn Chinese? The usual spiel, but here I found myself talking about my sister in the strangest of circumstances. One broad-shouldered man, much larger than the others, asked if we'd been to Henan Province and said he had studied at the Shaolin Temple.

At 1:30 on the dot, all the men moved across the hall into a small room, some kind of staff lounge for the club. We couldn't get inside, but after a couple minutes the Kazakh tried to led us along with several of the young men into a nearby room. It was a karaoke booth, a small room with a long couch around one wall, an entertainment system opposite and a glass table in the middle. Gaudy brown and white wallpaper peeled on the high corners of the walls and dusty fake flower arrangements were placed at random locations in the room.

Inside I could see three women, all dressed in skimpy dressed and loads of makeup. Their permed haircuts reached the middle of their backs. They looked young and empowered, the men who stood in front of them just young.

The Kazakh explained more as I looked on from outside the door. The men are paraded in, six or eight at a time. The women ask questions, and then choose their entertainer. Soon the former Shaolin monk sat next to a customer with a black patent leather purse.

Our funhouse tour continued. Now we were led into an empty karaoke room. On the couch sat a man around 40, with a squared-off haircut and a black suit. This was the boss, and he began our meeting with a cigarette. "What exactly did these two tell you about this place?" he said, gesturing toward the Kazakh and his silent assistant.

I told him our story so far, how we'd been plucked from the foreign student university's bar and dragged out here just to take a look. The boss seemed pleased.

"You get here at 11," he said. "You can leave at 4, but if you still have a costumer if you have to stay until they leave. Each night you will make at least 500 RMB. You can start tomorrow, but wear nice pants and real shoes."

I looked down at my flip-flips and hairy feet covered in dried, crusty sweat and felt embarrassed. I promised to look better the next time we returned, and thanked the man for his time.

We left the room, and I told our hosts that it was time to go. But instead of taking us toward the exit, they led us into one final room. Now we were the ones on
display, put in front of three hungry women. They wanted man-meat.

"Where are you from?" One asked me. "How old are you?" said another.

"Can you dance?" asked the third.

I felt mortified. To these people I was an exotic monkey with a miniature symbol, a cute toy that would liven up a night on the town. These costumers probably spent years making a fortune in real estate or manufactured, now they wanted to be fawned over. Staring at these ravenous people, I knew that I couldn't never work here at the karaoke club, even if I never established whether or not I would be expected to "entertain" these people back at their hotel suites.

Prostitution is dehumanizing. Being any kind of servant, required to dance when someone says ‘dance’ and bark out an awful version of Aerosmith's "I Don't to Miss a Thing" on cue is terrible too. Even services that I take for granted are vaguely unsettling. Why should a woman run across the room just because I need a package of salt? Maybe I don't always need to get what I want.

Working the Electronic Corner

KUNMING, China - Prostitutes aren't stupid.

One rang me up at the Golden Bridge Hotel just a couple hours ago. "I heard you're staying until six this evening," a female voice said. "What are you doing? Do you want a massage?"

I declined, not wanting the elicit the services of anyone working at this dive-y hotel next to the railway station. The shower didn't work, the sink held several years worth of mildew and my pillow had a yellow stain on the right corner. I'll take my foot rubs somewhere else.

But how did the prostitute (Let me clarify something here: When a woman calls a hotel room in China soliciting massages, she's always a prostitute, or at least a madam.) know I'd decided to spend a couple extra hours at the Golden Bridge?

Her call came only ten minutes after a furious argument at the front desk. After arriving at one in the morning, Zack and I made it out of the room at 12:40, over half an hour after the official check out time. Now I'm not a morning person, and I frequently make it out just after the official leaving time. I've always been able to cajole my way out of paying the extra fee. Not here.

"Foreigners and Chinese are the same!" the fuyuan at the counter said. "Everyone pays the fee!"

"You're cheating me!" I howled back. "We stayed here not even 11 hours."

"It's the all the same!"

This went on for several minutes, until I was forced to make a tactical retreat. I accepted paying the half-day charge, but swore to be in my room until 6 p.m., the maximum time alloted. I would get my revenge my disrupting the routine of the cleaning woman. It's a petty move, but sometimes I'm petty.

And the hotel staff had their revenge. While I stormed back up to the fifth floor with my backpack, they placed a call to the hotel's massage liaison. There's a couple of waiguoren in Room 526 looking for some action.

Celvin

BEIJING — Celvin is 20-year-old college sophomore, an English major with a penchant for cooking. He's just fallen deeply in love, and I can't imagine his desire will ever be requited.

Celvin's been mentioned on this blog, he was Three Thumbs' unnamed apprecentice at last Saturday's barbecue, the one responsible for carrying the huge cartload of supplies around the Tsinghua campus. Now let me mimic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and tell the events of that evening from another angle.

Three Thumbs kept Celvin busy for most of the night, having him prepare wings and pre-spice each roll. Later in the evening, Three Thumbs started chatting with party guests, and left the Celvin in charge of the embers. By 10:00 the party had put away the last of the wings and Celvin was free to join the festivities. Soon he'd found Jessie, a junior from San Diego.

Celvin's English is not good, and Jessie's Chinese is basic, so they had trouble communicating. Some of my more fluent friends served as a meditator and they exchange a few pleasantries about school, their families and the weather.

At this point everyone at the party was full of alcohol and roast chicken, and their conversation was interrupted by requests for pictures. I took a picture with Three Thumbs. Three Thumbs was in a picture with Jessie. I'm in one with Celvin and a tree, and then at some point Jessie and Celvin were in a shot together. After pictures the party guests broke up, the party guests to a bar, Three Thumbs and Celvin to work their grill in front of it.

The next morning Jessie woke up to a text message.

"hello. how you doing?" It was Celvin.

Ten minutes later:

"last night very fun. i really enjoy meeting you."

Celvin sent more messages throughout the day, most referencing when he could get a copy of a picture someone took at the party of Jessie and him. Unfortunately the camera went missing after the party, taking the
picture with it. Celvin didn't take the news well:

"I can pay money," he said in one message. He doubted the camera was really missing. "But I think is this the real reason? I not think so," another message said.

Jessie dropped her phone in toilet Wednesday night, rendering it useless for two days. When it started working again, there were messages waiting.

"i very very very very very very very very very very want to see you."

Celvin had fallen for Jessie, and he wanted a meeting. He suggested dinner, as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, Jessie didn't reciprocate his feelings. She's seeing someone, and isn't about to dump him for a mediocre English student from a small town in Hebei Province. Therein lies her dilemma: She wants to tell Celvin the truth, but in a way that won't drive him to jump from a tall building.

Three Thumbs weighed in one night when Jessie stopped by his grill for a couple late wings and some advice.

"Celvin won't give up," he said to Jessie. "He is in love."

This week Jessie and I are planning to dine with Celvin. I will be there as translator, friend and protector in case Celvin decides he can't contain his love for the duration of the dinner.

I'm not sure if this is the best solution. Celvin wants to go on a date, not dine with a couple foreign acquaintances. Perhaps it would be better to avoid all contact, and figure that Celvin would move onto a new crush in a couple weeks. But this way at least he gets to see Jessie, and there's a chance that their relationship will develop into a healthy, long-lasting friendship, and Jessie's Text Message Box will never be empty again.

Can We Get Back to the Surgery?

ALBANY, N.Y. - After my dentist proclaimed my mouth cavity-free, I had to the courage to ask a question I'd been curious about for months: Do I need to get my wisdom teeth removed?

"I don't know," he said, and looked at me blankly. "Go see these people." He handed me a business card for the Adirondack Oral/Maxillofacial Group.

Three weeks and one canceled appointment later, I turned off an office park cul-de-sac and parked at the oral surgeon's lot. The practice shared an operation with a deli, which I walked into by mistake before rounding the building and finding into the right office.

A woman with a fixed cleft pallet and still evident lisp took an X-ray, and then took me into a small examination room. Five minutes later the doctor walked in, dressed in scrubs and still wearing a face mask. This was 8:30 in the morning. Unless this doctor performs dawn surgeries, he's so much of a germophobe he wears these as a matter of course.

The doctor used my EMS approach to making his job more interesting: changing the subject. He took a print of the X-ray, put it front of a light, and then asked a question.

"So, what do you do with your life?"

I told him that I'm leaving in a few weeks for language school in Beijing.

"Cool," he said, a bit informally for a doctor but he was under 40. "I have a cousin who spent a year in Beijing. He met a Chinese girl and they married."

"So, what dialect do you plan on studying?"

Mandarin, I said. No one studies anything but Mandarin. I didn't say that part.

"That's like the main dialect, right? The Communists forced everyone to speak that after they took over?"

Well, no. I could have told the dentist that standard Mandarin is derived from a standard Beijing accent and the language of the Imperial Court. The Communist government has been more effective in promoting a centuries-old policy that people should learn Mandarin. Chinese isn't unique in having so many dialects. Lots of languages have dialects.

I didn't really want to get into it. I wanted to know if I needed oral surgery in the next two weeks. Would I be setting off on my journey east with a bleeding mouth?

Thankfully, the removal of my wisdom tooth (I've only got one) can wait. The impacted tooth is asymptomatic, and besides, if it became infected, the dentist suggested I could get it removed in China.

"They've got excellent dental care there. We've had some of their dentists come over and speak to us. Where are you going to be studying?"

Amazing. It was all-China, all-the-time with this guy. He went on about studying Chinese was a smart career move, problems I might have with learning the language, and the experience of having a Chinese cousin-in-law.

The dentist is a good example of a group of people I run-into from time to time: the China Crazies. They've got a lot to say about China, and they don't get to talk about it very often. When they hear I'm going there, the floodgates open. It's very flattering that they want to talk my destination, but sometimes inappropriate. Let's save the China chit-chat until after surgery.

Three-Way First Date

ALBANY, N.Y. - I'm holed up on this chilly December evening at Professor Java's Coffeeshop, a high school hangout for the goth/poetry reading set. I'm supposed to be writing a letter to Beijing University about spring semester admission, but instead I've been listening in on a first date a couple tables over.

I particularly enjoy this story, told by the male - a self-proclaimed "easy going person" - about a previous unsuccessful dating experience.

"She was dressed basically like her mother. But she's like three years younger than us. She was just really out there. And I'm like she's totally, totally not my type. But I'm having a great time with this."

"So finally her friends get there and we have a couple drinks. We were pretty buzzed. It was like 12:30 and we left, and I knew a place on my route that was open.

"I had a good conversation, I had a good time. I mean anything above that, no way, but I had a good time."

"A couple days later, I call her up, and ask to speak with her, tell her 'hey that was fun. maybe we should have drinks again some time. But her mother picks up the phone and says she's not home."

At this, the date groans. Her new man got stood up.

"And now I feel stupid, because I totally didn't want this to be anything, and now it looks like I'm the one who's calling."

"And you're trying to be a nice guy."

"Yea."

I can only hope the same thing doesn't happen after this date.