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A Night On The Town April 14 2006, Friday afternoon
It was two days before my forty fifth birthday, and I was sipping a beer in front of Xiao Shan Ba--literally Hill Bar in Chinese, known to everyone as "the Hill". It actually sits on a small knoll of park land, boxed in by a wide and busy boulevard in front, a high rise hotel behind, and a sprawling shopping center on one side. Centrally located in Guangzhou's business district, it is the oldest foreigner hangout in the city, and because of the little oasis it provided, I found it to be immensely comforting. For now, I sat alone at a small table before the entrance of the bar watching the dense throng of pedestrians a stones throw away.
I took pride in the fact that it was because of me and a few friends that the owners had bought tables to put out front. Before then, my buddies and I would drag out the heavy, cocktail tables and spring loaded, bouncing bar stools that filled the bar inside so we could watch the busy rush hour traffic wizz by. We sat there for hours, separated from the street by a magnificent sentry of towering Kapok trees, known locally as Hero trees, their long drooping branches overladen with brilliant red blossoms nearly year round. The local pedestrians would gawk at us as they passed by, no doubt thinking all foreign men were lazy louts with nothing to do but sit about and drink all day. Perhaps they were right in some respects; we had more disposable income and found it hard to occupy our free time being totally surrounded by another culture's language.
This day, I was elated, because come morning I would be on a fast train to Hong Kong, where I would be spending a week with my good friend Hugh and his Chinese wife, Samantha, or Sam as we all know her. Hugh started out like me, teaching ESL in Guangzhou. After he married Sam, all that changed for the better. She had family connections in Hong Kong, so not long after they were married, they both high tailed it to the decadent city of celluloid Kung Fu masters, Canto Pop stars, and triad gangsters. The first time I went to HK, I was enthralled by the sheer up and down of it all; it is amazing how many high rise buildings they can fit into such a small space that surrounds Victoria Harbour. What struck me the most was how absolutely organized it was. In the Chinese mainland, people will run over you, and they don't even have to have a vehicle--they'll just bump you to death in pedestrian traffic! God love the British for their anal attitudes, because in HK, people queue, queue and queue some more. The orderliness to it all was enough to convince me to move there. But HK also has its urban appeal, the flashy neon Chinese signs and myriad milk-tea cafes and noodle bars and electronics shops and book stores that actually had English language novels. It wasn't until my second year in China that I stayed longer than a day in HK. Before I had only done the ritual visa run so indicative of expats arriving in the wee hours of the morning, spend the day browsing, sightseeing and shopping, then return to the mainland by bedtime. Once I stuck around and went beyond Kowloon and onto the Island of Hong Kong itself I was thoroughly hooked on the idea living and working there.
I'd had enough of the ignorance that seemed to reign supreme, although I couldn't fault the locals for that--it was the migrant workers that caused most of the trouble and headaches in the city.
I had also recently returned from a much needed holiday near Nanjing, in An Wei province, where I stayed for one month during the annual Spring Festival. It had been my first time to experience a real winter in China, having lived in South China for the previous four plus years and all that crisp winter air had infused me with new energy. I would walk around the city's main park. Dominating the place was a central lake, perhaps a half mile long and in its center was a giant metallic dragon that spouted water high into the air from it's upturned mouth. There were only a few old locals who dared to come out in the biting wind, and even they looked at me, peaking through their scarf covered faces at the crazy lao wai (foreigner) who dared to come out into the freeze. It was there I realized I had spent too much time in Guangzhou, and there were plenty of great cities in China to live in that offered more. I needed change, and Hong Kong was where I wanted to go.
Living in Guangzhou was like living in a Florida swamp. The moment I stepped outside from late spring into early autumn, my shirt would cling to me as fresh beads of moisture popped out from my skin, gluing the fabric to me. The air was so thick I felt like those gape mouthed gold fish I always saw in the ponds in the city parks, gasping for air in the fetid green murk they lived in; I felt in league with them. Moving to Hong Kong would not be any cooler, perhaps worse in summer so near the water. But I wanted the excitement of Hong Kong and Guangzhou was wearing thin. I'd had enough of the ignorance that seemed to reign supreme in mainland China, although I couldn't fault the locals for that--it was the migrant workers that caused most of the trouble and headaches in the city. When you have tens of millions of uneducated people milling about a modern metropolis, accidents abound.
China's new middle class leaves one skeptical of how education helps though. Things I've seen: A woman in business attire digging deep into a nostril with a gleaming polished fingernail, studies her prized goober afterwards, as if it were a trophy, then begins again. A paunchy businessman standing on a street corner awaiting the street signal, looking about indifferently, pulls his shirt tails out of his pants, bunches it all up around his protruding man-breasts, and rubs his shining gut while hocking up a sticky mass from his throat and spits it before him, so audible I can hear the splat of it over traffic. A fiftyish woman holds an infant by the thighs, exposing the kid's bum to the air to deposit a steaming smelly lump street side for the peasant who sweeps the road. While walking down a dark street shortly after sunset, a large plastic grocery bag lands a foot in front of me on the street, thrown out from perhaps a fourth or eighth floor window; it's happened several times.
A few of my world class friends had finally arrived and joined me on the front stoop of the Hill Bar. I was a little giddy knowing that HK was only hours away and I would soon be strolling along Salisbury Road overlooking the best skyline in the world. A wonderful week away from the cloying smell and endless chaos of the mainland, trading it for a different sort of organized melee around Victoria Harbour. We toasted my trip, some asked special favors: Bring back some hard biscuits and jam for an English friend, bring back a money clip for an American, chili powder and antacid tablets (of course) for another. I was writing all these requests down on cocktail napkins, the words oozing into dark blue splotches because of sloshed beer. I hoped I could recall them later.
The sun had long set, so we headed indoors before the best seats were taken. One of the many Filipino bands had already set up their stage and were pumping up the early crowd. "Michael, come up and sing with us!" the singer beckoned. I was in a terrific mood, why not? I jumped up on the make shift stage and sang along, a duet of sorts, "Hotel California", a song that is played in every bar, every karaoke joint and every five star hotel and nightclub in China--the locals can't get enough of it! It's the same with the Carpenters, Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis and Elton John. Western pop wasn't allowed in until the late 80s, so even today in the twenty first century, young twenty somethings croon to western songs thirty years old or more. Wear a t shirt with the Back Street Boys and you are guaranteed the company of a young Chinese woman or two.
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