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After singing a couple of songs and having a few proffered shots of Yeager from friends for my effort, I felt it was high time to eat, so I said my farewells and headed out the door toward a street famous for its late night street food. Xiao Bei Lu (little north road) is home to nearly all the Muslim cultures as well as African, Indian and smatterings of other ethnic western groups. Muslim traders have been coming to the area for over a thousand years. It is also where most of the drug trafficking and money laundering goes on in Guangzhou. The road is dissected by the main thoroughfare, Huanshi Dong Lu and so it seems, the trouble. This isn't a racist remark; it's simply a matter of business choice. Africans, Turks and Pakistanis deal in all kinds of mind altering substances. I was on the quieter, less troubled side of the street. The south side beyond the main road housed most of the previously mentioned foreigners, while the north side consisted of small shops, banks, schools, and restaurants. This is where I was. The safe side, looking for food.
At night the street changes into a food street, or Wai Sik Kai, as the Cantonese call it. Around 9:30 pm after the car traffic dies down, vendors come out and line up along one side of the road. Here you can find inexpensive, aromatic and tasty foods, either being cooked on the back of a converted bicycle or a real honest to goodness grill on steel wheels. Skewered roasted pieces of land and water beasts abound on a half dozen, smoking, sizzling grills and the scent is intoxicating! A favorite is grilled oysters on the half shell. It's loaded with coarsely chopped garlic, salt and a bit of cilantro. Yet this well known spot is hardly representative of a true Wai Sik Kai. There are areas of Guangzhou where entire streets are closed off at night, tables and low stools are put out and people will fill the roads curb to curb, spitting out their chicken bones until the wee hours of the early morning. But don't be mislead by the lack of manners, the experience is well worth it and can be highly addictive. I never realized just how far I could spit gristle until I moved to Canton. The fragrant and tantalizing smells that are carried on the smoke that wafts from numerous carts lining the street throughout Guangzhou rival the food in many fine restaurants. When you look around at the other diners, you get a sense of why you came. Everyone's mood is carefree; smiles paint their faces, and the sound of laughter and the clinking of beer glasses bounce off the soot covered housing blocks, making everything seem a little less dirty, and everyone a little less poor in the shadows of the misty Guangdong night sky. It's China at it's best.
As my order of oysters and spicy chicken cooked away on two different grills, I stepped into a nearby shop and bought a bottle of Jiujang pijiu* (Pear River beer) to wash it all down. I sat at a low, folding table on a bright pink plastic kiddy stool, my knees sharing space with my chin, and attempted conversing with an ancient old woman across from me. She had her entire mouth ensconced within a grimy bamboo tube, a smaller bamboo piece jutting up midway down that held tobacco. After discharging her smoke, she would grin with a near toothless smile ear to ear, laughing at me, then she would do it again. I sat at that table and ate while watching the night scenery. A beggar shuffled by me, rhythmically wagging his hand before me; I ignored him. A couple of migrant workers looked on from the shadows of a building around the corner. They weren't eating, so I got up and approached them, handing each one 5 RMB. One tried to refuse, but his friend beside him began thanking me in old Chinese style: a closed fist with the other open hand laying across it, shaken several times before him, chest level. Their eyes lit up, smiling and they quickly scurried off to a cart further down the way, no doubt a better bargain awaited them there. I don't usually tolerate beggars; many of them are professionals, with homes, wives and children. They dress in dirty rags and wander streets frequented by the myriad ranks of foreigners in Guangzhou. I can spot the truly destitute and will usually oblige them. The two men that I had helped feed that night were dirt poor migrant workers who were waiting in the wings for scraps left behind. The two of them could eat off that money for two days if they spent it right. Feeling well fed and realizing my legs were numb from sitting, I decided I needed to treat my feet and now slightly aching back to a traditional Chinese foot massage. Rising from my cramped position, I bid farewell to laughing granny who was still smoking, and hobbled off into the night.
* The beer in China is wonderful! It's served in huge bottles and cost less than a soda in the US. Read more about Chinese beer in Notes page
Rubbed The Wrong Way April 14, Friday late evening
The massage place was convenient to areas I liked to frequent so I often went there after hours. It was located on a narrow slit of a street between mouldering, dark, unlit buildings. The only bit of color there was the massage place itself. Here among dingy walk- ups, their muted windows encased in rusting iron gratings, stood a beautiful young Chinese girl dressed in a glimmering gold satin ball gown, fit for Cinderella. She stood behind a small wooden podium, a brightly colored neon sign above her head, flashing the parlor's name. The pseudo-princess escorted me inside and upward, away from the grim alley below. My feet tingled with anticipation!
The massage venues in China can run from the seedy low-lit places that one of my Australian buddies calls, "rub and tug joint", to very posh establishments, with showers, robes and in some cases, full buffets and humidors stocked with real Cuban cigars. My parlor of choice fell far short of the latter and a bit better than the former; no locker, no buffet, but pj's, some orange slices and plastic cups of fresh green tea. All I wanted was a soothing massage to end a perfect evening. I asked for one of two girls that I knew and was then led to a private room. Moments later a girl that I had never seen before entered. "No problem I thought",I'll set her to work. I did know how to say in Chinese, "A little harder", Chong yi dian and "little softer", Qing yi dian. Essential for surviving a Chinese massage, the latter phrase being the most frequently used. I can't recall ever once telling one of the strong handed country girls who were most likely less than six months off the farm, she wasn't grinding her elbow, thumb or finger joint deeply enough into the soft tissues of my body. I once invited a friend of mine to join me, and he groaned loudly from the next room. He told me later he got the phrases mixed up, so he had been telling his girl harder instead of softer!. Careless Chinese phrasing can be hazardous to your health.
This was a real massage place and that's why I liked it. More than once I witnessed a middle eastern client walking swiftly out of the place, complaining "he wasn't being serviced properly". If he wanted that kind of massage he should have gone to the women who lined up on practically every pedestrian bridge in central Guangzhou after dark. Like all large cities in China, Guangzhou is thick with hookers and most are young village women flooding in from the countryside of other provinces. Guangzhou is a city built on commerce- -it's been called "the world's factory floor". And there are thousands of lonely foreign men here who are quite willing to part with their money for the pleasure of these young women, and the families in the countryside know this. Sad but true, women are still regarded as expendable in modern China. The surprising thing about all this is most of these filial women send back at least half their illicit earnings to their family! Yet this is another story for another time. cont. | prev. | main
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