Some Things You Should Know

All right: it's now so hot and humid here and going out, even at night, is the equivilent of walking around in  a dirty sauna or two. I feel like I'm walking through hot dirty butter. Each breath of air fills my lungs with even more hot moist crap. Last night I waited over an hour and a half in a queue to get a taxi--in downtown Beijing--at eleven at night. The driver I finally got was VERY unhappy about having to take me so far--in the direct opposite of where he lived, btw--but he did it, and I tipped him a hundred kuai for doing so. Patronizing? I think not. I took him an hour away from his final destination.

Here's what you should know if you are unfortunate enough to be here in summer:

First: it's really hot and humid. St. Louis humid with third world pollution as a cherry on top. You think you can take that? Then welcome. If not, stay home and watch "Big Bird Goes to China." Take a quiz about China on Enchanted Learning dot com. You'll learn about as much.

Second: if you come here and have a really, really uncomfortable day or two due to lies, incompetent workers, and just general fuck-ups over which you have no control, then you have had a Bad China Day. This includes things like your plane being grounded because of high wind---even though not a breath of air is stirring and you see other planes landing and taking off---or the teller at Bank of China announcing into the loudspeaker, "You don't have any money. Go away." Or an  ATM eating your card on a Friday afternoon just as the bank office is closing. Bad, but not undoable. (They have all happened to me, except for the "plane can't take off due to high winds. That happened to my friend and as a consequence she missed her own Going Away Party. No kidding.)

Third, however, is the Bad China Day which turns into the Fucked Over Big Time in China which is better known as "chucked." As in, "Wow, the guy who was arranging my visa for my trip to Vietnam kept my passport for two weeks longer than he said he would and now my visa for China has expired and the police are escorting me to the airport right now and I can't call my girlfriend as my phone just ran out of minutes and they won't let me stop and buy more minutes..." Or, as I was witness to the other day, a visa agent called in sick and for some reason she had taken all the passports home with her, so my friend was unable to pick up her passport as promised that morning and was due to fly to the US three hours later...the meltdown and tantrum were worth of an Oscar, truly awe-inspiring, and if I were the clerk that had to deal with that histrionic, vitriolic and totally justified fit of rage, I would have probably done exactly what she did, which was this: Hang up.

Chucked. It happens. Just try really hard to make sure it doesn't happen to you. But if it does, do what I did: head to the Writer's Bar at Raffles Hotel and see if three Singapore Slings and some congenial company don't make it all a lot, lot better.