Ride 'Em, Cowboy!

I've had some amazing experiences in Beijing taxis--I've been ripped off, lied to, treated with the greatest of courtesy and respect, had lunches shared, directions given, advice sought: I've been serenaded, and once was almost driven off a freeway by a driver who was too busy showing me pictures of his Chihuahua on his cell phone to bother to steer. (The screams of terror from the four white guys in the back of the taxi make me chuckle to this day.) Oh, yes, I was abducted once, but since I didn't report it (long story why, including a dead cell phone and a TV show) I won't go into details here. After almost 20 years of taking taxis, I had a first: all I can say to sum it up is "Cowboy."

It's almost impossible to get a taxi from the front of Job Number One: taxis barrel by frequently but they are driven by off-duty drivers on their way home for lunch. I was trying frantically to get a taxi and had been flagging them down and begging them to Take Me To The City for a good twenty minutes while a group of san lun che men sat on their bikes and chuckled at my efforts. San Lun Che are those three-wheeled taxi cabs which are a combination of bike and godawful motor: think of a rickshaw peddled by a bike with the additional va-voom of a coal-burning engine (ok, maybe not coal, but you get the idea). These guys are usually pretty tough customers--some are chatty, most are cheerful, and all would love nothing better than to see some overprivileged fat cat--ie, me--fall flat on their face. So, after providing them with fodder for chatter and gossip, I was starting to get a little testy. I understand Chinese pretty well, including the local dialect, and their comments were not always kind. Finally one came forward and explained to Little Missy here that no one was going to stop but he could drive me down the street to a place near the subway station where I was sure to find a cab. I said the hell with it and jumped in the back of his san lu che, one whose cardboard floor actually boasted a Hello Kitty floor mat.  Off we went: we had gone a few hundred meters when the real experience began.

 We were on the extreme right hand side of the road: the inside lane had faster-moving traffic. A taxi shot past us on the left:  my driver's head snapped up and he gave a shout not unlike the Master riding to hounds: tally-ho! And he was off: he tripled his speed and tried to get the attention of the taxi which was now up ahead of us and to our left about ten meters. His feet pedaled furiously as his hands gripped the controls and fed more diesel or kerosene or fuel to the smoking straining engine. We gained on the taxi slightly: then our driver took out what appeared to be a small rope and started lashing out at the taxi with it, exactly like a cowboy roping a doggie.  I had interned in Cowboy Country and had seen students mutton busting, roping steers, and riding the broncs. This was far more exciting, especially as I was the recipient of my cowboy's skill in separating the taxi from the other cars, shouting it into the lane in front of us, and persuading the driver to pull over to the right side of the road so I could mount, so to speak.

I was laughing too hard to discuss the fee: I handed the driver about 20 kuai (generous) and thanked him for his courtesy and kind help. The taxi driver grunted as I got in: I asked him if he was often accosted in that manner and he shrugged. "Who cares," he said, "As long as I get the fare."

World Peace and Other Anomalies

Some day I will be able to write freely about That Other Jobs I Have which involves listening to non-native English speakers speaking at great length about a variety of topics--few of their responses actually matching any of the prompts I give them. Well, when that day comes, I will share freely the joys the sitting with a serious expression  while someone informs me solemnly that they have "a god heart, "  the image of Jesus of the Sacred Heart leaping into my mind. As I've written before, I'm not supposed to admit I judge these contests, even though I appear annually on TV on one of the bigger events, but there you are: I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to people engage in  English-language debates while looking grave and interested in every utterance. I am a Phonic Whore, paid to look pleased and impressed while my mind is miles and miles away. David Moser--probably the most famous American in China right now--said it best when he said, "I sat with a straight face while a contestant spoke about his only desire--World Piss--for a full three minutes."  It was, no doubt, the hardest money he ever earned.

Books, Friends, Lack of Library

I have started to purge my library: I have waa---aaa-ay too many books for someone who moves as frequently as I do, and worse, they do no one any good if they just sit on a shelf. Books are like people, they need to move around and strut their stuff and work their magic across a community rather than sit at home unloved. The Ladies' Detective Agency series I'll bring to school and put on the book shelf for my students--no sex, good morals, lovely simple language--and there are others that can join them. However, there are some series I can't bear to break up or give away. For example, even if you took all the "fuck wits" out of any Jennifer Lancaster books, there's no way my students would comprehend ANY of it. A lot of the people I work with don't get it either, however excellent their English. I am deeply attached to the books for a variety of reasons--Bright Lights, Big Ass was my first Jen and I still remember buying it at a large chain book store, just tossing it into my basket at the last minute as part of a buy two, get one-half off deal. I don't even remember what the other two books were: I do remember giving a yelp of surprise and delight when I read the first paragraph: I felt like I was coming home. As divergent as my background, beliefs, and values are from the author's, I still had a connection with that marvelous sarcastic voice. I scooped up the other books as soon as I had access---hell, I WON a copy of "Pretty in Plaid" in a contest on Betty Confidential--and I am waiting for the next to hit my hot little hands. Give them up? You'll have to pry them out of my cold dead hands first.

My liberal, hippy, DINK vegetarian sister expressed it best: Jennifer Lancaster is the only Republican she'd ever have over for dinner. Considering what an exquisite chef my sister is--What, you homemade chapatis with fresh fig chutney from figs picked an hour ago from a tree in the garden? No problem!---this is high praise indeed. (To be fair, she usually just serves me Nachos.)

Then there's my Cheryl Peck: I have in my possession right now only one of her books. Revenge of The Paste Eatersis currently in possession of my mother. If you haven't read any of her books, you are missing out. Her explanation on where bad explanations comes from should have been read at my grandfather's funeral--it would have expressed so clearly why we all suffered the trauma of his god-awful responses. As adults, we realized the stress and strain he must have undergone living with my grandmother Totsy, but as kids, all we knew was NOT to ask his opinion on anything. If you haven't read Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs, you are missing out, that's all I'm saying. No one I know deserves this book, so it stays here.

Ah, Laurie R. King! When my friend Diana tried to give me the first of her Mary Russell novels I sneered. I SNEERED! I wasted two years of my life by not reading this book. Once I got over my snobbery (I was dating someone who belonged to an Arthur Conan Doyle society at the time, more's the pity) I was thrilled and haven't put the series down since. I did give away the Kate Martinelli series--somehow, I didn't warm up to that one, although they are beautifully written and plotted and keep me guessing 'til the end--but I am waiting, waiting, waiting, for the other book in the Folly line, and hoping another Russell novel comes along. I have, sadly, given away The Beekeeper's Apprentice to an unworthy bitch, the crazy Valerina (her opening line with anyone is, "I was abused as a child and I HATE China!") who later told me "I didn't get it." Uh, what didn't you get? "Why someone with all that money wore glasses when she could have had Lasik!"  (Hello, Anachronism! Goodbye, Common Sense!) Also unworthy: the house guest who took my copy of Sahara Special and never brought it back. If she had at least acknowledged what a fantastic book it was and sped it on its way to a new reader, I'd understand. As it is, I am fearful she tossed it.

My books are pets, friends, companions, teachers: I'd hate to think of any of them leaving my hands and ending up in a trash heap somewhere. I can't break up my Sweet Potato Queenseries, or wonderful Celia Rivenbark: I have to know that at the end of the day I can come home and dip into one and reassure myself that someone else on the planet thinks you should "Stop Dressing Your Six Year Old Like a Skank." 

Clearly, there's a reason I've chosen to hold on to these books: the protagonists are women of great strength of character, and I am in search of the same: large-hearted, funny, kind people. The authors are largely female, the lovely Alexander McCall Smith the lone male voice--but then again, he's writing chiefly from a woman's perspective, and a "traditionally built" woman of size as well. Good for him. The sacks of books I have to give away are full of deep pieces, Big Ass Prize Winners, lots of translations of Latin American authors, all of which I have enjoyed, and even wept over (Kite Runner, anyone?) but those that stay on the shelf are my home girls, my chorus, my (forgive the reference) Pieces of Me.  A note: there is a lending library here, the Book Worm, but it's too damn far away for me to visit regularly and the books are most annoying arranged: you have to push past patrons eating at tables to access the shelves where the books are stacked up in some order the logic of which escapes me...I am grateful it's there, but it's not a practical option for someone like me with limited time and even less patience. My dream job? Sitting somewhere and reading and then telling everyone what I read...in theory, as I used to teach literature (and have better literary terms up my sleeve than "lovely", such as "verisimilitude") this would seem a perfect fit, but in truth, if you're teaching a bunch of snotty sophomores The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole for an entire term and come final exam time, they still haven't cracked upon the damn book and write their final paper on "A Drain and a Mole" it's not quite the same thing as reading, writing, discussing, and then moving on to the next paper delight.

I must be feeling rebellious: I didn't italicize or underline a single title. Naughty.

Thanksgivings

Another Thanksgiving spent here..this time, instead of ignoring the holiday (which I don't have off) or going to an all-you-can-eat buffet at a hotel with friends, or microwaving stuffing and boiling a chicken at home, I went to the home of friends. When I finished teaching at 3:30 I jumped into a taxi and had a snooze while on route to the opposite side of the city--from SE Beijing to NW. Ah--delightful, particularly as I was listening to Gleeful Podcast on my iPod. I am stuffed--so nice to see old friends, and especially those who set a traditional and bountiful table. Menu: roast turkey, stuffing, gravy, corn, a mixed vegetable cold salad (think Waldorf salad with crunchy steamed broccoli) mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes with a pecan crust, salad, and two types of cranberry sauce, the whole jellied mess still in traditional can form, and the whole berry type. Don't ask about the desserts--nine variations of chocolate, cheesecake, and pumpkin goodness.  No worry about the vegetarian dish, no screwing around with "but we GOTTA have that overcooked stinky brussel sprouts!" It was a miracle--plenty of food, beautifully cooked and served, and no extraneous dishes like my grandmother's chutney salad (which she insisted on pronouncing "Choot-ny." If corrected, she'd sniff and snip back at you, "Sounds better that way!")

On the way out--as I went down the six flights of stairs trailing behind a young and nauseatingly nice, in love couple with three small children (I was the back-up in case anyone dropped a shoe or a rattle) I got all teary-eyed. They are truly nice people with a nice happy family and they're both spectacularly great parents. He is one of the most tender, in-tune, take-charge Daddies I have ever seen and I felt my heart swell and burst with gratitude that Daddies like this existed. I love my father but he made it very clear when we were small that he despised small children---especially those who made noise, made demands on Mom, or who crossed his line of vision. His outlook did not much improve as we got older, although as adults he doesn't despise us totally, and he is, without a doubt, the World's Best Grandpa, as loving and kind to his granddaughter as is humanly possible--but still---this is not the experience of fathering I had, and it is not the experience of fathering my daughter had. In that moment of heart-swelling, or heart-expansion, or raised consciousness, or whatever you can call it, sure, there was a twinge of grief for myself and my daughter, and also for my parents because THEY didn't experience fathering like that, but overall, a feeling of relief to see the love so patiently applied. Sometimes you don't have to be the recipient of love to be its beneficiary. I can read by a light which was flipped  for someone else, after all.

I am grateful for my friends: I am grateful for my enemies, of which I do have a few. (The bastards.) I am grateful for the challenges thrown at me--way more than most people born into my situation would have, but manageable. My daughter is healthy, smart, and being educated, and when I leave this world she'll have the resources of inner strength, intelligence, and kindness to carry her forward. I'm even grateful for that drunken text message from The Rose at 1:36 a.m Now let's see if this feeling of gratitude lasts the day through--I have to teach my toughest group this morning and it would serve them right if I lay down on the floor, pretended it was my grandmother's green and gold press-apply shag carpet, and took a long Thanksgiving nap, replete with turkey and gratitude quickly turning lukewarm and lumpy.

Error

Ever make a mistake at work that is so jaw-droppingly awful that you can't believe you did it? It's bad enough when YOU are the one who catches it: far worse when it's your boss's boss's boss...such a thing happened to me today, twice. Yes, twice: once for each job. I think the moon must be in feces or something. I will of course deal with the consequences but still---OUCH! Will not curl up on the sofa in fetal position and frantically stuff Tim Tams down my throat--will NOT curl up on the sofa in fetal position and frantically stuff Tim Tams down my throat--will take dogs for nice long walk and cook a healthy meal but still---OUCH!

Bag It Yourself

The local Carrefour hit a new low, one I did not know was possible. To my surprise and delight, there was no one in line at the cash registers and there were even TWO cashiers there, one to ring up, and one, I reasoned, to bag. The local Carrefour is especially deficient in courtesy and common sense--for example, people form ONE queue for FOUR cash registers which are jammed together so tightly there's no room to bag the groceries-- but I thought hey, no line, TWO cashiers, this could go well. I placed my items on the tiny lap-top-computer size shelf to be rung up by Cashier Number One: she scanned each item and handed it to Cashier Number Two, who held the two grocery bags I had purchased. I thought--being a reasonable person accustomed to some form of customer service, no matter how cursory--that Cashier Number Two was placing my items in the bags. No. When I finished putting my items up on the tiny shelf (not even a conveyor belt, thank you very much) I discovered that Cashier Number Two had put a shopping basket INSIDE MY CART and had simply thrown my groceries into the shopping basket--and the cart--willy nilly, with the two shopping bags thoughtfully placed on the bottom underneath the bacon, eggs, sugar, toilet paper, eight plastic buckets, four dozen doughnuts (par-TAY!) and other assorted items. I squawked a bit--where the HELL was I supposed to repack this shit? After all, the end of the check-out line was the hall connecting the store to the rest of the mall. No tables or surfaces were provided. I was supposed to burrow down past all of those groceries, retrieve the bags, and reposition all the groceries into the bag from the bottom of the cart WHILE  STILL STANDING IN THE LINE. Uh, Chinese people? You know something? You're the people who stand in the middle of a doorway of a crowded store and check the time on your cell phone--or pause at the top of a moving escalator to send a text message--or block the entrance to an airplane with your sudden need to pull out a piece of toilet tissue from the far reaches of your wallet. Well, you frickin' geniuses of time and motion study need to know this: a person cannot BAG THEIR OWN GROCERIES AT ONE END OF THE LANE WHILE THEY ARE STILL PUTTING THEM ON THE SHELF FOR THE CASHIER TO RING UP, PARTICULARLY IF YOU WANT THAT PERSON TO PAY FOR THEM AS WELL. Cashier Number Two? You're full of shit. Would it have killed you to place the items IN the bag, instead of dropping the eggs on top of the loaves of bread and thoughtfully dropping the bags of sugar on top of them all? Frustration, thy name is bored worker from Hell.

True Confessions (Family Members, for God's Sake Don't Read This)

I've never gone commando on a glass-bottom boat, but I have done something just as bad. My friend Juju bumped into me today at Mysterious Job That I'm Not Allowed to Write About Number Two (so to speak) and whispered a tale of horror to me: evidently she went to a going-away party for a co-worker which inadvertently turned into a wake for another co-worker who had been buried the day before. There she was in a red sparkly top, ready to launch a colleague off into the wilds of China, when she was seated at a table full of dour-looking people who were, she quickly learned, the relatives of the deceased who had heard about the 'do and had assumed it was send-off for their dear departed--rather than a send-off for a colleague who was not headed Upstairs but down South, as in "Guangzhou,"  not as in "Hell."  (Same difference, if you ask me: I don't want to be anywhere hot enough to grow bananas, but I digress.) She fortuitously had brought along a black blazer and she grimly kept it on while people told soft sad stories about the deceased. She kept the bottle of Moet tucked away in her handbag and slipped it into the hand of the colleague just before she left.
"Worse thing ever!" she said. "I sat at this table and was saying, 'Hey, everybody, why the long faces, it's not like we'll never see him again' and then someone on my left kicked me and whispered, 'Shut up, you're sitting next to the wife of the colleague who was BURIED yesterday!' "

This reminded me mightily of something that happened to me years ago which truly outshone her experience in awfulness, and being a sweet person, I told her my story. Big Daddy, Sissy, Lulu, if you are reading, STOP NOW!!!!!

I'm from a small-ish city and I went to university in small towns, hence a few details will be changed. The long and the short of it: many years ago I had a brief and very sweet affair with an older man--not a colleague, and not a professor of mine. He was smart, sophisticated, very funny, and really supportive of me and my collection of neurosis. We had a very short fling and then as usual I finished what I was doing in the US and packed up my stuff and returned to China. I figured we may--or may not--see each other again. I didn't have email at the time--or even a computer that worked--and I moved a bit so I wasn't surprised by not hearing from him. I took the good from it and moved on and as time passed I dusted the memory off and felt happy to have known this nice, nice man. Well, after a few years I did get a computer and had email again and lo and behold, I received an email from him asking if this person was indeed me...it was. We corresponded a few times, progressively intimate and sweet emails, and agreed to meet when I came back for summer vacation. His last email was unmistakably flirtatious and we set up a lunch date with a promise of, shall we say, more to come...I flew home, took a nap, went to the beauty parlor, borrowed a car, and drove to his office.

There I was, clad in his favorite color (pink) with my hair freshly blonded looking like I just fell off the top of a Christmas tree...and there were all these people in and around his office, some openly weeping, some red-eyed, a few white-faced. I walked up to the receptionist's desk and said, "What the hell?" and was immediately cut off by a familiar voice saying, "Zanne? Zanne, is that you?" I turned around to see the guy I had a HUGE crush on in school. He had obviously been crying and was very confused to see me. I was equally stunned. I had not seen him since that summer night in the 80's when we graduated and I barely recognized him. Something in my head went bong-bong-bong--something was not right. People were leaving and I was staring at this man, and he was staring at me, and after a long time he pursed his lips and said, "Well, I see you must have known my father." Ah---so THAT'S why they had the same last name!

Ok, it gets worse. At the funeral--actually, just a memorial service--I noticed quite a few women staring daggers at one another. Many were dressed in the same shade of pink that I was wearing (although I guessed they hadn't just had a wax and were probably wearing panties) and all of us were of a type--short, snub-nosed, golden haired, with knockers. I was somewhat relieved to see I wasn't the eldest. One of the speakers at the funeral--excuse me, memorial service--mentioned The Deceased's dedication to the feminist movement and I thought for a moment I would laugh. Various jokes in extremely bad taste about stiffness etc ran through my head--but through it all, a profound feeling of gratitude for having known this lovely man. There was no way I could lean over and tell his son--the one I had SUCH a crush on in school-- that his dad had been the nicest lover I had ever had, the one by whom I set the bar, but it has occurred to me that really, this was the most comforting and kindest thing I could have said. I've never met anyone who appreciated me in quite the same way. I know that, had he been there, he would have been rolling in the aisles at the delightful inappropriateness of it all--my groomed and naughty self with her empty stomach and fierce jet lag, the clones I sat with, the sidelong looks and pursed lips among his groupies--in the wildly horrible setting of rampant grief.

In the midst of life we are in death and as he once said, sometimes in the midst of tragedy we stumble upon something so damned funny that we just have to laugh.

I finished telling this story to Juju and mentioned that I would post it later. She said, "I shouldn't admit this, but your story was WORSE than mine and I feel a LOT better!" Well, that's what I'm here for, babe: I live to serve.