I noticed something this morning in the taxi on the way to work. I don’t think I’ve seen one person here wearing sunglasses. It’s a bright day today (and nowhere NEAR as cold as it was supposed to be, thank God) and I put on my sunglasses out of habit. Then I realized that nobody else had them on.
I’ll have to ask about that, I wonder why it is. Maybe people who wear sunglasses are considered assholes or something cultural like that. Beats the shit out of me.
Wow, what a great night out with my new buddy Richard. We started out at this fantastic restaurant, some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. The duck was spectacular. We also had spare ribs that were in a sesame garlic seasoning, as well as some sliced pork, garlic beans, and other treats, like Mandarin Fish, sort of a fish turned inside out and covered in a sweet & sour sauce—you just picked chunks of meat right off the bone. (Wanna know how fresh this was? On the way in to the restaurant you walk past the tanks where they keep the fish. When you order one the chef brings it out to your table in a bag so you can inspect it. After your approval he takes it back to the kitchen, beats the fish to death with a mallet, and turns one of God’s creatures into a delicious feast for both the eyes and palate.)
The total cost was 437 RMB. This was a full, multiple-course meal for three (Richard’s girlfriend was with us), where we drank green beer made from seaweed. It tasted more or less like regular beer, so we had two or three of them. Three people, five star restaurant, delicious meal of many delicacies, multiple drinks: $58. FUCK I love this country. Seriously, this identical meal in Los Angeles would have been approaching three bills without breaking a sweat.
After the meal Richard’s girlfriend departed, and the two lads set off on their own to a bar, right next to the Beijing Hooters, where we began drinking and discussing various and sundry topics. It was mostly packed full of expats with a few Chinese broads, they had TVs showing a 9-ball pool tournament on EPSN. Then we went to Maggie’s.
Ah, Maggie’s. Beijing’s most famous Mongolian hooker bar.
It was, on the whole, absolutely pathetic. The bar was more or less full of two kinds of people. First there were the hookers, every woman in there was a hooker, and looked the part—too much makeup, skimpy clothes, the whole nine yards. Then there were the guys, mostly businessmen in suits who were in Beijing for a few days of meetings and decided to go get a little Chinese pussy while they were here. The thing was how pathetic they were. Here were a bunch of guys in their 40s and 50s who thought they were hot shit because they had a sexy 24 year old Chinese girl sitting with them, when the truth is that she probably fucked 20 different men last week. They had this air of smug satisfaction about them, as if they were some kind of god because, in a country where the average income is about $10,000 a year, women found them attractive. Or at least pretended to find them attractive because they had money and kept filling their glasses with champagne.
It was just sad. I thought to myself, fuck, I’m 37. Am I going to be some 48 year old suit-wearing douchebag picking up Mongolian hookers in a seedy Chinese bar? What a sad commentary on someone’s life. I mean, I can understand maybe being some guy who has been married for 30 years, and on a business trip he decides to go out and get a little strange poontang just for the hell of it. But if you’re going to do that you have to understand that you’re paying a woman for sex, a woman who will fuck anyone who pays her. It’s not any kind of accomplishment to have sex with a hooker, and that’s what you could clearly see in the faces of the guys in this bar, a smug sense of self satisfaction, as if the woman were interested in them for some reason other than they were going to pay her.
If there were a word stronger than “pathetic” I’d use it, but I can’t think of one.
And we were solicited, too. The girls would come up and use some lame-ass opening line about my height. “How tall you, almost two meter?” We tried to get them to leave by first telling them that I was German and didn’t speak any English, but they kept at it. Then I told them that I was religious, and I was saving myself for marriage. They were dumbfounded at this, that someone would give up vagina for religion, which I suppose isn’t so unexpected a response coming from a godless communist country. We told them “God sees all,” and waved our hands mystically. After a while they realized we weren’t buying what they were selling and they split.
See? Religion does have a purpose—getting rid of irritating Mongolian hookers!
The tunes were good, though. I haven’t heard “Rockin’ All Over the World” by Status Quo in about twenty years. Maybe it’s a sign of maturity that I held the men in that bar in such contempt. Maybe I’m just an egomaniacal prick, I don’t know. But the rule is, if you’re going to pay a woman for sex, at least be honest enough with yourself to admit that she’s going to have sex with you because you’re paying her, and not because you’re some super duper double awesome megastud from the planet Hotness.
I forgot to write that a couple of days ago I had to go and get my official government medical exam. Nothing major, they’re checking to see if you’re bringing in any infectious diseases. (As if China is a bastion of public health.) At any rate, they took some blood, did a chest x-ray, and a quick EKG. I was in and out in about 20 minutes.
I mention this because of the taxi ride I just had on the way home. I swear, the driver had tuberculosis or something from the way he sounded. The taxi ride was 10 RMB (about $1.25). I handed him a 50, and I almost didn’t want to take the change. I immediately ran upstairs and washed my hands, then ran disinfectant gel over them.
OH! The fucking heat is on in the hotel finally! It’s not government heat, the hotel has its own heating system, which until today has not been working. So imagine my surprise when I opened the door a few minutes ago and it was like a goddamned oven in here. The other day, when I was trying to get the thermostat to work, I cranked it all the way up to 30°C, which is like 80-something Fahrenheit. Well, it’s been blasting at 80 all day, and after sitting in my refrigerator of an office all day it was a hell of a nice little treat.
Tonight I’m off to eat Peking Duck for the first time since I got here. (I had this delicious pork noodle thing today for lunch, it was absolutely spectacular and cost a whopping $1.75.) I’m meeting my buddy down at the north gate of Worker’s Stadium again. In Chinese it’s “Gong Tie Bei Men.” But I found out that in a Beijing accent anything that ends in -en is pronounced with an “-urrrr” sound. So, phonetically speaking, it’s “Gong Tee Bay Murrrr.”
I was practicing today, and my Chinese crew thought it was fucking hilarious. I also taught them what “mad skillz” meant. Ah, the great cultural exchange.
Also, I expect to get the keys to my apartment tomorrow, so hopefully my shipment can get delivered ASAP, enabling me to go outside without my nutsack shrinking to the size of a peanut shell.
I think I might hit Wal-Mart this weekend if I have the time. If I do I’ll take pictures. I’ll bet they have a fishmonger section, where old women with bloody wooden mallets stand in front of tanks of fish and turtles. You pick out the one you want, they grab it, beat it to death, then wrap it up and sell it to you. But all for a low rollback price, of course. And IKEA isn’t too far from my new place. At work they told me that since so few people here have their own vehicles, and virtually nobody has a truck or van of any description, IKEA delivers your purchases and sets them up for you, usually the same day you buy them. And they don’t charge any extra for this, either. Pretty fucking cool!
Oh, and on an unrelated note, I have been informed that our Benevolent Communist Overlords have deemed YouTube an acceptable website for viewing. So, as requested, I posted the rave video there as well.
Not bad for two days in country. I loooooooooves to get my drink on and watch hot, sexy chicks in their 20s writhe in the glow of a strobe light.
And sweet goddamned miserable holy fuck is it cold here! The government still hasn’t turned the heat on, and won’t for a couple more weeks, so we all sit around at work in coats and jackets. Well, everyone else does, at least. I didn’t bring a jacket. Why?
You’re only allowed 70 lbs a bag when you fly internationally. (That’s business class, if you fly coach it’s 50.) I put a couple of jackets in my air shipment and my heavy winter coats in my sea shipment, because the air shipment was supposed to have been here waiting for me when I arrived. However, the movers fucked up some customs paperwork and the air shipment was delayed getting out. It’s here, though, and it’s cleared Chinese customs, waiting in a warehouse to be delivered. They offered to bring it to my hotel, but I told them I’d just gut it out for a couple more days until they could deliver it to my apartment.
This weekend I’ll be buying a space heater or two.
Well, it’s official, I got my apartment. The landlord went for the offer. I’ll be moving in probably this weekend, maybe early next week.
Okay, here’s the details. It’s never been lived in before. It’s in a gorgeous high-rise building on the 25th floor. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, about 1,200 square feet. Hardwood floors through the apartment, with floor-to-ceiling windows in the bedrooms. Both the bedrooms are corners. There is a different view of the city from every room. At night the cityscape looks like Blade Runner. It’s fully furnished with brand new stuff. As part of the lease the landlord has agreed to buy a brand new HD television, as well as a washer and dryer. (Dryers are not common in China.) The rent also includes T1-speed internet access and satellite television. There’s a state of the art security system, so that when guests come to visit I have a little LCD monitor near the door, letting me see them before I tell the doorman to let them in the building. The complex features an olympic-length lap pool, and a full gym with professional trainers. It also has two restaurants, a day spa and massage salon, and a little convenience store-type shop. All of this is included in the cost of the lease.
As part of my employment contract I was given a housing stipend. All I have to do is pay anything over and above the stipend. Thus I get everything you see above for about $395 a month.
Beats the shit out of paying $1,100 and looking at a supermarket wall, huh? When I move in I’ll post pictures.
I don’t ever, ever want to hear another one of you complain about how cell phone plans in America are confusing. I had to get a new phone today, and it was the most goddamned confusing thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. I had one of the girls from the office there explaining everything to me while I was doing it, and I still don’t have a fucking clue what I was doing.
So, in the US you sign a contract for a few years, get a phone, and get a certain number of minutes. In China you buy the phone separate from the SIM card. So I bought a Motorola SLVR (for about half the price they cost in the US), then had to get the SIM. Since I want to be able to make international calls I had to buy a certain type of SIM. There’s some kind of monthly usage fee of 50 RMB (about $6), and then you have to go and buy a thing sort of like a phone card. You buy them from corner newsstands, places like that. But there’s a code on the card, and then you have to call and lock the code on the card to the SIM in your phone.
Seriously, I don’t have a goddamned clue what I paid for. I just got to the point where I said, “See? This is my wallet. It contains a lot of money. You tell me what to buy.”
Of course, now I have a cool new phone, and my ringtone is “Chocolate Salty Balls” from South Park, sung by Isaac “Chef” Hayes.
Say everybody have you seen my balls
They’re big and salty and brown.
If you ever need a quick pick me up
Just stick my balls in your mouth!
OOOH!!
Suck on my chocolate salty balls,
Stick ‘em in your mouth and suck ‘em!
Suck on my chocolate salty balls,
They’re packed full of vitamins and good for you,
So suck on my balls!
I wonder if the Chinese have any idea what South Park is.
Greetings visitors from Conservative Grapevine! I’d like to thank John for the link, especially considering this is more of a dopey personal blog than a political one. But if you’re interested in what life is actually like behind the Red Wall, I’ll do what I can to fill you in.
Oh yeah, and the chicks here are SMOKIN’ hot, too. There’ll always be lots of talk about chicks. And once I get my head out of my ass I’ll post pictures of some of them.
I made an offer on an apartment today. The realtor thinks the landlord will go for it. When the ink is signed on the lease and you suckholes see what I’m getting for my money, every one of you is going to start looking in the Beijing want ads.
Just to prepare you: in Los Angeles I lived in a small one bedroom, maybe 750 square feet. I had one window. I never opened the blinds, because my view was of the wall of the supermarket next door, a wall about 5 feet from my window. It was in an area not exactly high crime but it wasn’t exactly Brentwood, either. There was the occasional gang shooting.
And for all this I paid $1,100 a month. Keep that in mind.
Chinese beer and soda cans still have the old ring-pull type tops on them. Why? What possible fucking reason could there be for doing so? Even if it was slightly more expensive to create the type of cans we have in the west, the economy of scale would make the difference in price somewhere around a thousandth of a cent, maybe even smaller. So why stick with the old sharp, litter-prone, finger-slicing ring-pulls that the civilized world got rid of, oh, 30 years ago?
But that satellite missile system is coming along great, as are their plans to create a communist party in space. When you have a culture that’s 5,000 years old, the Chinese tend to think of things a hell of a lot more long term than we do.
You know one of the best things about living in a country where labor is so cheap? I never have to wash or clean anything again. It’ll be like being married, without the nagging.
I swear to God, the heaviest thing I’m ever going to lift in this country is money.
I’ve received a request for pictures of the city. I haven’t really had much time to see a lot of it yet. Of course, since I got here I stood outside Worker’s Stadium in the rain, waiting for a Scot I’d never met in person, who was going to be dressed like a Hooter’s waitress, so I could go to a costume party with people I didn’t know, and ended up at a rave so drunk off my ass I could barely stand up, but I really haven’t had time to take a lot of pictures. But just to get the ball rolling, here’s a picture I took yesterday of the view from my hotel room.
I promise, in the coming days more pictures and video will be forthcoming. If I can take some pictures of my office I’ll do that too, though the confidentiality agreement I had to sign expressly forbade it. Maybe I can get them to make an exception just so I can take pictures of the building, not what we do in there.
The hotel I’m staying in, while not a world-class resort, is a pretty nice place. I’m quite comfortable, the service is great, and they have a revolving restaurant on the top floor of the hotel giving you a 360° view of the city. So this is not a dump by any means.
My first night here, when I was zonked out from jetlag and crashed in bed, I have a vague memory of the phone ringing and someone asking if I wanted a massage. I said no and went back to sleep. The next day I couldn’t remember if I had dreamed it or if it had actually happened.
Yesterday it happened again. I was working on the computer, the phone rang, and a guy’s voice said, “Hello, you want massage?” Once again I declined. It just happened a third time, except this time it was a woman’s voice.
Now, massages are not an official hotel feature. (I checked in the services guide.) So obviously someone here in the hotel is earning a little extra cash working as a pimp calling all the foreigners to see if they’d like to get a little yellow tail (and I’m not talking about sushi, either). What I don’t get is why anyone would pay for sex in this country. I mean, talk about your classic “coals to Newcastle” scenario. Just the fact that you’re a white male means that half the women in this country between 18 and 30 will sleep with you. Go to any club in town.
Finding sexually willing women in China is about as easy as finding passed-out skanks on Colin Farrell’s living room carpet.
Today in Beijing it was pretty damn cold. I had three layers of clothes on, but my hands were freezing. There was no heat on in the office. And I haven’t been able to get any heat in my hotel room, either. I have to sit around with layers of clothes on to keep warm. There’s a thermostat, but when I turn it on cold air comes out.
I found out why today. One of the legacies of the communist era is that—I shit you not—the government controls the supply of heat in the winter, and they haven’t turned it on yet. So the radiators and stuff in the apartments and offices don’t work, and won’t for another week or so. The flip side to this is that, during the winter, you don’t have to pay for the heat since it’s provided by the government.
Well, today was my first day at work. Without going into specifics, let’s just say that taking this job was one of the best decisions I ever made. The facility is great, the money is great, the country is great, the people are great… it’s fucking wonderful.
Today five of us went out and ate a Beijing-style lunch called a hot pot. It’s sort of a huge pot of soup in the center of the table with a duck in it. Then you add in bits of lamb and beef and various veggies, and dip the meat into a sesame sauce which had sort of a peanut taste to it. Absolutely delicious. For all five of us it was about $14.
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