Monday, December 10, 2007

Embassy Embarrassment

I can’t believe I forgot to blog about this but I did.  Last week, as I wrote below, I went to the doctor.  The clinic I visited is in the embassy district of Beijing.  (Being a capital city, there are hundreds of embassies here.) All the embassies are guarded on the outside by soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).  As someone told me once, they are there primarily to stop people from climbing the walls to seek political asylum.

At any rate, the clinic is down a small side street off a main road.  I waited for five minutes for a taxi but none drove past, so I decided to walk down and catch one off the larger street.  I crossed the road to where I was walking alongside the wall of an embassy—I think it may have been Poland but I could be mistaken.  As I walked I noticed a group of about eight soldiers marching in formation coming down the street towards me, goose-stepping in perfect synchronization.

It was a weird moment.  On the right of the sidewalk was the embassy wall, then there was the sidewalk itself, and on the left of the sidewalk were trees about every 20 feet.  There was only room enough on the sidewalk for either me or the soldiers to pass; one of us was going to have to get out of the way of the other.  If the trees hadn’t been there it wouldn’t have been a big deal, we could have just walked past each other, but the trees made it so that I would have to get off the sidewalk and into the gutter.

It was a tough decision.  I was in the Navy, I know how to march, and China is still technically an enemy nation.  There was a big part of my red, white, and blue heart that wanted to stand my ground and march right past these guys with my shoulders back and my head held high.  The trees made this impossible.  So, with rationality trumping my pride, I stepped into the gutter and let them pass.

But man, did it suck to have to do that.