Hot Potato

As I belted out the last line of "Shook Me All Night Long" and the Filipino band backing me (some would say propping me up) hit the final chord, the crowd at Bar 58 erupted. Even the Mongolian hookers looked away from their decaying American businessmen to cheer.

Ridiculous scenarios were the norm during my trip to China where I visited Mr. Girlfriend For the Night himself, Ben, and we packed so much into a little over a week that I've broken up this very long post into sections for your most happy lovely reading pleasure. So sit back, crack a Tsingtao and enjoy this not-so-tall tale.

Nightlife

I'm not sure anyone sleeps in Beijing. We went out most of the nights I was there and never got home before 3:30 a.m. One night we left Mix - a ridiculous club that tries to offset its rampant scumbaggery with a no-hat policy - after 6 a.m. and the dance floor was still full of people dancing to dated American hip hop.

There are 15 million people in Beijing and I think there might be 15 million bars. Ben, of course, has visited all of them. Ben, by the way, will hereby be referred to as Princess Sparkle, as he was nicknamed by a friend in honor of Summer's toy pony on The OC, which the Princess and his friends watch incessantly.

Alcohol is recklessly cheap in China. You can basically buy a still's worth of booze for $5 and there are no Hitleresque American bartenders to cut you off.

One night I was with Ben and some of his ex-pat friends at a hole-in-the-wall and one of his friends, John, an ex-frat boy, bounced a quarter into my gin and tonic. This set off an ill-fated round of quarters, which wasn't really quarters but just us dropping quarters into each other's drinks until one g and t became 12 very quickly. Thus quenched, I started loudly commenting on the undeniably lame rubber band/hair band thing an American at the next table was wearing on his head and, while I was loudly commenting, Princess Sparkle pushed me into Hairband Boy, making me spill my drink on him. Not only was this a tragic waste of drink, but it went over even worse than it normally would have, seeing as I was mocking the guy at the time.

Princess Sparkle's friends intervened before any punches were thrown but Hairband flicked me in the eye with his hair band and I fear my vision will never be the same.

In another near-international incident, four Chinese guys who did not need English to convey their displeasure with me for talking to one of their homeboy's girlfriend were just about ready to throw down when Ben's "Chinese brother," Calvin displayed his cadre of very large, wife-beater-wearing friends and diffused the situation (Calvin then dubbed me his Jewish brother - Jesse Jackson would be proud).

By far the best watering hole we visited was 58, mainly because of the aforementioned Filipino band. They have no name - it's just Daniel, Grace and Donald - and they rock. And it's not awesomely bad, either - they are truly good and occasionally wear matching T-shirts with oversized wolf head designs. They played everything from Abba to AC/DC and all equally well. At one point Princess Sparkle, John and I sang the Proclaimer's "I would walk 500 miles" with the band to a rousing ovation. To recap: a Filipino band, playing an uncelebrated Scottish band's song with three drunk Americans singing in faux Scottish accents to degenerates and hookers. In a word, touching.

People

On my penultimate ("next to last" saves you a syllable and makes you less of a douche) evening in Beijing Princess Sparkle and I had tea with a couple of Chinese dissidents who went astray of the government during the Cultural Revolution in the mid-70s and racked up some hefty prison time as a result. They told us about their friend who is under house arrest for the crime of self-publishing a tract suggesting judicial reform in China and said that they only feel comfortable talking freely in the safety of their home.

It was a reminder that when it comes to human rights, China is really just Cuba with 1 billion more people and a lucrative market. It also made me feel better about the other less culturally rewarding evenings I spent with Princess Sparkle's scumbag friends.

There's John, or Happy Flower Anal Pony as he's affectionately known, who hails from the Northeast and now sells car parts and unabashedly goes after the lowest hanging fruit on every dance floor. He is also currently trying to wriggle out of a poorly planned relationship with a 38-year-old Filipina nanny (three kids) who, after John broke it off, text messaged him three times in a row this message: LIAR LIAR LIAR. Griff teaches English and loudly accuses taxi drivers of scamming him before drunkenly passing out in cabs.

And then there's Mike, one of the most disgusting people I have ever met (that is saying something). Mike is obese - he has a bobble chin - and that is probably his least unattractive feature. He also has a penchant for Russian hookers. When a group of us were sitting down to eat at a Russian restaurant he showed up late, walked right past our table without acknowledging us and sat down at the next table to talk to what was clearly a hooker.

Ten minutes later he looked over and said, "Oh, hey guys, I didn't see you there (he had)." He then went right back to talking to the hooker.

When he finally sat down Princess Sparkle said, "So, Russian hooker?"
Mike: "Oh, I know her sister."
Princess: "And her sister's a hooker, right?"
Mike: "Well, yeah. But she's not a hooker (not true)."

Later in the night Mike told us he was flying home to the States to get married - after banging hookers for several months in China without ever mentioning said marriage.

Food

Spicy snails - delicious; pig knuckle - revolting. Chinese food tended toward the yumminess of the snails. My first night we dined on bird flu-tastic Peking duck and went on to sample everything from Szechuan to Malaysian food. I also answered the age-old question: what do Chinese people eat for breakfast. Answer: nothing good. Chinese breakfast is as shitty as everything else they eat is good. One morning it was a cold egg, untoasted bread and peanut butter and a good cup of coffee is as hard to find as correctly translated English.

For the most part, though, China is a tasty country. Hot pot might be the greatest invention ever. Take spicy, oily mix, boil, drop in raw meat, eat, wash it down with booze, repeat. Yes, please.

There were a few not-so-great culinary moments. At a Japanese place, Griff and I accidentally ordered marrow and Princess Sparkle suggested I steer clear of a soup with a suspicious looking tubular meat floating in it - colon, it turns out, is edible, according to the Chinese. I'm generally against rimming my meals so I declined.

English

Far be it from me to criticize anyone's language skills but for Christ's sake, you'd think out of 1 billion people a totalitarian regime could find one person fluent in English that they could force to translate their signs correctly - at least at one of the seven wonders of the world.

I felt bad heading to the Great Wall still drunk. It seemed disrespectful. Until I got there. First of all, I was greeted by a giant, cheap-looking banner that happily proclaimed, "The Great Wall of China Welcome to You!" After that I had to negotiate the seedy vendor obstacle course (You can have your picture taken on a camel. No, it doesn't have anything to do with the Great Wall) to get to a heavily vandalized section of the wall crawling with Germans. I nearly yacked off the wall (though that was mostly my fault).

I've strayed off topic but really, the signs in China consistently had ridiculous translations. Gearing up for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing has installed English greetings in all their cabs when the cabbie turns on the meter. A nice touch, except the greetings make no sense. A woman blathers something like, "Beijing your welcome." Remember, 15 million people, which means the government went through the trouble to put this in hundreds of thousands of cabs but not to correctly translate three fucking words.

There's a park called "Racist Park" in China. No, it's not an exhibit of the Chinese's naked hatred for the Japanese (boy do they not like the Japanese) but rather the Park of Chinese Ethnic Minorities (Who they also don't much care for) with a terribly translated sign. Even the Commie-run English-language newspaper, not a big critic of the government, had a story about how shitty English signs in Beijing are.

Now the government is launching the artfully titled, "Public Bilingual Sign Standardization Drive" for the '08 games. Judging by the Communists' history it's probably a 5-year plan.