Essays
Fear and Loathing in the P.R.C.
It was Christmas day, and as Bonnie and I sat as comfortably as the little, lumpy seats on China Airlines Flight 914 would allow, it looked as if our single Christmas wish would be fulfilled after all. Barring a hijacking or plane crash, our Christmas dinner would consist of Beijing duck with all the fixins, and it would be eaten in the very city which had given birth to the dish. It was a simple enough wish, as far as wishes go, but one made all the more powerful by the past six months’ steady diet of bland, somewhat slimy food, tinged with a soupçon of seaweedy fishiness. Big hunks of roasted meat were but a dream from a near-forgotten life; yet they were dream which would soon be reality. It was hard to believe; I had often doubted that this meal—this trip—would actually happen.
First, there had been the matter of the visas. If you think that getting permission to enter the largest communist nation in the world is easy… well, you’re right, actually. Obtaining our Chinese visas had been a breeze. No, the visas which had caused us grief were the ones which we needed to enter Japan, our country of residence, the place where we pay taxes, the nation which has issued us the foreign resident cards and work visas which we carry on our persons at all times. The Japanese entry visas stapled to our passports, we discovered, were simply impotent when it came to authorizing re-entry into Japan—for that, of course, we needed re-entry visas. Naturally.
And so we made a special trip to Fukuoka; found the seedy little immigration office tucked under an obscure raised highway, and laboriously filled out infinite forms in the designated form-filling-out area. When the last "t" was crossed, we dragged ourselves to the form-handing-in area, only to have its door shut in our face. The one little fact they had forgotten to mention in the documentation, or troubled themselves to write on the offending door, or bothered to mention as we carefully filled out our forms, was that the office closed for lunch—at the very time when most hardworking foreign nationals are free to visit it. For a brief moment, I believed that I could kill.
The moment passed.
Our trip to Fukuoka on a week day had only been possible thanks to our monthly meeting in the big city—a meeting which was set to begin at roughly the time the immigration office would reopen. Defeated, but determined to try again another day, we left.
Not coincidentally, exactly a month later the next monthly meeting rolled around, and Bonnie and I once again made the trek to the immigration office. This time we were prepared. We arrived a full two hours before the lunch break, each with a set of completed forms in one hand, and the requisite 6,000 yen in the other. With confidence and determination, we walked up to the form-handing-in counter, and took a number. With a can-do sway in our hips, we waltzed over to the waiting area and sat. Clearly, this time we meant business.
A full ten minutes before the office was set to close for lunch, our number was called. The forms were reviewed. Our passports and foreign resident cards were checked. Everything, it seemed, was in order. With something akin to unbridled joy, I handed the clerk our 12,000 yen, and prepared to see yet another sheet of paper stapled into my passport. But it wasn’t meant to be—not yet anyway. This particular office was not equipped with cash drawers, and this particular clerk hadn’t received the proper training to make change—or some such thing. For whatever reason, we simply couldn’t pay here; there was a special office for that, two floors down.
I looked at my watch. We had five minutes before the dreaded lunch break. Bonnie and I grabbed our forms, ran out door, leapt down the stairs with little regard for our lives, and frantically searched for the visa-paying office. We found it quickly; stormed into it, and, panting, wordlessly handed the forms and cash to the clerk there. He counted our money once. He counted it again. And, just to make sure, he counted it once more. It was all there. He reached into a drawer, and pulled out a box of what looked like postage stamps of various denominations, and proceeded to meticulously stick 6,000 yen’s worth to each form, seemingly oblivious to the anxiety which had taken over my face. After what seemed like an eternity, he handed the bestamped forms back.
As I ran back up the stairs, occasionally stopping to pick up stamps which had blown off our forms, I was once again forced to marvel at the complex illogic of the country I live in. There were little stamps everywhere, obscuring vital information on the form. Why couldn’t they just have one 6,000 yen stamp? Heck, why did this office need paper stamps at all? Wouldn’t a rubber stamp with the word "PAID" embossed into it do just as well? Wouldn’t it make more environmental sense? And wouldn’t it free up squads of ink and paper and stamp factory workers to do more productive work? More fundamentally, why didn’t they just install a cash drawer upstairs? Why did the simplest of transactions here seem to require the involvement of so many people? And, as I dove through the closing form-handing-in office door, forms clutched to my chest, lose stamps held tightly between my fingers, my heart beating so loudly that it deafened me, I couldn’t help but wonder…is this culture shock?
* * *
By some miracle, Bonnie and I were able to leave the immigration office with re-entry visas that day, but our struggle to get to China was far from over. When I mentioned our Christmas plans to coworkers, they started dropping subtle, polite hints that it was the worst idea that they had ever heard. When I said that we wouldn’t be on an organized tour, they were openly horrified. Beijing, they informed me, was cold in winter—too cold to support human life. And the food was greasy. China, I was repeatedly reminded, is not a developed nation like Japan—you can’t just walk into a restaurant off the street, eat some random thing off the menu, and expect to live more than a few hours. What’s more, one concerned friend confided, in the whole history of China, no one has ever been given the correct change. No one. Perhaps the most damning statement was whispered to me at the photocopier one day: "As for the Chinese, their humanity is different."
Despite the widely held belief that our plans were foolhardy, I was eventually able to convince one of my coworkers to act as translator, and get a travel agent on the job of getting Bonnie and I a pair of tickets. I began to read a bit about Beijing, and supplemented the knowledge gained there with the first hand accounts of second year high school students who had visited China earlier in the year. A few somewhat negative statements like "the flight attendants were mean and ugly" and "I’ll never leave Japan again" notwithstanding, the students were mostly positive, and I began to get excited about our trip. Said excitement took a small dip two weeks before our planned departure date when I was informed that the travel agent had, as yet, done nothing based on his deep conviction that we would be happier going to Thailand, preferably on a tour. I was only able to convince him otherwise when I pointed out that I came from Canada, and that my people actually prefer the cold. Somehow, he could accept that, and finally got on the job. Given the late date, he couldn’t make any promises, though.
And now here I was, two short weeks later, on a plane soon to be taking off for Beijing. Somehow, it had all worked out. And the flight attendants, I noted with pleasure during the safety demonstration, were neither mean nor ugly. Yes, this trip would certainly be better than some had led me to believe. The engines fired up, and I leaned back, prepared for an exciting journey. It was then that I noticed that the overhead bins were fastened to the ceiling with duct tape. The nose of the plane lifted into the air; the luggage bins began to rattle; the engines made a funny clacking sound. I could only hope that they had used rivets to strap those on—or at least some good, strong rope.
* * *
One scary meal later, Bonnie and I were standing in an airport full of girls and boys in ill-fitting army uniforms in the People’s Republic of China. All that stood between us and our duck was a taxi ride and a hotel check in. I could taste the tender force fed beast already. We fought our way through the army of men peddling overpriced taxis, stood in the official oh-so-long taxi line, and soon were being whisked through the dirty, disappointingly uninviting metropolis. The beaches of Thailand might not have been such a bad call.
The hotel was a pleasant surprise. Our room had a western toilet, heating, a TV with English channels, real beds and a shower with hot running water and pressure—luxuries which we had rarely enjoyed in that proud, developed nation on the other side of the Yellow Sea. This boded well. Or maybe this was just a little oasis of comfort in an otherwise uninviting place. It was tempting just to lie back, and enjoy the opulence before exploring further. But there was the matter of the Christmas duck, and we were just a short walk away from the famous Qianmen Duck Restaurant.
We headed into the night… into the dirt and filth of the city. It was only eight o’clock or so, but the streets were fairly empty of life. Eerily so. Still, the telltale sounds of life could be made out: the cars, the bicycle bells, the spitting. Mostly the spitting.
The scale of our map was a bit smaller than we had thought, and the walk just was a bit longer than we had anticipated. When we finally arrived at the famous duck place, the one with the pictures of great men eating great duck plastered all around it, it was closed. Not closed-closed. There were still people inside, eating, laughing, having the times of their lives. It was just closed in the sense that the restaurant took no more customers after 8:30. For a time, we stood at the window, looking in. The people inside mocked us.
Or maybe that was my imagination.
And then a voice came from the darkness—a soft, young, heavily accented voice. The voice of hope. "You want duck?" His name was unpronounceable, but he asked us to call him Gary. "I can help," he said. Ordinarily, I might have shooed him away; averted my glance and walked on. This was a city of people waiting to rob me—I had been warned time and time again. But Gary knew where we could get duck. Peking duck in Peking. On Christmas night. That had been the grail which led us here, and we couldn’t stop the quest now. Not after one little setback.
And so we headed into the hutong, the narrow alleys of Beijing about which I had read so much. This was where the life of the city was to be found. But not tonight. Tonight they were deserted, and a little creepy. Gary was an English student at university, and was thrilled to be able to speak with us. He seemed sincere, and we made small talk as we descended further and further into the maze of the hutong. I asked if Beijing was safe, and he assured me that it was. Except for the gangs. Even those, he assured me, would never attack anyone on the main roads. Only in the hutong. Only at night.
And then Gary remembered something. "I think we missed it," he said, "Wait here." And with that he disappeared into the night.
My spider sense began to tingle.
We were in the middle of a giant maze. We were alone. Alone in the hutong, home to the roving, murderous gangs of Beijing. At night.
They kill at night.
Gary had left us here to die. Maybe he had even led us here to die at the hands of his gang friends. Yes, that was it, he was just their gentle-looking front man; the alluring worm on the hook of gang violence.
Of course, this was no surprise—this had always been the trade off. Somewhere, deep in my soul, I had know from the start that Gary would either get us duck or kill us. There were only two ways for this story to end. Actually there was only one way: a dead duck. I now knew that I was it.
I heard some footsteps approaching, and braced myself for my fate. "It’s this way," a voice called out—Gary’s voice—and, having no alternative, we followed. He led us to a small restaurant. We entered, and were led upstairs to a private room with a large banquet table. It was clear to me that the gang had brought us here to be robbed and killed in a more private setting. So as not to alarm Bonnie, I went along with the ruse, ordering some duck and a little duck soup, and inviting Gary to join us for the meal.
Choked with emotion, Gary thanked us for trusting him; he said that few foreigners did. They assumed that he was out to cheat or rob them—and often didn’t even acknowledge him when he addressed them. It was something which he took personally, even though he knew he shouldn’t. I made a few excuses for the wary strangers, but none of them managed to convince me that Gary should feel anything but hurt. And then the conversation moved to other things. When I pointed out that it was nice to be in a building with central heating, Gary looked confused. Why didn’t they heat in Japan? Weren’t they rich? Not wanting to seem culturally insensitive, I dispassionately explained that the Japanese believe that suffering extreme temperatures makes them stronger. Gary responded with a bemused, "How odd," and I knew that we would be friends.
And when someone showed up at the door wielding a large knife, it didn’t even occur to me that it might be used for some misdeed. No, this knife would no doubt be used to make our Christmas wish come true. A golden duck was rolled in presently, and carefully carved with the large knife. The meat was placed in a serving dish, and the carcass was wheeled away to make soup. The meat dish was set in front of us, garnished with the two halves of the duck's head, bill and all, bronzed to perfection. There was a time when that would have bothered me, but I’ve gotten used to the accusing looks of my food as of late. What would once have been a gruesome sight only made my mouth water.
Soon, other dishes followed containing the pancakes, bean sauce and leeks designed to compliment the famous duck. We dug in, and it was a feast—a feast fit for a king… maybe even an emperor. The perfect Christmas dinner.
When the bill came, I was full and had a new friend… one who had agreed to show us around in exchange for the opportunity to practice his English. The banquet had set us back a big 5 bucks US, and I was pleased to note that the change came promptly, and was counted out correctly—a first in the history of China, or maybe I had just been misinformed.
As we walked home that night, Bonnie and I marvelled at how unexpectedly well this Christmas had gone—as Christmases always seem to when we travel. We also marvelled at Gary’s English…but when we thought about it, we realized that it wasn’t his English, per se, which had impressed us. It was just the fact that we had really communicated. Gary had spoken about himself, and his dreams—and had asked us about ours. It occurred to us that we hadn’t had many conversations like that in the past six months, certainly not upon first meeting people.
Or maybe it was just our imagination.
Beijing certainly promised to be an interesting city—and it was one that was already giving us a new perspective on Japan, and our experiences there. Even though its streets were mostly empty at this hour, Beijing seemed to have a pulse… and we were just starting to feel it. We couldn’t wait to see it full of crowds and traffic, and couldn’t help but hope that the noise of the cars and the bustle would drown out the sound of spitting.
Jean-François Chénier, December 1998