Ch03 Taking out the Laundry (2004-01-04)
(5500)

Marriage was worrying.

“Honey… Honey…”

I'd been chanting this like an idiot in my living room. Trying to get my mouth around the word and overcome a decade of mocking it. It made me think of 1950’s TV, canoodling corn-fed fatsos in flyover suburbia, or a post-modern milquetoast pleading with his self-actuated better half.

On the other hand, they say that if you repeat something long enough, you'll believe it. In that spirit I tried: As a child I did childish things but as an adult I did adult stuff, leaving the juvenile crap of childhood behind. But in my present mood this just exploded like a blank cartridge on the pyre of rationalizations I’d come up with for marriage, scattering the ashes of second-guessing, the air swirling with premonitions of regret.

Not that my marriage was even bad. So what was my problem? I was so confused.

‘Honey’ and ‘please’ and nagging (that nemesis for those with chronically low self-esteem) seemed to go together like two fingers and a thumb into a glove for a dismembered freak. 'Honey' was the first step to special-pleading with the wife and begging permission for sticky backyard barbeques, apologizing for crumbs on the sofa, whimpering about taking lunch down into the den and backpedaling on the pursuit of weird hobbies involving glue or guns or S&M or normal guy fetishes like bar-hopping or Sunday afternoon football with the guys or S&M without them.

And yet, as my energy flagged and I began to calm down, it dawned on me that I didn’t have a problem with ‘honey’ and what it represented: mom & pop retro values. When I stopped to think about it, I couldn’t come up with anything genuinely wrong with them. It was just that they were from the wrong generation, i.e. the previous one, and thus intrinsically uncool. And I was getting a bit long in the tooth to be worrying about what was cool and what was not.

I sucked my teeth. My final and lasting reservation with ‘honey’ was that it sounded like whining. If I started whining, real problems, maybe even leading to divorce, were in the mail. And, strange as it might sound, Bunny didn’t want me hopping off the pedestal I’d been awarded for being a foreigner.

For that matter I’d never met a local girl who did want equality. In theory, maybe. But in practice they hated it. I experimented, treating women like men, being respectful. They found it off-putting at best and alarming, asexual, and insulting at worst. Treating them ladies and being blandly nice, snuggling up, being available, returning calls, and paying for their meals didn’t work either. They got bored and restless, started looking for greener pastures, didn’t return my phone calls, gave me the slip in the end. Chicks wanted a challenge, a pillar of strength, someone to look up to. In a word: daddy.

All’s fair in love and war, or so they say. But the women I knew took it whole hog. Fairness and equality were for chumps, fat chicks and wallflowers. And I came to realize that you were lucky under the circumstances if these girls left you if they despised you. Things could be worse. For if they stayed, they got in the driver’s seat and rode you ragged. Worst of all, they nagged. And that led to serial cringing. And that led to panic attacks. And that led to lots more of what caused the problem in the first place: ‘Oh honey?’

However, if I couldn't enunciate ‘honey’ sincerely and without hesitation, Bunny would be unhappy. I had a problem.

Maybe I'd get used to it after a while. Yeah. I would. Right? But then I thought: 'honey' rhymes with 'mommy'. Was that an accident…?

Stop.

Breathe.

Focus.

Then something moved outside on the veranda. I couldn’t see it clearly because I’d put up Venetian blinds after replacing the original safety glass with transparent window panes. Local safety glass isn't designed to keep burglars out or keep suicides in (not as unreasonable as it might sound), but to keep snoops at bay. Translucent glass lets light in but keeps prying eyes out, thus retaining the best aspect of the wall, China's most popular architectural form.

There it was again. Movement! I got up and went over to sneak a peek through the blades of the blind.

I looked through the edge of the blind, but the angle wasn’t wide enough to get a decent view. I stood up and stretched lazily, wondering who it might be. You might think that going outside would be the easiest way to settle this, but if it was tourists, they might tell other tourists and even more of them would show up.

We did indeed have tourists up here on the rooftop and your humble narrator was the bashful attraction. It was a merry game. Because of the high density population, most of the city dwelled in virtual fish-bowls. Neighbors were used to spying, gossiping, and ankle-biting. They poked fun at your naïve foreigner interest in chi-gong and then rushed off to the fortune teller for his prognostications per winning lottery numbers. They mocked your respect for farmers’ almanacs. Five minutes later, trying to figure out why you didn’t act sufficiently Chinese, they asked you for your zodiac sign.

And in a knowing way they asked you how many kids you had. I’d overheard a neighbor offering solace to a weeping friend. “There, there. It’s not so bad having a daughter. Getting your tubes tied now is a public service. The one-child policy is critical with the population getting out of hand.” But did he really mean it? No son meant another Chinese family tree good for nothing but firewood. Before this, everyone had an eye on you. Now, with the dreaded daughter, the ultimate albatross around the family’s neck, it was both eyes. Every trip beyond the city limits was suspect. The neighborhood committee would show up, withered faces in blue Mickey Mao suits, narrow eyes and cunning grins, delivering a warning snorting wheeze: “Not going to a county fair to buy a second wife, we hope.” Laughter. “If we catch you, we’ll have to confiscate your apartment.”

It all seemed so unfair. Until I remembered that in Atlantic Canada, shooting a rabbit out of season allowed the Canadian neighborhood committee to confiscate your apartment too.

Foreigners arrived in Gore-Tex and Oakley Blades. Confusingly, they didn’t wear rich brands from their own countries. Instead their jeans had more holes and fit even worse than a farmer’s. They wore their baseball caps backwards to keep the sun off their necks because a tan was for your face. And why did they want the dark skin of poor people anyway? And their hands were either lost in their pockets or gesticulating like snakes. And yet they were so rich that they kept saying ‘Have!’ all the time. (When a foreigner said ‘Yo, yo, yo!’ the locals thought he was bragging ‘Have, have, have!’ in Chinese.) No doubt about it. We were weird buzzards: worth watching and keeping an eye on.

But instead of getting our fifteen minutes in the limelight, it was more like fifteen years and running. We provoked gasps, gossip, conspiracy theories, and brought the locals together through state-approved xenophobia. In short, without enough foreigners to go around in a country of 1.3 billion, we got gaped at a lot.

So I kept the blind down during evening hours and weekends. Otherwise kids and parents formed an audience outside the window. It was sort of like being a tropical fish behind glass. Frank was a Neon Tetra, me a Kissing Gourami, and Mike a Siamese Fighting Fish.

The tourists, on the other hand, were on the outside looking in, bereft and waiflike, exiled from the fun and clambering like illegal aliens to get in on the First World action. They reminded me of the folks who collect like strays to watch the daily filming of NBC's The Today Show, wagging their hands and miming the words ‘HI MOM!!’ through the glass at the camera.

These innocents were no more of a bother than pigeons cooing on the roof. But there were also pests: the prying Party busybodies with carte blanche to walk into our home plus the aforementioned geriatric street committee snoops. These stoic grandmas and greybeards were a cabbage-smelling retro-dressed Chinese edition of the Taliban street enforcers, snipping hippy-hair and threatening to call the summary-beating cops if you gave them any lip.

As with all enforcement, rackets (the constabulary version of moonlighting) developed on the side. Fortunately I was worthless to them, my income too small and my public image negligible. I had no connections. I read Engrish books but kept my mouth shut. I wasn't interesting. A real dog could do tricks; running dogs were passé. Monkeys masturbated and ate bananas without peeling them; foreigners fornicated behind closed doors and ate unappetizing counter-traditional glop like tomato-festooned pizza. And wasn't cheese favored by the Tibetan high-mountain barbarians?

I could daydream about this all day. Or, I could chuck my excuses overboard and just open the damn door. When I did, all motion outside ceased. Two sets of eyes were peering at me. I peered back. It was so unexpected I couldn't help but think for a second that I had done something wrong coming out on to my own veranda. I felt like yet another flasher caught red-handed in a Chengdu McDonalds.

These two were a fiftiesh couple from downstairs, second or third floor maybe. The wife was in dyed golden curls and leopard-skin tights. She and her husband were frozen, like deer in headlights. The husband was in the ubiquitous raiment of middle aged men during the after-hours: a white cotton undershirt, tennis shorts and flip-flops.

I smiled in neighborly fashion: “Hey folks. Howdy-do. What's up this fine morning? Laundry again?”

Hubby began to move again. He gasped shallow puffs and began growing a smile you might confuse with an expression of pain. A myriad lineaments in his face took up the slack and went taut as his signature expression came into being. He looked like he was going to speak but then he mistook my silence for reproach. He panicked and looked at his toes and started snorfling. He didn’t stop. He just kept going. On and on and on.

“Oh man!” I complained and stamped my feet, having seen these time-wasting freak-outs in the elderly generation before. Perhaps he’d suffered psychic damage during the Cultural Revolution: too many dunce-caps; too many airplane sessions. Damaged goods were everywhere.

It might be ten minutes before he’d recover. I watched sullenly as his wife clambered in behind him, her human shield.

I rolled my eyes as a psychic self-defense measure. I was trying to blame him. But unless you’re really callous, it’s hard not to blame yourself. I knew that I was only half of the equation. And I had inadvertently pushed the button. But who or what installed the button and why? And I’d learned the hard way that pressuring people in these situations made things worse. Patience was called for. Patience was something I rarely had.

I shrugged, trying to accept my incompetence. But a shrug is also body language for Get Stuffed!

I wanted to say something. To break the ice. But you didn't just speak to people. Not in this place. Not after all the social upheaval they'd been through the past fifty years. It was Us vs. Them. And they had a conspiracy theory for everything.

I smiled at my nonsense. Or was it nonsense?

The phone rang, rescuing me. I went back inside the pad and reached over to the top of our television and picked up the receiver. A young man barked, "Hello?"

"Hi. Who are you looking for?"

"Who are you?"

I repeated slowly, “Who - are - you - looking - for?"

"Hello?"

"For god's sake! Who are you looking for? Who do you want to speak to?"

"Hallo!!!" It was an announcement now.

"Who are you? If you tell me who you are, I will tell you who I am, okay?"

Home telephone service was still a novelty.

The young man said, "I'm Chengdu!"

"Oh for gods sake! You're not a city. What is your name?"

"Hello?” in a drag-queen tone. And then imperiously “Who are you?"

"Nobody's home!"

I heard a click on the other end as I was putting the phone down. It was probably one of the wife's business connections. Bunny would chide me for being impatient with her business associates but somebody had to get the wheel of phone etiquette in motion. Plus, if you looked on the bright side, the caller probably figured 'nobody' meant nobody important was home. In other words, Bunny was not there. In other words, he had the information he wanted. In other words, having achieved his goal, he was unlikely to understand my impatience with him. Foreigners were impenetrable.

I went back outside and sat down in one of our new plastic lawn chairs to wait out the couple.

I looked up at the clothes swinging in the breeze from the steel poles hung over a section of my veranda which served as a commons for the building's occupants. From the ends of the poles hung plants, forming a hanging garden, one of the main attractions for me and my wife. We loved that the place was full of flowers, vines, succulents, and cacti. We’d bought and installed several miniature trees in chicken wire wrapping.

There were also herbs in abundance: cilantro, basil, chili peppers, even ginger. Most of them were planted by huggy-bears with green thumbs. They showed up usually on weekends, armed with a small radio blasting music or news. They often wore shorts that emphasized the local ratio of torso (long) to legs (short). After watering, weeding, debugging, trimming or harvesting their plants, not to mention fertilizing their soil with the last few days worth of crushed eggshells, they'd roll up their undershirts, recline in their favorite sun-bleached wicker chair, sunning their bellies and reading a stitch of newspaper while sipping lukewarm tea out of recycled jam-jars.

Some folks, like the couple from downstairs, used the steel poles to sun-dry their clothes. On weekends the rooftop and our veranda in particular was crowded with garments flapping in the prevailing breeze.

"Kills the germs," one fellow said, picking his teeth with a toothpick and placing it back in his shirt pocket. Another, wearing the corporal remains of breakfast on his undershirt, piped up with "The sun's X-rays are nature's natural disinfectant." I retorted with the high fecal count of the city air and that it wasn't X-rays but Gamma rays he was thinking of. But the belief in sun-drying clothes was too firm for either facts or humor. Everybody was doing it, so it must be right. Besides, what did a freaky foreigner know?

My choice of a rooftop pad, notorious for being scorching in summer, suggested I wasn’t the brightest bulb in the karaoke marquee. Plus, I was married and didn’t appear to be a man of the cloth. All of this suggested I was safe, benign, maybe even cute & cuddly. Outside of soul-snatchers and skirt-chasers, foreigners rarely acquire a mastery of the local language beyond that of young children (though this is a positive failing: Chinese love kids). So, people in the building would speak their minds freely, right beside me, confident I wouldn’t understand a word of Chinese.

One day I’d come out on the rooftop and somebody I recognized from the building smiled, harked a thumb in the direction of Yours Truly and asked his pal, “Doesn't he know how hot rooftops get come June?” I was curious what they would say so I walked over and mimed my greeting to them. I didn’t want them to know I spoke Chinese. They tipped their backs in slight bows and politely said, “Ni hao. Ni hao. Xiansheng, ni hao.”

Then, just as politely, the first one continued talking to his friend. “The air-conditioning bills! Holy Mao! See these big noses that they have?” He pointed at me with his index finger: “See that sucker growing out of his face, it's like a meat mushroom or a fat sausage or something. Now that's got to be a heavy drain on the blood supply to the brain.” His pal nodded and grunted in agreement. They chattered some more, lost interest in me, and waved merrily as they moved on.

People were friendly. Old acquaintances offered a sip of tea. New acquaintances patted me to see if I was real.

But sometimes it all gets a bit much. You get a little freaked out by the constant attention, the unpredictable protocol, the new sets of double-standards. Mild culture shock. I start to nag and my wife tells me I take stuff too seriously.

In her halting, but steadily improving, English she'd recently told me: “You a doggone stick in the mud.”

"Am not. I'm a stickler for principles." I was being facetious. But 'stickler' was a new word for her. She changed the subject, as she often does when an unfamiliar word threatens to derail her side of the conversation.

You a doggone stick in the mud was playing through my head until I reminded myself that I didn't have to care about any of this. I was a free agent in my own life damn it! This microcosmic clash of civilizations wasn't my fault. I began my personal counter-xenophobia mantra. We're all on autopilot; vessels filled with culture; blank slates overwritten with the graffiti of previous generations.

A few iterations and I breathed easier. I remembered to practice breathing from the diaphragm. At the same time, I rolled up my shirt, exposing my abdomen to radiate heat into the morning breeze. Everyone did it here. (Removing the whole shirt was taking the nudity thing too far and going feral.) I was learning to relax and let my hair down in the approved manner. If Michael could do it, I had no excuse. I was learning to let it all hang out with the indigenous set. I was getting down with the brothers. The Chinese brothers.

A noise caught my attention and I looked up and saw that the husband was finally beginning to unwind, as if emerging from a dream. Like many of us in this dusty town, on waking up, his first action was to screw a finger into his nose. This was a good sign. He rooted around, looking for obstructions. Finding one, he extracted it, examined it, and then released it into the breeze, pleased with the accomplishment.

It came sailing in my direction.

I jumped out of my chair hissing, "What the...?" Out of harm's way, I shook my head and frowned. "Disgusting, man…"

The wife became self-conscious. But the husband himself was placid and self-absorbed, unaware that any change had taken place. He wasn’t prepared to second guess himself. He heard nothing.

Bored now, he looked up, searching for something to hold his attention. He found a target: my crotch. Knock-off pornos had convinced the locals that palefaces are hung like mules, the African diaspora hung like horses. I said firmly, "Hey! Hey! Eyes up front. Front and center."

This frightened him. His eyes got big and round, like a foreigner’s. Fear prompted his physiology to release all ballast: he farted. Then he began blinking. He went for at least a minute, as if the circuitry in his brainpan was loose and the lights were on at home now, but flickering and on the verge of winking out.

I looked down, sucking in my stomach so I could see better down below. No willy peeking out. Maybe it was the pricy under-shorts I was wearing that caught his attention. The bloomers he’d hung out to sun-dry were cheaper. They were vent-less and like swimming trunks you could pee right through them if you wanted.

Maybe it was the bottom of my belly that he’d been looking at. It was my boldest feature. Big bellies took a lot of food (beer was my secret) and implied a big wallet. That in turn implied that I could pay for big pussy (not an attractive metaphor in English perhaps). Maybe he took me for a sexual athlete, a postcolonial conquistador of indigenous hanky-panky.

I could guess all day. Why not just ask the man? Then again, why bother?

I looked over at them again, and at his wife in particular. She was aiming a hurt puppy-dog look at me. But a sympathy trick is just an aggressive defense tactic. The husband's blinking had slowed down. He was as ready as he’d every be so I said, "Good morning!" I was as self-effacing as I could be: "Um…Look, eh, I don't want to be too much of a bother, right? But," and pointing to their laundry, "Would you mind perhaps putting your undies over there a little."

We took turns patiently taking in the majesty of the husband's drawers flapping in the wind. Pretty big bloomers for a small punter. Maybe he wanted to make a point with me. Maybe he was another one of the married-with-children swing-hitters that military service seemed to mass-manufacture. Maybe his BVD's were a sort of prurient prayer-flag, epistles in the wind, and he hoped for a romp with Yours Truly, plump representative of the alleged global leader of free love: the good ole' USA.

I suddenly heard a shout of, “WHAAAT? SAY AGAIN? What's that?”

I was so startled that I cringed and whimpered, “Christ Almighty!”

I looked at him wondering if he thought I was deaf to reason. Or was he trying to cross the language barrier by force? Nah. Underneath the camouflage of glasses and BVD's was a clod-flipper used to shouting across hill and dale to his neighboring clod-floppers. Like I was a country-mile away, he hallooed again, "WHAAAT?"

I put my hand up, “Enough shouting already dude. I can hear you. Loud and clear.”

He grinned and came over to shake my hand saying, “Sorry, if I was a bit loud. I’m getting a bit deaf in my right ear.”

Remembering the nose-clearing episode, I fibbed clumsily, “Ah… I just washed.” And put my hands behind my back. “Sorry. But, eh, how’re you doing this morning?”

“Good, good. Weather’s fine today. Yes very fine.” I was no longer an inscrutable occidental. I was just another shyster neighbor. Another atom of need and greed. A regular Zhou.

“Sure is,” I said, looking into the orange murk. I scratched an itchy eyebrow and then pointed with my finger at his underpants, “Eh, so mister, um, how about the clothes? Can you move them maybe? I don’t mean to trouble you too much. Just that they get in the way of our view. We’ve, me and the wifey that is, sort of have a weakness for plants you see. Green plants on an orange background,” and I framed the scene with a square made by connecting my thumbs and index fingers, “looks rather delightful. Quite nice you see.”

He looked at me and scratched his head for a moment. He snorted and his mouth made chewing motions for a few seconds until he achieved synchronicity and croaked, "What? What's wrong with my underwear? Don't you like the colors?" He chortled, as natural as a fish in formaldehyde.

I blinked, realizing he suspected the truth lay somewhere else. His wife frowned figuring she also was onto a plot of some kind. They were wondering what this was really all about.

"Oh, oh… The colors? Marvelous. My favorite. Yes, indeedy.” I frowned awkwardly, “Just not my favorite location that's all. I was thinking perhaps, umm, if they were over to the left just a little bit, our view out our front window wouldn't be blocked."

“Front window? Who cares about the view? It's the weekend. You're a rich foreigner. You can go sightseeing in the mountains.”

“Not my speed, see? Weekend trips with my wife's family and relations into the mountains aren’t all that inspiring. Communing with nature? Not exactly what they’ve got in mind.” They slurped on recycled tea, chain-smoked cigarettes without inhaling, gnawed on leathery pemmican snacks, wiped the remains of sugary dried fruit on their slacks, and alternated from gay shrieks to livid murderous glances while trying to cheat each other at mahjong. They rooted out roadside weeds telling me they were ancient medicine. They gambled on everything from when a bug would fly from a leaf to what model of truck would next come speeding hell-for-leather around the bend. And when the relations with money wanted to inspire envy, they gathered splashing buckets of spring water and broke out the detergent and wiped down their cars by hand, the soapy suds coasting brightly back into the crystalline waters of the brook.

I started to ramble, "What I mean is, every weekend our front yard becomes a gypsy circus. Folks dry their clothes, get the barbeque fired up, fly kites, and all sorts of stuff up here. When they go, they leave behind a landfill's worth of rusty hangers, plastic snaps, fish bones, ash, cigarette butts, wrappers, you name it. When the wind really gets going, stuff gets blown into our plants and some of the crud gets blown right through our open windows and into our living room.”

I just wanted to get this off my chest. Maybe he'd tell other people in the building anyway. I summed up with, “This is a public area, I understand that, but I’d really appreciate it if you could move your undies a tad over to the left."

He stared. He nodded in concentration. And then just as I thought he was going to speak, he began to blink again. That same piece of defective wiring was buggered up again. But then it stopped and he had all the appearance of meditating. He nodded and punctuated coming to a final decision with another fart, in that innocent manner whereby many local men clock their meditations.

I was confused. It must be my fault this weird psychic crap kept breaking out around me. That lunatic Michael. This bozo. There were others. I must be bringing this on myself somehow.

I was always causing myself unnecessary trouble, or so my wife claimed. She knew how to handle these situations properly. I was all thumbs. And my body-language was disconcerting. Locals didn't even believe in body language. Shucking and jiving was primitive stuff for a people with five thousand years of culture.

I didn't know what to make of it. I felt badly like a scallywag beachfront property owner shooing the proletariat off the beach. Maybe I was just imagining things?

The door opened behind me. It was my better half, “So what's going on, Charles?”

“Just chatting up the neighbors from downstairs. It's like talking to statuary.”

“Statutory?”

“Yeah, statues. I come out here and they start acting crazy all of a sudden. What's so scary about me anyway? I must have done something wrong. But what?”

“Yeah.” She was smiling. Triumphantly.

“Yeah, what?”

“Yeah, you do something wrong. You always do something wrong. That's why you need me.”

“Can you explain to me what I did wrong?”

“No. No explaining. No time.”

“You mean no patience.”

“What's difference?”

“Well, I mean…”

“Quiet! I take care of these two bozos. Get in the house, Charlie, where it's safe.” She snickered, walked up and patted my bum.

That's my can-do wife. A win-win problem solver and happy helper. Happiest of all getting a rise out of feeling your pain and making you feel small while taking care of your business and running your life.

I wasn't about to be humiliated, least of all in public. “I ain't going nowhere.”

“This a Chinese situation.” Which explained why she was speaking to me in English. She wanted to pull a fast one and needed the cover of an inscrutable language. “You don't need to see this. Complicated.” She meant it wasn't convenient if I saw how she worked her magic and jotted down the strings and trap doors.

“With all due respect, my nearest and dearest, up yours!” I gave her a peck on the cheek but she caught my hand going for her ass. She turned back to smile at me and winked.

Striding forward aggressively she spoke in Mandarin to Hubby: “Eh, good morning! Yeah. So what's up with the laundry flapping here in front of our windows? We pay good money for this view.”

Hubby was taken aback but his wife came out from behind him. She said, “Ah, Miss Chang. Hey, ah…”

“It's not Miss Chang. It's Mrs. Chang. This stinky bag of skin and bones is my husband.” Having boldly declared me a scumbag, she took the initiative away from the duo and nipped in the bud the temptation to shame her association with a furriner.

After all, only a few years ago, flirting with a foreigner could get you incarcerated: two years in the slammer.

The husband smiled, wishing to keep things on a harmonious keel. He said, “We wish you prosperity and happiness on your marriage. He's a fine young man. He has the stomach and jug-ears of the happy Buddha. Auspicious signs.” The wife jumped in impatiently, “Yeah. Happy whatever. But you know, ah, that is, ah, public property. No offense, but we always hang our laundry here.”

My wife moved in closer and said in a confiding tone: “Hey, you know, just between you and me, my husband, he's a foreigner.”

Stating the obvious isn't insulting in Chinese. They listened with rapt attention, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She raised her eyebrows. “He's like, crazy go nuts, you know? Like maybe he'll throw himself off the building, leaving his ghost to haunt the place. Or maybe he'll soak himself in gasoline and scorch himself and make headline news. An international incident. Bad for reputation and property values.”

“Yeah...” They admitted reluctantly.

“It's a full-time job managing a foreigner. They can't be left alone. Outsiders just don't make sense. They're like…um…children. No self-control. All this me-generation stuff. No sense of family or social responsibility. Only 200 years of history. No culture. That's why he's here. To learn. To study the great masters.”

“Really?” They were impressed. Better, they were flattered.

“But it takes time. Patience. I study the virtue of perseverance.”

The duo soaked this up, looking at each other and reflecting. The husband spoke for both of them when he said with a slight reverential bow, “We admire your devotion.”

My wife rumbled onward with implacable illogic: “So, wadda ya say you move the laundry. Or he might do something we'll all regret.”

They got moving. And they weren't even pissed. She'd scammed them and made them love her for it in the bargain. My wife came back to me and allowed a satisfied smile to form on her lips.

She whispered, “You owe me one. Today, you make lunch, okay?” She got happy thinking about it and giggled, “I want green Thai curry chicken and Guangxi Eggplant with Fish Sauce!”

I gave a slight reverential bow and mocked, “We admire your devotion.”

I watched the duo until they finished and we waved our goodbyes. Hubby was positively gleaming.

I came back inside and found my wife on the couch. I asked in English, “Why did you tell them that pack of lies? Surely you could have reasoned with them?”

She raised her nose, “Reason is too slow. Not efficient. Lies work faster?”

I made a pious face.

But she wasn't convinced. “Well they do. So then you should lie more. All the time if you can. Ai ya, I love you Charlie. You're my plum. But you so dumb sometimes you don't know to come out into the rain.”

I laughed, “You have to learn what English phrases mean, not just commit them haphazardly to memory”

She parried with good humor. “Eh, got no time for English lessons today. I got to go see my mother. She got the heartburn.”

“Heartache?”

She frowned in thought. “No, um, how you say? Indigestion. My mom is married, remember? That crazy guy, he's called my dad.” She was goofing.

“Oh. Right.”

“You think you smart sometimes Charlie, but you think too much. Not such a good idea.”

“What?”

“I got to go. Be a good boy while mommy's away.” She gave me a peck on the lips, leaving behind a sticky layer of bubble-gum flavored lip gloss, and scampered out the door.

Copyright Biff Cappuccino

News 2004-12-14:

Robert Novak, Syndicated Columnist and CNN Crossfire Host, discusses the intelligence bill, Iraq, and President Bush's cabinet nominees.

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Is it only Mr Bean who resists this new religious intolerance?

HOLY SMOKE: What were the Crusades really about?

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions (Biff: this guy is too amusing; one of the more hapless con artists I've seen. One of his former books is titled Psychonavigation: Techniques for Travel Beyond Time)

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Kinsey Myths Perpetuated in New Movie: fictional Kinsey is at odds with the historical Kinsey, who masturbated with lengthy objects inserted in his urethra, circumcised himself with a pocketknife, used a noose to hang from an overhead pipe by his genitals

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PEG palliates paralysed pooches

I came to believe that the Palestine-Israel issue was low down on the list of priorities for the man in the street but something approaching an obsession for the political, business, and intellectual elites. ... The reason why the [Arab] elites fake passion about this issue is that it is the only one on which they agree.

We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore (Biff: mellifluous lunacy)

Cartoon from the Guardian (Biff: more lunacy)

Congress OKs private-spaceflight bill "Never watch sausage or legislation being made," he told MSNBC.com. "It's been a long, tortuous road."

Rules listed for $50 million orbital race In addition to the $50 million prize, Bigelow said his company also is prepared to offer $200 million in conditional purchase agreements for six flights of a selected vehicle ... In addition, $800 million in options contracts for 24 flights will be available over a period of about four to 4.5 years, Bigelow said

From letter to a friend -- Dude: ... What I need to know, and if you'd be so kind as to help me, is just where the writing works in addition to where it does not work. I see elements that I could improve (my grasp of the vernacular is weak at best, I need more specific terms for things (brand names, common names for flora, and so forth), I need to spend more time describing the psychological growth of character as opposed to analyzing events.)

But clearly there's much more that I need to work on. The worst part is that there are apparently complete blank areas in my mind in terms of normal values or expectations. An example is my lasting contempt for pity, sympathy, and guilt. Having fairly well eradicated or suppressed such emotions, it's hard to produce such feelings on the page. To a degree I imagine the same is the case with you.

I'm aware of how smug it sounds to state that I often wonder if I'm not disqualified for novel-writing by virtue of being imaginative and curious about the world about me: I often feel I'm simply not feeble enough to take an interest in the psychological development of dullards who lack imagination and intellectual curiosity and thus, as far as I can make out, exist with barely a mental life; and I'm quick to recognize the tedious tactic employed by many writers of recounting history or current events or otherwise laying out a grab-bag of facts without the addition of interpretation (many writers simply trot out a standard selection of left or right-wing cant and shibbolleths in lieu of thinking for themselves).

Perhaps this is a problem that arises from being historically knowledgeable in part. Mencken pointed out that novelists in his day were almost always philistine idiots, consumed by dollar-chasing, and given to belief in all kinds of bozo notions and conspiracy theories (Paul Theroux has entertained some rather wild imaginings in the past). Menck found the better class of businessman far more honest and informed, and to generally have much better taste in terms of cuisine and booze.

Anyway, enough carping. Where there's a will there's a way. Failure is the mother of success. Yadda-yadda-yadda.

Hope to see you on Friday. The direction of my professional future rests on this more than you might think...

News: 2004-12-08

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Michael Scheuer, author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," discusses his new book

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Threats of legal action on Middle Eastern and Islamic issues are about as common as corrupt practices at the United Nations – and almost as problematic.

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Throwing Kofi to the Dogs

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“上海幫”與後江時代

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With not much original reporting, I discovered that the latest big fine by the FCC against a TV network -- a record $1.2 million against Fox for its "sexually suggestive" Married by America -- was brought about by a mere three people who actually composed letters of complaint

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Mediaweek has a great story revealing that up to 99.9 percent of complaints to the FCC come straight from King Prig Brent Bozell's self-annointed Parents Television Council. (article here)

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Death by Insanity (Biff: good introduction to the racket whereby the Phlip govment corruptly cooperates with interested parties to irresponsibly harvest forest and when disaster happens, as recently with landslides, the govment appeals to the US etc. to pick up the tab. Foreign govments see an opportunity to appear pious, sympathetic and helpful, when of course they're funding the problem. So much of getting a living by those who sing for their suppers approximates this sort of mutually beneficial hustle...)

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被背叛的遗嘱 (clara)

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The New America Foundation & the NYU Law Center host a day-long conference called "Al-Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11." Authors Peter Bergen & Michael Scheuer (AKA, Anonymous) are among the participants

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Interesting question below...

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> I read your story chapter. One question--I see how you are trying to explore> an interesting character, but do you actually like the characters you write> about? I get the impression that you don't. It feels like you look down on> them. Is that what you are going for?

Actually, I wasn't trying to explore the character. The concept never crossed my mind. Clearly I need to consider doing so. One of my problems is that I seldom find people interesting. Do you suppose this is a handicap? ...haha...

Actually, that first chapter was a technical exercise. Eventually I'll do something with it to patch it into the novel. Or, alternatively, I'll toss it. I just threw a hodge-podge of events together slam-bam to practice getting away from over-explaining all the time and to get some action going...

In Chapter 03 (part of which is up on my blog) I'm using what I learned in the process to run my character in just one chapter from his Szechuan home to a Chinese soccer stadium which breaks out in a riot featuring food thrown at police, a dispossessed farmer immolating himself, a spontaneous falungong demonstration, my character and friend taken to jail, where the person coming to bail them out (an ethnic Tamil Indian) is mistaken for an African and is beaten up by a police constable (the latter based on one of my students at howard who bragged about how he beat up every black brought into his custody - to teach them respect he said).

My greatest limitations at this time (in addition to what you've mentioned) are technical: reviving forgotten everyday Joe Blow vocabulary, bringing out scenes via colorful/memorable details, crafting scenes to move the story smoothly along, being dry w/o being corny, expressing feelings which are un-masculine and thus taboo or near taboo in conversation.

I never thought about whether I liked my characters or not. I've noticed that a certain strain of British folk employ complaining/commiserating as a starting point for friendship. I must have acquired this from my dad. So, I'm in the habit of criticizing more than praising. This produces a certain progress in understanding the world, but doesn't produce a balanced perspective.

It's probably this same feature that attracts me to Paul Theroux's work: many people seem to find his books negative, though I don't find them that way at all. I think his complaints are spot on and endearing. I read his better stuff and feel reassured.

So it's not that I look down on my characters (though you're right, inadvertently I do), it's that I'm habituated (and will have to change this) to subsuming everything to criticism. As a young teenager I realized that my vocabulary for bitching was ten-fold that of my lexicon for praise. I need to change this.

Clearly I don't see what many others see and vice versa. I need to immerse myself in a broad range of people again, something I haven't done for fifteen years (when I last lived in a hostel), to remember/learn how a range of other people see things.

For example, I was raised to consider pity and sympathy to be decadent. That might work in Scotland, but it's not going to go over well with the average North American house-wife who is probably my target audience...

This novel, however it turns out, is going to be my first hard-core attempt at really getting down the genre. No rush this time. After the first full draft, I'll pass it to a couple of folks for reviewing. At the same time, I'll take some time off to read more fiction to give me distance so that I can come back and rewrite as much as needs to be rewritten. I'll probably write short stories occasionally in the interim on other subjects/characters to broaden my perspectives, learn how to build (i.e. better appreciate) character, and bring in new vocab, metaphors, departure points, etc.

Paul Theroux takes six months to write a novel. This book of mine is destined for something like the same schedule in order to gradually finesse it into something containing memorable people (some attractive/sympathetic, some not) who do interesting things as part of a cohesive story. I want a novel that's both serious and funny, and which gives an accurate, if wholly invented, portrait of some of the events that one comes into contact as a foreigner living in a backwater city in contemporary China.

I've got my work cut out for me. The plot and it's twists are already worked out. But it's going to take lots of reading about China and lots of empathizing with my fellow man (that's going to be the hard part...haha...) to breathe life into it. As usual, the string of failures leading to the present notwithstanding, I'm totally confident I can do it. If I wasn't, I wouldn't dare take two years off at the age of 40 to chase a potential pipe-dream (a rather frightening word at my/our age)

Good luck and godspeed with your own writing. Put it up on your blog from time to time and alert me/us when you feel confident with it.

Biff...

P.S. Sorry if this is long...

Ch05 Soccer Match first draft (incomplete)

11000wds

I was supposed to be preparing for graduate school, but Frankie finagled tickets for a soccer game. One of which I promptly snatched up from him. I needed a break. A celebration of some kind. I just needed to unwind to get in the right mood for studying. I didn’t want to rush. I wanted to take things one step at a time.

Besides, even though soccer sounds like harmless fun, it's also a great opportunity to get in touch with the authentic Chinese people and their culture: to understand the Tao of Chinese soccer fans, to deconstruct the impact of Sunzi's “Art of War” on Chinese sports, to check out the socialist solidarity of the players, referees, and fans.

I met Frankie at the Mickey Mao the night before the game to snag the tickets and give him his cash. Having made money off me scalping, guilt must have pricked his conscience. He decided to look out for my best interests. This was a new role for him. He hummed and hawed at first before he got into character, “Hey, Charlie. You know. I mean. Um… What’s Charlene gonna say when she finds out?”

“And how’s that going to happen?”

“I don’t know. It’s a small town. Loose lips sink limp dicks. You know, that kind of thing.”

I cringed, “C’mon man, we’re talking about my wife. Don’t you think that’s kind of crude?”

He rolled his eyes, “Like she’s going to hear it?”

“I don’t know. Just, just try to be nice will you? Jeez… Try another flavor. This week’s personality just isn’t working out. Doesn’t suit you somehow.” He’d permed his hair and was growing a big balloon of an Afro. He was in a full length Muslim Shalwar Kameez and one of those squashy collapsing African hats. He looked like an African politician trying to get out the populist vote.

“Hey, there aren’t any sub-Saharan’s in this place. I’m the first. Don’t I deserve credit for this?”

“But you’re not black or Muslim. Your folks immigrated to Los Angeles from Buddhist Sri Lanka.”

“Didn’t some of the local people ask you if you were Japanese when you first got here?”

“Yeah, I guess… But…”

“But nothing. The whole point of being here is that I can be anyone I want. A fresh start. I could even be you if I wanted to. So you better be nice to me.”

“What?”

“Yeah, man. I could paint myself up as Bozo the Clown and tell them I belonged to some weird lost tribe of white people.”

“Yeah?” I was dubious.

“Sure, you know… Umm… Like the Ainu of Japan. They were Caucasian aborigines in Japan right? They’re extinct now. Went out like a candle in the 1970’s. You must have learned about them in one of your anthro classes. Even Canadian universities teach anthro right?”

“Don’t get started.”

“No, no. Check it out.” He started to get in to it, his arms shooting into a high pose, his voice that of a documentary narrator. “The hair represents the crescent moon on sacred nights; the rubber nose is the sacrosanct power of the harvest sun; the floppy overshoes grant me the power to walk over hallowed ground.” He looked at me normally now. I was on the verge of cracking up but he was deadly serious. “Dude, it’s like totally fun. So you mess with people a little bit. So whaaaat? Relax. Live a little. You’re so uptight. Such a straight white dude. Must be those long cold winters up in Canuckistan, man.”

“Leave Canada out of it. Besides, you know I’m live and let live. Just don’t get too weird on me.” I put my hands on my waist, “But some Nigerian’s going to come to town and punch you in the nose when he sees you. Nigerians are all over Hong Kong doing international trade. Real go-getters. They’re in Taiwan. Chengdu too. They’ll be here soon enough.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Nigerians are big. Well dressed and real polite too. But this,” and I pointed to his getup, “You’re pushing it.”

He waved me down, “Just enjoy the game bro. And get to your studies. I want to see you make it. Succeed.”

“You too my man.” I said. We shook hands heartily.

The next day, after Charlene was safely off to the office, I was off to the game. I was in a great mood.

I put on some of my most unfashionable, understated duds, as I always did when going to a game. I had on cheapo basketball sneakers -- the thin-soled kind that's hard on your feet but still popular with low-budget counter-culture types on college campuses today -- plus khaki slacks, an old T-shirt embossed with a Playboy bunny insignia and "Happy Rabbit Loves Everyone", and my ratty Twin Machine-Gun brand leather jacket which was cracked and frayed from wearing it on rainy days and failing to kneed it with oil. Either way I didn't want to attract attention in the stadium from some squad of beer guzzling, wolf whistling, rowdies. The Chinese version of the English yob. You never know what's going to happen when the home team gets upset and who the next target of convenience for the next hooting, self-affirming witch-hunt is going to be. Been there, seen that. Pumping fists, flailing arms, chanting, crazed eyes, wild stares, demonic grins. Scary stuff.

I walked over and looked into our mahogany dresser mirror. Hazel eyes, short auburn hair, a reddish pointy nose, a pinch of freckles, no facial hair. I decided against shaving and mussed up my hair a bit, wetting it down just enough to make it damp, and then pulled on a winter woolen cap. When I took the cap off, my hair would have that solid, helmet look. Using the wife's moose and aiming for that wiry out of control look was too much work.

I slouched.

I mused over how I'd walk once I got outside. Maybe the moon-trot: you straightened your legs completely and stamped the ground as you trotted to your destination. You looked, for all appearances, as if your limbs weren't quite long enough to reach the sidewalk. Or maybe the laborer's stagger: you hunched over and swung your arms wildly up and down while pounding the pavement in a rush. Or maybe the spineless waffle: you relaxed your upper body completely, rounding your shoulders and giving your back a curvature that knocked an inch or more from your height. Your arms hung by your side as you moved. Instead of a pimp-roll, this was a limp-roll. It was relaxing and non-invasive. Best suited for mingling and meandering. Yup that was the ticket.

You might think that just wearing local clothes and messing up my hair wouldn't make much difference. I'd still stick out like a sore thumb in the stadium. But actually, with fluent Chinese and a practiced confidence, you can persuade people of just about anything.

As I went out, I shut our flimsy screen door and turned over the bolt-lock twice on the burgundy designer sheet metal outer door. There were all sorts of clever thieves about.

Having locked up, I looked lovingly over the greenery on our extended balcony and then I ambled over to the elevator. It was already at my floor, the door gaping, but the elevator attendant wasn't inside. I took a look but he wasn't around.

I wanted to get a move on, but it was bad form to use the elevator yourself, to push the buttons with your own fingers.

It wasn't a class thing. The attendant was part of another government make-work project. Money and enterprise were everything these days. Working was positive. Regardless of the nature of the job. And there was a pervasive sympathy for anyone under the threat of losing their position. But who needed an attendant to push the elevator buttons when you had two hands?

I shouted, "Hey! Someone wants to take the elevator!"

Nothing happened, I shouted again. I was a rush dammit! The hell with local habits and customs. The hell with fitting in.

I barged into the elevator, and tripped as the floor level and elevator level were out of whack again. I fetched up on the chipped wicker chair the operator had installed for himself.

Catching my breath, I looked over the rest of his furniture. This was his office. At least it wasn't his home. There was a scratched desk complete with a reconstituted jam jar, a government issue thermos with a real cork stopper, a couple packs of Long Life monopoly cigarettes, and a tabloid magazine playing with fire and riding that fine line between commercial success and a gulag sentence. Just as the doors were beginning to jump and bump to a close, a hand jammed itself between the doors.

The doors opened again. It was our building's elevator operator. He's an old spry fellow, with a barrel chest, a buzz cut and a full outfit of fluffy Mao gear, with rubber flip-flops down below. Not only was he demonstrating solidarity with the old horror, but he wore these clothes as a warning, like the stripy yellow jacket of a wasp. He was also a practiced fibber full of vague stories of defeating the Japs and the Nationalists, thus earning his place at the national feed trough and getting this useless job in particular.

He rumbled sonorously, "Hey, this is my elevator." He meant it. As in, it was his, not ours, the rent-paying tenants. Smiling and looking me in the eye, "Don't touch those buttons. State property." Yeah, right.

He nodded to himself, hoping to inspire me to nod as well. I noticed he was back to wearing his lucky mood-watch. He’d given it up a while ago when he started taking the watch too seriously. It had set up a feedback loop with his emotions, which played havoc with his moods. At the moment, however, he was happy sucking on a toothpick in lieu of a cigarette. Both of which were pacifiers.

I was charmed by his chutzpah, his energy and gusto. But I was still in a rush, "Well I shouted for you, but nothing happened. Come on, old buddy, let's get this show on the road."

He put his hand over the floor buttons as if to keep them from harm's way. He turned a key to shut the elevator off. "Hold on there, sonny. You got a lighter?"

I groaned. He tried to suppress a smile. A polite sadist.

I did have a lighter. Never left home without one. But I didn't want to give him an excuse to fire up, fumigate our breathing space with raunchy Yunnan tobacco, and start yacking at me and further delay our departure for the first floor.

"No.” I lied. Pretending to rifle my pockets, I felt my lighter and moved on to jingle the change in my pocket. Fraudulently I said, "Sorry. No can do. I'm trying to give up the habit. Filthy stuff, tobacco."

He lowered the tilt of his head, the better to give me the evil eye. "Yeah, that explains the funny stuff you keep lighting up. There's only two sorts of stuff burning regularly up here on the rooftop. People barbequing and your wacky tobacky."

I ventured lamely, "Probably just burning some of the trash and leaves that collect on the roof."

"Inside your house?"

Then I remembered I wasn’t the only weed smoker in the building. Hardly. These mountains were polluted with users. "You've been snooping?” I asked confidently, “I thought your job was to run the elevator. Are you a snitch for the neighborhood committee?"

He gave me the evil eye, but the corners of his mouth drooped.

If people thought he was a snoop, they wouldn't talk to him any more. If I started a wicked rumor he couldn't be sure if folks in the building would ignore me because I was a dumb foreigner who didn't know anything or if they would believe every word I said because I was another Honest John of a foreigner who was too dumb to keep his mouth shut. The Cultural Revolution had demonstrated the danger of mixing dumbos and the truth: all hell could break loose.

I saw my opening, "OK then." I sniggered and then volleyed with: "First floor please!" And I stared at him hard, making my eyes large. He made a grouchy face, popped the key back into the slot, and away we went. He'd be polite to me from now on in. He wasn’t a bad guy anyway, just lonely sometimes.

Down on the street I grabbed some sourdough buns, some hot sauce and ginger slivers, plus some Moon Rabbit milk candies and that scrumptious Shanghai knock-off of Reese's peanut butter cups, not to mention a couple bottles of beer to gently wash it all down the gullet. I put my growing stash into my copious jacket pockets.

When I was done, and just about ready to grab a cab, I saw the neighborhood street person again. When he caught me looking at him, he stared. No hostility, just recognition, followed by shyness, and then a return to his monomania of prowling for cigarette butts. This time he was wearing green military pants with his grungy flipflops and faded Mao jacket. But when he moved now, he held his right hand out, his fingers extended, his palm aimed at the ground like those magnetic detectors people use looking for treasure buried in beaches. His hand was splayed. I cocked my head to get a better angle and realized that he was carrying it as if it was palsied. And his formerly normal walking pace was replaced with a 1-1-1-stop rhythm. 1-1-1-stop. 1-1-1-stop. This was how he got around now.

I was no stranger to superstition. He was developing a pantheon of taboos and inhibitions to improve his hunting of the ever more elusive cigarette butts; elusive because he'd found most of them by now and only a limited number were being flung from fingers to replenish the original yield. And so his superstition evolved to meet the challenge of changing conditions. No longer was he just crossing his fingers, he was moving onward and upward, evolving into a semi-paralytic. Soon he would reach climax and hardly be able to walk or move at all. Then the rubber truck would be called to take him to the loony bin, where it would take real magic to find any cigarette butts.

I turned back to the street and flagged down a cab to get to the stadium.

A screech caught my attention. I turned to see that yet another rural pedestrian (her knee stockings a dead giveaway), unused to the idea of two-way traffic and crosswalks, had jumped into the road like a springing deer and had almost been almost hit by a taxi. A shouting match ensued between the angry taxi driver and the frightened, embarrassedly defiant pedestrian, who kept her distance and then disappeared into the crowd on the other side of the road, interrupting traffic as she moved into the other lane, where she was met with honks and more jeering drivers.

I ignored the shouting match and hooted to the taxi driver, “Hey! Buddy! Can you take me to the soccer stadium?"

The driver looked over at me. He was still breathing rapidly and trying to keep his temper under control. He glared at me and then changed his mind. He sucked his teeth and said, "OK. Get in. Let's go."

As he got back in his vehicle he looked for the pedestrian, but she was long gone. He pulled his taxi up to the curb and I took a last turn around to see if street dude had struck gold. He was still in his stiff-legged gait, humping it the wrong way down the street. No cigarette butts in sight.

As I got in the taxi and parked my butt on the seat, the failing springs sank me nearly down to the level of my shoes. I looked on in mock horror as my knees came nearly up to my chest.

The driver thought I was looking for his pedestrian and started carrying on, “Fucking hayseed! That dumb bitch almost became roadkill. She might have damaged my car. A taxi's not cheap you know? I don't have any insurance. What would I do if my car was totaled? How would I support my family? How come these dimwits don't know how to cross a fucking street?"

I said," I'd like go to the soccer stadium, if you don't mind."

"Where?" barked the smoking driver through the bared teeth common to northern-accented Mandarin speakers.

"The soccer stadium."

"What for?" he laughed, scattering the spittle that collects at the edges of those bared teeth.

The car wasn't moving. Irritated I replied, “What difference does it make? For the soccer game. What else? Come on, let's get going. I don't want to be late."

"OK. Up to you." The beater began to move, the driver shifting gears at the lowest possible rpm to save gas. The whole chassis of the car shook terribly as a sympathetic vibration took hold. He didn't realize that his ultra low rpm gear-shifting would slowly warp the car's driveshaft and ruin it. There was music chirping through the car stereo. It was low but I could make it out: a Taiwanese sun-and-fun dirge, the type featuring a funeral organ, a three chord guitar rhythm, and a throaty female vocal with the powerful range required to hit the wailing notes of popular Japanese covers.

We passed a local park full of middle aged folks in track suits walking backwards to push the dharma wheel in reverse and collect retro chi. There were some oldsters looking like they were trying to shake off Parkinson's disease; no, scratch that, it was that tai chi warm-up for that looks like Holy Rollers getting the quakes as they let a/the Holy Spirit into their hearts.

The driver interrupted my day-dreaming to interject, "But the soccer game's on television. The scalpers can't even give away tickets."

As the car chugged down the street, I realized that I could stay at home, put my feet up, turn on the heater and roast my toes. I could enjoy myself with a beer, a clean toilet, a stocked fridge. It sounded great, but if I was at home, I wouldn't be able to suck in the stadium ambience, that friendly tippling and camaraderie of the home team crowd, the psychic lift my personal attendance and cheering would give the players. And this submersion in the partisan politics of sports is half of the game, isn't it? How can a livingroom TV compete?

My gaze out the car window fixed on something and my eyes came into focus on another taxi. This one was broken down. The angle of the front left wheel was splayed like a broken ankle with the foot pointing at an implausible angle. I leaned over the passenger seat to front and pointed across the road, asking the driver, "What happened to the car over there."

Squinting, the driver tried to be helpful and said, "Probably just defective. There's a lot of stolen cars on the roads. Shipped up from Hong Kong by speedboat into Guangzhou. You never know what you're buying."

But I scratched the afternoon growth on my chin and wondered if it wasn't just another new driver unfamiliar with his vehicle. Someone who didn't realize that purchasing a car was just the beginning of owning and operating a vehicle. Maintenance was required, such as lubing and changing the ball bearings on the axles. Otherwise the bearings gave out and the wheel came half off the strut.

The taxi driver prodded, "So you still want to go to the stadium?" Maybe he was hoping I would have a change of heart and opt for a cathouse on this chilly afternoon. Perhaps he hoped to negotiate a kickback when we arrived.

I took a moment to think about it. I sat back into the seat. Experimenting with how to be most comfortable, I ended up laying on it lengthwise. I chewed my lip and then decided, "Steady as she goes, captain. To the stadium."

"Have you been to the stadium before?"

"Of course"

"No. I mean, been to the stadium to watch a soccer came? Or something else, maybe?"

"No. I have to spend all of my time driving this taxi. I drive usually seven days a week and often 12 hours a day. I bet you white people don't work like this in America."

"Actually, a lot of people do, especially in industries that have seasonal highs and lows. I've done it. On a farm you usually harvest crops in the early fall and you're busier than hell. During the winter, there's nothing to do. I've worked 84 hours a week, just like you."

"Oh yeah?"

But I didn't want to discuss labor practices. "Anyway, you should check out the stadium sometime. For something to do."

"Yes. I suppose so."

The car suddenly veered to the left, there was an angry chorus of bicycle bells. The driver rushed to say, “Sorry about that. Another stolen manhole cover."

"Are they still stealing those things for scrap metal? Unbelievable."

"What do you mean? A lot of poor country people don't have jobs. The government is corrupt anyway. What's a few stolen manhole covers to the government boys. Most of the thieves leave a couple of plastic bottles in front so that you will know they've stolen the cover."

I relaxed some more into the seat, yawned and said, “I guess."

"The real problem with this town is the traffic." His voice had gone hoarse half way through that sentence. He started clearing his throat of a terrible luggee. After hacking and coughing like a cat with a fur ball in its throat, he expelled the whole awful mess, like a wad of chewing tobacco, out his open window. In China, the whole street was a spittoon. "Too many cars," he continued, "They should ban the bicycles from the main roads."

But it seemed to me that the real problem was driving skills. There was no concept of right-of-way. Driving down the street was a constant game of chicken. Just now, taking this right hand turn, the driver pretended not to see couple of pedestrians coming out into the street. I was looking right at them, while they were staring angrily him, the driver, trying to pierce his thick-skin with their psychic energy. By pretending not to see them, the driver didn't have to be polite and he could just ram right through.

But the stale air in the car was making me drowsy and dreamy. Maybe there was a leak in this beater that was letting in exhaust and carbon monoxide. I sure didn't want to fall asleep, so I rolled down my window a crack and started talking again. "Hey, do you know what the stadium reminds me of?"

"What?"

"It's like something right out of the Roman Empire."

"Huh? I doubt it." But actually, he hadn't even thought about it. What would he know about ancient Rome? About as much as I knew about ancient China. He simply disliked having a local icon compared to something predating it in the West. On the other hand, if the icon was Chinese and came first, that was okay.

"No. Seriously. The Roman Empire was just another socialist state full of dissidents, slaves, make-work projects, fiat government, patriotism and imperialism."

"Imperialism? That's what the Western nations did to us."

I was in too good a mood to argue with him. "The Roman's probably had great food too. Almost as good as Chinese food." I was trying to be a smart ass, although this was lost on the driver. Which was all the better anyway when I realized that Chinese food probably was a lot better than Roman food.

"Did you know the Roman's killed Jesus?"

"Fucking imperialists." The driver growled. "They always kill the good guys."

His taxi was littered with Buddhist paraphernalia and Daoist mojo. Gold, crimson, black, and saffron statues of dark gods and happy Buddhas were stuck on the dashboard; fetishes dangled from his rear-view mirror, their tassels swinging as the car bumped down the road and jerked during gear shifts.

I wondered how to put what I wanted to say into perspective. "Yeah. That would be sort of like Mao Tze-dung putting a bullet in the back of Sun Yat-sen's neck. You know, killing the nation's founding father. The good guy"

"What do you mean?" he asked, his eyes staring at me suspiciously from the rear-view mirror.

"Sorry about that. I mean... It would be like Chiang Kai-shek putting a bullet in the back of his neck."

"Yeah?"

"Sure. You know. Bad guys killing good guys. Just like in the movies."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, what I mean is that, Chinese Jesus's are still getting it in the neck here all the time. In the stadium I mean. They haul them out, read out their crimes, and put a bullet in them. No joke."

"You against capital punishment? Not us Chinese. When your time's up, it's up."

I wasn't sure what this meant. I wanted to talk about dissidents, he wanted to discuss the death penalty. Was this an evasion? But just in case he was serious I said, "That's sort of like what some Christians say in America. When your time's up, it's because you're wanted in heaven."

"Huh." I couldn't tell if he was suspicious, indifferent, bored, or wanted to drop the subject. Maybe I was crazy, high, or a snoop.

I abandoned the effort. We were soon at my destination and I paid the fare.

I looked up the bright and shiny white entrance to the stadium. I was impressed that the old gray dilapidated face, with its missing shards of plaster revealing exposed brick masonry, had been revamped and repainted. Now it looked much more like a going concern. The last time I'd been here, there were a handful of twenty-foot tall hardwood trees growing right out of the walls. Seeds had been blown up by the wind into seams in the concrete, germinated, and grown. And grown and grown. That was all history now. Socialism had been replaced by professionalism.

When I went inside, the ticket lady was still a troll, but a younger and prettier one in a proper uniform. She demanded money from me like a gangster and literally threw my ticket at me. But I was used to that. Progress was being made. One step at a time.

I was further impressed to find that they had installed an elevator. Formerly, you had to walk all the way up and down the bleachers, huffing and puffing and ready for the showers by the time you got to your seat. You watched the summer games all sticky and grimy. In the winter games, once you stopped sweating, you were still wet and clammy under your clothes and at risk for getting a chill. That was all history now too.

When the elevator doors opened, I saw the obligatory elevator operator hired for the public's convenience. As I got in with the overeager crowd, I felt elbows sticking in my kidneys, my shoes getting scuffed, my feet getting squashed. The operator was indifferent to the happy squirming commotion, the tipsy men exchanging sports lore, the muffled complaining of a toothsome girl who was accusing someone of anonymously pinching her bum, the male laughter which met her complaint. The operator was sound asleep on a cot that he had moved into the elevator. He was under a blanket and covered from head to toe. Only the outline of his body and snoring gave him away. Like many people in China who held two jobs, he had wisely selected one of the positions specifically for the opportunity to sleep on the job.

As the elevator went up, the air took on a strong fragrance of sausage and garlic. First I breathed shallowly and then I tried to hold my breath. But as the doors opened, the crowd pushed out and I gasped as I was lifted right off my feet for a couple of seconds by the rush. As my feet touched down again I breathed deep gouts of fresh air.

I checked my ticket and looked for the approximate area in which I was supposed to sit. This being China, the seat number was more like a suggestion. Outside of the VIP area, it was finder’s keepers free-for-all.

Looking out onto the soccer pitch, the teams were warming up. Players were kicking the ball to and fro, doing short sprints; the goalkeepers were stretching like yoga masters.

Today's soccer match was between the local boys and Hong Kong University. I didn't gamble, but if I did, I'd bet on the HK team. Now that I thought about it, I wanted to watch the poor suffering ex-colonials from HK, seduced by Western capitalist brainwashing into sucking-up to the evil boots of the British ex-tyranny, go on to kick the asses of the patriotic and chemically-pure home team.

The nosy neighbors at the apartment had made me irritable again. Or was it that I was antsy and spiteful at the prospect of going back to school. What if I made a mess of things? I tried not to think about it.

I found my appointed bleacher location and took a look around to see if there was anything better. Nah, this spot was fine actually. I took a look around before I sat down. It seemed pretty average crowd. I didn't come very often, but every time I did, you could tell that local people were increasingly prosperous and the standard of living was steadily rising.

For example, that woman over there: the one with the bongo lips, and the clam shaped mouth which is often symptomatic of childhood calcium deficiency. See the small teeth? Yup. Calcium. Anyway, she's got that pink watch, with the flesh wristband, blue jeans, and robin eggshell blue pumps. But the hairstyle is lagging behind the times right? She's got a coiffeur that reminds you of The Ramones. Still, on the positive side, she's got a bit of makeup which seems to work and isn't too obvious from a distance.

Or take that other one, that cutie over there on the right, with the broad forehead. She looks vaguely like a buffalo because of that hairstyle: long and parted directly down the middle, and then scraped down the side of her temples and looks like curtains. But she's Japanese clean and has delicate skin. A sweet young thing. Easy take home material.

And then there's that middle-aged woman up here on my right. She's tinted her hair a rust-purple. With the today's wind messing it up, it looks almost like a rug, though I'm sure it's actually natural. That thin sweater she's wearing, it's definitely made out of artificial ingredients and the geometric pattern enables it to substitute for a chessboard if need be. And she's wearing the popular long pointy shoes that fit on women's feet like canoes or kayaks. Perhaps she's a divorcee.

You probably think I'm mocking these good folks. I'm not. All around me, I see serious progress. The clothes are clean, pressed, adventurous, less tacky; the attitudes are more relaxed, confident, less xenophobic, willing to get down with foreigners.

And take a look at that one. That nervous energy, the thin pipe-cleaner limbs, the self-absorption and indifference to people around her. She's busy flipping through page after page of her newspaper. This is still a rare bird for these parts, though there's more in the pipeline I'm sure. The no-nonsense blue jeans, the unadorned black turtleneck, the black rimmed glasses without the flapping price tag. She's probably a lawyer or an information worker of some kind, maybe a reporter. Either way she's whole-hog middle class.

These other women are dressing to be noticed, to make an overt statement; they're looking for recognition and other forms of feedback. What a brilliant improvement over submerging oneself in the masses! But this other one lets her clothes do all the communicating for her. She's not interested in confirmation. Her elegance is more like a warning to those without both feet planted solidly in the middle-class. Do not disturb! Keep out! Shove off!

She was a bit older too. In her thirties. I was wondering if I could get up the nerve to introduce myself and talk to her, when suddenly felt this tap on my right shoulder blade.

“Are you reading that?” asked a Chinese woman of about 30, judging by the depth of the three lines circling her neck and the way the muscle rippled under the corners of her mouth. She was red-faced and her breath had the faint smell of alcohol. Make that fragrance. It was appealing. Alcohol and attractive women, as a combination, often are.

She was referring to the game schedule I was holding in my hand. It was in Chinese. I replied, “I was a minute ago. Just looking to see when the game's going to break up for half-time so I know when to..."

She cut me off. "You can read Chinese?"

I hesitated for a second over whether I should pretend to be Chinese. I decided that today I'd be a foreigner. I replied to her in the affirmative to which she said, "Can you speak Chinese?"

She was serious. "Yes, in fact, believe it or not, I'm speaking to you right now in Chinese." And I gave her a smile and deadpan eyes.

"You're fantastic! That's amazing. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes. You must have Chinese blood in you. Your dark hair. That's it. Your mother is Chinese?"

"Actually, I'm pure Caucasian. If there is such a thing as a pure ethnic background, that is." I chortled semi-sincerely.

She frowned, moved down to my bench to get close to me. She was in a carmine satin jacket tastefully littered with the Chinese character for prosperity and curry-brown slacks. The lazy scuffing of her feet on the bleachers brought my attention to the patent leather shoes she was wearing. There was a minimum of leather to maximize the amount of skin revealed. The small heels gave her booty a delicate lift.

She approached and put her hand right on my face, moving my chin forcefully, back-and-forth, wagging it and giving me the appearance of expressing NO!

She pulled back from me again, looked me over, stared me in the eye and stated, "No, you're definitely Chinese somehow. That explains it. Foreigners can't speak Chinese very well. And they never master it. It's too difficult. It's a Chinese language." She shrugged, stating what she considered to be obvious, "It's for the Chinese."

I didn't know what to say. I was taken aback by her forcefulness. Sure, she'd been drinking. But maybe she was a lunatic? I'd heard such sentiments from other people before. I was more than familiar with the logic. But the fact that she was touching me in public was unusual. People went to jail for doing precisely this, the local police framing them on suspicion of prostitution or some other such nonsense charge.

"So, I'm curious. Who in your family is Chinese?"

I laughed the nervous chuckle off someone trying to advance an unpopular idea. "I'm quite serious. Actually, there is no Chinese blood in my veins."

This wasn't what she wanted to hear. Her face went redder than it already was. She got up in a huff and left. I groaned, realizing how much en masse admitted the situation. If I played my cards right, perhaps I could arranged an extramarital fling. Instead, yet again my pathological mania for honesty was getting in the way. The road to Chinese hell was being paved with my good intentions.

I knew fully well that once you start speaking Mandarin, even if you're dressed up to the nines in foreigner gear and have blue eyes and blond hair, people presume you have Chinese blood. It often takes a heroic effort to persuade people that you aren't at least part Chinese. At that point, protesting that you're not Chinese even somehow becomes unpatriotic. An affront to the Chinese people. They're offering membership in the Chinese clan. Why don't you want it? We're not good enough for you?

For trying to tell the truth you become a no good big-nose bastard. Recently my wife had been nagging, "Lie Charlie. It's easier." She'd wink and I'd feel guilty and foolish and be persuaded to move another inch towards her values, her family's values, the city's values, the region's values, the province's values, the national values. So much for my values.


Insert gay dude trying to pick you up...







I turned around to hear a slurred, "Yo, dude, wazzup?"

It was a thin, balding American-sounding guy with a peaked nose and a pizza face. He was dressed in the local Army fatigues. I hadn't seen this sort of thing before on a foreigner. I thought you might get arrested. Goes to show you how much more civilized and cosmopolitan things are getting to be. The only stuff missing from his brash outfit was the cap and epaulets. He even had chevrons and shit-kicker boots.

I replied, "So, how to do you do? I guess you're a soccer fan, eh?"

"Yeah, of course. There's not much other reason to come to these stands on a cold blustery day. Why don't you sit up here with me? The view's better. We can check out the game together. Exchange complaints. Whaddaya say?"

I stuffed my steamed buns and beer back into my jacket, got up and while I stepped up and over to the next level of bleachers, I asked "So, what's your name and where are you from?"

"What are you, a snoop?"

"Get real. I'm just here to watch the game. Don't be paranoid. That's the local's job."

He snickered but was chagrined, "Right, right. I was just messing with you, to see what you'd say." As I sat down, he took his eyes off my gaze and regrouped and said, "You know, people are always asking you where you're from, what your name is, what you do. It gets to be a pain in the ass. You get the urge to start telling people you're Bongo Nuts, from Buttfuck, US of A."

"Yeah, that's true. Sorry. I didn't mean to pry. But, I guess I'm still kind of curious. My name is Charles Ferguson. You may call me Charlie." I extended my hand.

"I MAY call you Charlie? What're you, Little Lord Fauntleroy?"

"Hey, cut it out!"

"May? What are you? A Brit?" He jerked back as if hit with a nasty smell. Narrowing his eyes he said, "You look American." Now he was indignant, as if I'd played him for a fool.

"American?" I looked down, "Jeez! Yeah, I'm an American! We're all Americans right? Now you sound just like the Chinese."

"Watch it! Them's fighting words." He'd raised his fists in a boxing stance, but he was smiling, just teasing. "So whaddaya do here Charlie. If I may pry."

"Nobody says, 'if I may pry'. It's either 'if I may' or...ah... 'I don't mean to pry.'" On saying this I felt better, but began to wonder if he hadn't deliberately botched the phrase to give me the chance to regain face. "Anyway, I'm Canadian. And I'm in between jobs. Used to be an English teacher, but now I'm starting grad school."

"Grad school, you're putting me on? You don't mean here in this dirt bag town, do you?"

"Umm, yeah, actually I do. I'm starting the Masters program in history just next week as a matter of fact."

"Well fuck me, man! That's too cool. We must be in the same ass program."

"No way! Right on! So what brings you here to the university?"

"A scholarship. What else would attract me to this jerk-water paradise? Freshwater schools don't exactly enjoy a great reputation on this planet."

It always bothered me when somebody started taking cheap shots at China and the Chinese. It wasn't their fault. Chinese chauvinism was expected, but it looked ugly on a foreigner. I know it must sound sort of hypocritical of me carrying on like this, but only if you think my shots are cheap shots too. I don't know, somehow when I'm critical it doesn't sound cheap at the time. Later, however… Either way, it's usually not fair no matter who does it. So even if I can't manage my own mouth, I can help others. You know. Be a good Samaritan. Do a good deed every day. Give back to society. And Chinese society has been very good to me -- my griping to the contrary -- when all is said and done. So I said, "That's not very nice, especially when they're giving you a scholarship, right?"

"Well you're a cheap whore. All it takes is a scholarship to zip up your mouth. Damn, dude, try working up some independence of spirit. Buy back your own soul. I can understand poor people selling out, but you aren't poor. Or if you are, no foreigner has to be impoverished in this country. Once you fall off the boat, as long as you've got a pulse, you've got it made."

I interrupted, "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know the deal, I've been talking and writing about this for a dog's age. Nothing new under the sun."

“You write? No shit? Fiction? Non-fiction?”

Being around him made me self-conscious. “Just a blog. Nothing special. Short stories and stuff. It's embarrassing. You'd hate it.”

“I should check it out. A writer in training wheels. I respect that.”

I didn't believe him. Everything he said was tainted with mockery. To change the subject I asked, "So what is it that you're going to study, anyway?" But I already knew it had to be interesting, unconventional, whatever it was. An antidote to the dreary moth-infested two years that otherwise potentially lay ahead.

"I believe you mean 'what is it that I'm going to research?' I'm not just sure yet. Probably something like anticolonialism."

"Anticolonialism? What's that?"

"When's the last time you were in school, dude? Don't bother answering that." He paused and sighed with resignation. He hesitated and decided to go through with what he was going to say, "I'm interested in a lot of the bullshit arguments opposing colonialism. Or, for example, just look at the problems that have arisen in the 20th century because of the popularity of political self-determination. Pundits and hacks are always going on about the importance of it, but it seems to me to cause more trouble than it's worth: civil wars, guerrilla insurgencies, nationalism and flag-waving patriotism. It's just another example of idealism and of what H.L. Mencken was talking about when he wrote about the US Civil War and said in passing that a moral victory is always a disaster."

"Wow!” I hesitated, fumbling for the right spoken word, not my forte, “That's a pretty weird take on things."

But I was interested. And becoming increasingly interested in him. He was a prick, but a sharp, bright, ruthless one. People who berated others, when they themselves couldn't or weren't interested in doing what the other did, were dime a dozen. Setting straw men alight took no bravery, just a lazy frame of mind and five minutes initiation to begin a lifetime of turning this trick. But he was happy to berate himself and his own country. Everything was a potential target. Whatever he was going to do would be exciting. And probably self-destructive. I wanted to be there, to watch.

He frowned and asked, "You ever heard of this guy?" He pulled a book out of his satchel. The cover said, The Antichrist. "You know this dude, right?"

I replied, "Yeah, of course. Everyone knows him. He's that 19th-century philosopher Nietsky."

"For the love of... It's pronounced Neechee. Not fuckin Nietsky. God, it's going to be a tough semester." He shook his head.

"Awe, come on. Don't give me such a hard time. I know this guy, I just don't know how to pronounce his name. I mean, it's not like my Chinese wife is going to tell me how to say it. And back at home, the only German prodigy that local folks would know would be...umm... Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

He started chuckling, "He's not even German. He's Austrian."

"Yeah…but…uh…he's ethnically German, just born in Austria, right? Let's split the difference and call it even."

"If you say so." He rolled his eyes. "Read this section okay. Nietsky put it better than I ever will."

"Quit it!"

"Read. Please?"

I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as "idealists"--among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion. . . The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (--and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself--as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices. . .

When I finished, I said, "Huh!" and looked at him wondering what he expected me to say.

"Idealism's a big problem dude. And not just in the academy. Look at war in the 20th century. I mean, if you're a weaker country and just lay down and take it when a stronger power comes along, most of these dumb ass wars would never take place. I mean, look at the French in the Second World War. They just bent over and took it in the kazoo for six years. You know, Vichy France? Paris remained intact. That was the way to do it."

"Yeah, but didn't they roundup the Jews and ship them off to concentrations camps and kill them?"

"And that wouldn't have happened if the Germans had blasted their way through?"

"Yeah but it would have given the Jews more time to escape."

"Escape to where? Nobody wanted them in those days."

"Okay, well, I don't know much about Europe." I shrugged.

"Then look at China. When the Japs came blasting through, Chiang Kai-shek wanted to just let them come into Shanghai and take what they wanted. He knew he couldn't stop them. He was right. But some of the more patriotic idealists and dreamy socialists got together and decided to make a last stand in Shanghai. The result was a lot of dead people and a lot of smashed real estate and they still lost Shanghai. An ancillary result of that was the Nanjing massacre. If they hadn't defended Shanghai, the Japs wouldn't have gone into Nanjing and started shooting civilians. The Japs took a real beating in Shanghai from snipers and so they killed every soldier they found in Nanjing, whether armed or in civilian attire."

"That's still a war crime! You can't just kill soldiers. You put 'em in a POW camp. When the war's over, you release them."

"Calm down! Calm down! It's not even your war. I hate it when foreigners become patriots of their adopted countries. Such patronizing. Such piety. The world needs to be saved from nuts like you." He rolled his eyes again and waved me down. "Stop for a minute! … Hey! There it is again. I keep smelling something organic and ripe. You farting or are you hiding food in your jacket?" He looked at me with confidence, a greedy smile forming on his lips. Daring me to be so weak and insecure as to deny him some grub. The slippery devil. It felt like being worked over by a hostess in a cathouse.

I said, "Oh yeah? Well I can't imagine anything I'd eat would be up to your uppity standards."

"Try me. C'mon. You can do it." He extended his left hand in front of me to distract me from his other hand which snatched my sourdough buns out from my jacket pocket.

"Son of a bitch! Give those back."

"Take a Prozac will ya! I'll pay my share, don't worry about it. You need to cut some weight anyway. What about drinks? What are we sucking back today?"

"You wish."

"I got to sing for my supper? Can do. Okay. As to your war-crime, of course it's a crime against humanity. But so are ultraviolet rays. So what do you suggest should be done? Should those dirt-bags at the United Nations pass a binding resolution condemning the sun and impose sanctions? You can spout all the rhetoric you want. But what difference will it make? What matters is what you're going to do about it. And ethics? That's a bit rich during wartime, don't you think? It's fine and dandy during peacetime to talk about the ethics of the battlefield or elsewhere. But the reality is that people do what they do when you give them weapons and hate. Or should I say, weapons and idealism, which is what the Axis powers were really about. Not to mention al Qaeda. War on Terror? It ought to be called War on Idealism."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

And then we were both cut off by an enourmous roar from the crowd.

"What happened?" I looked on to the soccer pitch and saw a goalkeeper pulling the ball out of the corner of his net. The Hong Kong quislings had scored against the local patriots. But the roar only subsided into a cacophony of howls, whistles, and boos. It kept going and a crazy disjointed wave began circling the stadium. It went around once, and then came back around in our direction again. Pizza face stood up and grabbed me by the collar, pulling me up to my feet.

"Oy!" I protested.

Then he looked at me very seriously and with the tone of warning said, "Charlie! Stand the fuck up or we're going to get thrown out of the bleachers by some group of maniacs."

The wave passed through us and we sat down again. I asked, "Hey, so what's your name anyway?"

"Bartholomew Matthew Spencer. When I was a kid, people called me Bart. As you can imagine that's not such a cool nickname anymore. Call me Matt or Matthew, as you like. Anyway, here," and he shoved my steamed buns back at me quickly. "Put this food back in your pockets, dude. Hide it."

"Huh?" But I did as I was told and began to have an inkling why. For out of the corner of my eye I saw a first pair of gray fluttering things go by. I thought they were pigeons scoping for French fries or other bleacher foodstuffs at first, but when I focused I realized it was actually two fluttering plastic bags with stuff inside. I followed their trajectory as they plummeted to the bottom of the stands to their appointed target: a gaggle of green-suited police. Some were still anxiously putting on their helmets; the chief upfront was yammering orders sharply to get his men to place their riot shields above them. A genuine phalanx.

Following the initiative shown by the first scofflaws, the rest of the crowd erupted. It was like half a food fight, the sort I'd witnessed in high school cafeterias. Everything became fair game as a weapon: bags of noodles, soup, buns, bean milk, chopsticks, and cartons, whatever. This raid, this artillery barrage of breakfasts and lunches launched by the great proletariat, came flying down the bleachers at the police below. The crowd shrieked and howled, people were really excited. It was Tiananmen in 1989 all over again. Like a positive version of the Cultural Revolution, a free-for-all by the downtrodden to stand authority on its ear.

All around us were jabbering men who'd been hitting the sauce, now smiling and gesticulating, pumped with liquid courage and having a great time getting revenge on the anonymous baddies who were the police. With excuse of losing a goal to the quislings, everyone could obliquely express their dissatisfaction with the political status quo. Each profited from the anonymity of being just another black-top in the crowd. Power to the people!

But that wasn't all there was to this. "So, have you seen this kind of thing before?" Knowing that, by virtue of his reaction, he must have.

"Yeah, of course. It's sort of de rigueur at games nowadays. The home team gets scored on and the protest food starts flying. I don't know. What do you expect from these monkeys?"

"Monkeys?" I was shocked. "Isn't that racist?"

"Racist? What do you mean? I don't believe in the concept of race. Sure, they're different colors of skin, but I don't see any difference in terms of intelligence. I thought you're Canadian? Surely you of all people, growing up in a country that prides itself on multiculturalism, should know that racism is bullshit."

"Yeah, but..."

"So if I call a white dude a monkey, would that NOT be racism? Is that it?" He frowned and looked away into the flying food, irritated. Just in time to see a plastic sports-drink bottle that was coming right for my noggin and snag it gracefully with one hand out of the chilly air.

"Jeez! Great catch. Thanks. That one would have hurt." And then I wondered out loud, "Do you think it was deliberately aimed at us?"

He was keeping an eye out now to rear as he marched me forward. "These mofos are spastic to beat the band." More racism, I thought.

He must have known what I was thinking because he picked up his explanation where he left off, "You know, I get the feeling that nine times out of ten, people who play the race card do so because they actually believe in congenital racial inequality. They get so worked up because they really believe there is a difference. Not me, pal. So, if we're going to be cool, ditch the race card. Besides, racism was never about race even to begin with. It was always about culture. Who's on top and who's below simply depends on the strength of the economy of that culture. That's pretty much what defines where you on are the totem pole, who you are in the food chain: doing the eating or being eaten."

"Yeah, I guess... I don't know. I mean..."

"We can talk about this shit later. C'mon."

Whether I agreed with him or not, I loved listening to someone else try to make sense out of the world. What a nutty perspective he had. And all those historical references. Attending a local university, I figured I could just fake my knowledge of Western history. The profs wouldn't know too much, I figured. And they'd be insecure about what they did know because they couldn't freely access information in the West.

"Charlie, haul that fat ass of yours. We've got to keep moving." I had sat down to listen but Matt pulled me to my feet again and we started to edge our way along the bleachers, "Look around you. We're still in the middle of the crowd that's tossing the food. If the cops change their mind and get feisty, they're gonna start shooting in our direction. If we're luck it's gas. If we're not, it's bullets. This country had 57,000 recorded mass protests last year. I don't feel like being confused for no string-pulling, rabble-rousing monkey and taking a bullet. I'm not going to be a fucking martyr for a cause that I don't believe in."

People heard us speaking English and turned to stare. Even people who didn't speak a lick of English recognized Matt's four-letter adjectives and his pejorative tone of voice. Some folks were friendly, others indifferent, some hostile, perhaps suspecting we were snoops or even provocateurs. A time like this made folks receptive to imaginative conspiracy scenarios.

A few wrong words and inappropriate body language and we might get lynched. The cops couldn't protect us now and neither could anyone else. We'd be like those poor Japanese tourists in Guatemala who were pulled out of a tour bus and strung up in a mountain village a couple of years ago. Some ambitious local sorcerer convinced people that Jap bodies were inhabited by evil spirits. Civilization is a thin veneer on society, etc... Truer words never spoken, baby.

I heard a squawk below, and, peering between the standing spectators, I was able to see a middle-aged female food vendor engaged in a tug-of-war with three men. They were taking her mantou buns and throwing them at the police. The crowd around her was cheering. Matthew said, "There you go. That's the real heart of this protest. Middle-aged adults who never had the chance to engage in vandalism as kids, are now getting their kicks and loving it."

"You mean, they never got it out of the system when they were younger?"

"That's the key to Cultural Revolution, if you ask me. Mao just pushed the button, but the machinery was already there, ready-made, primed and ready to go."

"Okay, but don't you think that there's something noble about this protest? I mean, it's good to see the police get their asses kicked sometimes, don't you think? They're famous for being brutal."

"That may be, but they're just schleppes doing their job. They got families and kids to feed, like everyone else. They take orders most of the time, not give them. Besides, if you don't protect private property, you ain't got nothing in this world. The basis of civilization is private property. It must be protected. Bad cops notwithstanding."

Not knowing what to say, not having any ideas on the subject, I tried to be clever and said, "But what about freedom of speech? That's surely the most important thing in our culture."

"Nope. Protecting private property comes first. Only with private property do you have free speech. Without property, you don't have rights. Rights have to be earned, fought for, negotiated. No one has an intrinsic right to rights. You need to read Thucydides."

I knew who this was but didn't dare ask which part of his book I was supposed to read. Interpreting my silence as ignorance, he turned and shouted, "The Melian Debate."

But he wasn't angry now. Perhaps having someone to talk to was softening his rancor at a world that surely ignored him most of the time.

He kept yanking on my arm, pulling me through the bleachers until we got several rows over where the population was thinner. Well and not so well-dressed couples had come over here to canoodle. They were in various stages of amorous adventure and needed greater space to stretch their legs to facilitate getting the petting action going. There was a layer of voyeurs in the bleachers immediately above; unlucky at love, they gaped. One took notes. Several of the citizenry were playing pocket pool. One gentleman, perhaps deranged, was harmlessly pulling on his pecker. It was just another Saturday afternoon in the boondocks.

As to Matt and me, we were just happy to have immediate access to an exit. An emergency escape.

We sat down. He ignored the continuing commotion and continued, "Greed is the best thing we human beings have going for us. It's steady, reliable, predictable. With private property and greed, the Greeks and Romans established the fabulous inequalities of wealth which were needed to fund their great civilizations. When Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire in 310 AD, it was all downhill till civilization finally bottomed out at the level playing field and imploded like paper mache in the rain. Once greed became verboten, the only thing left was fairness and equality. And with that, Christian mobs burned every library on the theory that books were unfair to the illiterate, killed every smarty on the theory that smart people were unfair to the dumb, and closed the public baths on the theory that being clean was unfair to the great unwashed."

Did he really believe that? He nodded to me, saying, "And that led directly to the Dark Ages, to Napoleon, the USSR, South African apartheid, Hitler and the Nazis, Pol Pot, North Korea, and Communist China. Fairness has an impressive history of death-dealing and destruction. As does pity. But that's another story for another time."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Having got this off his chest, he chilled out, got smiley and became aware of his appetite. "Hey, how about that food in your pockets? I've earned it haven't I? Thinking makes me hungry. Don't be so cheap."

That seemed to be his cornerstone strategy: making you feel petty and allowing you back into his good graces if you did him a good turn. The good turn he dictated to you, that is.

Greed. Quid pro quo. This really seemed to be his operating philosophy. He wasn't kidding.

But just as I was rifling my pockets, another roar went up. But it was quickly followed by silence. A thin reedy voice wavered across our part of the stadium. I couldn't make out what it was saying. He looked like a farmer, judging by the billowing crazy hair, the sandals, the Mao jacket and fluffy pants. It was only in the hinterlands, the really conservative areas, where people didn't really believe that Mao was finally gone, that his spirit or scion wouldn't suddenly reappear to start a whole new decade of dunce caps, airplanes, Gulags, and firing squads, that people still wore this stuff.

Farmers had become a cause celebre and they were always in the news. They were still suffering, the economy not having picked up in the remote areas (as opposed to the areas close to the cities, where some farmers were doing gangbusters). Transportation links hadn't been set up. In lieu of half an hour by superhighway, peasants might need four to eight hours of rural byway to travel the same distance. I suspected Matt would have said something along the lines of rural greed hadn't met up with city greed, shaken hands and got down to some mutually advantageous profiteering.

That was his shtick. He was consistently dramatic, trying to get your attention and push your buttons. He laid a trap and if you fell into it, weakened and vulnerable, he defied you to cross swords with him and pushed the point home when he could.

I recognized this in him like one drunk spotting another in a room. His shtick was my shtick. My choice of the word 'shtick' was a giveaway in itself. It was false, insincere, a trying-too-hard. It was an attempt to weaken Matt's strength through spin. It was my flair, my extravagant attempt to make up for my weakness, real or perceived. But this admission only strengthened me. Having opened the septic wound, it was now ready for cleaning. Would Matt do the same?

Seeing the farmer up at the top of the bleachers, next to the edge of the stadium, making a speech, was ominous. Everyone knew what this portended. A last stand.

I heard marching coming up from below and peered around the lip of the exit to see the phalanx of police hotfooting up the bleachers. But the farmer was prepared; they usually are. He pulled out a bottle, gasoline no doubt, and poured it on himself. Everyone was quiet. Just the sound of marching and the police chief exhorting his men, like a sports team coach, to seize the farmer.

For the rest of us, the crowd included, it was like witnessing a saint. A martyr. So quiet. Steadfast. So this was what it looked like. What it felt like.

He said nothing, then a last shouted burst of "China! Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years and no justice for the people of China." And then he pulled out a huge lighter. I couldn't see it clearly, but it must have been one of those Chairman Mao blowtorch models which plays "The Sun Sets in the West over China." He set his jacket alight, the wind in the upper bleachers rapidly transforming him into a human torch. A couple of women screamed, but the mood was respect. Quiet respect and the steadily approaching trump-trump-trump of police quickstepping up the bleachers.

It sounds morbid, but I wanted to watch so badly. I was transfixed. Gaping. Almost insensate. Yet tears were streaming down my face. It was 1989 all over again.

Matt yanked me harshly, and shouted, "Let's get the fuck out of here! I mean now goddamit!"

Unfinished - Copyright Biff Cappuccino

worker douses himself with gasoline, followed by spontaneous eruption of falungong people.

Get hauled off to jail.

Don't forget to have him discuss Philippine landslides, China and Wal-Mart. He pulls apart that book by Jan Wong (Iris Chang comes later. You post an essay which is just your blog rant),

Ask Frankie (change from 'Frank' to 'Frankie') to get you out by bringing ID. He gets beat up by cops who think he's black. He's actually a very dark Tamil Sri Lankan.

Copyright Biff Cappuccino

More comedy. Christ! Everywhere I turn, it's hustlers peddling bogus history. Check out this sweetheart: Norma Khouri.
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From The Victims of ‘Victimhood’ :
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Norma Khouri’s international best-seller “Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan” is an indictment of “honor killings”: the practice of killing women whose behavior has shamed the family. Khouri’s lifelong friend Dalia, a Jordanian Muslim, was murdered in Amman by her father for falling in love with a Christian.
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Fearing for her life, Khouri fled Jordan to asylum in Australia. The sensation caused by the book is flawed by one thing—the story may be a lie from beginning to end.
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An 18-month investigation of “Honor Lost” (titled “Forbidden Love” outside the U.S.) was conducted by the Australian Sydney Morning Herald and Amal Sabbagh—the Secretary-General of the Jordanian National Commission for Women.
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On July 14, the resulting expose rocked the literary world.
Khouri’s book is riddled with factual errors as well as what Sabbagh called a general “lack of knowledge of Islam and of Jordan.” For example, the book refers to Kuwait as Jordan’s neighbor when the two countries share no border. It describes the Jordan River flowing through the capital of Amman when no such tributary exists. These are strange errors from someone who hails from Amman.
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More damning was the revelation that Khouri had left Jordan at the age of three and lived in Chicago for almost 30 years.
Lying for fame and fortune is nothing new. The intriguing aspect is how our society has become so gullible as to gulp down claims of victimhood without pausing for evidence.
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From Chicago police reopen file on Norma Khouri :
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AMMAN — The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday that Jordanian author Norma Khouri had allegedly defrauded close friends, family and the sick of around $1 million over “the best part of 10 years.”
The Herald's Chicago correspondent Caroline Overington said 34-year-old Khouri has been on the run from the Chicago police and the FBI for more than five years.
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Now, following the Herald's investigation of her literary hoax, the police have reopened a metre-thick file on the author — known in the US as Norma Toliopoulos — with the aim of charging her with a decade's worth of crime, Overington wrote.
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“We believe she is a con woman,” a source within the Chicago Police Department told the Herald, “one of the best we've ever seen.”
Khouri has allegedly netted at least $1 million from her crime, according to the Herald.
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Chicago police were about to issue a warrant for her arrest in 1999 but she took flight, eventually resurfacing in Australia as the best-selling author of the supposed memoir Forbidden Love, the newspaper said.
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Documents obtained by the Herald show that in 1996, Khouri took 97 US government bonds worth $408,000 from a safety deposit box owned by her elderly neighbour, Mary Baravikas. Police believe that she also stole Baravikas' house and $33,000 in cash that was also in the deposit box, according to the Herald.
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Khouri has also been accused of taking $40,000 from a man who claims he was her lover. According to documents obtained by the Herald, a man called John Closterides told Chicago police in 1999 that he had a “romance” with Norma Khouri. She told him she was a Jordanian princess, the Herald said.
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From Betrayal but a small part of the larger deception :
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When I wrote my novel Somewhere, Home, based on my grandmother's life, I realised that in spite of all the difficulties she faced, and at a very young age, she never felt sorry for herself. She chose instead to be resourceful, to make a new life in her adopted home and with her adopted family. While my book fictionalised events, I hoped I had conveyed a real sense of her feistiness and of her strength of spirit, the way she had succeeded in looking beyond her own traditional upbringing. I wanted the book to be in that sense truthful.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
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Which is one of the reasons I was so upset by Norma Khouri's Forbidden Love, the "memoir" about a Jordanian honour killing which was withdrawn by its Australian publisher after being exposed by the Herald as a fraud. The book, published in 2002, became a bestseller in the US and was sold to publishers around the world; in Australia it sold more than 200,000 copies.
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To cop a phrase from Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, these people give me a royal pain in the gulliver. Watching this silliness seems to help:
http://www.craptv.com/coop/america.htm
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Biff Cappuccino

Today's www.atol.com forum posts:

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Other dude: Pepe Escobar is my most favourite writer bar none. I have quite a few favs but no one holds a candle to pepe. Just wanted to say what a great writer he is. Although in quite a few respects he is a bit ahead of the times.

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Biff: Pepe Escobar is just another conspiracy theorist. There is nothing too improbable, as long as it's politically correct, that he won't swallow and parrot. He strikes me as just another journalist who values safety in numbers. Does he ever do his homework on the issues? Does he ever read a book? He strikes me as being completely inert and incapable of thinking for himself. He has never displayed an original thought in any of the articles of his I've read. And all of his pious feelings are retreads that were already thousands of years old by the time the Pharaohs arrived on the ancient scene. How can someone who wears his heart on his sleave and who is devoid of original ideas be ahead of his time? His only value to me is as a weathervane pointing to the latest alleged moral combat explaining world events: i.e. the latest conspiracy theory propounded by moralizing armchair generals for whom systems of ideas are too complex. It's half-wits like Pepe who give the free press, and the left wing especially, such a bad name with those in the know. Relying on the press for one's opinions is a disaster.

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Other dude: At least pepe has the guts and will to go where white trash dont dare. Where the story is at... And when you are the only one there, guess you can make up the stories since there is no one else who can challenge you on the facts.

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Biff: There are reporters dime-a-dozen in practically every location Pepe's gone to. Everybody and there dog who graduates with a bachelor of arts wants to be a reporter. That's why there are so many all over the planet (and why they work for so cheap). And since book writers are also dime-a-dozen, there are books covering literally every subject he's ever covered as well. Pepe does nothing original. He's incapable of originality. It shows in every post of his.

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And it takes no guts to trot out a leftist line in the year 2004. Left-wing politics have a long, long history. Jack London gave socialist speeches and wrote editorials in the nineteen-teens. Helen Keller was arrested in the 1920's campaigning for socialism. Since the Great Depression of the 1930's, left wing politics have been VERY popular with the educated 'white trash' of America. They still are.

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We can agree or disagree with Spengler, but he tries to be original. He has guts. When Pepe does something like Spengler, then I'll respect him.

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But Pepe won't, because he can't. Anyone who can, does. Originality in almost any form is potentially highly lucrative in the media, whether it's the press, Hollywood, radio, or whatever.

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Michael Moore must be worth over US$100 million by now. Why? Because he did something original. He 'invented' left-wing docu-comedy. The earlier left-wing stuff was tear-jerking material. He brought out the comedic side of what he considers tragedy (I think he's full of it, but that's for another post).

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If Pepe had guts he would have done something like this by now. It's the obvious thing to do.

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But it takes more guts (and more confidence and maturity) to mock people (particularly if you do it gracefully) than to commiserate with them or screech to the heavens at their sides in anger. Leftist writers like Molly Ivins of Texas, or Al Franken of the east coast, who have a sense of humor do very well for themselves. Both are 'white trash' types unless you take exception to Al Franken who I believe is/was jewish.

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Other dude quotes John Perkins new book at length and approvingly.

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Biff: A quick survey of John Perkin's books is worthwhile as he seems to have some choice advice on time management and saving airfare: from http://www.johnperkins.org/

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John's earlier books have been published in 14 languages. They include:

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Psychonavigation: Techniques for Travel Beyond Time

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Shapeshifting: Shamanic Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation

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The World Is As You Dream It: Shamanic Teachings from the Amazon and Andes

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The Stress-Free Habit: Powerful Techniques for Health and Longevity from the Andes, Yucatan, and Far East

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Spirit of the Shuar:Wisdom from the Last Unconquered People of the Amazon

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And of course, given the above, Perkins has the full endorsement of the lunatic fringe on the left: Democracy Now!(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251)

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Somehow the following review seems more likely to be somewhere near the mark: From Publishers WeeklyPerkins spent the 1970s working as an economic planner for an international consulting firm, a job that took him to exotic locales like Indonesia and Panama, helping wealthy corporations exploit developing nations as, he claims, a not entirely unwitting front for the National Security Agency. He says he was trained early in his career by a glamorous older woman as one of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of corporate hegemony. He also says he has wanted to tell his story for the last two decades, but his shadowy masters have either bought him off or threatened him until now. The story as presented is implausible to say the least, offering so few details that Perkins often seems paranoid, and the simplistic political analysis doesn’t enhance his credibility. Despite the claim that his work left him wracked with guilt, the artless prose is emotionally flat and generally comes across as a personal crisis of conscience blown up to monstrous proportions, casting Perkins as a victim not only of his own neuroses over class and money but of dark forces beyond his control. His claim to have assisted the House of Saud in strengthening its ties to American power brokers may be timely enough to attract some attention, but the yarn he spins is ultimately unconvincing, except perhaps to conspiracy buffs.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Other dude: Why don't you look up general smedly... Maybe you can drag that punks name through the dirt since it wont fit your world view..

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Biff: I know about smedly. And about U.S. Grant's comments about the Mexican War. And about Thucydides slamming of Athens in ancient Greece. But you need to check the people you quote before quoting them. You linked to John Perkins at Democracy Now! in another thread. The guy's a nut who believes in psychic transportation. He's written an entire book on this. And several other nutty volumes too. Do a google search and brace yourself.

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Have you watched the democracy now interview on video yet? Check out his rationalization of how he gave in to serial bribe-taking. He ought to do standup.

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I used to toe the left-line somewhat, but I realized I was being hustled after I hit the stacks at the library. There's a lot of hustlers out there. On both the left and the right. All I'm trying to do is base my world view on something broader than journalism and internet links.

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Biff Cappuccino