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sports in china...nightlife in jinzhou...chinese food......and morein this issue
from east to west:I know, I know, it's been almost a year since I added a new Chapter to Chuck in China. It's been one hectic month after another - going to Beijing and the Great Wall; spending my first Chinese New Year here; winding up my stint in Jinzhou and saying goodbye to the many, many friends I made there; moving all my stuff a thousand miles or so to south of the Yangzi River (and in the process having to buy two large suitcases just to carry all the going-away gifts I received from the people in Jinzhou); teaching writing to 150 students at Suzhou University (and the resulting piles and piles of writing assignments that resulted from that stint leaving little time for anything else!); to getting ready to teach at another school here in Suzhou which offers a bit more money and a lot more free time. All has conspired against my efforts to update my site. Well, wait no longer. During all this time, I was still able to find some time to write-just no time to organize it into website form. I have compiled a number of pieces which I have written over the last year and a half. Parts of this Chuck in China 5 may be familiar to some readers as pieces of some of these stories may have appeared in e-mails to some of you. Nevertheless, I have pulled them together, organized them, re-edited them, and, in some cases rewritten them. In fact, as I went through them all, I found more than I could use, and almost have enough material to finish up Chuck in China 6, as well. So, hopefully, that might appear sooner rather than later. To my friends waiting to hear more about Suzhou-both last summer, as well as this year, you'll have to wait a little longer. Most of the material in Chuck in China 5 is left over from my Jinzhou days as will be the bulk of material in Chuck in China 6. The subject of Suzhou is a huge one - and one I want to get at soon. So I wanted to clean out the attic on my Jinzhou days, before I finish tackling Suzhou. Hope you enjoy Chuck in China 5. the sports page ... sports in chinabaseballAs I walked out of my hall one afternoon, one of the Japanese students who is here studying Chinese - Rioh - was throwing a rubber ball against the wall and he had ...... A BASEBALL MITT! I ran back to my room, grabbed my mitt and the hardball I brought with me to China and we played catch in the street outside the hall for about 20 minutes. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, who wandered by stopped and, eyes agog, watched these two "waiguoren" playing this "strange" game. (In addition to blue-eyed, big nosed, white-skinned people, the Chinese refer to Japanese, Koreans, indeed anyone who is not Chinese, as "waiguoren".) The kid was pretty good so I was able to crank up the old heater after awhile. It was a hilarious scene. Most Chinese have never seen baseball - except perhaps an excerpt on TV. There were literally 70 or 80 people standing there watching us in awe and chattering away. Rioh does not speak much English but after awhile he squatted down like a catcher. (Asians are very good at squatting.) He would yell out "STEEIIKE" or "BAAAA" after each pitch. One of the Japanese women students came by and I let her use my mitt. She wasn't bad. And she did not "throw like a girl". They must have co-ed ball in Japan too. We did have one problem, though - no bat. No problem. I ran up to my room, grabbed the bamboo handled mop in my bathroom, snapped it in half and VOILA! - a bamboo bat. A 20 minute game of 3-person stickball ensued. We tried to enlist some volunteers from the assembled masses but, true to form, the
ONE IN A BILLIONA few days later, one of my students, Peggy, came up to the podium after class. "Chake," she said, "I heard that you like to play baseball." "No, Peggy," I replied, "I LOVE to play baseball." "My father was once a baseball coach 25 years ago in southern China," she informed me. "I telephoned him last night and he still has his baseball bat. I heard you were using a mop handle." Peggy's family had, at one time lived in southern China. In a very small part of the mainland, near Hong Kong and Taiwan, a few people do play baseball and Peggy's father had been the school baseball coach. (Perhaps her father had been sent to that part of the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. I didn't ask her, but he had the right demographics-about 20-25 years-old then, and a schoolteacher. During the Cultural Revolution, many, many people, particularly teachers, students and other educated people, were ordered to go to the countryside for "re-education". Mao believed that by living among the peasants, they would "more firmly grasp "the prevalent principles of that time. By all accounts, it was NOT, a Thoreauian "return to nature" experience.) Later, her family moved to Northeast China. The following week, Peggy again approached me after class. "Chake, my father and mother are taking the train to Jinzhou this Saturday." "Oh, that's great that they will come to visit you," I said. "Well," she murmured, "I think the only reason they're coming is that my Dad wants to play baseball with you." "Oh," I said. I'm sure it wasn't true. Saturday afternoon, Peggy called me and said her mother and father had arrived and her father had brought his baseball bat with him. I told her I'd meet them on the soccer field in 10 minutes. When I arrived, the family was anxiously waiting. I walked over with my baseball mitt and a rubber ball. (The Japanese student with the mitt had returned to Japan rendering my mitt the only baseball mitt within, oh, about 2000 miles in any direction. He had, however, left the rubber ball behind in Jinzhou.) As rusty as Peggy's father claimed to be at baseball - last having played 20 or so years ago - the guy could throw. If he was this good with twenty years of "rust", I'm certain he was an excellent player and coach in those days. BP IN JINZHOU(No dummy. Not the oil company. BP is baseball-talk for Batting Practice) With one mitt, one rubber ball, and the newly arrived bat, he and I walked to a corner of the soccer field and began playing a game of pitch 'n hit - with no fielders. It had been nearly 9 months since I had swung a real bat. Peggy had, apparently, built me up to Ruthian proportions and so, as I stepped in to face her Dad's pitches, I felt the weight of the western world on my shoulders. (Oh, I forgot to mention, that her dad said I was the first American baseball player he had ever seen in person.) The first pitch came in - straight and quick and right down the middle. My old training came back in a flash: facing a new pitcher - take the first pitch to see what kind of "stuff" he throws. I was proud that despite the lapse of time, my baseball instincts had held true. Now I settled in to the makeshift batter's box. Homeplate - a stray piece of the ever-present trash blowing around Jinzhou; the batter's box - scratched into the ground with the long-dormant bat; the backstop - an old wooden tool shed at the far end of the soccer field. Peggy's dad wound up and threw (the man had great form, 20 years on, or not). It wasn't high heat (the man was a coach after all; he knew that you don't try to rip a fastball by someone in your second throw in twenty years. That's a good way to rip a muscle, a ligament, a tendon, or two). His pitch came in quick - low and outside and I whipped the bat down and away, caught the pitch well near the end of the bat, and drove a sweet line drive to what would would have been the gap between left and center. I surprised myself. By all rights, having been devoid of the game for so long, I should have taken a mighty cut and missed it by three feet. Peggy's Dad was even more gleeful than I. He gave me a big smile and a universal "thumbs up". Then, he turned to Peggy and her mother, sitting under the willow trees to keep out of the sun, and said something. Peggy yelled over, "He says you really are a ballplayer!" Meanwhile, that line drive had landed in the midst of a group of students on the far side of the soccer grounds and they suddenly realized some small spectacle was taking place over in the corner. They didn't seem to know what to make of this small, spongy ball which had suddenly darted into their midst until Peggy yelled something to them, and one of them trotted over and handed the ball back to her Dad. It struck me at this moment that none of the sports that are played in China involve "throwing" a ball. The closest is basketball, but you shoot that. Soccer is played with the feet. Ping Pong, with a tiny wooden racket. Tennis with a large, mesh racket. Badminton, with a slightly smaller, flimsier mesh racket. Volleyball, you .... well you get the idea. The Chinese just cannot throw well. Except for Peggy's Dad. He was the one in a billion who actually had a good arm. Of course, everyone stopped playing soccer and turned to watch. And people walking by saw the soccer players standing in the middle of the field looking off to the far corner of the field and, of course, stopped to see what they were looking at and, concomitantly, stopped to watch. And others seeing them and the soccer players gawking, of course, stopped to watch too ...... and so on ... and so on ... and so on. This is how it is in China. A small event quickly mushrooms into high drama and gawking. Or at least, a Kodak moment®. In a few moments we had scores of people all around the field watching. I was connecting on most pitches and the soccer players quickly figured out they should return each hit to Peggy's Dad. They tried out their throwing arms. The funny thing, though, was that when the ball came near them, they had no clue as to catching it with their hands. They'd try to stop it with their feet-like a tiny soccer ball - and 9 out of 10 times it bounded past them and they'd have to chase it down. Peggy's Dad and I switched roles. Not having pitched overhand to a batter in quite a few years, I was pretty bad. The few good pitches I made, Peggy's Dad smacked 'em good. The rust on my pitching arm was much denser than his. But then again, I was never a pitcher. Shortstop, Yes. Pitcher, Not! Then we switched back. My batting eye, truth be told, had no rust. I was spanking those pitches all around the field. Then, I got hold of one and sent it long - all the way to the goal on the other side of the soccer field on one bounce (maybe 425 feet). The assembled went "WAHHH!". The batter himself (that would be me) went, "WAHHH!" Next pitch, I connected again, a long arc into the dust and grime of the Jinzhou afternoon. Peggy's Dad and I were in the groove. We had a baseball jones and were gettin' it done. No translation needed. He and I spoke only our common language of the love of the game of baseball. He'd throw a bad pitch and smile in apology. I'd swing and miss at a perfect pitch and smile in embarrassment...and respect for this man's skills. And in thanksgiving for having had the great, good fortune of having had what has to be the rarest or rare opportunities in China-the luck of having a baseball coach's daughter as a student. "WHAP!" I connected on the next pitch as true as any that afternoon. And a cloud of disintegrated rubber rose trying to mix with the Jinzhou soot, then snowed gently to the dusty ground. The ball was no more. And thus ended the first-ever BP (batting practice) in Jinzhou. Later, after my parents had sent some rubber balls, a couple of real baseballs, and an extra mitt to me by a slow boat to China (75 days to get the box of books, balls, and coffee), I was able to teach a group of high school students I was tutoring how to play. Boys and girls, they all fell in love with the game and wanted to play it every week rather than study English - a request I had to reluctantly refuse. "I'm your English teacher," I told them, "not your baseball coach." "Every other week, OK?" I added. THE PHYSICS OF BASEBALLThe biggest problem I have found in having a ballgame in China isn't ignorance of the game or the rules. It's ignorance of the physics of the game: that a bat, for instance, is very hard. Ditto a hardball. And that if you put these two in motion, lots of things can happen and most of them hurt if they happen to you. Students lined up ("queued" in Brit English) waiting to bat will push, shove and move closer to the batter as they wait their turn. This behavior is common in any line (queue) in countless situations in China - say, the shoving and pushing which goes on when trying to buy a train ticket or getting on the bus, for example. Here, on a baseball diamond, it is far more dangerous because they cannot grasp the concept that when the bat is swung in an arc, it can wipe out a whole line of students waiting their turn a few feet behind the batter. Too, when a speeding ball hits the bat, there's no telling which way and how far it will go - only that it will get there very fast and hurt like hell if it smacks you. Non-participants will wander over to watch. Ogle actually. They'll just stop and stand about halfway between the pitcher and batter, on the first base line (as if preparing to field a bunt - but with jaws agape and hands clasped behind their back). Or they'll just slowly wander across the field between pitcher's mound and second base. (They don't walk in China. They slowly meander - more like drifting from here to there.) And they can't understand why I get aggravated and constantly have to stop the game and shoo them away. Since they can't understand "Hey, move! You're gonna get hurt!" in English, I resort to taking them gently by the arm and moving them to a distant, safer vantage point. The concept that a ball off a bat speeding at 100+ m.p.h. can go in unforeseen directions just doesn't register. It's a lot like infants approaching fire the first time. Or foreigners trying to cross a street in China for the first time. Also, since the new players have no experience with the game, it is impossible for them to even follow a fly ball. I once hit a monster drive-a truly awesome blast and as the ball flew far across the soccer field and I admired its long, lazy arc, I glanced down and saw the outfielders looking on the ground in all directions as to where it might have gone. When it smacked against the wall of the classroom building outside the soccer field and a good 60 feet beyond the farthest outfielder they all looked behind them and finally saw it bouncing back towards them as they ran over to stop it with their feet, pick it up, and run it back to the pitcher. Lucky for me that day. That drive missed flying through a glass window by about 6 inches. That certainly would have shook up whoever was inside that room - a strange foreign object crashing through the window from above. "Meteor?!? Aliens?!? No, just that crazy Foreigner playing his crazy game!!! basketballBasketball is HUGE here. Seemingly every male plays it. After "Hello how are you?", I think the second phrase the students learn is "I LOVE this game!" The NBA has done a remarkable marketing job. Every Wednesday morning, the Jinzhou TV station broadcasts an NBA game. The Chinese announcers voice-over the American play-by-play. NBA merchandise (whether authorized or unauthorized) is sold everywhere, particularly Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls stuff. Michael Jordan is as bigger than Mao Zedong. Don't believe me? Go to Beijing. Visit Tiananmen Square. Look and see how many people are wearing Michael Jordan shirts. Walk into the Forbidden City under the giant portrait of Mao hanging on the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Just inside the gate, amongst the ancient palace buildings, you'll immediately see basketball courts to your left and right, often with off-duty guards playing a game of 3-on-3. The Gang of Four would not have approved. INTERCOLLEGIATE BASKETBALL IN CHINA: THIS AIN'T THE NCAAWhat the players here lack in skills, they make up for in enthusiasm. I often practiced with the Jinzhou College team. The college has no indoor gymnasium so practices and inter-collegiate matches are held on the playground. When other colleges came to play, the students would ring the court 4 or 5 deep to watch the game. Others will be hanging out their dorm windows yelling "JIA YOU!". Quite a difference from inter-collegiate basketball in the States where 20,000 seat arenas are filled for every game. The College team here has a few players who are pretty good. One or two of them might be able to make a Division III team in America. Otherwise, the skill level of college players here is about that of a high school junior varsity American team. Nevertheless, they LOVE this game. And I enjoy playing with them. It's nice to have a basketball court (actually 4 of them) right around the corner from my apartment. I try to play at least every other day. And I try not to take advantage of the height difference. It's funny. In America, I am a short guard, but here, at 6'2", I am the tallest guy on the court. Players will ask me how tall I am. I tell them I am 1.88 m (6'2") and they all go "WAHHH!". Then they ask if I can jam. Not! I can still play the game but, these days I'm more like a Larry Byrd. I have a three inch vertical jump due to Lao Tui ("old knees"). I sit outside and shoot. Actually, the students drive the lane a lot here probably due to the fact that they are not accustomed to having to go up against tall guys in the "paint". One would think that outside shooting would be the game here, but when all the players here are relatively the same height (i.e. short), I guess it's easier to drive the lane. No matter. I try not to abuse the privilege of my height by driving the lane too often. MICHAEL JORDAN COMES TO JINZHOUOne day I was out at the Jinzhou Power Plant with some friends who work there. The main pollution control measure at this huge coal-burning plant is that it was built 20 kms. downwind from the city. So up sprang this small city of about 20,000 all of whom are workers at the power plant or their family and relatives; an entire, self-contained, small city. They literally call it Electric City. Say it real fast three times and whaddya get? Cute, huh? Anyway, to my friends, I suggested we play a game of hoops. Believe it or not, the electricity had been OUT in Electric City for the last few days so we couldn't play at the indoor gym the power plant has. Yes, that's right! The power plant's own city had no electricity! (But that's another story - read about it in Chuck in China 6.) So we headed over to the power plant's primary school which has outdoor courts. It's about 4:30 p.m. so there were about 100 kids there waiting for their parents to pick them up after school. So my friends claimed a basket and we started playing. So, since I'm probably the first foreigner who ever set foot on this basketball court, everyone stops whatever they're doing and comes over and watches. They are literally lining the court, 5 deep. Luckily, I was "on" that day. After hitting a baseline jumper, I high-fived one of the 10 year-olds standing under the basket. Soon they were all screaming for high-fives after every basket I made. I think my friend Theresa, who was standing on the sidelines, must have told them my name because pretty soon they were chanting "Jia You!, Cha Ke - Jia You!, Cha Ke - Jia You!, Cha Ke". (Need I remind you, Chuck, in Chinese, comes out sounding like CHA KE.) SUDDENLY... this little girl about 10 years-old bolts out of from crowd during a brief break in the game, comes running up to me and hands me a piece of paper and a pen. She wants an AUTOGRAPH! Well, I sign my name (in Chinese to her amazement) and all hell breaks loose. I'm suddenly swarmed by 30 or 40 kids screaming and waving pens and paper. I am not making this up! Well I signed a few then my friends tell 'em all to move back and we start playing again. After every basket, one or two come running onto the court to get my autograph and my friends shoo them away ... kind of like those fans who jump onstage in the middle of rock concerts, only to be chased off by security. At one point as I tried to cut off a pick, I slipped on the coal dust which coats everything here, and went down. A collective "AIYAHHH!!!!" went up from the crowd, as they saw the old man go down. No problem, I jumped back up and kept playing. And the autograph seekers kept hounding me after each basket. Finally, I took myself out of the game, so my friends can continue uninterrupted and I stand on the sidelines for 15 minutes signing. I'm pretty sure a couple of kids came back for two or three autographs. (Maybe there's a sports memorabilia market here in China I didn't know about.) Most of them were saying "Qing Nide Yingyu Mingzi": "Please, Your English name!" They didn't want my autograph in Chinese, they wanted it in English. Theresa was trying, to effect some crowd control on the swarming kids, but to no avail. To be honest, I was getting a kick out of it. I felt like Michael Jordan ( but without the equivalent paycheck). So just for kicks, I started signing "Michael Jordan" on some of the papers. One of the older kids actually caught what I did, pushed his way back to the front and insisted on another, true autograph. Anyway, it was a real trip. Maybe I could start a shoe company here -"Air Cha Ke" - with a "tilde" instead of a "swoosh"! Whaddya think?. Oh yeah, and I guess I must have twisted the knee when I went down on that coal dust. It didn't hurt at the time. I felt fine and kept playing. It didn't start hurting until I had stopped playing and was standing there for 15 minutes signing autographs. And the next morning, I barely made it out of bed. Serves me right for having delusions of Jordan. ping pongIf basketball makes me feel like Michael Jordan, I get over it real quick when faced with Ping Pong. It REALLY IS big in China. And in Ping Pong, I feel more like Mr. Bean. Ping Pong tables are everywhere. Dormitories, offices, classroom buildings. I've even seen OUTDOOR ping pong tables at most of the primary and middle schools I have visited! They're made of slabs of stone or concrete. The "net" is a regulation-height stone slab. Pretty cool! Nearly everyone (but me) plays. Students, teachers, administrators. At the Suzhou University Foreign Affairs Department Building, if I need to find one of the administrators and they're not in their office, I can usually find them down the hall in one of the large offices which they converted into a Ping Pong Room. All the dorms seem to have at least one table on every floor. I can't play to save my life, so I try to avoid any and all invitations to "have a try". Here, I have to say that the people's skills excel. One night, my friend Cindy (from Chuck in China 4) and I went to visit a "Ping Pong" Club in Jinzhou. It was the ping Pong equivalent of an American Racquet Club (with smaller racquets and "courts" of course!) Wow! could these folks play. Young and old were smacking that little white ball around. She introduced me to the club pro who, I was told, was the number 1 player in all of Liaoning Province and ranked high on the national list. AIYAHHH!! some of his shots seemed to defy Newtonian physics. And I watched him play a game with one of his students, a young girl of about 9 who, I am sure, will 10 years from now be the Chinese Women's national champion. Quite amazing! Anyway, if nothing else, Ping Pong has had a significant impact on me. After all, if you believe the political hype, it was Ping Pong Diplomacy that put America and China back on speaking terms back in 1972. And 27 years later, I'm reaping the benefits of Henry Kissinger, Zhou En Lai, and the sport of ping pong in re-starting the relations between our two countries. rifleryHUH?!? I know that's what you're saying! Riflery? As in shooting? Guns? HUH?!? I guess, if you had asked me, "Chuck, what are the three things you are least likely to expect to do in China?" I might have answered:"(1) Shoot a gun, (2) Play Golf, and (3) Drive a car." In that order. Well folks, "Wrong, wrong, and wrong!" I'll save (2) and (3) for the next Chuck in China. But here lies the tale of #(1): A MYSTERIOUS PHONE CALLOne Saturday morning my phone rings. It's my old friend from Karaoke Diplomacy in Chuck in China 1. "My car will be there in a half-hour to pick you and the other two foreign teachers up. We're going shooting today." CLICK. TIC, baby! "This Is China". One often, never knows what will happen next. Nor, just as often, is one told much more than a few minutes in advance, what, in fact, will happen next. Perplexed, I called Teacher Donna. She hadn't any more info than I. Now, we knew from rumors that some folks liked to go up in the mountains that surround Jinzhou and, shall we say, target practice with real guns and live ammunition. But these were only rumors. Maybe we were being taken on such an excursion. So we figured if we're going to be hiking around in the mountains we'd better dress down. Donna likes to dress to the nines, but acting on our hunch we donned sweatshirts, gym shoes, and old jeans, and met the car as it arrived precisely half an hour later. As we drove away from the school and headed east away from the city center, the mountains loomed in the distance. Surely, our prognostication was correct. We were nearing the edge of the city; the commercial buildings and office buildings were becoming fewer and fewer. The mountains grew closer. And larger. And more ominous. 76 TROMBONES LED THE BIG PARADEWe were traveling at a hefty clip with one last building complex ahead, and then, I could see open road to the mountains. The driver spoke no English so we had no idea what lie ahead for us. Just open fields rising up into the mountains when ..... ....SUDDENLY the driver swerves right. Right into the parking lot of that last building complex and screeches to a halt. Through the window, I see men in army uniforms rushing toward the car. They throw open the doors and, grab us by our elbows, quickly hustling us out of the car. "Kuaidian, Kuaidian" they're yelling. At this moment, a salvo of mortar erupts, adding about 21 inches to my usual 3-inch vertical leap. At that moment, a brass marching band, fully attired in Robert Preston/Music Man-like uniforms appears from around the corner and strikes up a march. We are hustled past three or four 5 story high hot air balloons, through a phalanx of silk qi pao-clad beauties, and thrust up onto a stage full of men in suits and army uniforms. Remember, no one had yet told us what was happening. TV news cameras came rushing over and filmed the assembled, paying particular attention, of course, to the foreigners. (YAWN, this TV camera stuff is, like, getting soooo old.) But here's the funny part, imagine all these people in beautiful silk suits and dresses, a sprinkling of Army officers in their dress greens, and three grungy foreigners in sweats and jeans. Ohhh!, those crazy foreigners and their slack habits!! Gradually we pieced together what was happening when our host finally showed up: some well-connected (i.e. Party) folks had just built a brand new hotel, restaurant, club complex; this was the grand opening; and foreigners, of course, make good "Film at 11" material. Yep, yet another opening party. The brief speeches ended, a ceremonial red ribbon was unfurled, and all assembled on stage lined up along same to perform the ceremonial ribbon-cutting. A final volley of mortar fire capped of the festivities and, then we were herded into the adjoining restaurant for, what I have to say, was probably the best banquet I have yet experienced here. And it wasn't even noontime yet. A custom here for a big opening is to invite talented artists and calligraphers who, after dinner (or lunch in this case), unpack the tools of their trade and, spontaneously create long beautiful scrolls of art and calligraphy celebrating the opening and the owners and the event. (I am guessing here because I still can't read a lick of Chinese). It was fascinating watching with the assembled as these artistes created beautiful pieces of Chinese art which were then, immediately, taped to the walls to hardy applause. By now, of course, all memory of that morning's phone call had been forgotten. Obviously a ploy. We were thoroughly enjoying ourselves in the unexpected reverie of this gala event. As I said earlier: TIC, baby! This is China. One never knows what may happen next. And, we learned once again that in China, plans change. Or so we thought. Our host re-appeared and told us, Ok, let's go. We all said our goodbyes and thanks, etc. Wait, a photographer suddenly appeared. We need a picture of our foreign friends in front of the new hotel/restaurant. No problem. Old hat for us. We went, we posed, we finished. The car was parked nearby we started towards it. The afternoon was still young, but we had had 4 hours of excitement already. THE SMELL OF GUNPOWDER IN THE AFTERNOON"No! This Way!" We were steered away from the car, and toward an adjoining building. In we walked to a newly decorated lobby which had the distinctive look of a private club-including a qi pao-clad beauty. And the distinctive smell of gunpowder. Ushered into the next room, we found ourselves in an indoor shooting range. An old warehouse had been gutted and refitted as a shooting range, and a new building tacked on to the front-serving as the club lobby and quarters. Young uniformed soldiers stood at attention in each of the 8 or so booths and each of us was herded into separate booths. The polite soldiers offered us our choice of weapons: shotgun, pistol, or automatic rifle (AK 47 maybe?). Just like that. I have never shot a gun. Ever. Don't know the first thing about them. I held one once when my friend Carmen was trying to get me interested in it as sport. But....no. I don't like guns. This was funny to the Chinese assembled there, because they have heard that everyone in America has guns (while not entirely true, it's too close to the truth for my liking). So they assumed every American can shoot. Knowing that my national pride was at stake, and knowing that a shotgun has the widest "coverage", I chose the shotgun as my weapon. Stupid me. They then informed me that rather than shooting at the various targets assembled at the far end of the range which, I swear, included live chickens running around, they had a clay pigeon machine thrower. So my initial attempt would be indoor skeet-shooting. They taught me to say "Pull!" in Chinese (it escapes me now - I think I'm blocking!) and off I went. A half-dozen or so pulls later and the pigeons won 6 - 0: all six "pigeons" escaped unscathed. The polite, but certainly scornful soldier handed me the AK 47. Now I don't know if that is, in fact what it was, but it was half as long as a shotgun, had a metal frame shoulder piece, and, on the first shot I took, blew out both my right shoulder and, despite the headphones, my left and right eardrums. At the far end of the range, all the chickens seemed to be intact. I took a couple of more shots....man, this gun was powerful! And LOUD! I said, "Man this gun was powerful! And LOUD" I SAID!!!, "MAN THIS GUN WAS POWERFUL!!!!....AND LOUD!!!!......AND ANSWER THAT DAMN TELEPHONE!!!" I couldn't even hear myself think. My ears were ringing or somebody'/s telephone, I couldn't tell which. I better stop. Plus, I'd yet to hit anything except one of the 5 walls that made up the roof, floor, right-side, left-side, and back of the old warehouse. One weapon left - the .45 pistol. The soldier was smirking ever so slightly at my mis-marksmanship. "OK pal," I wanted to say, "where's the basketball court? You may be half my age, but I'll show you a thing or two." I held my tongue. Then I held the pistol in my hand. The smirking soldier, though held the bullets. I gave him a nice, friendly smile, and we were back on good terms. He wheeled an outline target down to the other end of the range, then loaded six bullets into the pistol and stepped out of range (the pistol was attached to the booth on a short chain). Thinking back on all the American cop-movies I had seen, I spread my feet to provide a solid base, grabbed my right wrist with my left hand, arms extended full, and squeezed off six shots into......God knows where? The soldier reappeared, and spun the wheel bringing the target back to the booth. "AIYAHHH!!" Two 10's, two 9's an 8 and a 5 on the target. At least I'd hit the target on all 6 shots. "Piece of cake," I snorted. The soldier neither spoke, nor understood English. But his eyes said, "Beginner's luck!" I gestured for six more bullets. Second time around, went like the first, 6 of 6. "OK!!" he said, smiling broadly now. (Everyone in China, literate or not in English, knows OK). One more round. Third time down. I did it again-but better 6 for 6 and three 10's. He gave me the thumbs up; I recovered a small (very small) measure of respect. So I decided to quit on that positive note. Besides, the stench of gun powder was clogging my lungs. I needed a cigarette. nightlife in jinzhou ...By and by, I discovered night life in Jinzhou beyond the Amusement City of Little World. Here's a few bits and pieces. I have more, but I'll let you ruminate. KIDNAPPEDA few weeks after I had been in China, I was forcibly kidnapped by five of my adult students after class one evening and taken against my will to the nightclub in the Jinzhou Mansion Hotel (I'll have more to say on the Jinzhou Mansion Hotel restaurant in an upcoming Chuck in China - suffice it to say for now, that if you ever visit Jinzhou, under no circumstances should you darken the portal of revolving restaurant that sits atop the hotel. That will be a story for another time, as well as an object lesson on why China has a long way to go in catching up to the west in the service sector.) But this night, I was abducted to the nightclub on the second floor of the hotel, and my adult students, hearing me complain in class that there's nothing to do in Jinzhou after dark, decided to "enlighten" me. We entered a huge ballroom with a band set up at one end, a few couples sitting in the darkened recesses surrounding the dance floor, and otherwise empty on this mid-week evening. There I was forced to drink bottles of Qingdao beer and dance disco AND ballroom to bad music. I had yet to test the 10:00 p.m. "curfew" of Jinzhou College. It's not really a curfew-they just lock the gates of the wall surrounding the school as well as padlock the doors of the Foreign Residents building where I live. (Imagine the Fire Code violations an American college would have if they PADLOCKED the only exit door of a residence hall every evening!) Well, unbeknownst to me, the students had gotten permission beforehand to keep the gate of the school open pending my return. How did I learn this? Well Cindy, one of the kidnappers (you met her in Chuck in China 4, and in ping pong in this issue), received a beeper call (or BP call as they refer to it here) from Chen the Magnificent from the Foreign Affairs office at 10:30 p.m. asking Cindy what time I would be released. Apparently, when she asked for permission to "kidnap" me, she was required to turn over her BP number. Shortly after the BP call, I was hustled out to a waiting cab and returned unharmed to the waiting College. This is the sad part - it was only 10:45. Perhaps they were worried I would turn into a pumpkin for staying out so late. THE BAD GIRL'S DISCOEventually I found a half-decent club in Jinzhou - Sunny Island Disco. (True to form here, where everything "western" is about 15 - 20 years behind, any dance club here is coined a "Disco") Sunny Island actually played good music. It was very techno (for Jinzhou). It was the closest thing I have seen to a Cleveland club by far here. Some of the foreign students (Japanese and one German) had gone there a few times (and solved the two-part problem of the College "curfew": a side gate one can crawl under to get back on campus, and, then throwing stones at the windows of the Foreign Affairs Hall until someone wakes up and unlocks a window to climb back into the Hall). When the school term ended, I figured it was a good time to do a late night out here. So Suwichi (a Japanese student), Ramon (a German student) and I headed out. First, we stopped at the western restaurant on our way there so we could have real drinks. I had a Bacardi & Coke for the first time in ages. This place was probably the only place in town that had rum). Suwichi had a Dewars on the rocks. After one glass he was a grinning fool! Ramon had a half-liter of Beck's. Total bill, two drinks and a bottle of beer - 100Y. Way high for this place but they overcharge for anything western here figuring we are used to paying those prices. But it was one of the few places in town that serves any booze beyond beer and wine and I was pumped to finally do some dancing after a full semester of classes. At the disco, all they had was beer (although they had draft beer - the first I have seen here). People don't drink much at the clubs. Everyone just dances - by themselves, boys and girls, girls and girls, boys and boys. (Like Catholic girls at a mixer, straight guys dance with straight guys all the time here.) Many of the women were smoking, too. (That may sound funny to a westerner that I even mention it, but, in China, everyone will tell you that "Only Bad Girls Smoke". That would be news to my 72 year-old mom who's been smoking for 50 or so years. Mom? You reading this? You're a bad, bad girl! Honestly, some of the paternalism shown towards women here gets real obnoxious-more so to the women) Anyway, the dance floor was jammed, the music great, the women gorgeous. And friendly. We had a good night. It was good to get out for a late night jam. Too, it was great to hear anything besides the usual karaoke, the Carpenters, Richard Marx, Madonna, and Michael Jackson which is everywhere here. Welcome to the nineties, Jinzhou! THE BAD BOY'S DISCOA few nights later, now knowing where the Sunny Island was, Cindy and I headed over to the disco. Being a non-smoker, she had never been there. We were dancing and having a good time to "Boom Boom Boom-Shake the Room" when suddenly a guy started dancing with the two of us. As mentioned, this is rather common here. "Let's Dance with the Foreigner". I let it slide for awhile. But the guy persisted and I began to wonder if he was pissed off (people in China rarely express their anger openly) that a white boy was dancing with a Chinese women. I decided to be slack about it. Some people here do like seeing Chinese women hanging out with foreigners, it's true. Figuring, "Hey Cindy and I are just friends and if he wants to dance with her, no problem. Here's your chance," I walked off the dance floor leaving he and Cindy to dance. I went over to our table, sat down and poured myself another beer. It was pretty dark by the table and a minute later, I felt a hand grab my thigh. Huh! I looked up and the dancing guy had followed ME off the dance floor! "I love you", he said in broken Chinglish. My Chinese, at this point was not good enough to say, "Hey pal! Hands off. I don't go that way." I grabbed his arm and yanked it away, resisting the urge to hit him in the face (though maybe he would have enjoyed that). I stood up, headed back to the dance floor, grabbed Cindy, and brought her back to the table. Nancy Boy had disappeared. For the next fifteen minutes she taught me various phrases to tell someone to f**k off, the most useful of which, I now employ on a regular basis: "Gun Kai" (Whenever people follow me down the street, or a crowd gathers when I stop to buy something, or when that most obnoxious and pernicious element of China today, the sanlunche driver, rides alongside of you for two blocks insisting you get in his sanlunche despite you saying "Bu Yao Le!" every 30 meters, "Gun Kai" usually works. It translates roughly into "Make Like a Barrel and Roll Away!") Cindy and I left shortly thereafter, me somewhat wiser as to life in China and with some new language skills and Cindy shocked at what had happened ("China doesn't have such people," goes the party line). We headed over to Mike and Anna's shop for a visit and, when I related the story, they all had a good laugh. But, I was not amused. 25 HOURSSoon, to my relief, a second disco opened in Jinzhou. Mike, Anna and I were invited by the boss to visit. The refreshing thing was that we weren't invited because I was a foreigner and he wanted foreign faces, but rather because he knew Anna (I think she had done some modeling for one of his other businesses, or something). We found this out because, though he had invited us, he only paid for Anna's drinks-water. Anyway, the place was called 25 Hours and, though it was much smaller then Sunny Island, it was much nicer - great sound system, great lighting system, and great DJ. They had carved this disco out of a rather small space and had a second floor balcony which overhung the dance floor. The problem, for me anyway, was that to do this, the ceiling height of the seating area around the dance floor on the first floor was about 6 1/2 feet with the beams supporting the second floor and the ductwork carrying the electrical and HVAC at about 6 feet. So to walk around the first floor, I had to become a hunchback. Nor was the situation very conducive to air circulation when the place got jammed. So we spent a lot of time out on the dance floor. At some point, we're all dancing and I suddenly see that someone has brought a basketball with them (don't ask - I have no idea why?). So while I'm dancing, I gesture for the ball and the guy throws it to me. I start spinning it on my finger while I'm dancing and the whole place breaks into a standing (dancing??) ovation. I felt like Shawn Kemp at Cleveland's premier club, The Basement. DON'T CRUSH THAT DWARF, HAND ME THE PLIERSWhen I returned from my summer in Suzhou in August of '98, Mike, Anna and I headed over to see what was new at 25 Hours. Apparently a lot. They had decided to add an early-evening floor show before they cranked up the music. In Suzhou, this had been the standard at most of the clubs. From, say 9:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. the club would have some kind of entertainment for the non-disco folks. I had seen bands, Karaoke contests, dancing girls (traditional Chinese dancing), and fashion shows at various places. But 25 Hours had the floor show ne plus ultra: Midgets... .or were they dwarves?? It started off with the usual: a really bad band and a few shameless Karaoke singers. But then it veered into the bizarre: three Chinese midgets ( or dwarves - I can't remember - is it dwarves that have normal sized heads and everything else is shorter (or smaller)?). It was like a Chinese re-make of the "We represent the Lollipop brigade..." scene in The Wizard of Oz. Three dwarves, half as tall as the shortest folks in the disco (and that's SHORT, folks) doing a floorshow. For one song, the lead singer/dwarf placed his mic on the floor and then stood on his head next to it and sang the song. Then two of them stripped off their shirts and had a simulated kick-boxing match. Then all three did some acrobatic stunts, sang a couple of more songs, left to roaring applause, and the house music started up. I swear, I was not on drugs (prescription or otherwise) when I witnessed this. Nor as I write this account. China can be as bizarre as it is interesting. That's why we call it .... Chinese Surprise! more ... life in chinaA new feature at Chuck in China - occasionally I'll enlighten you on some of the cuisine of China. In Guangzhou (Canton), there is a saying that there, "You can eat anything that flies in the air, except an airplane; anything that's in the water, except a boat; and anything that walks on land, except a person." Well, I haven't been to Guangzhou yet, but I can assure you that it's an exaggeration in East China or Northeast China ..... but only slightly. Welcome to: RANDOM NOTES ON CHINESE FOOD
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