I’m amused by the annual Ayi exodus.  Since it’s rare to see a Beijing expat lift anything heavier than money, this seasonal retreat of our nannies, waitresses, cooks, cleaners, drivers, dry cleaners, convenience store owners, and jianbing purveyors is a useful exercise in deprivation and self-reliance…like an outward bound experience for the neo-colonialist in all of us.

I really enjoy temple fairs.  I think of it as a way to spread wealth.  Two years ago I had my wallet nicked. Last year somebody managed to walk away with YJ’s cell phone.  I’m taking my students to Ditan Park next Wednesday.  If anybody is looking for a used iPod, blackberry, or expensive camera, check the local pawnshops in the Beixinqiao area on Thursday morning.

I love the gala.  The gambling possibilities are limitless.  Currently I have 50 RMB on the Over/Under for “first sighting of happy dancing Han dressed as minorities singing about how much they love the Party” and “Number of Dashan wannabe foreign minstrel acts.”[1]  I also have a three-way teaser on a Song Zuying song + Jiang Zemin sighting + shot of Mrs. Jiang Zemin looking like she really wants to crack one of Jiang’s nuts in a hydraulic press.

I’m disappointed Zhao Benshan won’t be performing. Never figured the guy to ‘retire.’ I guess I had always hoped he would go out in a blaze of glory, one final performance busting out blue jokes sufficient to make a Shenzhen hooker sit up and take notes while mooning the CCTV censors with a man-sized ass.  Pity, really.

I like that my in-laws live in Tianjin.  While I enjoy friends talking about the travails of journeying to remote county towns in farthest Dongbei or a 45-hour train ride to Guangdong to take part in family bonding, I prefer staying closer to home.  Actually, I’m so congenitally lazy I’ve finally worked out a scheme whereby Tianjin comes to Beijing thus sparing me the ‘effort’ of a 35-minute train ride.  To be fair our apartment is a little bit more guest convenient than where we stay in Tianjin, but my mother-in-law laments that Beijing is quite boring during the Spring Festival.  To make her feel at home this year I’ve hired a few mercs from Blackwater Security to shoot RPGs and random bursts of gunfire off our rooftop at midnight on Sunday.  It should up the explosion quotient but if that doesn’t work, I’ll simply put an unopened can of soup and a bottle of ergoutou in the microwave and press “start.”

Actually, as longtime readers of my blog know I seriously lucked out in the Chinese In-Law Lotto. My father-in-law neither smokes nor drinks which means that I don’t need to ring in this year by sacrificing future years through participation in quaint customs like “tobacco-as-testosterone,” “toasting-with-jet-fuel” and my favorite, “drinking-to-the-point-of-delirium-before-going-outside-with-sufficient-explosives-to-end-the-Taliban-and-lighting-them-with-the-cigarettes-dangling-from-our-mouths.”  My mother-in-law is an incredible cook, and her ability to dote on my wife to the point of psychological scarring should someday find its way into a textbook.

Perhaps the mystery of Spring Festival will always elude me, but at least I can enjoy it as a time to catch up one work, fulfill my jiaozi quota for the quarter, and write snarky blog posts about the holiday season while pretending to work on my laptop.

Happy Year of the Dragon!

High-Heels Girl: She’s 5’2 but insists on toddling around in 6” spiked heels like a rum-soaked hooker. God forbid you end up behind her approaching either stairs or an escalator.  How these women avoid a mass epidemic of high ankle fractures is a Chinese mystery akin to Panda libido and Hu Jintao’s actual hair color.  Personally, I don’t blame these girls as much as I blame idiot HR practices in Beijing requiring your receptionist be taller than 1.6 meters to answer a telephone.

Loud Laowai Guy: Dude, they can hear you. You’ve seen this guy, almost always in a group, pontificating loudly in English about the people right next to him as if they have no idea what he’s saying.  Yo, Frat Boy…even though the only Chinese words YOU may know are “pijiu” and “chuanr” you might want to remember that many of your fellow passengers have been studying English from the time they could eat solid food.  The only reason they’re not telling you to shut your piehole is because they are too busy contemplating the grammatical and syntax implications of calling you a ‘douchebag’ versus a ‘douchenozzle.’

The Meandering Messengers: You can spot Meandering Messengers from across the platform, heads down, tapping, careening into their fellow commuters like hyperactive loose electrons.  When trying to get from point A to point B (for example during the approximately 20-mile walk required to switch lines at the Xizhimen Subway stop) nothing will gum up the works faster than two or three Meanderers whipping out their phones and switching from normal forward progress to a semi-synchronized half-speed lobotomized lurch.  They’re also impossible to get off the bottom of your shoe should you happen to step on one accidentally.

Aggressive Seat Guy: Some might argue that this character shouldn’t be gender specific, but I have an easier time being jostled by Grandma and her cane needing a seat than by some young angry dude shoving people out of the way before the doors even fully open.  I know the subways are crowded, and having a seat can make a long ride much more pleasant, but it’s a seat on the subway not the last plane out of Saigon.  Going full aggro in pursuit of a place to put your ass for five minutes just seems weird and angry.

Door Stuffers: They work in tandem, usually holding hands, sometimes wearing matching outfits.  They rush into the car and…stop. Right where they are. Right in the middle of the door.  It doesn’t matter if they’re going one stop or five, they ensconce themselves in the middle of the only available entrance and exit and do everything except build a nest made of twigs, leaves, and their own saliva.  The only real fun is when this species’ natural enemy, Aggro Seat Guy (see above), comes barreling in at full speed causing the female Stuffer to squawk hysterically while her mate makes useless threat gestures with his appendages and throat.  Always high comedy.

Enjoy your commute.

Last night though our waiter was kind of dickhead, and while I was willing to let that pass the problem was…dude also forgot to put in our order.  At first we didn’t notice. It was busy and we had beers and so we were pretty patient.  But after 30 minutes we decided to ask, and in reply got the standard: “mashang.” Okay, they are “mashang-ing” and it’s all good.

15 minutes later, one of the floor managers stopped by and we asked him about the status of our food. His answer: “mei wenti.”

So both “Mashang” and “Mei Wenti” have assured us that there is no problem and our burgers will soon be served.  Once we crossed the hour mark though, we asked “Mashang” where the hell our food was, at this point “Mashang” turned into “Aiya, Wangdiaole!” He had totally forgotten to put in the order and by the look on his face and his attitude it was clear he didn’t give a fuck about it.

“Mei Wenti” came over and tried to ply us with free nachos in a kind of “if I throw food at the foreigners maybe they’ll shut up about their unrealistic expectations for ‘quality service’” snit, the whole time looking at us as if we, instead of asking for ‘burgers,’ had requested instead that he bring us the ‘nearest small child for satanic feasting.’

Fortunately, the manager, and I wish I knew his name, he’s either British or Australian and he’s always been a good guy to us, was there.  I just happened to stop him and tell him the situation. This guy SPRINGS into action, apologizes profusely, and within 10 minutes we had a round of drinks and our food…on his tab.

Mistakes happen. No restaurant is perfect. But I judge a restaurant’s service not by their mistakes, but by how much the staff seems to care about fixing them when things do go wrong. An all too common attitude (around the world, but especially here in Beijing) is: “If you don’t like it, go. If you don’t come back, who cares?” If it had been up to “Mashang” and “Mei Wenti” we would have probably finished our drinks and then gone to Flamme (also a good place) likely never to darken the threshold of Blue Frog again.  Now, because of the manager’s quick and sincere response to our complaint, I’m actually likely to patronize Blue Frog MORE in the future.

Customer service isn’t hard. It’s listening, giving a crap, and then taking real action to make it better.  It’s how you keep your customers.  Last night, Blue Frog came through.  Kudos to them.  Here’s to hoping that more restaurants in B-town start getting the message.

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A few more of my favorite places to eat in Beijing: Flamme, Kro’s Nest, Home Plate BBQ, hole-in-the-wall Xinjiang place around the corner from Great Leap, Dali Courtyard, Cafe Sambal, hole-in-the-wall dumpling place across the street from me here in Hepingli, Element Fresh, Haidilao (if we can get a table), PBD Pizza in Weigongcun, and the Chengdu Provincial Hotel restaurant near Jingshan Park.  

Last week I led yet another tour of the Forbidden City.  It’s gotten to the point where some of the ‘regulars’ have started recognizing me, and this led to an ill-advised and childish outburst from one of the touts who lurk outside the ticket office trying to snare unsuspecting visitors into using their tour guide “service.”   Generally  speaking, most tour guides in China…how to I put this nicely…suck.  They can spout off the heights and widths of buildings and are (pretty) good with dates,* but you’re more likely to find a concussed spider monkey doing theoretical physics than a tour guide in this town who can answer a question requiring a deeper understanding of history or a nuanced approach to narrative.  How tall is 太和殿…they’ve got that.**  How was it possible for a proportionally tiny population of Manchus to rule China proper as part of a larger empire for nearly three centuries? Not so much.***

In any case, the sight of a Lao Wai leading multiple tours of the Forbidden City was enough to cause the little man to foam spittle and mucous…even more so when I said I was doing it for free.****

Glad to be back.

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*Though I did once hear somebody leading a group of foreign tourists at Yuanmingyuan tell her charges that the palace was burned by the Eight Country Allied Army in 1900.

**About 27 meters.

***I once asked a tour guide this many years ago.  His answer, “The Manchus soon learned we Chinese were smarter, and so we actually ran the country. Eventually the Manchus wanted to be just like us.” The sound you’re hearing is either Kangxi weeping in his grave or Mark Elliot whipping his chair against the closest wall.

****Technically I do get paid to be a teacher, but this was a weekend student trip for which I volunteered.  Besides, I knew which answer would REALLY piss the guy off and went with that one.  Yes, sometimes I can be a dick.

One of the luxuries of living in the United States is the relative ease of consumer transactions.  You identify an item you wish to buy in a store, you select the brand of that item, you carry the item to a cashier who charges you a fixed price which you then hand over in currency or credit before walking out of the store to enjoy your new purchase.

Now, I’ve been in China long enough to not have any unrealistic expectations when it comes to simple purchases.  First of all, basketballs fall into that malleable category of ‘sundries.’ These require you to wait for somebody to write a ticket for the item and to take that ticket to a separate cashier stand.  You pay the money, the ticket gets stamped, you take the ticket back to the original “salesperson”[1] and claim your purchase.  I’ve never really understood it, but it’s just one of those things you get used to after awhile.

What happens however when the clerk refuses to write out a ticket?

I  wanted to buy two light bulbs, a small hand pump for the basketball, and the ball itself.   No problem until we got to the ball.  They didn’t want to write a ticket for this ball.  I asked “Why not?” and they showed me another ball.

“一样” （the same）

“No,” I replied in Chinese, “It’s not the same. That ball is half the size, it is basically a child’s beach ball, and, besides…it’s pink.”

The salesperson walked away in a huff only to return and tell me that I can pay for the ball downstairs at the usual checkout line.

Not having just fallen off of the back of a Huairou miandi, I knew that such an outcome was improbable at best.  First of all, the ball lacked a bar code.  Supermarket cashiers, not China’s best and brightest to begin with, are seriously flummoxed to the point of aggression when confronted with an unbarcoded item.  If I slabbed a rotted poodle carcass onto their check-out kiosk, and then piled on top of that the baby seal pups which I had just stunned with a Louisville slugger, the moral outrage of my actions would pale before the incalculable horror of my presenting them with an unscannable item.

There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to be able to pay for the basketball downstairs.

Thus begins our little comedy play.

“Are you sure I can pay for this downstairs?”

“Absolutely.”

“100% sure.”

“100%”

“Okay. But if it doesn’t work then I’m going to come back.”

“Um, pretty sure.”

You can probably guess how this ended up.  The cashier girl downstairs absolutely lit into me for bringing down the basketball and when I somewhat meekly replied that I was told to do that, she got even angrier.

“Who told you do that? They are wrong. Nobody said that.”

Huh.

I reverse my shopping cart out of line, trailed by the hard stares of Beijing middle class shoppers who would never be so rude as to try and purchase a BASKETBALL at the regular cashier’s line.

Back upstairs to find the trio of salesgirls who had originally assured me that this would all work out fine.

“What are you doing back? You should pay downstairs!!”

“They said to pay upstairs. In fact, they were quite angry about it.”

“Pei! I’ll go tell them myself.”

So, downstairs we went, led into battle by my 80-lb champion who seemed frighteningly eager to do mayhem.  When she got to the cashier she didn’t so much explain the procedure as starting to hurl all manner of abuse at her opposite number.  It was at this point her frequency of pitch exceeded my non-canine ears ability to hear distinctly what was being said, but I could see from their faces that this was quite a scrum.  At any moment, I expected the crowd to roar and…oh my GOD…is that the Dairy Department’s music!?!?…Oh Nooo….how can this be happening? It’s chairs in the ring, total mayhem…[2]

As far as I know they’re still at it, so if anyone has a basketball can I borrow it to shoot hoops this afternoon?