A new bar, beers and loose BM

I’m sorry I haven’t posted in a while; it’s been a long week for me, I’ve been sick with the flu of some sort that became the sore throat from hell. It’s kept me pretty much in bed all week with an occasional interruption to go the head or to teach one of my classes. I’m fortunate enough to only have four classes a week to deal with, and only one lesson plan to teach, so class wasn’t too difficult. But by Thursday, my throat and body were at their end, and I gave in to going to see a doctor. I’ll spare you with the details, as I will be submitting an account of the week to the Advocate for next Thursday’s paper, but the doctor’s office was quite and experience.

It started last Friday night, when a three-year teaching veteran named Mark from the states invited all of the foreign teachers to dinner at a Uighur restaurant near the center of the city. The Uighurs are a large minority group from the far western province of Xinjiang, where religious and political disagreements with the ruling party have left the area somewhat tense and difficult to govern. Uighurs are a Muslim group that have been around for centuries, but have never really had a land to call their own. They’re closely related to East Turkmenistanians and Kazaks, and their language sounds like a mixture of Turkish and Kazak. According to Peter Hessler’s book “Oracle Bones” they’re fiercely independent and are known to be shrewd businessmen.

Apparently, successful restaurants are one of their most profitable endeavors.
This place accommodated all 12 of us after pushing a few tables around and adding a few extra chairs from another restaurant next door. Soon our table was filled with warm sesame bread (nang), mutton shish kebabs, pickled cabbage salad, and a dozen bottles of cold Blue Star beer.

The beer went down like water, and the appetizers were the perfect compliment. The main course was noodles with veggies and meat; they were gracious enough to skip the meat in my dish, which I was very thankful for. The food was tasty: the noodles were spiced perfectly with a hint of red pepper and loads of green peppers.

Then the baiju came.
“Baiju?” you ask?

Oh you’ve never heard of it?
Well, let me tell you about baiju.
If Germany has Jagermeister, Russia-Vodka, Mexico-Tequila…China has Baiju.

Literally translated it just means liquor, and when you order a bottle of baiju at a restaurant, they know exactly what you mean.
I think it’s made of rice. It’s clear, thick and sweet. The flavor reminds me of those peanut-shaped marshmallows that used to be available at the five and dime around Easter time, but alcoholic…and strong.
I put down an entire shot, but that was all I could do. Yet suddenly, my glass was full again and I had to pass it on Mark who was sitting to my right. The flavor kicks you in the back of the teeth and stays there for a while, and continues to visit throughout the night.

After our meal, the group decided to head out to a local bar. Some of the foreign teachers who’ve been here for a while have cultivated friendships with a pair of locals named Frankie and Yusi (pronounced You-Suh). These guys are the types of guys that can get you anywhere, get you anything, and who know everyone around. They brought us to Charlie Bing Bar, a little slice of home in the middle of Baoding. Charlie Bing Ba (as it’s written on the sign), is marked by a rotating Budweiser light, wood paneling on the outside walls and a warm inviting glow emanating from inside. Once inside, the first thing you see it booze booze and more booze. The wall behind the bar is filled with almost anything you could want. Captain’s, Jose Cuervo, and yes, my favorite, Black Label.

But, the magnus opus of Charlie’s has got to be the fooseball table. A fooseball table in China!
Granted it’s no Tornado table like I’m used to back at “Our House” in Boston, but it certainly goes a long way to satisfying one of my basic human needs.

This night could not get any better.
And it didn’t.
I got my butt handed to me by nearly everyone I played. I was on the losing end of every game, but I was just happy to be playing and drinking my drink—on the rocks.

The night went on, the drinks went down and the ball kept going into my goal. It was one of the best nights I’ve had so far. The conversations went one into the other seamlessly. It was like we had all been friends forever, but we were just getting to know each other.
Eventually, we decided to head back. We were out past our curfew (we have a curfew of 11:30 every night), and we had no idea how we’d get back into our rooms. But the booze gave us the confidence we needed to figure out a way without worrying about a thing.

We said farewell to Frankie, Yusi and our other new friends and hopped into a cab back to campus. The taxi dropped us off near the entrance and we got out and walked the rest of the way to our building, which of course was locked. I, being the toughest, most agile man around, took it upon myself to climb to the second floor window so I could unlock the door from inside. Despite Sarah’s most professional boost, I failed miserably and almost came tumbling down on top of her. I must have made enough noise because a light from inside turned on immediately. It became one of those moments of panic and relief at the same time. We were caught doing something we shouldn’t have been doing, but it was a good thing because we had no other way out of our situation. Our nice front-desk attendant came to the door and removed the padlock to let us in.

Hangover City, Population: Me

Inevitably, Scotch gives me a hangover. Even if it’s just two glasses, my head aches, my stomach is a bit twisted and I don’t want to wake up the next morning. So I stayed in bed as long as I could, until the sun outside beckoned me to go for a walk. Sometimes I just can’t fight the sun. While outside, I ran into Natty and another American named Daniel. They were going to the market to pick up a few things and to grab some lunch at an outdoor noodle joint. I tagged along for the ride and because I also needed a few things from the market. My stomach was still unsettled, but I figured by the time we were sitting at the lunch table with food in front of us, it would be ok.
Dan’s giant frame barely fits into the busses here in Baoding, and when we hopped on the number 27 heading for the market, he nearly bumped his head. The 6’5” Montana native came to China as a student to learn the language and culture. The guy is already well versed in English, French, Spanish and German, and now he wants to learn Chinese. I don’t know many girls who would resist a tall multi-lingual hunk like that! (you know who you are).

The market was packed with Saturday shoppers perusing the aisles for the best prices on Mooncakes. The Mid-Autumn festival is on Tuesday the 25th, and preparations have been underway for a month. It’s a traditional holiday in China, somewhat like Thanksgiving in the United States. It celebrates family, the fall harvest and number of legends in Chinese lore. The market even had an oversized mooncake selling for 30,000 Yuan!

We purchased what we needed (cheese and ping-pong balls), and headed to the noodle restaurant.
The owner sat us at a table on the sidewalk and took our order. I knew he was the owner because his picture is on the sign above. Dan’s Chinese is much better than Natty’s or mine, so he ordered for us. The cooks stood about ten feet from were we sat shaving off slices of dough to make the noodles. Two of them each had a large cylinder of dough in one hand and used a slicing tool in the other to rhythmically slice pieces into noodle shapes while projecting them into a pot of boiling water, all in one motion. It was incredible to watch these guys at work, and they would make every noodle to order. Our noodles arrived in no time and we set to work stuffing ourselves with the delicious meals that sat in front of us. Salty eggs, a savory broth and thick hearty noodles—nothing like a 2 Yuan lunch to fill us up (that’s the equivalent of about 30 cents).

I couldn’t even finish my bowl, and my stomach was starting to fight back; it was time for the trio to head back to campus to rest and replenish our bodies.

After resting for the afternoon, Natty and I decided to try out our new ping-pong accessories in the ping-pong hall next door. They’ve converted a large one-room building into a recreation area for ping-pong with over two dozen tables, and we were one of the first pairs to try them out. A few things needed to be adjusted, we had to put a brick in the middle of the table because it lacked a real net, and there was a lot of water on the ground. But eventually, we were able to play a good few games and I reclaimed my position as current indoor game champion.

I still wasn’t feeling 100%, but I didn’t think it was anything besides the effects from the night before. Some of the Korean students invited us to a BBQ behind the foreign student housing, and I wasn’t going to miss it for the world. We arrived to find 25 or 30 students huddled around a long, makeshift BBQ pit. Lit coal scattered the ground while fueling the fire along this 30-foot pit, with chicken wire mesh acting as the grill. All along the pit, students sat on milk crates and cardboard boxes sharing spicy cabbage salad, pork, chicken, shrimp and beer all the while laughing and having a ball. It was like I had just arrived in the backyard of a family’s house near Seoul during a mid-summer celebration. They greeted us like we were part of the family, made us sit and sample the delicacies they had to offer. I was hesitant at first,  I haven’t eaten meat in nearly two years, and I didn’t want to start here. However, I felt that it would be rude to refuse a taste, and so I took a bite of pork saturated with spicy Korean BBQ sauce. I’m not going to say it was delicious, but the sauce was certainly tasty—the beer helped wash everything down. I stayed for a little while longer, eating shrimp and a few more pieces of pork, but my stomach was still unsettled and I had a Chinese tutoring lesson scheduled for later in the evening. The Koreans were gracious in inviting us to their BBQ, and I was sorry to leave. Natty, Alex and Daniel stayed until the end, and by their accounts, the party got better as the night progressed.

I left for my Chinese lesson to find Sunny, my tutor, already waiting for me. I apologized for being late and we set to work right away. After 2 hours of pounding characters out, listening and repeating, my brain was fried. I couldn’t handle any more Chinese; all I wanted to do was curl up to a good movie—in English. By this point, my stomach was still feeling queasy, and my night was ending, or so I thought.

When I arrived back to my room, I noticed that Natty and Alex were next door playing chess and talking about the BBQ. I joined them and we ended up staying up very late playing cards and drinking a few more beers. I think this might have put me over the edge.

Sunday: recovering and more

I tried to sleep it off, but there something wouldn’t go away. I quickly realized that it was no the alcohol that was the problem–although I’m sure it didn’t help—it was everything else that I had put into my system over the past two days, starting with the Baiju, then the ice in my Johnny Walker Black, the subsequent meals of noodles, and to top it all off: pork. What was I thinking? My body couldn’t handle all that, and so it purged all it could, as fast as it could.

But it also led to a week of hell.

I wasn’t going to let it spoil Sunday, however, because it was Sarah’s birthday and we all went out to Charlie’s for a celebration. Daniel picked up a cake at the last minute, and we ate like royalty (the cake was a white vanilla cake with cream frosting, but had slices of dragon fruit, kiwi, watermelon, and white chocolate all over it).

That was the last time most people saw me until the following weekend, after the doctor and after the injections.

I’ll have more soon, but I realize this blog became a little too long to keep a reader’s interest. I’ll try to write more often in the coming weeks, and try to keep the entries under a thousand words.