DaWangLu

Da Wang Lu.

That was the first set of Chinese characters I tried to say in public. It was the location of a store which I was trying to locate during my first weeks in Beijing. So I asked one of my colleagues at work how to get there. But apparently I didn't say Da Wang Lu correctly, because her answer was a long, drawn-out, aggrieved response:

"EHHHHHH?!"

My heart sank to the floor. Not only had I failed to speak the language, failed to pronounce the name of a simple street, but I had screwed it up so badly that I was causing my poor colleague's brain to burst.

"Um, yeah, Da Wang Lu," I said. "I think it's on the east side, past the 3rd Ring Road."

"Da Wang Lu," she confirmed.

"Right," I said. "Da Wang Lu."

"No," she replied. "It's Da Wang Lu."

"I know," I answered. "That's what I said. Da Wang Lu."

"No. It's Da Wang Lu."

"Yeah, right, Da Wang Lu," I said. "So where is it?"

"No. You mean Da Wang Lu."

"Right," I replied. "That's the name of the street. I need to find Da Wang Lu."

Before the conversation could turn into a Chinese version of Abbott and Costello's famous "Who's On First" routine, my colleague's voice charged up an octave, and now she was yelling at me and stomping her foot.

"NO! IT'S DA WANG LU! DA - WANG - LU! DA...WANG...LU!"

I had no idea what could have triggered the level of anger in her voice. So I said to myself, it's OK, I'll figure it out. It was then that I understood how subtle differences in pronounciation and tone matter when you try to speak Mandarin Chinese. It can literally spell the difference between the name of a street and a personal insult. And after almost two years of living in Beijing and trying to learn the language, I am convinced that you need at least 5 years of study, or be born-and-raised in the culture, to get Mandarin right. Speaking with an accent, or an unusual dialect, or simply with a fatigued tone of voice means you can't order dinner from the menu, or ask the taxi driver to just stop at the next corner.

Some Beijingers hear me struggling with the language, and they ask me, "what's wrong with you? DaShan is a foreigner and he can speak Chinese better than the Chinese." My conclusion is that DaShan (the Canadian guy who became a TV star in China...everybody knows who he is, trust me) is really Superman. He's got the mild-mannered alter ego perfected, right down to the eyewear. The only thing that keeps him from flying faster than a speeding bullet is the lack of phone booths in the CBD.

Learning a new language requires patience, from teachers and students alike. I found the store, along Da Wang Lu near Chang'an Jie, and purchased a Mandarin study guide. Maybe it will show me how to keep my words from hurting the ears of the Chinese people.

Mandarin Oriental Hotel

One of the more unusual things you will see during a walk around Beijing's Central Business District is the burned-out shell of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. There appears to be no ongoing work at the site, four months since the fire that reduced the planned luxury hotel into the charred hulk that stands alongside the gleaming new CCTV tower near the east side Third Ring Road. What's left of the 44-story wrecked colossus is most starkly seen in the late afternoon sunshine, and it is among the most frightening sights in the Capital, just behind the foaming loogies left on the sidewalks by the city's serial mucous spitters.

I am sure someone, somewhere is discussing how to rebuild the hotel, but my idea for its future happens to be very cost-effective. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel has the potential to become the East's scariest tourist draw: Beijing's original Tower of Terror.

Just leave the building alone. It already has a nasty reputation. As part of the new CCTV complex, the hotel was derided and detested by many Chinese netizens as a symbol of ridiculous State spending. And that was before it burned. The hotel climbed to a new level of bad karma after the February 9 blaze that killed one firefighter and injured a half dozen others. So why not re-open it as China's biggest haunted house? Its operators can follow the successful blueprint from Disney's Tower of Terror thrill ride, where people are seated in a "freight elevator" and suddenly dropped hundreds of feet in the space of a few seconds. They could include scary characters to enhance the experience, including 1) the now-unemployed goofball official who ignored the warning not to use the fireworks that triggered the calamity, 2) city residents displaced by the original multi-million dollar project, and 3) spectators who watched the fire burn while ironically holding sparklers. Just as with Disney's Tower of Terror, these characters can entertain people as they wait in the inevitable long lines to get inside the attraction. That is, when the visitors aren't busy busting into the queue like NASCAR drivers charging out of the pit lane at Daytona.

At Disney's Tower of Terror, the riders are photographed at the moment they're dropped down the "elevator shaft", capturing the instant of stark, raving horror on their faces. In Beijing, there will be voice recordings in which you will not hear anyone screaming. Instead, they'll be chatting animatedly about how the ride isn't scary enough, in which case, real fire might actually be necessary.

Squatting

I used to live in a high-construction zone in Beijing. I saw many workers who, when they weren't using 19th century tools to do 21st century jobs, were relaxing in a very traditional way. By squatting. When I asked one of my colleagues about squatting, the answer was predictable.


"Squatting? Yes, of course. Everyone does this."


Yet when I saw it in action for the first time, my mind echoed the words of James Carter from "Rush Hour 2": "Now I KNOW I don't think I'm seeing what I see I'm thinking!"


Here was a guy sitting flat-footed on his heels -- on the edge of a raised platform, no less -- as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And what I wanted to say was, "Sir, please. Find a comfortable seat. You are not an animal in a zoo." Besides, it looked too much like he was taking a dump, and in a city where defecating indoors seems optional, it was not a pleasant image to behold. Get 5 or 6 guys squatting together around an open flame, and you're imagining the campfire scene from "Blazing Saddles."


The unfortunate truth is that, in fact, squatting is kind of necessary, because there are very few clean public places to sit. Suppose you're tired enough to rest on a park bench for a while. You might wind up sitting on 1) a fine coating of dirt from a dusty building project, or 2) an oily film from smokestack pollutants, or 3) someone else's spit, or 4) a slimy combination of all three.


So, while in Beijing, always have a newspaper available to put between your butt and the seat of your choice, and be thankful that pork and beans is not a popular item in the Chinese grocery stores.

Sayings

If there is anything mainland Chinese like more than tea, it is old sayings. Many of America's most notable sayings trace their history to Mark Twain, or maybe a hundred years earlier, to George Washington. The Chinese always refer to a fellow named Confucius, who was spouting aphorisms all the way back in 500 B. C.

But what is weird about modern-day China is how the Chinese like to claim many popular sayings worldwide originated with Confucius, and became standard lexicon in other countries. One colleague told me:

"We have a saying that 'one should harvest dry wheat while the sun is at its peak,' meaning people should not waste time when work is to be done."

"I know that one," I replied. "It's 'make hay while the sun shines'."

"Yes," said my colleague. "Confucius said it first."

"No, he didn't."

"Yes, he did. Everyone knows this."

OK, well, maybe it is possible that Confucius did originate the phrase. There are all sorts of things no one knows or fully understands about Chinese history and culture. But then I found out about some other alleged Chinese proverbs, and now I'm not so sure.

"Perception is Reality" may be traced back to the teachings of Confucius. Perhaps Confucius determined that what he saw in his garden was pretty much what was actually happening; he simply had the foresight to put it in writing.

"Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law." Also attributed to Confucius at one time or another, this claim is very likely to be true. In fact, given what appears to be an historical Chinese obsession with obtaining material wealth, it should be amended to read: "Posession is Nine-Tenths of the Law. Especially OUR law."

"It Was Not Over When The Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor." A 20th-century update of an old Confucius saying, I'm sure. This one was apparently circulated by some misbehaving students at Peking University in the 1950s, demonstrating again that the Chinese know more about our history than we do.