Visor

Beijing is a city of bicycles, upholding a tradition that dates back centuries. This is despite the fact that dozens of new cars and drivers hit the road every hour. I am positive that, in 100 years, a simple bicycle will ultimately be the symbol of what Old Beijing used to be. And, alongside the bicycle, there will be the biggie-sized visor, a giant, tough, tinted-plastic shield that goes from the top of the rider's head to the tip of her chin.

I think the windshield-visor combination is cool. I've always wanted to arrive at my destination looking like I'm ready to cut and mend metal. If I happened to crash and break my bike frame, I could just fire-up the acetylene torch, make the repairs, and be back on the streets within seconds.

Seriously, it's a positive idea, achieving full-face protection from the sun's glare and debris from the road. If Dale Earnhardt was wearing this -- in addition to a proper seat belt -- maybe he would still be alive and winning races. Even more impressive are the lengths that some riders take to protect their exposed forearms from the harmful effects of the sun, especially among older mainland Chinese women. By custom, they try to avoid dark-tanned arms and shoulders. It's partly due to concern about keeping healthy, but it's also a fact that, in China, dark skin implies a life of manual labor, inviting social discrimination. So silk gloves that go up past the elbow are among the summer-season necessities for these easy-riding grannies.

Somehow, I'm not so sure the Intimidator would have followed that trend.

When I Rule

Upon celebrating my 19 month anniversary of being in Beijing, I feel compelled to admit something: the first 12 months were none too pleasant. The shock of trying to adjust to a completely new culture without benefit of language skills or accurate information about day-to-day living took its toll, and although I am able to laugh about most of it now, I was in some very serious trouble more times than I want to count. Sickness, starvation, the threat of deportation, insufficient funds, lousy living arrangements, and more.

I thought a great deal about the advice I was given early in the experience: "approach China with an open mind and give it a chance, and things will work out." Well, I did have an open mind and I did give it a chance, but no, things did not work out -- well, not like I'd hoped, anyway -- not until I'd finished my first year in Beijing.

To get through the longest of days and the darkest of hours, I came up with a list of things I would change if given the opportunity...the opportunity to rule China. I mean, everyone else has had their chance; I think it's my turn.

The instant I become fluent in Mandarin, I will simply take over, and When I Rule China, this is what will happen:

1. ...taxi drivers will work for tips. They'll figure out once they deliver better service in a kind and helpful manner, they'll get paid more, on-the-spot. That's got to be good, right?

2. ...people must clean up whatever it is they spit on the streets. With their tongues. Forget the idea of issuing fines, this plan will be more dramatic and instantly effective. And don't try to tell me there aren't enough police to enforce it.

3. ...there will be three, no, four McDonalds' restaurants on every block.

4. ...there will be no more rusted bikes, scooters, cars, or trucks. People must take pride in their wheels and reject the beat-up rentals; from now on you are what you ride / drive, just like in Southern California.

5. ...workers, stop bringing power tools with you on the subway. I am surprised people are getting away with this now.

6. ...a loaf of bread must have more than 6 slices in the bag. French bread will be subject to an additional 10 percent sales tax. Accordingly...

7. ...all French Carrefour stores will close and be immediately replaced by SuperTarget from the USA.

8. ...the spelling of words in Pinyin will become standardized. No more 5-different-ways-to-say-4th-Ring-Road on a map.

9. ...two thirds of all football, er, soccer fields will be plowed-over and replaced with basketball courts across the land. The final third will be used for golf driving ranges or tennis courts.

10. ...we hire the mayor of Macau to run Beijing, and order him to light up the Forbidden City like Las Vegas all year 'round.

By the way, I just learned how to make banking transactions using Mandarin. Get those Big Macs ready.

Chinese Food

I went to eat dinner at a very old-fashioned Beijing restaurant. My companion, a young lady who was born and raised in Beijing, explained to me that this restaurant was so traditional that the famous Peking Duck was not even on the menu.

Unlike foreigners who dine in Beijing, most Chinese find only rare opportunities to eat Peking Duck. Most of the time, they're eating at smaller, less-expensive establishments like the one in which we were seated. Restaurants which, my companion explained, do not have the same standard of cleanliness that we enjoy in the West. As if to prove her point, she refused to eat with the wooden chopsticks which the restaurant provided. Once the food arrived at the table, she slowly pulled out her own set of stainless steel chopsticks, which came in four parts. She assembled the chopsticks as carefully and silently as an assassin would put together a high-powered rifle, and only then was she ready to enjoy her meal. This scene left me extremely impressed. I was having dinner with the Chinese Girl from U.N.C.L.E.

I am not ashamed to admit that I am basically clueless when it comes to using chopsticks. Restaruant staffers tend to expect it. After observing my fumbling-around with the 'sticks, someone will usually bring a knife and fork, and plop them down in front of the idiot-foreigner-who-should-not-have-even-showed-up-in-our-country-if-he-did-not-know-how-to-eat-our-food. This was kind of humiliating at first, but I got used to it. If I wasn't so concerned about carrying dangerous weapons around, I would bring my own eating utensils wherever I go in China. It would undoubtedly shock whomever accompanied me to dinner:

Dinner Companion: "Hey. What are you doing?"

Me: "I am getting ready to cut my food. WITH A KNIFE."

DC: "AAAAAH! How barbaric! One eats the pig's intestinal organs with chopsticks only! Everybody knows this!"

Me: "Sorry, but my stomach is learning as we go. Now, where is the ketchup?"

That being said, I really admire anyone who can eat with chopsticks in old Beijing; someone who can manage to look at the food on the plate, grab it cleanly with the 'sticks, and consume the stuff while declaring it utterly delicious. And since you might swear some of the food is still moving when it's brought to your table, knowledge from special weapons training is nice to have, too.

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.