Let’s not beat around the bush

Let’s get the English out of the way

I have this intense desire to clear out certain doubts, which I do believe are floating in the air: China is picking up English, slowly but steadily. Sure, they’ll get there in the next 50 (0) years perhaps — when communicating will no more be a headache for the average expat.

In China, at least in the bigger cities, it isn’t as if you’d have to wait too long on the street stranded before you find someone who speaks English. I’d say, you’d have to wait, at an average, about 10 minutes. That’s quite terrible on a hot day though. But it get’s worse when the person tells you he does understand English, but actually he doesn’t.

He’s just stopped to practice his English with you. Obviously, he’d think he’d know English. But half way down the clearly off-frequency conversation you realize, damn… this one’s special. Dude, I don’t have a problem you learning English, but I’m about to die of dehydration.

But yeah, you’d have to wait 10 minutes to be a part of this gem of a conversation. Unless of course, you get lucky.

The hard part is when you have to live here. Coz seriously, if I dehydrated to my demise in the city that I live in, I have no reason to live.

It’s the everyday things of life. It’s still a dream to meet a ‘normal’ Chinese girl in a bar. Sometimes you bump into them, it’s rare, but it happens. She even tells you she understands ‘a little bit’ of English. Perfect. But then you start talking. And she giggles and says: “Oh my God, please talk slowly.”

The most painful thing for an impatient expatriate: Change the speed of your speech.

Ordering food. Lord, it all looks pretty challenging, exciting and simply fuckin delicious, but Goddamnit why can’t you have English menu cards? Just pictures of the dishes are sometimes not enough! Not when you feel like eating something other than niu-rou (beef) , ji-rou (chicken), ju-rou (pork) or yu (fish). What if I want another type of beef?

And the Chinese waitresses: they’re all born with a natural instinct of messing up your order. Even when you point toward a picture of a dish, and it’s the only picture of a dish on the page.

Don’t even get me started on Traveling in China. Step out of city limits, and into a place where few tourists set foot, and your worst nightmares will come alive. China’s gorgeous — geographically. The people are sweet — they want to help — but they’re helpless. They don’t understand you. They don’t even understand you when you say certain words in Chinese. They don’t understand your body language either — they have a separate one of their own.

Of course, all expatriates eventually find a locality that works for them. For me, it’s Lido. For others, it’s Sanlitun, and some others, the ancient hutongs. Lido is mostly about open roads with diversified tree plantation running along, super-amazing Western restaurants, a handful of cozy bars, loads of massage parlors, and a fair share of expatriates. Here, English is always just a minute away.

Sure, it’s easy to say: Learn Chinese. But I know just about as many Chinese words as I need or want to. I keep picking up a handful every month and try and use them. But almost all of them are words I’d use to to tell a Chinese something, never ask.

The point of conversation never arises. Unless of course, I get lucky. It’s rare, but it does happen.

Cafe Del Mar

There’s something about the place that keeps me coming back, aside from the fact it was the first bar I entered after my arrival in Beijing almost two years ago. It’s got it all that a bar really needs to make a profit — alcohol, a Philippino band, outdoor seating, a pool table, loads of hookers (of varying shapes and sizes) and sleazy pot-bellied caucasians. I ain’t one of them. 

It’s a fun place which at times can get a little rowdy. Probably just like any other bar.

I usually go to bars by myself. I love bars. I love the idea of drinking alcohol on a bar counter. And if I go with someone I already know, I don’t really get to soak in the atmosphere of my surroundings. I’ll admit, I enjoy talking to strangers more than friends.

I moved out of my office-provided accomodation last year with the sole intention of moving to Lido, so I can live near Cafe Del Mar, and of course, the other bars in the locality. Coz really, Sanlitun, the bar street of Beijing,  begins to suck after you’ve lived here long enough.

I always liked having a neighborhood bar, the suburban bars, as they’re called. There;s nothing like the bartender pouring your drink without being told.

I almost always go to Del Mar alone, and invariably meet somone I know. I wait to get drunk before I join their table. It eases the torture a bit.

Last night though, I took my wife. She never goes to Cafe Del Mar, for that matter, she never goes to any bar without me or her friends, who’d party maybe once a month. She doesn’t really care if I go though. Mostly because she knows I’d cross oceans in search of suburban bars. Ironically, we met in a bar.

Her only agenda is: ‘Don’t fuckin wake the baby up when you come back home.’ I usually wake the baby up to play with her, then she gets excited and my wife has to put her back to sleep while I conveneintly pass out in the middle of apee-ka-boo game.

Well, she’s somewhat calmed down since the baby. Everybody does I guess. I have too. Boy, you should have seen me two years back! 

But one particular reason she ‘hates’ Del Mar is the hookers. She calls it a pick-up joint. And it is. But not everyone’s buying. Those who want to can buy the girl a drink while they agree on a price and what they’d like to do to each other, and those who don’t want to can just sit back and watch the drama unfold. What’s a bar without an armful of eye-candy.

I never talk to hookers unless I’m smashed out of my skull. Basically, at that point of time I lose all control over my actions. I don’t slurr and I don’t wobble, but I get a sudden attack of verbal diarrhoea. Despite that, I can count on the fingers of my hand the number of times I have engaged in a conversation with a prostitute.

It’s pointless. You’re not taking them home, and I don’t really give a fuck about their pretentious bullshit. You just never know if they’re telling the truth.

Most of them know me as the mysterious good-looker sitting at the bar, probably gay, or just a chauvenistic asshole.

As my wife and I entered Del Mar last night, it was like we’d walked into a northern Irish village pub, where everyone suddenly shuts up and turns to look at the strange looking man who just entered.

As if the entire bar, every old man at the counter, the hookers scattered around in groups on the tables, the waiters and waitresses were talking about us. They had never seen me with a girl, definitely not a non-Chinese girl. Or maybe they were just whispering about the girl who hooked the asshole. Or maybe they were just admiring her breasts — you don’t really get to see decent sized boobs too often in this land of the small-eyed — the rest of the body is quite alright though. They are genetically anti-fat.

Every girl is a stunner, compared with most other parts of this obese planet.

But most of the ones I come across either come with a price tag, or don’t speak English. And let me assure you, India is diverse — every city is different in every way possible — China, the seventh largest country in the world with the highest population, isn’t.