Saturday, July 19

Yesterday was a day full of surprises.

I was up unfathomably early, which I will put down as due to jet lag. At about 5:30 I just didn’t feel like sleeping anymore and got out of bed and fooled around on the computer. Da got up too, though he didn’t exactly look like he wanted to be up, and we chilled outside. People generally stirred, and by 7:00 or so we were having breakfast.

Da described the breakfast that we’d have as “hearty.” That was an understatement. His uncle went off and came back with three large plastic containers each overflowing with dumpling-like doughey things called Bauza. He sat me down with a cup of coffee and told me to eat them, along with cashew nuts, bits of beef jerky, and some sweet fruity something. It was delicious. The difficulty with Bauza or any sort of dumpling that I’ve found is that they are so difficult to stop eating. I had what probably amounted to being one or two too many.

The idea was to have a very lazy day where Da could catch up with some of his relatives and we’d just chill. That’s basically what happened. But as many other things in china, so I’m told, if something’s going to be done it’s going to be done on a big scale, a “China scale.” We chilled and met up with Da’s family on a “China scale.”

First things first, we had to register at the police office to let them know we were in the country. Da’s uncle drove us over and we walked inside. The police office was a large room with concrete floors, a long desk at one end, and many notices on the walls. There were about eight young police officers behind the counter, whom you could see through the glass partition, all apparently doing nothing. I really couldn’t tell why they were there on a Saturday, or if there were perhaps other, better things they could be doing. We gave them our passports and the necessary information about our stay. They began to process the information. They kept processing the information. One of them spoke to Da, and Da spoke to us. “They want you guys to sit down,” he said to Nils and me. “This could take a while.”

That was another understatement. They only had to scan the inside page of the passport into their computer system, but by the time it took you’d have thought that they had done a full criminal background check, cross-referenced by every agency around the world. I suppose they could have been doing this, but judging by the force of manpower on the case I would say that it was pretty unlikely. One officer seemed to be doing all the work, while the others stood around idly, sometimes picking up a passport and looking through the pages and visas, not for any official purpose but just out of a sense of curiosity. One officer who grabbed our attention didn’t even pretend to be working: in the hour or so we were there he just moved back and forth between his standing place and the vending machine, each time coming back with several packs of junk food which he would then proceed to stuff into his face. One trip he came back with four (we counted) packs of snacks, which he proceeded to eat in rapid succession. Again, I wondered exactly why he was there in the first place.

Another funny thing about the police station: as Nils and I were waiting we saw some grubby, lankly looking guy come in to get something sorted. He had a bit of a deep chest cough, not looking in top form. He started wheezing and coughing, and eventually he went to a corner and just started blowing his nose into a small trash can on the floor. He had snot and germs all over his hands, which he then proceeded to wipe on his keys and keyfob. And with that, he went along with his business. Nils and I both looked at each other. We both soon agreed not to touch any public handrails or surfaces in the police station, and in China in general.

Eventually things got sorted, we got our passports back and the slip of paper which proved that we had registered. It had taken about an hour and the collective effort of eight Chinese police officers. That was a surprise.

After that ordeal we got down to the business of meeting and greeting Da’s relatives. We came home for some watermelon and met several more of Da’s cousins, one of whom was married to Wang, who is currently researching in the United States and speaks a bit of English. He was pleasant enough and very polite to keep us entertained in English, though it did mean that Nils and I had to be careful speaking in our secret language which previously only we could understand. Soon we were on our way to lunch, where more of Da’s relatives would join us.

Lunch was a spectacular, glorious event. We got across town and met with more of Da’s relatives, all of whom were happy to see him. Perhaps the most interesting, but also the most inaccessible for we non-Chinese speakers, was his 90 year old grandmother. We all went to a restaurant and got another private room, which you realize is quite a good idea when you see the shouting masses eating in the main dining room. Nils and I were there in the first wave, which meant that quite suddenly the others arrived, one with Da’s grandmother riding piggy-back on one of his uncles. That was a surprise. The food was just as tasty and exotic as it was the day before. Spread before us on the massive revolving glass plate we had kidney, egg tofu soup, crispy chicken (made with the cartilage parts, not the meaty bits), spicy chicken with peanuts, pigs ears (my new personal favorite), and a whole bunch of other things that I wouldn’t have the slightest clue about. There were crawdads on skewers marinated in a delicious sauce. I watched Da’s uncle eat his, head and legs and tail and all, and I followed his example. It was tasty, though a bit spikey in the mouth. And of course there was beer and Chinese spirits. Like the night before, every five minutes one of Da’s uncles would be making a toast, done by banging the glass of spirit on the glass surface of the revolving glass disc, and we’d drink some more. Beer soon followed (with Da’s uncle’s explanation that it was okay to drink beer after spirits, so long as one drank enough of it so that one would burp out the badness in your stomach), as did much merriment.

I don’t know how long we were there, but I thought it was a wonderful meal. I thought I was really lucky to meet so much of Da’s family, even if I couldn’t communicate. The whole restaurant experience, and in many ways this whole country, seems like it was out of a time warp. Here we were, eating a massive feast in our own private dining room where the women were expected to go around lighting the men’s cigarettes. Even just the idea of smoking cigarettes at a dining table, much less in a private dining room with no windows or ventilation, with a small child at the table, is a bit anachronistic. I keep feeling that this is what it must have been like for my parents growing up in America in the fifties and sixties.

When the dinner was over and Da’s grandmother lifted back down the stairs we headed out to meet once again the heat of the day. After one last stop at the apartment we headed right across town to the office/apartment which will be our home after we come back from X’ian, when Sarah and Zach arrive.

Da had prepared me to meet his mother’s friend, the woman whose place we will be staying in. We have come to call her “Ga Ma” in China, which I’m told is a term of affection much like “surrogate mother.” She had, according to legend, used to get into elaborate drinking contests with Bo Chang. The most famous of these culminated in a display of gymnastic ability, which had her doing a hand-stand before Da’s father attempted and threw up all over himself. With Bo and Pien off in America and probably, I presume, no longer willing to participate, she has now made it her mission to see that the sins of the father are visited on the son. The last time that Da and she had met it ended with Da throwing up out of a taxi cab window. She was not to be underestimated. The man with hubris would rue the day. I was ready for her, though I was careful.

Ga Ma and her daughter, Lan, greeted us and showed us to the office. It was perfect, exactly what we will want when we have more people here. Three rooms, one sofa that pulls out to a bed, another sofa that just looks comfy, a kitchen and bathroom. It was looking good. We all sat down to talk. It was about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. We had just consumed a massive amount of food. Alcohol was involved. I had been up since 5:30. Jet lag figured in there somewhere too. The only person with whom I could have a sustained English conversation all day was Nils, and we were embarking on another similar conversation with our new hosts. “I could really use a nap,” Nils said to me. And that’s when it hit me. Not only could I use a nap, I simply had to have one. It was imperative. So I got up. The sofa bed had been pulled out. I lay down. And I slept.

It was a wonderful nap, but getting up afterwards was hell. Apparently I hopped right out when Da woke me, but I wasn’t feeling that way. I took 25 minutes in the bathroom, still trying to wake. “Ryan better not be sleeping in there,” I heard Da’s voice say through the door. “Ryan? Ryan?!?” I deliberately took about eight seconds to answer before I assured him that I was not sleeping, just as a joke. Or maybe I was just in such a stupor that I didn’t know. At any rate, I wasn’t feeling up for a big kind of dinner. Though given what I’d heard Ga Ma and her exploits, I could only assume the worst.

She and her husband and Lan stopped by and led us to the restaurant across the street. Lan had studied in England so she knew a bit of English, not great English but enough to communicate. We met Maggie, a beautiful girl whose real name I cannot even begin to try to pronounce, much less remember. The restaurant was hot-pot, which meant that they put a boiling cauldron in the middle of the table and give an assortment of raw meat for the party. You take what you want, cook it in the water, and eat it with a peanut and chili sauce that you’ve mixed previously. Just thinking about it makes me hungry again. I was anything but hungry when I arrived; this was to be our third hearty meal of the day. But immediately my appetite was wetted when we got to the business of dinner. We all ate and ate and ate. The main meat they had was lamb, but also on the table were squid, sheep stomach (not so great), assortments of mushrooms, white fish (delicious when fresh cooked like that), and, once again, a whole lot of other things that I can’t even begin to remember. I ate until I felt like a balloon. I ate until it hurt. I ate until I thought I was going to throw up, and then I ate some more. It was just too good to resist.

Another staple last night, and I assume this happens regularly when hanging out with Ga Ma, was beer. We started off simply, innocently, just having a 600 mL bottle each. I was a bit mesmerized when I saw a waiter cart in about fifteen of these bottles, thinking we’d be lucky to finish them all off. How wrong, how very wrong I was. Ga Ma insisted that each time we said “Gam Bay”, which I had previously thought just meant “Cheers,” people finish whatever was left in their glasses. This could apply to the whole table, or you could stand and challenge individuals to a Gam Bay. And the men, she claimed, should drink two glasses for each glass that the ladies drank, as we were bigger and stronger. We got down to it, and there was a lot of beer chugging to go along with the food. Sometimes I thought I was going to throw up. I had mentioned to Da and Nils that I was considering going to the toilet to have a mid-dinner puke session, just to clear things out and present myself like a true champion in front of our hosts; they were not too keen on this idea. The nail in the coffin was going to the toilet and seeing that instead of proper toilets the stalls just had a hole in the floor made of porcelain, which presumably could flush. It didn’t seem like the right place. When I returned from the bathroom I nearly got into some trouble. Maggie stood and toasted Gam Bay, which meant I had two to drink, and when I was done with that Lan toasted to me Gam Bay, which meant another two had to go down. I finished the fourth glass of beer and immediately started to sweat; there was that feeling, known to me all too well in college, where you know that you want to puke but you think you might be able to fight it. It’s not quite imperative, but you’re not sure yet. So I quieted down for about a minute. Thankfully it passed, I burped a bit, and I was able to keep going when Da and Nils returned. I found that once I ‘put down the chopsticks’ and stopped eating that helped a lot, and I was able to carry on with relative ease.

In the end our party finished 40 600 mL bottles of beer. I think back with pride that that figure means we drank 24 liters of beer. I don’t know how that was possible.

It was such an amazing experience. On road to drunkenness I told my hosts, through Da and Lan, that I love Beijing and its drinking culture. They told me that if I like Beijing for that, then I am a true Beijinger. “Ich stein ien Beijinger!” I shouted. Toward the end of the night I would beat my chest like tarzan after finishing a beer. When I came back from the toilet for the second time I caught Lan in the hallway. “Oh, it’s gone crazy in there,” she warned me. I went in and people were doing head-stands against the wall. The sins of the father are the sins of the sun after all, though Da didn’t puke. I did a handstand with the help of Da and Nils. Thinking about those things, I can see how we went through 24 liters of beer. It was a good night.

Our hosts paid for the meal. Da later told me that it cost 700 yuan, total. That’s 60 pounds. 60 pounds for a feast for six people, a good third of which there was no possibility of finishing, and 40 bottles of beer. That’s another thing I love about this country. Before coming home Da and Nils and I had ice cream from a local store. The total price was 1.50 for three ice creams. So each ice cream cost 4 pence. That’s obscene.

We got to Ga Ma’s office/apartment after dinner and checked our email. We took a cab back to Da’s uncle’s place. We got to the apartment and Da’s aunt and uncle were up. We talked. We went to bed. We were exhausted.