Bums I Have Known: The Southener

He was from South Carolina or Louisiana – somewhere like that. He was tall, ponderous and a bit stupid. He told me he had a degree in agronomy, which at the time I’d never heard of (as much as I hate to admit it).

He travelled from Tianjin to Dalian during the summer of ’01 and that’s where I met him; I can’t say the conversation was good, but he went through the ever interesting motions like anybody else. He had been in China for around seven months and had never set flipper outside Beijing or Tianjin. All his time thus far had been focused on his work and learning about China. He was green in other words. He had been going to and fro from work – eating with colleagues, and worst of all: listening to their various misrepresentations of what was really going on. He intended his trip to Dalian to be a cultural one, and it was in a way as he had his first brushes with the underbelly of China—the darker side found him at last, and believe you me he was keen to tell someone about it:

He had heard that Dalian was more picturesque than most other smokestacks of the Northeast. The city, so he told me (despite the fact I was then a resident there), promised Japanese and Korean designed skyscrapers and old Tsarist buildings, against a backdrop of green hills with nice beaches beyond.
His youthful optimism was crushed, however, when he reached a dirty train station with the crowds, the thieves, the hawkers and the touts of the China even he already knew about. He walked a fair distance from the train station before selecting a grimy, smoky hotel for a few hundred RMB per night — internet searches had not recommended any cheap accommodation in the city.

On day one he took his time to look around the city, and eventually cheered up a bit—Dalian indeed has some interesting Russian buildings, even if the majority of them are replicas of those destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. He caught a sturdy Japanese made tram and then a crammed bus to the beach—the beach however was none too impressive: He paid two Yuan to enter what seemed to be a cage—yes a caged in section of beach—the cage actually extended out into the water twenty meters—‘the swimming area’. Needless to say the cage was rather crowded with curious men in their Speedos and women in full length wetsuits. Our man returned to the city promptly and spent most of the evening in a 24 hour shaokao (BBQ) joint drinking watery beer. The second day was more productive, as he made it into the hills which surround the city. He found the exercise invigorating after a long period of sedentary living in the flat Tianjin. He was rewarded for his efforts by a summit (covered in freely growing hemp) that gave a magnificent vista of the cityscape with its huge skyscrapers and attractive harbour.

As evening came this young Louisianan (or Carolinian) decided that he wanted to find out where the laowai of this metropolis hung out—he had hoped for a bit of internationalism given the city’s history--it was once a Russian concession— and later fell under Japanese control. His initial forays had proven only that the Chinese monoculture was alive and well. After asking a few taxi drivers he found one who swore knowledge of the existence of a place with lots of laowai. This driver eventually pulled up at very nondescript doorway after what seemed an inordinately long trip around the compact centre. However, the taxi driver had the best of intentions, and had brought the American to just the kind of place that he had requested: the unassuming door opened onto a steep staircase descending to a subterranean bar. The bar was rather empty, a few Chinese played cards and drank tea—our man sat with a beer disappointed. After some ten minutes a foreign man and three foreign girls entered. The male newcomer immediately introduced himself; Jeff was his name, and he was in his early twenties like our American friend. Moreover Jeff was from a most interesting location: The Ivory Coast. The girls couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but to cut a long story short they all went in on a bottle of tequila and got quite drunk. Three of the girls were from Vladivostok, but the cutest one, a blond, was from one of the Russian Islands to the north of Japan. The South Carolinian was quite taken by the exoticness of his new friends as they may have been with someone from South Carolina or Louisiana... or well anywhere for that matter, save China or Russia. They were all students, but only Jeff seemed to have much of a clue about speaking Chinese, indeed the Russian girls could barely speak English.

After awhile Jeff wanted to go and get something to smoke. The two men left the girls behind and caught a tram uptown. Through a myriad of back alleys Jeff lead the Louisianan to a Uigher restaurant. Muslim Uighers are not that common in Dalian, and so our American couldn’t help again remind himself what an interesting evening he was having. The restaurant was incredibly decrepit; the plaster was flaking of the walls and the Louisianan broke the stool he sat on. The Uighers who ran the place, four brothers, were very friendly—and the two foreign men had a few beers and lamb skewers—before buying a smallish ball of hash from the brothers. Our Louisianan had never smoked hash before. Back at the bar Jeff, the Louisianan and the girls took turns to go in pairs to the WC to smoke up. On the first occasion our man went with Jeff---not only did they smoke, but Jeff produced some K, which they snorted.
Things soon became rather fuzzy and the Louisianan was in the toilet a few times with various Russian nymphs— Jeff knew what he was doing—he soon was practising mouth to mouth with the girl from the Island.

Our friend ended up getting one girl back to his hotel—the receptionist did not even bat an eyelash. With all the drugs he was in a kind of euphoric state, this is the life he was telling himself—until the next morning when the girl demanded money: he then realised he could no longer be one of those cocky young men walking round proudly proclaiming, ‘Hey buddy I never pay for it’.

The tale outlined, shouted to me over Chinese style techno in a smoky disco, made quite an impression on me. Why? Well this Louisianan hanging out with non-western foreigners was kind of interesting; indeed, the Africans, Russians, and Arabs who are now (according to some reports) flocking to China continue to fascinate me: They are not accorded the same respect ‘Westerners’ are, and in many cases they often don’t have the money to solve...er...problems—yet in some ways they seem to live their lives far more naturally in the People’s Republic of Chaos than most western expats do.

‘I still wonder what happened to those Russian girls’ my Louisianan declared in funeral tones, after finally pausing to take a sip of beer ‘they were just teenagers having fun—the girl I slept with may have just been starting down the road to prostitution (or so I hope she was just starting), it must be an all too easy road to follow…’ He continued on, but I couldn’t hear him over the music: his voice was getting quieter as his story became yet more confidential. I had had enough in any case.