the birthplace of beer culture?????

qingdao (tsingtao to most of us) exported a product so hallowed, so coveted,so treasured that the factory of said product has been in chinese hands, then japanese during the war, and then communist chinese hands.in fact, this product accounted for 98% of all chinese exports duringthe early communist years. BEER BEER BEER!!!!!!! Sweet, delicious,invented by sumerians, then to Babylonians, then to egyptians, to greeks,skipping over romans (who only drank wine and thought beer barbaric)then on to western europeans and americans the now guardians ofits sacred evolution in yumminess. say it with me, "i love beer".feels good to love something doesn't it. well, beer loves you right back buddy. the qingdao beer factory tour is lame but you get free beer (anti-lame). you do learn a lot about making beer in 19th c.china (if that piques your interest). the best thing about the breweryis that it's on beer st which, no surprise, has lots of beer.
but, the bestest of best things about qingdao is their preferred mode of imbibing....get this....beer in a bag!!!! dude, best idea ever.so, take a plastic grocery bag and fill it with beer from a keg until it's the desired weight and sell. buyer pays 80 cents for about 1-1.25 liters of beer....80 cents for a liter of beer straight from the brewery...yes, this is beer heaven on beer st in the self proclaimed birthplace of beer cultgure. how does one drink beer out of a grocery bag you ask?yes, this is a stumper. I couldn't figure it out as well dear reader.but, the chinese are so smart, they just poke a straw into the bag and you squeeze the bottom and suck the beer through your straw. works for me! down side to beer in a bag is it gets heavy after a while if you don't drink it fast. also in 90 degree weather with 80% humidity,it gets flat and skanky if you don't suck it down so suck it down amigo.i'm bringing this idea back to the states. I think beer in a bag has a home in the good ol USA.

the art of negotiation/the art of war

Bartering in China is essential. There is a very complicatedpricing structure here in China. At the top is western starting priceat the bottom is "if i sell this to you i'm going home broke price".In between, near the bottom, is Chinese price. All of these pricesare negotiable. There are two strategies if you don't speak Chinese.1) cut first price in half and start from there until you reachyour willingness to pay threshold.2) decide your maximum price beforehand and then start at 50% of that price. Be firm and walk away until you get called back andtold that that is their go home broke price. if you get it, congrats.you've just negotiated in china. but know that even the rock bottom go home broke price you paid is still double the minimum price they would have sold it to you but hey small victories for small battles.
that said, I am very proud to report that i began my foray into the art of negotiation in Peking with a 9 year old boy with two thumbs on his right hand. my opponent was fierce; and expert at the art. with pen between his two thumbs he furiously whipped out a series of numbers on a piece of scratch paper as we began our dance of death. i would grumble, point, shake my fist, and yell when i didn't like his price. the quarrel extended for what seemed like days. in the end, both of us exhausted, thumbs and voices weakened from the battle royale, we converged on a price. here is what it was.your author expertly negotiated a power converter from the ridiculous price of 125 yuan down to, finally, 100 yuan. yes, yes, yes. in the end i paid not 20 dollars, but 17 dollars for a crappy made in china power converter that i saw at target two weeks ago for 10 dollars.touche my double opposable thumbed adversary. touche. this round goes to you.

egg mcmuffins, mcmao ze dong, and mccommunism part II - sweet revenge

never fear, i was not defeated. the following morning i awoke to the early peking haze to face mao's memorial hall. but, i needed to harness the power of the west. i needed the juice of capitalism to flow through my veins as i reentered that hallowed hall. i needed a mcmuffin. powered by mc'd's i faced my fears of the 5,000 person deep line. without camera i proudly queued. i bought twoyellow chrysanthemums for the great leader and laid them on his tomb.mao's body laid in quiet repose. stately. except for one odd thing,his face way day glow orange. like electric orange. freaky super orange. i shuffled past with my cadre of school children and other line mates. silent and jaw gaping.
upon exiting the tomb we are shoved into the ultimate mao souvenir shop. mao clocks, mao cuff links, mao paintings, mao sculptures, mao necklaces (hay ladies), it's mao's world, we are just living in it. had there been a mao money clip i would have bought it but no, sadly there was not such a treasure.this my friends is mccommunism.

Egg McMuffins, McMao Ze Dong, and McCommunism Part I

The Great Helmsman Mao Ze Dong is still deeply revered today by the Chinese people;sometime ad nauseum. Chairman Mao went from dweeby librarian to dweeby dictator (although those pictures of him in his commi suit in the 40s are pretty cool lookin).Now, I'm by no means a Mao fan (even though I do have a 10,000 years red t-shirt). I mean there was the great famine, the cultural revolution, and that whole let's kill every sparrow in China thing so we will grow more wheat (I think that was during the great leap forward). Unfortunately for Mao, sparrows are freaking rad and eat, among other things, locusts, which then spread through the farms lands of china bringing about the great famine (nice one dweeb).
Public health tree huggers will point to the bare foot doctor program as a great accomplishment of the Mao regime. I mean, well if you call imprisoning or worse all the doctors or make them clean toilets instead of treating people and then train lay folk to walk around and treat minor acute complaints a big success then ok it was a smashing one.Health in rural china was bad then and its pretty bad now.
So, on to the point of this entry. I decided that in order to understand some of the "chineseness" of chinese people I had to visit the Memorial Hall of Mao Ze Dong. What follows are all true events. My first attempt at visiting the memorial was last Sunday morning.I got to Tian'anmen Square at around 7:30 am and the line for the memorial was already about 5,000 people deep (no joke...although in the interest of fairness and full disclosure I have been accused of exaggerating on occasion..or what i more eloquently refer to as "good storytelling"). The line snaked through the white stone pavement of the square. From the entrance, it twisted around the the back of the hall, looped around and came all the way back out in front.
It was here in line that I learned some very important things about the Chinese. So far from earlier blogs we know that they hate not smoking and consider driving a bloodsport and like to eat weird shit on a stick. So, let's update our running commentary on what it is to be chinese. First, chinese people hate standing in line. Funny for a communist country that they hate queuing so (maybe the Russian bread lines never made it past Mongolia).Imagine the following. You are a Westerner, used to standing in line at the bank or whatever and are now standing in line to garner entrance to the most important cultural sight for Chinese. Got it? Ok, so now you are in a line that goes on ahead of you and wraps back and comes back to you. The line in the other direction (closer to the memorial) is about 10 yards away and is guarded by young dudes in blue uniforms with mini bullhorns (and boy do they use them).Got your mental picture? Ok, so now imagine that every time a guard turns his back there is a crazy mad jail break to the other line. I mean you would think these people are running for the border or running for prize money. Whole families would hold hands and make a mad dash for the other line. At this point I couldn't resist pulling out the camera and snapping away. It's utter human mayhem (well as much as you can have when people are jumping a line). What's this you say? What about "no cuts, no butts, no coconuts"? I know, you're thinking what about the guards right? Do they stand for such patent abuse of queuing rules.
Well, to answer that we have to move on to the second thing I learned about the Chinese that Sunday. They are really good at playing possum. When clearly busted by the guards and receiving a good tongue lashing what do these insolent line jumpers do? Here's the amazing part....not a damn thing. They totally ignore the police man tugging at their sleeve and yelling at them to get out of line (no translation needed there). What's better is they start blending further into the crowd with the police man in tow still totally ignoring the law. Then guess what happens? The other folks in line don't decry no cuts, no butts, no coconuts.No, they start yelling at the cop because the family was clearly in line the whole time (you need glassed umpire). Soon enough the cop moves on to catch the next band of rascally line jumpers. This goes on and on for an hour. Amazing. So, did your dear author muster the gumption to jump. Gumption I have by the pound but unfortunately I kind of stick out when ducking into a crowd of chinese tourists and I promised several very good friends that I would specifically make an attempt to avoid getting arrested in China.
This is a never ending story but without Atreyu. Now, I get all the way to the very end of the line and there is a metal detector before you enter the hall.I empty my pockets and my camera is immediately confiscated and I am escorted (which is Chinese for dragged) out of line. They find a guard who speaks english and she tells me very politely that cameras are not allowed. Ok, so maybe you could tell me before I stand in a gagillion person long line. Maybe have a sign. Maybe have the creepy recording you play on repeat while i'm standing in line tell me not only can i not bring in a knife, gun, or explosive and that i can't engage in horseplay (ewwww) or dress inappropriately that i can't bring an mf'ing camera into the hall. but i am polite (my mom's southern) and i ask nicely if i can leave my camera here and go in and come back. nope. guess what i have to do? yep, get out of line, cross the square, cross the street,go to the "locker" section and "deposit" my camera. but surely i can come back to the entrance and avoid the line right? HA! hell no. the kind woman tells me "thank you for your cooperate" and shoves me out of line back in the throngs of the square. crushed and defeated this husky capitalist dog put his tail between his legs and scampered off to plot his revenge...sweet revenge (see part 2).

Bizarre Foods - Part I - Peking Night Market

The Donghuamen Night Market here in Beijing boasts some of the strangest foods in China or in the world for that matter (ok, now i totally sound like Andrew Zimmern). Basically, its 30 or so street stalls all lined up with each selling different foods.How it works is Chinese and Western tourists run the gauntlet of haranguing and shouting proprietors pushing their sheep's penis,snake of a stick, and fried ice cream (it's not all gross). Available eats include: chinese pizza (basically mu shu vegtable), various dumpling and noodle dishes, and fish or meat ball dishes and then we get into the best part of the market....what the f*ck is that on a stick section. The WTF is that on a stick section includes but is notlimited to: chicken, lamb, beef, squid, various testicles, star fish(poor star fish), sea urchin, big scorpion, small scorpion, cricket wood grubs, chicken hearts, shark, and fruit on a stick (see you'd eat fruit on a stick right?). Oh, and let's not forget the coup de gras...stinky tofu on a stick. So, first off, of all the foul smelling things on a stick, stinky tofu was by far the most offensive to one's olfactory sense. So, of course I ate it. Basically, it's firm tofu that has been aged (or left to rot) until it looks just like blue cheese. Then they fry it in a wok with oil and put some star anise plum sauce on it. I have to say, it smells like a combination of death and foot fungus before it's cooked but actually tastes really good and isn't so stinky when you eat it (btw, it doesn't give you gross burps which I was pretty worried about and it basically tastes like fried tofu with some english to the after taste).Also, just so I didn't feel like a total candy pants I ate somewood grubs on a stick. So, these are also fried and basted with dried chili. The wood grubs tasted like taking a dried leaf, filling it with instant mashed potatoes, deep frying it so the outside was crispy but the inside was gooey. Pretty good. I ate em all too. I was about to move on to tiny scorpion on a stick when I started feeling dizzy.Maybe it was the heat or more probably the throngs of people, the shouting, the stinky smell-a-thon of smells, oh, and the whole I just ate freakin wood grubs thing. In case you were wondering,no, I didn't get sick. Next time, I'll go for the scorpion. I'm cool with eating bugs but eating the parts of an animal where your bathing suit should cover is probably my Rubicon. It's the riverthis Caesar doesn't cross. Ps, they have food for muslims (thumbs up sheep eaters!)

Go! Go! Go!

Driving in China is a bloodsport. Like gladiators or go fish (I will kick your ass at go fish). After waiting in the longest taxi line ever at 1 am in Beijing Airport I climb into a cab. My driver, who I will call Squawking Charlie was a formula one driver in a four cylinder Hyundai. Serioulsy, I clocked him at 160 km/hour. I don't actually know how fast that is in mph but I think its pretty damn fast.

Squawking Charlie loved to shout into his radio at the other taxis. I guess he was telling them they were candy pants not racing him through the midnight streets of Peking. He loved to yell. When he almost hit someone in a turn and then actually SPED UP to get out of it he uttered the only English words I would ever hear him say that night, "Go, Go, Go!" I actually thought they might be the last words I would ever hear. But no, I did that there are no such things a lanes on Chinese roads. They are just lines that everyone ignores. I've yet to see any bloody accidents. Maybe totally ignoring the rules of driving makes everyone pay attention???? Probably wishful thinking when you're scared out of your shorts in the back of a speeding death cab.

coffee?, tea?, laser tag?

LAX Tom Bradley Int'l Aiport is a clusterfuck of oversized bags and giant cardboard box luggage today (as usual). I'm nervous about my flight to Beijing. There's a lot of ocean to cover and our pilots still have acne and look fresh out of Nintendo Wii flight school. Luckily if we crash land there's an entire Costa Rican soccer team to eat (Hey, it worked in that movie Alive).

The jet way is a nicotene patch graveyard. They clutter the walkway as we enter the plane. I think the Chinese either really like smoking or really hate not smoking (or both). It turns out, they smoke on the plane anyway in the bathrooms (though I think it was mostly our prepubescent pilots).

The inflight movie is Daredevil. Damn, Ben Affleck is a fist full of assholes for making that one. It's agonizing. Ps, big black guy from Green Mile, what happened to you? And director guy from Swingers, really?

Shortly before landing our stewardesses introduce us to their new job duty. Taking our temperature before we land to make sure no one brings the dreaded pig flu into China. They come through the cabin with a laser temperature gun and shoot each passengers forehead. My temperature is cool (like me :0). Unfortunately, pink jump suit girl next to me has a high temperature. It turns out several passengers have abnormal temps. So what to they do? Quarantine? Nope, turn up the AC on the plane and turn it into a flying icebox. So tricky.

Well, as soon as we land and are about to get off of the plane we are told we will be boarded by the infection control team. These guys don't mess around. Seriously. I thought I was in an X-files episode. Six guys in white Tyvek biohaz suits get on the plane and use their super laser guns to sweep across all of our foreheads. Pink jump suit girl is concerned but they let her go with instructions to wear a mask. As soon as we got off of the plane some guy just hurled over and over. Yep feeling good about this one. Ahhhh...welcome to China...welcome to the swine flu diaries