There are a number of issues of international importance that have come to my attention in various ways while in Beijing, so this post is dedicated to enumerating a few random thoughts, mainly for my own amusement and entertainment. If anyone should ever actually come to read this blog, you should probably just skip over this post.
Napkins
I have come to appreciate the dinner napkin – a relatively unnoticed, yet pivotal instrument used in experiencing culinary delights. At least it is in Pine Bush. In Beijing, it has been relegated to a position completely lacking status. If you can get one in a restaurant, it has a remarkable resemblance to the thin, transparent paper product which I use to control the situation when my nose has sprung a sudden leak. In their defense, the package does say Facial Tissue, so I guess they have the right to tell me to use it to wipe up the noodles that are dangling from my mouth and sliding down my face, but…
Taxi Drivers
I’ve decided that there is a major crisis brewing in Beijing. Almost without exception, every time we get into a cab at the hotel, we are treated to a 5 minute comedy show. Mind you, we always arrive with a previously prepared printed sheet from Google Maps. Our destination is carefully highlighted, and the names of the cross streets are clearly printed. A big star designates the exact location on the map where the object of our interest lies. And yet…. it generally requires a lengthy discussion involving at least one (but sometimes several) bellman and the cab driver. Hands are waiving. Folks are getting excited. Everyone talks at once, then there’s a moment of silence while everyone peers pensively at the map. Repeat several times.
It seems like sometimes even the concierge and the hotel manager are involved (okay, I’m kidding, but it does get pretty absurd). Are we doing something wrong? Is map reading a lost art, or is it that I’m missing some very important nuance here? I think it’s the latter, and I’ve spent the last several days trying to figure it out, but it still isn’t clear to me. I wonder if, because the city is so large and each street has a name (not a number, like in NYC), it’s hard to know where a place is just by its name? Or is it that the way we draw our maps is intuitive to the occidental eye, but looks fundamentally wrong to to the oriental one? There’s something to be learned here. Really. I will figure this out, and get back to you.
Chicken
For many years I wasn’t a big fan of chicken, but lately I’ve grown to appreciate the big bird. I like it prepared in a variety of ways. But again my western preconceived notions fooled me when I began to order chicken in China. Turns out that the standard way of dismembering a chicken here is to take a cleaver and chop it up into slices about a half inch thick. Which wouldn’t be a problem for myself personally, if it wasn’t for the fact that the slices contain anything and everything that happen to be in that cross section of the complete chicken. That means skin, bone, cartilage, gristle, and every other form of dense or elastic connective tissue that holds the bird together. I’m sure I could get used to eating this way, but it’s so against what I’m accustomed to that I’m having a bit of a hard time adjusting. Did I mention that organs are invariably mixed into, too? I’ve learned to identify a few, but there is that one suspicious looking one….
At the restaurant
Last night we went to a restaurant with two young colleagues from Beijing. We asked them to order for all of us (did I mention that all meals here are family style? We order a bunch of entrees, and everyone shares them from common dishes. Good thing my chopstick skills are decent enough to avoid embarrassing myself. Oh, and ordered dishes always come out in a random, seemingly arbitrary order, so you should never expect that the appetizer will arrive before any other dish). The prolonged ordering process reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. A lively discussion went on for a while, occasionally with my New Yorker friend coming into the fray. The waitress would become involved at various points, then go away only to return shortly and engage again in the steamy debates that were going on (presumably in Mandarin) at the opposite end of the table. It wasn’t until later that the resemblance to the taxi driver scene became so obvious to me…
Last but not Least
It’s the little things in life which either make your day, or make you nuts. I know, I know…. I’m anal. But there are three musical notes that every elevator in Beijing plays when it arrives at every floor. The same three notes. In every elevator that I’ve been on. Which wouldn’t be worthy of mention, except that they happen to be the first three notes of the Sesame Street song. You know – the Sesame Street Song. Its the three notes that go along with the words "Sun-ny days…" ? The song has been in my head every waking moment since I set foot in the hotel elevator the first night. Is there something wrong with me?