I admit that I like it sometimes when things don’t go according to plan, it keeps life interesting. But when traveling internationally, this isn’t always the best time to “mix things up.” Yet that is often when things just don’t go right. So I figured I’d share a few of these situations during my recent trip to China. I considered rapping out a few rhymes and posting it on Youtube, but yea… we really don’t… no… not a good idea. I’ll stick to writing.
You Get Two Days Off for This?
After planning my business trip for China, I learned that my trip would coincide with the “Dragon Boat Festival,” a two day and more than 1000 year old national holiday. It definitely sounded exotic and ancient. Finishing work early on the second festival day, my colleague and I tracked down the river location of the festivities. Admittedly I was expecting a lot more pomp and circumstance for a holiday that was more than 1000 years old. The most pomp that I could see were a bunch of old folks wearing some very cheaply made orange ball caps. Beyond that… nada. And the boats? The whole festival consisted of a series of 500 meter boat races that lasted about a minute each, or so I presume. That is because the river location of the race was lined by trees and huge shrubs that were positioned between the small sidewalk where you could stand and the river. So with this Peeping Tom’s view of the boat race, all you could see were blurs of boats zipping by to the sound of the drum in the front of the boat beating out a Ben Hurr rowing pace. The only place we could even see the river was past the finish line, so by the time the boats came in view, the race was over.
Also, the whole thing lasted only an hour. Two days off? Huh? And to take away from that ancient orient feel even more, half the boat crews were white guys. In fact the most exciting thing that happened there was that three of the Keystone Chinese cops pounded on some poor 70-year-old man holding two grandkids and put him in an arm bar until they hauled him off in a Paddy Wagon (wait, is it still a “Paddy Wagon” when its full of Chinese people?). The final kick in the butt is this, to make up for taking two days off, the government designated that Sunday was now a work day. Happy six day work week! I knew I hated communism.
Yes, I Will Have the Homeless Man Feet-n-Nether-Part Flavored Tofu Please
A day after the Dragon Boat Festival, my colleague and I found ourselves in Hangzhou China looking for dinner. There were two highly recommended restaurants in the area that we tried to get into. Finding mobs at both restaurants, we opted to forego these two hot spots and found a nice dumpling restaurant between the two that looked fancy enough. Being sat down at one of three large communal tables, we ordered a bunch of random dishes, one of which was a tofu and shrimp dish (not selected by me). The food began to come out slowly and it was all pretty good. Midway through this the tofu dish arrived. Now tofu always looks good because it looks like large chunks of chicken, but it doesn’t taste like chicken. It seems to taste like whatever it is cooked with. Being adventuresome, I dropped a giant tofu chunk in my mouth….and my world nearly ended right there and then.
First, the flavor was so shockingly bad that I coughed a hot pepper into the back of my throat which immediately made me start to gag. To compound the pepper, the flavor was so entirely unholy and evil that I was literally holding down a major projectile vomit at this communal table. I mean I could not imagine anybody intentionally making something taste this bad. If tofu absorbs the flavors of whatever it is cooked with, this tofu was cooked with a homeless man’s unwashed socks that he wore as he jogged around the lake five times in 100% humidity. Once completing the jog, he went all Red Hot Chili Peppers on one of those socks and did three more laps wearing that sock as a jockstrap. The sock was then extracted with tongs used to handle radioactive waste and dropped into the tofu pot. And to top it off, once the tofu was done cooking, an aged donkey flatulated on the dish. That was the flavor of the tofu. I am not exaggerating in any way.
I sat there for more than a minute, eyes watering, sweat beading off my forehead, trying not to vomit on every Chinese person within 15 feet. GQ, my work colleague (as those are his initials and the magazine on which the ladies think he belongs) was laughing at me which didn’t help. Finally, with tears in my eyes and my physical well-being in peril, I sucked that booger down in one horrifically vile gulp. It was… it was… I don’t want to talk about it without a therapist on hand. Dante could not have dreamed up anything worse. The only bright side was that after I finally got down this little piece of roadkill flavored hell, GQ looked at me and said, “I have to uphold the man code and eat some, don’t I?” Yes, yes you do. And man code or not, he works under me and skipping out would have gone negatively on his annual review. Having both been culinarily violated, we both experienced a first ever tofu PTSD.
Dang Commies Lost My Church
Trying to be a good boy and despite the communists making Sunday a work day in view of the Dragon Boat Festival, I thought I’d stop by church before I went into the office. According to the LDS Tools app there was a foreigner’s branch that met at 8:30 in the morning. So all dressed up, I dashed off to the subway in a torrential rain storm with my hotel umbrella shielding the way. Needing some change to pay for the subway, I stopped in a convenience store to buy a drink and get some change. Hanging my umbrella hook on the checkout counter, I fumbled about with the Chinese monopoly money. Finally managing to sort out the change needed for the train, I bolted off to the turnstile. Two stops later and watching everybody holding around their umbrellas I noticed my umbrella was missing. Nuts. I left in the convenience store. That bad boy was gone. Still, I had my REI rain jacket in my briefcase and donned it as I dashed out of the subway and into the rain to find the church address.
While the jacket technically kept the water out, it could not do much about the 100% humidity in the air nor did it do much for my pants. I was soaking, but at least I could dry off at church. Arriving at the address, I was surprised to find an apartment complex. Pantomiming gestures to the security guard out front he made it quite clear that there would be no praying inside these apartments, nor did I want to pray in these apartments. It was a bust. Retracing my course, I trudged back through the rain. Now getting a taxi to stop in Shanghai is tough, getting a taxi to stop in Shanghai in the rain is darn near impossible, and getting a Shanghai taxi to stop in the rain and not cheat you is an entirely hopeless endeavor. So after circumventing the subway station a few times, I found the taxi stand and what do you know, the first taxi tried to screw me over big time. He seemed to insist that there is an added double fare for driving in the rain. Nuts to that. Determined not to be cheated this trip, I told him to get lost and hopped in the next taxi behind him. He just wouldn’t take me. Finally, the third taxi, though having no idea where to go, agreed to take me. And though grateful for the honest ride, this guy’s taxi was no condition to be on the road. The wheel alignment was performed by Jack Daniels and the car would randomly veer left or right and we dodged several unforgiving semi-trucks on the 30 minute journey to the office. Finally finding our office behind a Chinese Lincoln dealership, I made it to the office looking as if I had just been baptized rather than just having attempted to take the sacrament… in an apartment… that didn’t exist. I am quite certain that God gave me brownie points for the effort though as there were no lines at Disneyland Hong Kong. He works in mysterious ways.
Take a Quarter Inch Off the Bottom
On our last day in Beijing, GQ realized he needed a new suitcase. So off we went to the Silk Market which is full of low-quality cheap Chinese garbage trying to look like fine American luxury goods. Not needing a suitcase and hating to barter, GQ suggested I hit one of the foot massage places there in the mall while he beat some Chinese gal down a buck fifty on the price of a suitcase. Since it was only $10 for 30 minutes and the place looked legitimate enough, I sat down in one of the chairs with people getting pedicures and hand massages to the side of me and requested the foot massage. A very cheerful Chinese woman with good English began to wash my feet in a bucket of warm water (or it could have been the start of a tofu dish – maybe that is why they call it toe-fu?) and looked at my heavily calloused feet. She was appalled and said that she wanted to soften my heel up before the massage. Having no experience in this area, I just dumbly sat there. So she pulled out some sort of cheese grater and went to town on my heel.
After the pile of heal skin was large enough to cover a plate of nachos (they probably serve that in Hangzhou too), she showed me her handiwork and asked if I wanted to upgrade to the callous removal and foot exfoliation package for twice the amount. I politely declined. She promptly pointed out that my feet would be uneven now because she had done only one heel. I took a look and son-of-a-gun she was right. My left heel looked like a newborn baby’s bare bottom, but the rest of my feet looked like an elephant’s butt. She had me. So I upgraded. Out came the cheese grater again and off went my feet. After 30 minutes of sanding, buffing, and weather-stripping my feet were done. And they were soooooft. It was only then that she mentioned that I would need to be careful with my new fancy feet. She had just removed all of the strong protective layers of my feet and they would hurt and bruise easily. Hmmmmmm, my agenda for the next few days only consisted of walking the tradeshow, walking Hong Kong Disneyland, walking the streets of Hong Kong, and walking to the giant Buddha outside of Hong Kong. Well played cheese grater lady. Also, I think I am now literally ¼ inch shorter and almost could not make the height requirement to go on some of the Disneyland rides. Not quite the foot relief I was looking for.
Well there you go. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, my road to a good trip is paved with screwed up plans to serve with foot scraping flavored tofu in the rain. Still, it would not be an adventure without these kind of adventures. So I’ll enjoy the crazy and next time… go to Europe.
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