Jamie Doom...

answers his own rhetorical questions.

For a Large, Drunk Stranger in Shanghai

The first night I spent in Shanghai I slept half the night outside, on the sidewalk, in the rain.

 Let me start from the beginning. The first time I went to Shanghai , I was on my way to Hangzhou where I would begin teaching at ZUCC. I accepted the position as teacher based on a friendship I made with John Pasden from Sinosplice. Before I began the spring semester, I traveled around China a bit with my Chinese brother, Liang Bing. Liang Bing and I had stayed in 18 different hotels in one month. We were experts at finding cheap hotels.

 Shanghai is a bit pricier than most cities in China to say the least, but Liang Bing had a plan. He knew the address of a military hotel in the middle of Shanghai where we could stay for 150 yuan a night. However, we had three problems. Liang Bing isn’t in the military. I’m not in the military. I’m not Chinese.

 When we got into Shanghai we found the hotel with no problem. We nonchalantly went up to the front desk to check in. Immediately we were rebuffed because I was an American. The man at the front desk told Liang Bing, that the only Americans ever allowed to stay in a Chinese Military Hotel were the flight crew of the spy plane that crashed into a Chinese fighter and landed in Hainan . I have since stayed in a few more Military Hotels so I think he was exaggerating…but it did give me pause.

 Liang Bing then pulled a fast one. He noticed the manager’s name on the plaque above the front desk asked where he was. Then Liang Bing told the man at the front desk that his father was good friends with the manager. Liang admitted the he wasn’t in the military either, but that his father had arranged for him to stay there. Then Liang acted like he was very angry and started to beat on the desk and shout at the poor front desk man to give him a telephone so that he could call the manager of the hotel. We were safely up in our rooms two minutes later. No phone call, of course, had been made. This was not the last time the front desk manager would be berated rudely on my behalf.

For the next couple of days, every time we went through the hotel we had to sneak through the lobby quickly in fear that Liang Bing might be confronted by an angry hotel manager who had never met Liang Bing or his American friend.

The first night in Shanghai , I went out to dinner with John Pasden and Russell Moon. We went to one of those all-you-can-eat-and-drink Japanese places that populate Shanghai . For 150 yuan, I threw down all I could eat and drink, which is more than the average village. After that, we went to a cool little place called Excalibur near John’s apartment where I showed off my Hula-Hoop skills for a couple of hours while John and Russell played Jenga with their lady friends. Hula-Hoops and Jenga don’t mix. And soon John and Russell were begging me to leave, so that they could be cool with the ladies and do well at Jenga. Mostly I think they were jealous. I was pretty hot with the Hula-Hoop, and I don’t think anybody who was there can honestly say I wasn’t.

So they put me in a taxi and sent me back to my hotel. By this time, it was about 3 in the morning. Liang Bing had stayed in for the night after I had said the words “Japanese food”, and he was sound asleep when I got back to the Hotel. Well, I assume he was asleep. I don’t know because the front doors to the Hotel were locked, and it was raining. I had lost my phone the week before (I lost six of them while in China ) in Nanjing . I really didn’t know my way around Shanghai that well. It was already 3 and the only other people I knew in Shanghai were busy playing Jenga and being cool with their lady friends…while a Hula-Hoop leaned unused against a wall in the corner. I decided I would huddle up under a small over-hang across the street and protect myself from the rain with my arms.

 It would be morning soon, and they would have to open the doors and let me in then. About an hour later, I was awakened by a very large inebriated man. I was able to communicate well enough with him in Chinese to let him know I was locked out of my hotel and my friend was upstairs asleep. “Some friend,” he kept yelling as I told the story. I shrugged my shoulders and told him I could wait a few more hours.

 “Not in the rain...no foreign guest is sleeping in the rain.” I again shrugged my shoulders and told him I already knocked on the doors and they wouldn’t let me inside.

 He was growing into a giant-like character as we spoke. I didn’t realize how big he was when he first woke me up my nudging me with my shoe. He then turned, walked to the front door, began kicking the devil out of the front door, and yelling at the top of his lungs. Liang Bing later said the man was yelling that an innocent American was going to die of a cold because some idiots wouldn’t open the door.

Finally the front desk man woke up, came to the front door, and let me and the man in so before the entire hotel was rousted. My new friend pushed past the front desk man and we headed for the elevators. Now I was getting scared. I was in the hotel now. His job was done. He asked me my room number, and I told him immediately. We got off the elevator and headed to my room. Before he got to my room he had already started yelling. He started kicking my door as hard as he had kicked the front doors to the Hotel. Liang Bing, with sleep in his eyes, answered the door. “You are a bad friend, the man yelled at Liang. As Liang started to defend himself, the man turned around, got in the elevators and left.

I crawled into bed and went straight to sleep. The next morning Liang Bing told me he had stayed up the rest of the night defending himself in his head to that stranger who woke him up and yelled at him. I remembered that I never got a chance to thank that crazy man. I also remembered that I hated John and Russell. 

posted by: jmedoom at July 30, 2005 05:55 | link | comments (2) |