New Year’s Eve is usually a savage drunken beast, prowling in loud packs, wearing the latest fashionable war paint, gorging on proximity, possibility, and the power of mass presumption, leaving entire populations weeping, weaving and heaving, anticipation biting like a coiled rattlesnake and the night all out of anti-venom, as the bright butterflies of celebration fade into the dull angry moths of morning after regret. But in China, hardly anyone celebrates the Western New Year, and the streets of Baoji were Wednesday night normal as we made our way to a bar locally known as the ‘Four Sisters’. On a short dead-end road lined with bars it became apparent that no one had told the revelers here that this night was not celebrated in China. Every bar was packed. By this time we were a group of eleven and the Four Sisters couldn’t accommodate us—though they tried, and we finally settled into what I think was called the Che Bar. I remember the owner’s name was Michael and he uprooted the people at the window table and let us settle in. In China you just go along with this; it does no good to protest. They had mini kegs of Heineken and imported scotch and hookahs and a large red banner of the Cuban revolutionary hanging on the wall.
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I was waiting for my buddy Paul in the Baoji train station and as the minutes ticked by I was thinking how it’s not like him to be late, then also realized I was suffering from traveler’s dementia where you are always feeling that you are waiting in the wrong place, at the wrong gate, on the wrong street, existing in a shadow world apart from how the local people see it. Eventually, just as nonchalant waiting was dissolving into looking around and weighing my options, Paul came trotting up, out of breath. Responding to a call from his girlfriend at 6 A.M. he had been to Xian to take care of some urgency, then raced back to Baoji on a high-speed train that arrived the same time as my train did, but at a different station on the other side of the city. He explained all this as we drove the short distance to his apartment, and once there, displayed the bright treasures procured in Xian: three different kinds of cheeses, cigars, bread, and real British tea imported from the U.K. We immediately started hacking at a wheel of Brie while catching up, waiting for the tea to steep; the cigars would be for tomorrow night. Ah . . . to take this much delight in cheese requires being deprived of it. Describing China as the land of no cheese is right on the money. Sure, you can get it in the big cities, but everywhere else it’s a challenge, and if you do manage to find it, it will most likely be a bland tasteless, chemical equivalent meant to satisfy the uninitiated. You can forget about the sharp bite of real Vermont cheddar or the crumbly mouth burst of Rogue Creamery’s Smokey Blue Cheese. It all leads to a condition I call homeFOODsickness. Most expats suffer from this more than anything else. It comes on you suddenly, completely, and it usually causes you to crave things you were never even in the habit of eating back home. Hot dogs with yellow mustard. Cheeseburgers with ketchup and pickle. Potatoes and gravy. Bacon omelets with home fries. The cravings are as unique as the individuals are. I had one friend who sheepishly admitted to craving SPAM. The other thing most expats suffer from is not being able to speak freely in their mother tongue. To be casually and completely understood without having to stop the flow of a story and explain everything. Anyone who knows me is laughing right now . . . imagining me patiently stopping to explain everything. But at the moment I was eating real cheese and tomorrow I would be seated around a table able to speak freely without explaining. |
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