The Chinese restaurant is a truly zoological extravaganza and to this day I miss popping down to my favourite local shack for a plate of bao zhi (steamed dumpling), perched precariously on a ten inch high stool, mice scurrying across the floorboards. Nb. Bao zhi is also Chinese slang for boobs. Delicious! Which brings to mind the sexiest girl in the college where I taught plucking a fish head out of a hotpot served up on the floor of my living room and asking in all seriousness if I liked head too? I replied in the affirmative as she began sucking the brains out of the specimen clamped between her chopsticks. Once done, she concluded, “My grandmother says I should have lots of head, because it’s healthy.”
These days pretty much every town on the planet has a Bamboo Garden or Great Wall eatery. Those business-savvy oriental entrepreneurs then branch out into shops selling plastic kitchen and bathroom crap and we buy it. Before you know it there’s a Chinatown in place and fire crackers going off, accompanied by a band bashing cymbals and a colourful long dragon dancing menacingly up the road, scaring children. The reds aren’t under the bed, they’re in it.
When I returned to the UK in 1996 I told anyone who would listen that, economically, China was going to take over the world. How they laughed. These jokers included an economics graduate now writing business articles for a well-known media outlet, “Hahaha! No way. The Yanks control the world economy” and a former stockbroker, “Hahaha! I spent 15 years on the stock exchange. The Chinese will never get their act together.” Now every politician, businessman and wide boy the world over is queuing up to kiss the Chinese ass.
How the Middle Kingdom is laughing now. Hen gao xiao (very funny), as they say today, from the bull-markets of Shanghai to the watermelon stalls of Kashgar, where, incidentally, one particular tradesman did a sideline in great quality hashish and from whom, for $20, I purchased a lump the size of a tennis ball. Tai hao de! Excellent!
Despite how much the Americans will downplay it, the Chinese government pretty much bailed them out in 2008, prop them up and, like a cat with a ball of string, they are playing and beating them in their own back yard. A recycling magnate has even made an audacious bid for the New York Times newspaper. Hen gao xiao! He’s taking the piss, surely? Hahaha! Henry T Ford will be rolling in his grave, as will Chairman Mao, while Deng Xiao Ping will be giving it the thumbs up as it was his infamous ‘To be rich is glorious’ statement that kicked off the entire communist/capitalist China ball game in the first place.
Due to those wild experiences - Mr. Fang whacking an unruly customer over the head with his abacus in Duyun’s OK Bar springs immediately to mind; as do countless bus and train journeys through lyrical backwater landscapes and sooty ancient cities; waiting for friends outside a cinema and a man offering me his wife for $100 of passion; a policeman pausing while he handcuffed a felon to shout a cheery hello at me; a colleague launching a fertilizer business and asking for the names and addresses of all my friends, because they are bound to want to buy some; cramming 67 Christmas Day visitors into my small apartment just to see if it was possible, etc - my affinity for the Chinese and their colossal nation remains strong.
And to this end, there is now a big bunch of Chinese guys living in my street in the sand. By the looks of it they all live in one house (maybe they’d heard about my apartment filling experiment) and go to work in some factory or other in a minibus. So I lean out of the car window in the morning and shout out “ni hao!” and they puff manically away on cigarettes, laugh and shout it back.
There are of course downsides to this Chinese takeover, such as 80% smog to 20% oxygen in every town and city, kind of like winning the lottery and then getting slowly run over by a bus, but let’s stick to the Buddhist side of life and be positive. Chi fan, mei you? Had your rice yet?
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