"The Taiping Two-step (and other stories)"

Translation: "This food not suitable for gweilos."

OK People, crack open your beverage of choice, and settle down for Steve's first tales of Chinese madness.

This weekend nearly didn't happen. I was supposed to be getting the friday afternoon ferry up the Pearl River to Taiping to spend a drunkenly debauched weekend with some mates who work there building a Power Station, but all attempts to contact the aforementioned bunch failed miserably. So insead I went out on the standard friday night stagger 'round and end up in my local 'till the wee small hours. About 11 in falls one of the guys I'd been intending to stay with. Oh well, go in tommorrow then. Next morning a quick call secures me monday off ("We weren't expecting you anyhow" was the reply), and we're off... Well, not exactly, there's the standard "Trial by alcohol poisoning" to be had in the Kangaroo Pub first (which is about as close as you can get a beer to the HK China ferry terminal without going into the Hard Rock cafe, but I digress).

This turned silly, very very silly.

We were cheerfully slamming down the pints with a couple of hours to kill before the boat when we got talking to a bunch of US guys who were celebrating closing a deal the day before. Before we know whats happening there's a rapidly escalating battle of "we can buy you more shots of Zambucca than you can us" (in my humble opinion this is how all international disputes should be solved. Might be a bit embarrasing when your entire armed forces get done for dui on the way home, but WTF). So, suitibly blissed by several pints and about five shots of Zambucca apiece we set off for the ferry terminal. This is where things get difficult. One of the lads has promised to meet his Chinese GF just over the border in Shenzen (she can't come into HK, not having travel documents), so he's going back by train & bus. So our reduced party staggers in the general direction of the ferry terminal. I split off to get money, to meet the guys outside the terminal. I get there 3 min later, so why's there only one of him not two of them? "He's gone in there to find a bog", says the one remaining, pointing over his shoulder at a small fast food restaurant, built into the labyrinthine vastness of the four storey shopping mall that spreads for about half a mile along the sea front. OK, no worries. Ferry at 4:15, it's now 3:55. 4:05 and he isn't there. And we've got his luggage (Fifty fucking pounds of shopping in a rucksack), a drunken search of which doen't reveal his passport, so we're off for the ferry (the last one, hey, he's a grown man for fucks sake...).

We get the ferry, just. Two hours, one can of San Mig and a highly illegal porn video later, we arrive in Taiping...

Steve cheerfully walks past the customs guys carrying 90lbs of luggage (I *knew* there was a reason for weight training :) ), and I'm in China. Several minutes of gesticulating and broken English/Puthunguas secures a ride in something yellow and battered which may have started life as a nissan but whose origins are now obscured by years of bad roads and indifferant parking ("Hmm, Paris" I thought ;) ), and we arrive back at my mates flat, grab a beer and watch a bit of Chinese soccer on the idiot box to pass the time before rejoining the main bout of the evening. Thence to the local shop, to sit out on the pavement, and watch the world go by with a beer in hand, swapping mutually incomprehensible insults with the local guys who drive the motorbike/trike taxis (you *have* to pre-drink before you get on one of these bloody things). Oh yeah. The beer was Corona...

More to follow...

Date: 09 Oct 96
From: Steve Kellett

Thanks Oso, any lit crit gratefully accepted ;) BTW, the Taiping Two Step's still going strong! Damn that Sczechwan food...

To come in future installments:
The Anglo-Sino full cooked breakfast.
Why China is a good place to get a haircut.
Puthunguos Rap music.
Pat Benetar and Madonna go Mandarin.
What "glottal stop" means.
Looking foreward to seeing the beer drowning episode!

Bloody lawyers eh?

- Steve

Date: 10 Oct 96

The end of my last missive left your humble correspondant sitting on a rickety plastic stool (too low by about 3 inches for comfort) drinking Corona from the bottle outside a shop/bar in Taiping (coloquially known as "One Eyed Jacks") awaiting the start of the evenings festivities. The story continues...

So we're waiting, watching the locals clamber onto the dangerous looking bike/trike taxis (3 at a time) and weave off into the apparantly random traffic (I hadn't realised that they drive on the right in China, neither apparantly have about 30% of the locals). The composition of the departing groups of locals should be mentioned. 100% female in full dressed to kill mode. China has these inequitous morality laws. To be in alone the same room as a member of the opposite sex between the hours of 22:00 and 08:00 is illegal, cohabitation is right out, and fratranising with foreigners is *really* bad news.

But I digress. After an hour or so the first body drags itself up, and its none only than the man last seen disappearing in search of sanitary facilities on Hong Kong:

[SteveK]: "Ok you dozy bugger. What happened to you then?"

[First Body]: "I got an attack of the shits, found a bog just in time somewhere on the seconds floor of the shopping arcade, and was stuck in there 'till 4:30. I came back by train"

[SteveK]: "Well most of your shopping got confiscated at the border"

[First Body]: "Bastards, that was me dinners for the next fortnight"

[SteveK]: "Only kidding, its upstairs in the flat"

First stop, a Szechwan style restaurant. Wander in, grab tables, beer from the fridge, and the girls fire of a stream of Phutungous at the proprietress. Shortly after the food arrives, and keeps on arriving, and arriving. A word about Szechwan food. Hot. If it isn't ginger or chilli, it's ginger and chilli. This could possibly explain my subsequent problems, but I'm telling you the plot... Meal concluded we're off onto the trikes again (I think, memory retention factor now 80% and falling).

Next stop, a bar called 928. Run by a HK Chinese guy who comes in most weekends to look after business (among other things). Jugs of Carlsberg are purchased, and drunk, and (oh, you get the picture). At this point I leave my camera on the bar, three hours later I notice something's missing, 4 hours later I realise what it is! Hmmm (MRF now 60%).

Now I remmember most things about the next stop (huge glitzy HK funded nightclub on the 8th floor of a shopping precinct). Like the fact that approximately 80% of the people in there were pro or semi-pro "working girls" looking for trade (going to the bogs involved running the most pleasant looking gauntlet I've ever seen ;) ), that once the "western AOR with chinese lyrics" floor show finished the place switched instantly to five year old Techno with the hookers hitting the floor en-masse, and that the bouncers were wearing millitary-style uniform. (MRF 50%).

The next two hours is a semi-blank. We went to another more traditional style club (tables only, floor show). But what the fuck it was all about escapes me. Next thing I remmember is stumbling along in the middle of a curiously assorted bunch of now completely hammered gweilos (="Ghost fellow"="Large white hairy faced foreign devil"), average size 6'/210lbs, and stone cold sober (comparatively) Chinese girls, average size 5'3"/100lbs, realising that I'd lost my camera. Phone enquiries were made, and it transpires that it's behind the bar in the 928. Damn, we'll have to go there again tommorrow ;).

I don't remmember much about watching "Naked Gun 2 1/2", or drinking more beer, and then to bed (about 2:30 am).

To be continued...

Date: 17 Oct 96

The previous installment left your gentle scribe collapsing face down onto the (bloody hard as previously warned, but thanks for the use Mike) spare bed at his mate's flat in Taiping China, under the influence of copious quantites of alcohol...

This being sunday morning I approach wakefulness in my usual manner for that day, sidle up to it warily, sideways, hoping that you can get there before the hangover: Who am I? Ok, got that one. Check rest of bed, empty. Ok, open eyes, good, good, the absence of stabbing pain and and a misty ceiling indicating that the "remove contacts before crashing" part of the Kellett auto-pilot functioned correctly last night.
Aha, recollection seeps into my brain like piss through a matress, China... My morning reverie is at this point interrupted by a stabbing pain in the lower abdominal region, and as my Dad once described his dicovery that he'd got dysentry "I left that room in a cloud of brown smoke". I was out of that room and into the bog like an olympic sprinter (only one with the cheeks of his arse clamped together and his rectum trying to swallow ;> ). This was the first of many such incidents throughout the day, during which I deposited the entire contents of the previous nights Sichuan (I've check the spelling :) ) meal, slightly processed, in various "facilities" about the lovely (cough) city of Taiping. Anyhow, there's the general "lay in bed scratching your balls, reading a book, and wondering when the other occupants of the house/flat are going to make a move" bit that happens whenever you stay over somewhere strange, and at about 11am its time to emerge from the pit, shower away the worst of the previous days excesses, and on with the day.

First stop is the Sichuan Restaurant again, for breakfast. And we're taking the ingredients. It's apparantly Mike's turn to take the Bacon, and the rest of the guys will be turning up with the rest of the ingredients.

Pardon?

Yup. Bacon, sausage, baked beans, and canned tomato. Taken to the restaurant, handed over, and cooked up. With the accompanyment of assorted Sichuan dishes and, of course, beer (Tsin Tsao Premium, for those of you taking notes). It arrives, served Chinese style, in a communal stew bowl, all mixed up together, and is (of couse) eaten with chopsticks. The fried egg comes in the form of a garlic omlette, but WTF. D'ye know it was bloody good! One of the guys made up a sarnie out of bacon, beans, garlic omlette, sichuan chilli beef, and some local smoked sausage. Now that's Anglo-Sino cuisine!

After breakfast (it's now about 2pm, and the hangover has been drowned at birth), the lads decide that it's time to go for a haircut...

Now, barbers in Taiping are multi functional establishments. If the cops are looking the other way it is (allegedly ;) ) possible to get a couple of beers, scalp massage, haircut, and blow-job without leaving the building.

I passed on the blow job.

But the Mama-san insisted on coming for a beer with us afterwards anyhow.

Hmm. Funny place, China.