My language exchange partner, Wuning, wanted to invite me out the evening we met. But, like a coy girl who won’t let her eager boyfriend get to second base, I thought he was moving a little fast for me. So I postponed our evening out until this weekend (Saturday, June 12).
Wuning had explained to me that he often stayed at his friend’s apartment because it was quite near the office of the company they both work at. It might have been near their company, but it was miles away from my neighborhood. We set out at 630, traveling on Beijing’s light rail and subway system. About one hour and three trains later, we arrived at the Dawanglu neighborhood. From there it was still a bus ride to Wuning’s friend’s apartment block.
Beijing’s subway system can best be described as tolerable. It suffers from the BART effect of not having enough stations to be really useful, but it’s functional and relatively modern. The station announcements on the train PA are in Chinese and English, and represent the first use of English in day-to-day life I’ve encountered. Like most other things in Beijing, the subway is relatively cheap by international standards. Five yuan gets you a double ticket good for the light rail and the subway itself. As long as you are heading someplace that the subway actually goes, it’s a treat. (The woman selling subway tickets at the Wudaokou station counts as the single rudest person I’ve yet encountered in Beijing, literally hurling Wuning’s change back at him.)
Dawanglu is not tourist Beijing. It is deep, inner Beijing, a residential neighborhood of tall, grimy, charmless apartment blocks. After running into a local store to buy a bag of frozen dumplings and some pre-cooked chicken feet, which you can buy in kind of the same way you’d hit a salad bar or a sandwich counter in an American supermarket, Wuning led me to the block his friend lives in. Apparently, in Beijing, if you bring beer and chicken feet to a social engagement, you are considered quite the party hound.
The entrance foyer was pitch black until Wuning clapped, turning on the one bare bulb. (The Clapper lives. Many building lights in Beijing are sound activated, which explains why the lights in my sixth floor lobby once switched on when I tripped, which rather seemed to be closing the barn door after the horse of my balance had left.) Bare wires and sooty brick were the lobby décor of choice.
The elevator, however, was brightly lit and operated, somewhat pointlessly, by a cheery young woman. Wuning explained that the elevators switch off at midnight, so if you’re coming home late, be prepared for a climb. This is a serious issue for Wuning’s friend, who lives on the fourteenth floor of this particular block.
The door at the apartment entrance was about three-quarter sized, like something out of Hobbiton’s less well-kept district. A ring on the doorbell and we were greeted by Wuning’s friend, a shirtless and appropriately mortified Guan Rui.
Shirtless or not, he invited us in and bade me welcome. I was immediately ushered off into Wuning’s bedroom with a two liter bottle of Pepsi (in China: Bai Shi, or “100 happenings”, roughly translated) and a package of salty snacks that might have been dried sharks spiracles, but that tasted OK in my famished state.
For forty-five minutes I cooled my heels with the television, watching a program about the beauty of Yunnan province or somesuch, while Wuning and Guan Rui generated an array of unusual, vaguely industrial sounds from the kitchen.
Finally I was summoned into the dining room (which was also the study, pantry and entrance hallway, and about the size of a large closet). There, on a breakfast-nook sized table, was one of the most lavish feasts I have ever been presented with. Guan Rui had cooked for me, a foreigner whom he had never met, an enormous, homemade Xinjiang feast. I am not aware of what other talents Guan Rui may possess, but, brother, he can cook. He had laid on two mutton dishes, one beef and potato dish, some kind of seasoned rice, and had filled out the menu with the dumplings and chicken feet that Wuning had brought.
We broke out a round of Yanjing beers. “Cheers!” I said, as we clinked cans. Wuning gave me an alarmed look. “When you say ‘cheers’ do you have to drink the whole thing?”, he asked nervously. No, I assured him. In America, unless you were a college student, it was perfectly acceptable to take a polite sip and nurse the can. In China the toast, “gan bei!” means to drain your glass, and is often, apparently, taken literally. That must be hell when the drink of choice is the local maotai hooch. This was the first cultural exchange of what was to be a magnificent evening.
As we packed away fragrant Xinjiang delicacies, we engaged in the longest sustained Mandarin conversation I have ever had. With Wuning translating the sticky bits we spent four hours discussing sports, music, the beauty of Xinjiang, the beauty of California, Chinese history, the inability of (other) Americans to understand Chinese history, what I did for a living, and several other topics. At the beginning of the evening Guan Rui’s accent was fairly impenetrable. By the end of the evening I had an ear for it and could talk to him directly. (I was also carrying a good buzz, so this could have been an illusion.)
About three hours in, Guan Rui was overcome by a fit of hospitality and emotion (and three of Yanjing’s finest) and he sang me a “Xinjiang song of welcome” over the table. Wuning explained (and I have no independent confirmation, so I take it at face value) that this song was traditionally used to greet the annual rising of the lake in Xinjiang. I don’t know which lake, but it must be nice and they must really like it.
Well, what do you do when a guy invites you, a foreigner who barely speaks his language, into his home, cooks you an enormous feast, and, despite his modest circumstances, entertains you with incomparable hospitality and grace for several hours?
I don’t know about you, but I’m taking both Wuning and Guan Rui out for dinner this weekend, my treat.
At around midnight I politely declined an offer to crash for the night and took a taxi back to Wudaokou. Wuning and Guan Rui came down to the street to see me off, begging the girl in the elevator to stay on duty for a few more minutes so they wouldn’t have to hike back up.
It was one of the most splendid and interesting evenings I’ve ever spent, and represented everything I’d hoped to be able to do in Beijing.
Having spoken to a few other students, I don’t take Wuning and Guan Rui for granted. Many of the language exchange partners are fairly disinterested, or were dragooned into service. Wuning is a friend of one of the women who works at Worldlink. I am his second LEP, and he seems to take the role seriously and approach it with enthusiasm. I appreciate that. As for Guan Rui, well, he can cook and sing. Some girl should marry him quickly.