Adventures in Guangzhou!

So I was somewhat inspired to write when my roommate and I were walking around one of the central business districts in downtown Guangzhou. We were headed from a restaurant to a bar in an area that happens to have arguably the nicest five-star hotel around. As such, this stretch of road has a number of western restaurants that cater to the high class business crowd and the small number of foreign English speakers.

Nick and I had just finished a highly anticipated meal at a place creatively named, "The Mexican Restaurant," which happens to be located right above "The Italian Restaurant." It was my first time eating at this Guangzhou institution and I could not have been more disappointed. Other than the tasty Mexican food I had in Hong Kong a couple weeks ago, this was the only Mexican food I'd had in over a year and a half.

The problem, we decided, was that expectations were simply too high. When you order western food at a restaurant in China, it is almost never what you wanted or expected, simply because they have no idea how to prepare it. I assume it's much like Chinese folks getting Chinese food in America--it's just never right. But you're usually prepared for the pizza to be crappy at a place called, "Western Food King." When you get a burrito at a place that bills itself as specializing in Mexican cuisine, you don't expect to find carrot, cucumber, or ketchup inside (not to mention the lack of salsa or real guacamole). I almost cried, but I digress.

On our way to drown our sorrows at one of the local joints that serves as a close approximation of a sports bar, we were forced to cross a well traveled pedestrian footbridge. Walking across as I've done many times, Nick and I were talking about how ridiculous it was for several reasons. Just to clarify, this is a footbridge in one of the nicest, richest, most highly traveled areas of the cities (at least where foreigners are concerned):

1) At both ends of the bridge, there are usually a handful of policemen standing or sitting around. What I can't quite figure out is, what are they doing there? The bridge is one of the few guaranteed locations where you can always find street vendors peddling black market DVD's, necklaces, CD's, and watches. It just makes me laugh that the guys with the merchandise are in direct view of the cops but neither side ever seems to acknowledge the other.

2) If you want to buy drugs in Guangzhou, this is the place to do it. It perpetuates a sad stereotype, but there are always, and I mean always, a couple of African guys that try to sell hash to every white person that walks by. They're not too subtle about it either, generally shouting things like, "I've got great stuff here!" or "Hashish? You looking to buy??" Again, in full view of the police just laughing and joking around.

3) Given the expensive restaurants, bars, and hotels in the area, it's not surprising that there are a lot of people with money walking around. For this reason, the bridge is also guaranteed to have swarms of homeless migrants begging for money. This would be okay if they just sat on the side with a bowl out like most do; unfortunately, they've found that the most effective way of getting money is to send their 3 and 4 year old children to run after people, tugging on their clothes with one hand and holding a plastic bowl in another. Not only is it sad that parents use their kids in this way, it's also extremely intrusive and rude. What I realized the other day is that I am completely desensitized to the whole thing. Instead of ignoring them, I now pretend that the bridge is a football field where I'm running the gauntlet to pass the little kids, throwing fakes this way and that, even using oncoming foot traffic as blockers. The parents seem to find this funny though, so I guess we all win.

4) Again, due to the money and foreigners around, this is also the place to go to pick up a prostitute. You can always pick them out even before they say anything because they generally stand in groups putting on makeup and always have on really trashy high heels (I guess some things are universal). No matter how many times I've been asked, I always feel really awkward. Part of it is that they never have good English skills and always end up propositioning me with something like, "You like massage?" with massage pronounced "ma-sa-jee." I usually just start laughing awkwardly, whereas Nick has adopted the strategy of just awkwardly shouting an incoherent, "aaaaaaaaaaah" before they can even spit out the three words. We make a great team.

So all in all, the bridge is always an adventure. Just picture walking up the stairs past the watch guys and the hookers, only to start running past the homeless kids using the drug dealers as blockers and hurdling over the pirated DVDs, juking at the last second to avoid running into the police. Gotta love it...

In other news, January officially represents The Mustache Challenge of '07, when starting back on January 1, Nick and I both decided to cultivate our facial hair and see what sort of 'stache we could grow. The mustache contest is actually quite common, as I'm coming to learn, and people generally find it to be pretty funny. Now, I'm not quite sure when the mustache abandoned pop culture for younger people, but it was probably back when I was starting to learn how to read. Ever since, it's been more of a joke than anything, at least up in New England. It looks fine on most older people, but the younger you are, the more questionable it is.

And this is why, of course, we decided to do it. Being in China, everyone looks at us strangely to begin with, simply due to the color of our skin. Since I will most likely never do it again, this seemed to be a golden opportunity. Having grown facial hair last year for the first time, I was anticipating an awkward, itchy stage, only to be pleasantly surprised. Sure, it looked dumb, but it didn't itch like having a beard did.

We were both curious to see what our students would say and it actually took them almost two weeks to say anything. I mean, all white people look alike, right? The first kids to say anything were actually former students of mine from last year. I passed by two of my favorite boys who said, "hey, you have the..." not knowing the word for mustache. I asked them what they thought and they both said, "it's very handsome and manly." This response was expected, as Chinese guys have a tough time growing any serious facial hair beyond the one or two frighteningly long mole hairs. Next day I saw one of my female students from last year who also noted the addition above my upper lip. When I asked her what she thought, she said "it looks very bad." Hmmm. Well, at least she's honest. My favorite response though so far comes from a current student who looked at me as I walked through the door and questioned in disgust, "What happened to your face??" Classic.