Notes on being in Beijing

It’s not the third day, it’s the third entry. My intention was to write daily, but I find my powers of comprehension and articulation diluted in an imprecise mix of everything: sight, sound, smell and the fatigue of incorporating it all. This is not a new theme, but finding one has proven difficult. The things I do yield to the things I feel, and the retelling of it becomes all tone and no content. I blame my memory.

So I have a notebook, and sometimes I write in it. Here are a couple of the last excerpts.

The city is big, teeming, growing, and the pain of that growth smells. The stench is not optimistic. It originates in the exhaustion of the civil body as it overgrows itself. The trash, the dust of demolition, the over-quick entropy of poor workmanship.

I like that I haven’t seen many tourist sites here. I had my fill of them from my travels in Europe. They generally dissatisfy me because they offer little insight into present-day society or its tone and personality. And I guess I’m no historian.

It turns out that I haven’t been exposed to much intimate contact with Chinese people because nearly all of Adam’s friends are expats. It’s difficult to break into Chinese circles because foreigners carry their difference around on their faces and in the color of their hair, eyes, and skin. Marginalization based on physiognomy. Novel. People stare at Adam and me as if we’re novelties. The novelty here is based not on reputation as a westerner, as in Russia/Ukraine, but on sight. It gives me a sense of invisibility because I have the authoritative mix of anonymity and novelty that allows me to remain a superficial interest for natives who will excuse whatever excesses I exhibit as simple Western decadence.

For example, Adam and I decided to have our chests waxed to rid ourselves of that ubiquitous Western bush, the simultaneous sign of manhood and aging. The cost for deforestation per chest: $12. The woman performing the waxing said she’d never seen such abundant chest hair before and as a result made this comment: “I’m just doing this by ear.” In retrospect, I can’t blame her inexperience with foreign chests for the excruciating pain, but at the time I thought she must have been doing something wrong, otherwise why would I volunteer and pay (a fantastic, almost self-justifying price) for that masochistic rite? As Adam put it, “second to second the waxing was the most pain I’ve ever experienced.” And he’s passed a kidney stone. Now my chest is covered in red, pussy pustules where a monument to Western genetics once stood, arrogant and unperturbed. All of it—the pain, the yells, the hand squeezing, the deep breaths, the nervous laughter, the temporary celebrity, the weak thumbs ups, the after-sting—was way too much fun.



2006.08.14