Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

Another Harmonious Day in Socialist China
Part 3 of 3

The REAL Reason – Chinese Culture

As promised here and here, this is the reason I was ranting for the last few days. I wanted to bitch about the two-faced way the Chinese approach their culture. There have been a number of incidents lately which have pissed me off and I need to get them off my chest. The worst, by a long shot, was what I title “Drunken Instant Friend Wants Free Xiao Jie.”

So, let’s set the scene and introduce the players. My Laowai buddy and I decide to go take in a local seafood restaurant, in the company of a girl I am pursuing who is a local KTV Xiao Jie boss. She has large breasts, similar working hours to mine and works across the road from my home – so she is convenient. The girl, let’s call her Xiao Nao, decides to go pick up a Xiao Jie from her work for my buddy. Unfortunately my buddy is HUGE (tall and broad), and this puts the other girl off. “He’ll tear me in half if we make love” she nervously whispers to Xiao Nao. So Xiao Nao walks out with her to see her off. Unfortunately, on her return she is spotted by someone. Enter Local Drunk Fuckwit (LDF). Oh yes, he frequents her KTV, so he knows her well. He has been slapped off her hundreds of times but that won’t stop him from trying again today. She plays some mild wu shu games keeping him at bay, until he sees who she is dining with. “OMG! Laowai! Oh hello, hello. (Everything said by the Chinese in this story was in Mandarin; I am just translating to make the account smoother.) OMG. Laowai. There aren’t many Laowai in this city, who are they?”
Xiao Nao replies: “This is my Australian friend, and this is his American friend.”
LDF: “OMG, what a wonderful opportunity for me. Two different countries. Hello hello, I want to be your brother.”
Insert a few mild variations along the lines of “Oh, I want to drink with you, order up some beers on their account huh?” which we do to keep him quiet, and “Bottoms up brothers”. She has to go to work, I was supposed to accompany her to such (it was going to be a quiet night there), but LDF has delayed our repast and so we choose to actually consume. LDF continues to repeat his limited conversation.

So, we manage to sate our food appetites and now he is supposed to guide us to her KTV. After going around in ever decreasing circles for a while, he decides on a route and we head off for the 80m walk. Sigh. We get there, and come in; my girl is waiting for us and has found us a room tucked away in a corner where we will get the least interference – except that LDF has come along for the ride. I hold off on ordering beer, I don’t wish to encourage his presence. I try and talk with my girl – the whole purpose of this evening – and LDF constantly interrupts us. Most of the interruptions are concerning the fact that we are in a KTV and Chinese culture demands I provide him with a Xiao Jie because he is my brother. Really? Sometimes the people I am with at a KTV will provide me with a Xiao Jie, but it is the exception – not the rule – and every time it has occurred we have been out KTVing many times and I haven’t told their wives, mistresses or GFs about their exploits. Let alone I have just met this retard, he is smashed, and is the one declaring we are brothers – I have no desire to make the acquaintance of a useless walking phlegm-generator who keeps trying to fondle the girl I am telling him is my girlfriend and who has, on one occasion so far, kneed him in the groin to make her message understood. I explain that we are not buying Xiao Jie tonight; my buddy doesn’t want one and neither do I. My buddy and I are beginning to despair; it seems pretty obvious that this leech won’t let go unless we put some salt on it. So, I start being rude and angry at his behaviour, asking if this is the way civilized Chinese people should act etcetera ad nauseum. He seems to get the general idea we want him to fuck off, and indeed he sadly does. Hoo fucking ray.

He then proceeds to pester every room in the KTV; but the inhabitants aren’t as polite and retiring as I am – we hear angry shouting punctuating his journey. Miraculously, Baccus is watching over him, and no-one actually socks him one – a shame really, maybe he might learn from the experience. In the meantime, we have ordered beer and I have been able to start getting to know my girl. My buddy is happy, when my girl darts off from time to time we have a chuckle about LDF, and we have COLD beer – god bless Xiao Nao’s little plastic socks.

Xiao Nao returns, we settle down, and the door opens again: LDF has returned. We have put a fair dent into the box of beer by this stage, so we don’t get instantly annoyed, just resigned. But no! LDF has friends he wants us to drink with – a small light has appeared in the tunnel of fate and I leap on it. “I can’t go, I want to chat with my girl, but my buddy will come with you.” LDF is delighted – a chance to gain face by showing off his new brother to his buddies. My buddy graciously disappears to save the day for me. Wonderful. My girl and I REALLY get acquainted now we have the room to ourselves, and then I get several phone calls. One is from Ar Yu, a local who has wanted me to bang his missus-of-the-moment while he watches (they are never pleased about this so I decline his insistent offers rather than get tied up in something I am sure will be called rape), but he’s friendly enough so I reluctantly say “sure, come and join me” because both my girl and I know him. Unfortunately a wrong move, because when I hang up she immediately tells me “He is a bad man.” Message arrives on phone: “Come join us, this is FUN!” from my laowai buddy. Great – saved the day.

Ar Yu turns up with a male friend (no mention of this previously of course), we rapidly drink the remaining beers and he tries to order another box on my account. I tell him, “No sorry, my American friend wants me to join him.” He sadly understands, and is forced to leave without having been able to strip me of my salary in one session. He managed to do that a few weeks later by catching me while I was in a nightclub and ordering away before I spotted what he was up to. He even tried to order a 16,000 RMB bottle of Cognac on my account. Fortunately the girls at the Xiao Jie conversation bar know me, aren’t that stupid, and most have, at a minimum, licked my tonsils; so they ask me for confirmation of the order. Fuck me – what an asshole.
Anyway, Xiao Nao takes me down to the room, a large VIP room, filled with elderly Chinese gentlemen and their young “little wives” (as the girls introduced themselves as). How cute, official mistresses. We see LDF trying to fondle a Xiao Jie in the front of the room, she doesn’t like it, and walks off, so he goes to select another. The look on my face says it all, the gentleman I am sitting next to tells me: “He is normally a good man, just today he is drunk.” I find this hard to believe, but take it as gospel because these other fellows are nice and are our new hosts.

I drink to excess by doing a one-on-one bottoms up with the whole room because the second message from my buddy during Ar Yu’s visit was delivered in person which was “Hurry up man, I can’t drink enough to satisfy these guys!” and my buddy is a big drinker. However, I was guessing it was one-on-one’s against a large group – pretty standard cheating practice from Chinese. I was right, so I gave them all another 3 quick rounds which saw the men starting to show signs of bloat – so my buddy was safe for at least half an hour.

So, now that drinking is impossible unless they want to lose face, its time for dancing. None of these guys can, or want to, dance, but they DO want us to dance sexy with their mistresses. No problem, I’ll have a rhythmic bump and grind with your babe, with a grope in the name of good fun. Our new friends are delighted, we exchange phone numbers, promises of doing business together and call it a night.

The only other such incident of note is being invited by others to a KTV and then handed the bill at the end of the night because it turns out that all the others work there. That was a clever trick, but I refused to pay the girl because she had given me no service. Sat there dour as a brick, wouldn’t talk with me, play dice with me, pour my drinks or light my cigarette – very put out they had given her to the first Laowai the place had ever seen. I explained this to my friend after she left empty handed, and he was forced to agree they had given me a very sub-standard girl. It all worked out ok in the end; they have invited me to play in other KTVs on other nights – at their expense. On the night in question I was invited to many other rooms to drink with the inhabitants until the boss recalled me, so I drank a crapload and paid for little – so it wasn’t too bad a sting.

Chinese culture? Don’t wash for three weeks and look in your armpit – what you find there can easily be passed off as Chinese culture.

– DaBizzare