China Reflection

“Are you retired already?”  Fat Man asks me with a smile on his face.

“How old are you?”  Thin Man asks, not waiting for my reply.

I tell them my age.  29 years old this year.  My birthday is the day after Christmas, the same as Chairman Mao’s.  I’m not retired yet.  Still working.

“Go ahead and play a little bit,” Fat Man reaches out his hand and offers me his ping-pong paddle and ball and motions with a nod of his head to the blue ping-pong table that sits out in the open under this Beijing morning’s equally blue sky.  No one is using the table yet.  It sits silently atop carefully designed cobblestones and sidewalk bricks of concrete.  A thin layer of Beijing nightdust still covers the table’s surface.  Usually if people play ping-pong, the dust is knocked off little by little with each bounce of the ball on the table.  A fence surrounds the ping-pong table to one side.  On the other side of the fence, clusters of bamboo trees shoot up, reaching over and through the fence, cutting off the sound of the morning rush hour so that the area is relatively peaceful.

“No thanks, I can’t really play that well.  You guys go ahead, ” I say.

“Don’t worry about it,” Fat Man says with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You make about 3 or 4 thousand dollars per month?” Thin Man asks me.

“No, only about 3 thousand RMB per month,” I say.

“You’re wife is from America, right?” Thin Man continues.

I tell him I’m not yet married.  He laughs and suggest I find a Chinese wife.

“Your president…what’s his name…Ahhh ba ma?” Fat Man begins.

“Oh bama,” Thin Man corrects him.

“Oh bama, yes.  He’s a black man, right?”

“That’s right,” I say.

“Well, he’s not a true black,” Thin Man cuts in. “He’s mixed race.  His mother was white.” 

Fat Man motions towards the table once more with his paddle seeing if I want to play again.  I shake my head, looking at my watch.

“What time do you have to work?  We’re already retired,” Fat Man says.

“9:00.  I want to jump rope for a few minutes first.”

Fat Man nods his head and lets me know I can play anytime if I want to.  He walks with a slight limp back to the ping-pong table.  He and Thin Man begin to play, knocking the dust off the table with each bounce of the ball.  I turn around and pull my jump rope out of my sweatsuit pocket.  It’s got a built-in counter that calculates the number of jumps I complete.  I decide to jump 300 times for the first round.  Fat Man and Thin Man play ping-pong off to my left.  On my right side are other outdoor exercise devices and equipment.  To the far right there is a device I call the airwalker.  It consists of two small swings that you put your feet in to give the user the feeling as if he is walking on air.  Everytime I use this machine, I feel a little dizzy after dismounting because it disorients my spatial awareness.  Next to the airwalker are two pieces of equipment used for doing sit-ups.  The piece of equipment closest to me is used for stretching one’s legs and back.  After I finish my first 300 jumps, I use this device and the sit-up device for a few minutes.  When the world is upside-down, Newspaper Lady arrives to do her morning stretches.  She always brings an newspaper page to set her belongings onto when she does her stretches.  She puts both arms into the air, straight out above her, her palms displayed like a peacock’s tailfeathers.  She arches her back as far as it will go without falling down.  I finish my sit-ups and go back to the jump rope.  Another 300 to go.

My heart beating in my chest, and calves aching, I stuff my rope into my pocket ready to leave.  Fat Man and Thin Man have stopped to talk for a minute.  An older gentleman, about 70 years old, walks over to play a few rounds of ping-pong.  Thin Man gives him his paddle.

“Want to play?  Come on, play a bit,” Fat Man asks me again.  I look at my watch.  I can spare a few minutes.  It’s still early.  Fat Man motions towards Thin Man’s side of the table.  He hasn’t seen the old man arrive.  Thin Man has already given the old man his paddle.  Fat Man turns around and hesitates for a moment when he sees the old man standing ready to play where his friend, Thin Man, once stood.  He gives me his paddle so I can play with the old man.  As we play, together, Fat Man and Thin Man watch.

“Looks like he’s played before,” Thin Man remarks.

“How much does it cost to have a baby in America?  It’s free right?”  Fat Man asks.  I can’t give him a proper price for how much it costs to give birth in the U.S., so I just tell him I’m not sure.

“Nah.  Can’t be free,” Thin Man says.  “Look at him play.  Not too bad.”

The old man never says a word.  At first I want to take it easy on him, but then I realize that he has absolutel no problem returning my strokes.  I just play as I would against anyone.

“You guys retire at 30.  We have to wait until we’re 60,”  Fat Man says.

“Well, not exactly,” I say.  “Nowadays people in the States just lose their jobs at 30,” I say.

“Ha.  The economic crisis huh?  Problem all over the world.  You know, I heard that they’re not going to use dollars as the world’s currency anymore.  Maybe it’ll all be in Euro or RMB sometime in the future,” Fat Man says.

“Maybe.”

Thin Man pipes in, “How much money do they give for unemployment anyway in the U.S.?”  This is another question I can’t give an exact answer for.  The ball bounces off near one of the bamboo trees; I scramble to retrieve it while the old man waits for me to return. 

Fat Man pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers one to me.

“America grows a lot of tobacco, right?  Huge fields of it.  I saw that once on tv,” he says.  I tell him that I don’t smoke but that he’s right.  I’m from Virginia, and this is a topic I can address with relative certainty.  Looking at my watch once more, I see that it’s about time to go.  I give Fat Man back his cigarette and shake the old man’s hand.  As I leave, I overhear the old man speak for the first time as he walks towards Fat Man.

“Where’s that foreigner from?” the old man asks.

The hairs in my nostrils are frozen and hard.  Once again I’m on my way to the diabolo grounds^W.  It’s a Friday, so I don’t have to work in the afternoon.  When I took my job with the travel service that I work with I asked my boss if I could have Friday afternoons off in order to practice the accordian and play diabolo.  He had no problem with this condition.  Needless to say, he is a very flexible man and I’m ever grateful to him for this flexibility. 

The wind is blowing hard today, daring me not to go outside.  As I make my way to the metro station I wonder if I should return home and snuggle up in my tiny hole of a room.  No, I don’t want to let those guys down, I think to myself.  They’re probably all there expecting me:  The Entertainer, Marlborough Man, the Smooth Scholar, etc.  The diabolo circus waits for no one, especially not in the dead of Winter.  I look up at the sky.  The blue is slightly tinted with yellow, evidence of some residue from the sands of Mongolia being blown into Beijing.  Every year the desert and sand get closer and closer to Beijing.  Despite the government’s attempts to barricade Beijing with a wall of trees in Inner Mongolia^W, each year the city is pelted with sand and dust from the Northwest.  If I spend too much time outdoors on days like this one, I can expect sore throats the next morning.  It’s been nearly 100 days since the city has seen any precipitation;  not one drop.

I take the metro to the park, exit the station, and head towards the diabolo grounds, my ears expecting to hear the buzzing and humming sound that the diabolo makes as it spins round and round.  The only sound I hear on this frigid, gusty day is the sound of the wind and dust swirling.  Winter has had another joke on me today.  In order to make the most out of my trip here, I decide to take a walk in the park.  At least I can get a little exercise while I’m here.  I walk the path for about ten minutes heading East, and then I turn back around heading back to the metro station.  I arrived a little bit early today, so perhaps some of my diabolo friends are there now. 

As I near the diabolo grounds, my heart lifts at the sight of The Entertainer.  His back is turned to me, and so he doesn’t see me yet.  He is just turning to leave the grounds, as he is the only one there.  He is outside of earshot, but I yell at him as loud as I can, hoping that his 74 year old ears can hear my voice.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!” I yell at him at the top of my lungs.  He mounts his bicycle and rides it slowly in the other direction, not turning around once to look in my direction.  He must be wearing earmuffs, I think to myself.  Or maybe it’s his age.  I don’t know.  He pedals his bicycle away from me ever so slowly, but still at a swifter speed than I am walking.  I think to myself, if I don’t at least talk with him, then I’ve wasted an entire trip out here.  I”ve got to get him.

I’m not wearing exercise shoes on this day, and my toes are freezing.  The previous night I discovered that my shoes I wear everyday had two large holes in their soles.  I was standing in my bathroom after taking a shower, and there was a shallow pool of water on the floor.  I noticed that the water was seeping into my shoes from the bottom up.  Jesus…I just bought these things 3 months ago.  Cursing the inferior Chinese quality of my exercise shoes, I grab my briefcase in both hands, and begin to chase The Entertainer as he pedals away.

The Entertainer has gained some distance on me, and I find running in this wind more difficult than I thought it would be.  He rounds the bend that leads to an exit from the park.  As the exit of the park is on a slight downhill, he gains even more speed and distance.  He’s going to lose me.  I’m going to go home with nothing for this outing.  I huff and puff my way up the small hill and then down the slope, exiting the park.  He’s in my sights again, as he slows down a bit to make a right turn.  His speed slows down as he nears a traffic light.  Within earshot once more, I decide to yell out after him again.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!  Over here!”  No luck.  Those earmuffs must be cutting off all sound.

I pour on the speed, inching closer and closer towards him.  When he’s within an arm’s reach, he finally turns his head.  Sure enough he’s wearing army colored earmuffs.  His eyes light up, and his mouth spreads into the smile that I know so well.

“Hey!  What the heck are you doing here?  It’s so cold!  Let’s talk for a couple of minutes.”  He gets off his bicycle and immediately gives me a big bear hug, laughing as he does so.

We talk for a couple of minutes, and he asks me to give a phone call to another member of the diabolo gang, one of the few women who usually comes to the park to join in with the men.  Like a giddy schoolboy, he gives me her phone number and dances around from foot to foot to keep warm as the phone rings.

“Don’t tell her I gave you her number,” he says, “if she asks, just tell her she gave it to you before, but forgot….hee hee hee!”

After a few rings, she answers the phone.

“Hello, auntie?” I say. (It’s polite to call an older woman “auntie” in China).

“Jeffrey?  What are you doing outside on this day?  Your mother would be angry with you.  It’s too cold!  You’ll get carried away from the wind.  We all decided yesterday that we wouldn’t come today because of the weather.  Get back home!  Put some clothes on!  Drink some soup!”  The Entertainer is dancing around with a big smile on his face like a little old leprechaun doing a jig.  He indicates silently to me that I’m not to disclose the fact that he’s here.

After talking with the auntie for a few minutes, The Entertainer and I have a little chat.  In the middle of the chat, he hugs me again, picking me up off the ground as some young Chinese pass by.  Sometimes I cannot believe that he’s 74 years old.

“You know we have a new president now, Obama?” I tell him.  I’m not sure if he watches the news or not.  I myself watched the inauguration in a bar that was televising the event.  The bar was filled with foreigners and Chinese.  I talked with a Canadian girl of my age during that evening.  She expressed to me that she wanted to hug me just for “being American.”  I thought to myself, I haven’t changed…I’m still the same Jeffrey that I was when we had that other guy in office.  Still, if people want to hug now, all the better.

The Entertainer nods and says he knows about Obama.  He tells me he saw that Obama signed the order for the closure of Guantanamo and other overseas prisons.  He tells me that we all “want peace.”  This wish is something that I hear from him often.  We talk about Obama and our hopes for him.  I reflect on the fact that it was only a little more than 200 years before that we had slaves in America, and how it’s a big breakthrough to have our first black president.

“You know, there used to be slaves in Tibet before Mao Ze Dong freed them.  People used to have to bow down to the Llama.  But Mao set them free.  The thing about Mao is that he didn’t believe in any God, or any devil.  At that time we just believed in Marxism,” he says.  The Entertainer has a real respect for Mao.  He continues and tells me that there didn’t used to be so much corruption in China during Mao’s time.  “We were all poor then, ” he says, “it was all equal.”  According to him, things started to go awry after Deng Xiao Ping opened up China’s economy in the 1980s.  “That’s when the big noses started coming into China,” he says with a wink (he ofen jokingly refers to me as a “big nose”).  I just nod my head, laugh, and listen to his view of history and the world.  We don’t usually talk about politics, but today is a different sort of day.  Our topics change with the wind.  He tells me a bit about his family.  His son used to live in Romania (something I never knew), but now only makes 1000 RMB per month (less than 200 dollars), with a wife and child to take care of.   He asks me about my family and says he wants to meet my parents when they come to China. 

When our feet get too cold to stand there anymore, we begin to say our farewells.  He hugs me once more (good things always come in threes).  It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve really had such an indepth conversation with The Entertainer.  Usually we just joke around and play with diabolos and whips.  These things take time and concentration.  Good conversations usually just take time.  I feel inspired by his curiousity and innocence.  Never shy to ask questions, I’m always happy to answer whatever he wants to know:

“Do ‘thumbs up’ mean the same thing in America?  What about laughing…do you also say ‘hee hee hee,’ or does it sound different?  Why do people in the Middle East fight so much?” 

As we wind down our conversation, he sits on his bicycle and I head to the station.  I run towards the metro in order to heat up my toes.  My feet sting as they pound the pavement.  I know I made the right decision in coming here today.  Before I plunge into the metro,  I take  one more look back at my friend as he pedals effortlessly in the other direction.   The wind pushes me down the staircase towards the metro.  Sometimes all that it takes to make life worth living is a good conversation.