Couchsurfing Beijing

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Within what remains of the second ring of Beijing’s ancient Forbidden City walls built almost a millennium ago by the Mongol Kublai Khan, there lies the Olympic-funded Raffles mall complex, where I comfortably sit upon a plush sofa in the pristine third floor coffee shop with its excellent wi-fi service and amazingly good espresso, just a few Metro stops from the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and Mao’s tomb. Surrounded by H&M, Polo, Tag Heuer and hundreds of other shi-shi boutiques, the stylish twenty and thirty-something Chinese surf the knowable net- probably bypassing the Great Firewall of China with a secure VPN- as they sip their designer coffees considering what’s on sale and only occasionally glancing up from their laptops and mobiles at the incongruous TV coverage of the recent Qinghai earthquake’s ever-rising death toll.

Rainy days have been plentiful this inexplicable spring. After a week of running around the wet, neon-glossed streets of Shanghai there has been ample time to write down only a mere fraction of the infinite occurrences observed. I work imagining myself to be the first cracker in the land of roast duck, reporting everything as if for the first time. I vacillate between cobbling together these few thoughts on sensuous experiences and heading out yet again into the mishmash of puddles and people, taxis and takeout, dust and dogs. In Shanghai it was sales, commerce, shopping. I am forced to ask myself what is the best way to find out: What’s the story in Beijing, Morning Glory?

It comes to me via email: Response to your Couchsurfing Beijing Query. To those not in the know (I was one of you just a few months ago), couchsurfing is an NPO setup to facilitate a more granola form of travel between like-minded individuals. Facebook for flower children. To follow the myriad tourists who pack shoulder to shoulder into cliched cultural spots taking the same horrible digital photographs of the early morning elderly Tai Chi Chuan practitioners and the ubiquitous liveried soldiers would be, to my mind, to miss the real city. Despite that, I still find myself drawn to the dusty streets of the Sihuan market, circumnavigating the statuesque fisherman using 18 foot long poles on Xihao lake the south of which I dart in and out of the the small Hutong alleyways of Xisi taking photos of old men chain-smoking Double Happinesses in their black Mao hats amidst massive construction. To balance this internal fight I’ve struck a deal with myself: Day on, day off. Hostel, couchsurf. Today is no day for sightseeing and wi-fi-ing in coffee bars, rather taking care of business, getting things done, starting the ball rolling, that is to say, more than merely watching and regurgitating what the world already knows the Chinese do everyday, moreover to take part in their interior lives.

“Meet in front of post office!” She had written excitedly in her email. The rain, having washed everything a similar shade of gray, makes finding the official colors of the office- a subdued forest green with brownish-orange stripes- nearly impossible to see in a city of more than twenty million people racing about on foot, bicycle, and riding double on noiseless electric scooters. The cult of the taxi being king, they fear no man, vehicle nor police cruiser. Thousands of the five to seven-year old midsize Hyundai and VW doubles rule the road, honking in the manner of amyl nitrite-addled geese as they fly through the wind-blown Gobi desert dust filled puddles, scattering pedestrian in the packed crosswalks like so many meaningless clouds.

“Call me Sunny.” the woman in shock bright yellow raincoat says reaching for my hand as we step off the sidewalk in front of the post office, narrowly missing a massive pothole puddle of brown Beijing rainwater. I extend my hand, which rather than shake, she grabs, using her surprisingly considerable strength to pull me out of the path of an oncoming delivery truck, the driver mouthing some Mandarin curse while leaning his commodious weight on the horn at me.

“You need take care. Chinese cars no stop. What about Japan?”

“Similar but better. I think taxis are bad everywhere though.”

“Yes, this is world truth. You eat lots of delicious Chinese food? Watch your body!” She’s barely five feet tall and still she pulls me along like a ragdoll, darting out of the way of the oncoming armada of electric-powered Honda scooter lookalikes stalking road with ninja-like silence, beeping their Casio toy keyboard out-of-tune G note horns only at the last moment.

“Jeez, thanks. Yeah, I’m eating a lot, but looking forward to some local farmer’s market and street stall food…Man, this street is wide!”

“No problem with food. My mama cook tonight. This here street big one Russian style road from 70s, big in China. Chinese like big road, big skyscraper, even big earthquake…Come now, quick!”

Tell people that you’re surfing the couches of random Chinese locals “met” through the massive online community- despite commentary boasting of enlightening, faith-restoring encounters with strangers- you generally get responses ranging from, “You actually do that?” and “Has anyone ever tried to feed you dog?” to “Ever think they’ll try to chop you up into tiny pieces while you sleep?” Prior to actually meeting my first contact, all I wondered was if this was some sort of thinly-disguised service for swingers I had unwittingly signed up for. Despite being extremely cautious in online dealings with strangers of the opposite sex, the thought, if it were even only occasionally true, didn’t strike me as extremely disagreeable. Seeing a few “Couples seeking to host like-minded couples” posts cemented it for me: sign me up.

The truth, though not as romantic, is anything but the new millennium’s seductive online equivalent to the onetime Malibu nudist retreat at Sandstone. Rather, it is a genuine community of like-minded strangers who, through their Couchsurfing.org profiles, offer to host random travelers, as well as look to be hosted by others should the chance ever arise. Sunny’s profile reads like she speaks: in quiet, generally upbeat, run-ons of surprisingly fluent English, and always ending in exclamatory bursts, much like the hard-to-understand machine gun Mandarin she uses with her husband and in-laws in between telling me about her job as a clinical drug researcher.

“Of course I can’t tell my co-workers I have PhD, then they cause trouble for me. My company is state-owned pharmaceutical company, so no one works too hard, or else! I had to learn Chinese traditional medicine before western techniques at school, so maybe I can work for private company in future, I hope…Here, you eat!”

We eat rigorously and without much talk as the 47-inch Philips flat screen blares on about the recent 6.9 earthquake in Qinghai in the background. Sunny’s husband flips through the channels, all sixty of them exactly the same, as the family fishes in a blur of chopsticks through the five dishes placed in the center of the coffee table. Thinking it somewhat rude to ask exactly what we were eating- still not having gotten that in China, nothing is really rude- I keep quiet, chomping on spicy marinated cucumber, boiled bok choy, the stir-fried bamboo root, all the while regarding the quickly-disappearing steamed dumplings with obvious lust. Finally giving in and putting one in my watering mouth, chomping down as brown juice disappears into my beard, Sunny spouts, “You like some yummy Jiaozi? They are mama’s homemade, have do…do…how you say, strange animal, big ears, make weird sound? Something start with D…go like Reee-raaaaw! Reee-raaaw!”

Donkey Dumplings in Beijing

“Not…ummm..horse? Donkey?” Chew. Swallow. Gulp.

“Donkey! Yes, Donkey. Very tasty. I don’t like meat so much, mama and papa too old to eat much, but you can eat all!”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.”

The family bolts their food, drinks the last gulps of grape kool-aid flavored red wine and as the dishes disappear into the kitchen, Sunny turns to me, “Chinese eat so quickly, so we can enjoy leisure time. But now nothing but earthquake on TV. Government no want us to have entertainment, we should mourn with entire country, on every channel. We will play cards instead. You can go to bed, too much Mandarin for you I think.”

Rather than the plush L-shaped six-seater couch in the living room, I am shown the futon that is to have my name on it in the spare room of the couple’s track style house nestled in a gated community at the far end of Line Two Metro on the outer ring of Beijing. Yet before retiring I pop out for a walk around the neighborhood in the still chilly early spring night. Glancing up I espy a few straggling stars, invisible in the town center, trying their best to shine through the hazy low-lying pollution of factory clouds, trying their best to be visible for the billion plus who will make it through yet another day of tourist toting tour buses lining the lanes of Great Wall parking lots, another day of the taxis waiting impatiently outside the Temple of Heaven packed to its divine edges, and another day of all the markets and all the fishermen, all the street-leaning locals and curbside grannies, all the electro-Vespas and faux-merch touts going about their business. The pious will ply the flow of Tai chi energy with graceful movements that even film cannot capture. The soldiers in Tiananmen square will raise the five star flag from half-mast come rain or shine. Despite today’s losses, tomorrow will be another day.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 14:54. It is filed under China and tagged with Beijing, Couchsurfing, Death by Taxi, Donkey Dumplings, forbidden city, Hutong, Jiaozi, roast duck, streets of shanghai, tai chi chuan, tiananmen square. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.