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Foggy Mountain Stories

Normally the only person who can wear his spectacles askew is a man who has arrived and is respected and predominant in his position. Tonight, this was not the case. Tonight, spectacles askew were much in vogue due to the copious amounts of alcohol consumed by some great business leaders assembled from around China and the world. Qingdao, Guangzhou and Lanzhou were present from China. Mongolia, Canada, Armenia, Russia, Sudan, Mongolia and Switzerland were represented from around the world and others I can't remember had all spent great amounts of money and time to come drink alcohol together as a sign of their friendship. The symbolicness of it all was lost on me as I tended to equate business with sober minded individuals coming together in efforts to increase productivity, profit and prosperity. Silly me. I was in China and the dragon of the east, the up and coming world power, the Asian Tiger, the GDP monster would prefer to due business through the medium of wine and strong liquor.

By strong liquor, I mean rice wine that runs at 60-70% and puts vodka, whiskey and cognac to shame. Shots of this liquor are taken as a sign of friendship and cooperation. When there are forty people in the room, such as tonight, commitment to friendship takes on a whole new level. I, however, preferred the tea. Tea made from pretty white flowers that decorate the glass like a ornamental vase you see in some back street shop in China town. You're compelled to buy it because is appears mysterious and elegant and brooding all at the same time. You really want to take it home although you have no place to put it or use for it. But there it sits with all of its hidden symbolism from thousands of years of history and it pulls you in.

You envision romantic places that capture your imagination like a small child staring into a kaleidescope. The colors dance and create world that last for two seconds if they ever lasted at all. In this vase, you see mountains covered in a dense, rolling fog that is sure to shroud panda bears and dragons. It creates a world that lasts for two seconds if it ever lasted at all. But that's not the point right now because we don't want to think about what is. We want to think about what could be. Not in a sense that we should find out, but in the sense that we'd like to think that we would find out if we could. After all, we're all jealous of Marco Polo. We'd all like to think we would go barnstorming around some foreign continent like the explorers of old. In our youth and in our dreams, we brandish swords against native tribes, claim lands in the name of majestic monarchs and name mountains after our friends. In our older age and in our reality, we brandish business cards to foreign peoples, claim profit in the name of development and
name companies after grandiose ideals. We sit back and bemoan the fact that our world is shrinking and have no more lands to discover or new people to meet yet drive our air-conditioned BMWs hoping to get a glance from an envious passerby only we can ignore it as if we didn't care. After all, who wouldn't pay tens of thousands of dollars to have a good reason to ignore people? I have a sneaking suspicion that Marco Polo walked around Ancient China much differently than he walked around Venice. Did he perhaps lift his head a bit higher? Did his uniqueness give him an air or pretention that only comes when one is a favored minority like a lone chocolate chip cookie on a plate of zucchini? I think so. I think he walked around pretending to ignore the curious stares although he would notice when they didn't stare. It would make him feel bad. It would make him feel lonely. It would make him turn his head down to sip his tea as if he didn't notice that the one person didn't notice his uniqueness. He would drink his tea because he would be able to divert his eyes and give a few seconds of reflection. It was the tea that saved him.

It was the tea that saved me. That and an Armenian friend who also preferred the tea to any form of alcohol. We sipped our tea and took shots of it as if it were our only hope of survival from a drunken festival in a foreign land which is exactly what it was. We sipped our tea to toasts while our friends took shots of strong liquor. We sipped our tea while our friends drank red wine from a shot glass. We sipped our tea while the rest of the room disinegrated around us. It was a good feeling albeit strange. The only feeling I can liken it to is being a flea on a lion's back in a gladiator ring. The rest of the world is going to pot around and while you're along for the ride, thankfully you're not a part of the proceedings and can just sit back and enjoy the show. I dare say that the little creatures of the animal kingdom have enjoyed some of the greater spectacles in this world. Like the bird who was simply enjoying the cool ocean air off the coast of Nagasaki one summer morning in 1945. Or the frightened rabbit who watched the Battle of Hastings from a bush in the nearby thicket. I must say it would be an extraordinary feeling to witness such a monumentous event and then hop away in search of a carrot or fresh raspberry. Such a lovely detached feeling from all the chaos around you in which men die, countries are formed and tomes written is priceless.

I was able to get a glimpse of that feeling tonight as my time here is short, my attention span shorter and my toasts the shortest of them all. After all, toasting with tea only generates confusion and allows for quick getaways. Perhaps it is a tactic I shall remember for the future and save myself a lot of trouble. A tactic that would have served Bonnie & Clyde well. But the getaway finally came two hours later. Two hours of unidentifiable food which one dish reminded me of fried lobster legs. Not the complete leg either but the part between the body and first joint. The flat part with no meat or use for us consumers. I'm sure the Native Americans would have found a use for it as they were able to find a use for every part of the buffalo but tonight, I was not a Native American. Tonight, I was an American watching a table of food spin in front of me while I tried to snag the least ubiquitous parts with my chopsticks.

I suppose it's better than watching the room spin around me like everyone else was by then and I had done a good job of picking and choosing my food when a generous Chinese man whom I shall refer to as a friend as it is much shorter than "business man who happpened to be sitting at the same table as me but counted me as a friend due to his large consumption of alcohol." I also hesitate to call him a friend for
he was the one who decided it would be good for the foreigner to try a local delicacy with a fancy name but suspiciously looked like an intestine. Much to my relief, it wasn't an intestine and the piece of rubber with little tentacles sticking out all over it like a bad patch of grass was actually cow stomach. Now, if you're like me, certain questions arise about putting a stomach into my stomach but I picked it up and smiled with as much zeal as I could muster before sticking into my mouth. My first reaction was to suppress a gag reflex as was my second reaction. I pretended to cough to make my new friend think I wasn't gagging on his gift but just having some trouble with a tea leaf stuck in my throat. He bought it and cheered loudly while I chewed it and smiled while taking my mind to a far away place. Like the Midwest where I grew up and saw cow stomachs where they belonged. In cows chewing the cud in a nice green field with pretty red barns, blue skys and green cornfields behind them.

However, the thought of chewing one's cud quickly put me back to reality where I finally managed to swallow the food. I dutifully thanked him for the experience, declined a second offer and accepted his congradulations for being the willing guinea pig amongst the foreigners. Now I could see why they drank their rice wine which smelled like death and tasted a little worse. It would do wonders for me at this moment to get rid of the awful taste in my mouth but I dared not ask for any as I had had enough experiences for the night and did not wish to embark upon another. I've come to the conclusion that adventurous stories are only good for hearing and not so good for the ones experiencing them. Here I was in a foreign land eating parts of a bovine I never thought possible in a room awash with drunken businessmen from around the world. I was roughly 12,000 miles from home in one of the most mysterious and foreign countries in a situation that very few people have ever witnessed and while I realized it would make for a great story one day to which I could attach a thought-provoking quote and moral, all I wanted was a cheeseburger and reruns on my TV.

I suppose I could quip a line such as "Alcohol doth not business make. However, alcohol doth friends make and friends make business" which you'll have to read a couple of times to get the meaning and sound austere and intelligent, but I won't. I'd much rather sit in a restaurant with my friends some day, give them the shortened version of the story and sum it up with a "Yeah, it was fun" before our conversation would branch off into other far more interesting topics such as the local baseball team or which celebrity got drunk, pregnant or divorced. You see, we don't really care about adventures or great stories. Sure we think we'd like to have some wild adventure in a foreign land which would shape our philosophy and englighten us years beyond our counterparts. But when it comes down to it, we don't really care. We'd all much prefer our air-conditioned BMWs, jobs that allow us to save enough for whatever it is we're supposed to be saving for and eating cheeseburgers while watching reruns on TV. Eating the stomach of a cow sure does sound like a wild adventure but in all honesty, how am I supposed to explain that to you in a way that accurately describes the situation so you can understand the emotions and feelings involved? I can't. It's quite impossible so while I have my adventure and story, I again am left holding it in my hands without any greater philosophy or enlightenment. I'm left holding an experience that's rare, interesting, funny, remarkable, completely foreign and wild but what am I supposed to do with it now? I think I'll paint a picture with mountains and fog that give grand illusions that should forever be just that - grand illusions.