Correction, this filthy ALLEY
Didn't we pass this shit hole on the way into town? It’s a local street, which means is smells like cabbage, feet, dumplings, urine, hot grease and burning hair, never all at once, but changing and rotating step by step. I tell Tiff, that if we find our hotel on this street we need to be in before dark. We are looking for number 35 and we’re passing lucky number 13 when I see the construction site coming up fast. It looks like they've crushed building numbers 23 into the mid 60s and they’re blocking the road to make more room for the palatial Waldorf Astoria which sits comfortably on the main road, one clean block over. We ask the construction men where the hotel is, they give us some pointing, grunting directions and when we turn to walk back the way we came, they begin to laugh.
All of them.
Hard.
This is the most I've ever heard the Chinese laugh yet, cumulatively, not a particularly jocular group of people, but I haven’t seen much reason to be. The last (and first) Chinese laugh I heard was from that cab driver who was laughing BECAUSE HE COULD NOT READ. We have come to a fork in our journey; go to back where we came and start again or follow the directions of the jokey construction workers and see what happens next. We choose our own adventure, roll the dice and see what happens. We follow the construction worker's “directions” make two lefts, and HOT DAMN! 30 yards up the road, HOTEL flashes in red.
We found it.
We walk into the reception area and talk to the nice Engrish speaking cliché that is running the front desk. It is 10 am and we can check in at 1:00.
“1:00?” We ask.
“1:00” she says. “Your room will be ready at 3:00”
“3:00 or 1:00?”
“Right” she says.
“1:00?”
“No, 3:00.”
“Okay, 3:00.”
“Oh, and there won’t be any hot water from tonight, (May 20th) at midnight until the 27th”. But we can swim and shower at a 5 star hotel and they’ll give us a coupon.
“Where is it?”
“It’s close.”
Good enough, no point in arguing. Arguing doesn’t make hot water and if she gave us an address we couldn't understand it anyways. We leave our stuff at reception and take off walking, headed toward the Forbidden City. If you've never seen the Forbidden City It’s HUGE.
And I mean like 8 Vegas hotels huge.
There are 8700 rooms in The Forbidden City and we’re allowed to see inside about 10% of them. They’re all like ball rooms, 3 to 6 stories tall and open. Even the living quarters are huge open rooms.
The throne rooms, and there are several, are just huge ornate rooms with a throne in the middle.
There are enormous courtyards
and a 52 meter wide moat to keep everyone without 6 dollars out.
Michael stops us, he’s a tour guide and for 80Y will get us inside quick and show us the REAL Forbidden City. Tiff walks on but I talk to him, the guide book we have says to ignore these guys but I don’t have that in me, I have to let him down easy.
“We’re good” I say.
“You don‘t want to wait in this big long line with all these morons do you?”
This Woman's shirt says "Guggi"
“Yeah, kinda. We’ll be fine, thanks for your help.”
"I'm an artist"
"Me too"
He leaves us alone. The line full of morons takes 4 minutes, all of it is spent shoving or being shoved. The Chinese don’t understand waiting your turn, which makes me proud to be a turn-waiting American. The Forbidden City is crowded, I liked it better back when it was forbidden.
All the buildings are sealed off, and the windows are jammed with people wielding cameras.
We won’t get to see what we saw until we can download the pictures later. This is dead history, it’s glassed, sealed and out of reach. I’m a hands-on children’s museum guy. I don’t care for art museums and I would be fine with 7 photos of this.
It's big. I get it.
Old. I get it.
Ornate. Saw it at the entrance.
We walk almost straight though the city because, praise His name, Tiff’s feet hurt, which takes a close second to my boredom.
Tiff heard about a bar we should check out in a cool part of the city. We try a cab but he doesn’t won’t take us for less than 100Y (about 10 bucks) Not a lot for a cab at home but it's 10X the usual price here. A black market cabbie says he knows where it is and he’ll take the job for 60Y. It’s a 14Y cab ride but we’re thirsty and rich. We jump in his black Volkswagen and take off, 2 blocks later someone cuts him off, and he gets road rage.
Like ROAD. RAGE.
And starts driving like Chinese Dale Earnhardt's ghost, swearing and yelling, I turn on my video camera and Tiff grabs my arm. He cuts back and forth in front of some guy, who probably has no idea what he's done to raise the ire of this wack job but plays along. The two go back and forth, cutting each other off, slamming on brakes and yelling at each other until we get to our turn…our driver hesitates...do I let him go?...You can hear the wheels turning in his head... he hesitates... almost decides to lets his prey go free, and then CHANGES HIS MIND!!! Fuck it! I am going to KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER!!
We scream across 3 lanes and almost hit a bus so we can continue the hunt. Tiff is now cutting my circulation off at my wrist. Our driver is yelling and I’m taping the scene. Traffic, horrifically, comes to a stop, our driver pulls his E brake, opens the door gets out and and starts yelling in the middle of the road, Tiff is telling me to open the door and RUN but I’m curious as to how far this will go, plus, we are in the middle of the highway.
The other guy can now see that he is dealing with a guy who thinks Geto Boys lyrics are real, so he cuts off a couple cars, shoves his way into an illegal bus lane makes his escape. Like a gazelle escaping the clutches of a lion. Run free gazelle, live to chew thoughtfully for another day.
Our guy is mad and he lets us know as best he can but he might as well be giving us his grandmother’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies for all we know. We are now a couple miles off course and he’s obviously lost, we drive to the area we’re supposed to be in and he tries to get us to agree to go to a mall. We say no. He drives us to a Russian bar and tries to tell us it’s the place. We point our spot out on the map and he drives on. Obviously upset with the decision he’s made to let us in his car. We’re now driving in circles. He wants us out but we’re not getting out until we see Paddy’s Pub.
Fifteen minutes of driving circles and I spot it out my window. We are all happy. We had agreed on 60. He wants 100, and honestly, after living through the ride I think it's worth it, but I say 70, Tiff hits me, I say 80 and he agrees. When we get out the cab, Tiff let’s me know that we agreed on 60 and I’m a moron for paying a cent more. We walk to the pub and I have never had a more refreshing beer in my life.
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