magical things
people ask what life is like in Beijing. is it amazing, is it hard, what's it like? like amanda always says, living here is pretty much the exact same as living anywhere else, once you get used to it. that being said, there are occasionally blips of the bizarre in the otherwise ordinary life of a Beijing ex-pat.
Take Saturday night as an example. although thanks to no real guanxi of my own, I end up at Suzie Wong's. at a TABLE at Suzie Wong's, which apparently costs about a million bucks and is only really available to you if your dad is some kind of army general in charge of a large number of soldiers with machine guns. despite a fairly trashy facade, these corner booths are roped off with red satin and seat some of beijing's highest-rolling young ex-patriots. enjoying only a poverty-level income myself, i also only happen to be a friend of a friend of one of these characters. bottles of champagne and vodka kept appearing on the table and the thumping techno and strobelight and backless shirts made me dizzy, but it was the closest i've ever felt to being a movie star!
next thing that happens is that some of our other friends showed up, accompanied by david blaine, the magician. he's the brother of one of the kids we hang out with. so then i'm sitting with blaine, doing a really bad job of making interesting conversation. This is how it goes: me: "this must feel like a watered-down version of NY." him: "mm." Five minute or so tick by. Him: "yeah, this does feel like a watered-down version of NY." terrrrrible, i know, i dont like thinking about how awkward i can be. so then, possibly rather than continue to try to make small talk with me, he bites into a glass. chews up the glass. anyone can do it, he says. apparently he ate a couple of shot glasses the night before. you bite it with your canines, then crunch it up into sand. our other friend tried it and chipped two teeth.
as my dad pointed out after the obligatory "don't you dare try eating glass, mandie," one couldn't possibly consume very much glass over a lifetime without doing quite a bit of damage orally. and if you accidentally swallow a piece without crushing it up thoroughly? dont try this at home. or at suzie wong's. this will be my second claim to fame...david blaine ate a glass instead of talking me...the first claim of course being that jackie chan lives across the street, which may or may not be a sliiiight exaggeration.
speaking of magic and things that amaze me, i recently learned about army ants and how they travel in huge packs and destroy everything in their path. what really got me, though, is the way they link arms or feet or whatever it is they have 6 of and make a giant ball around the queen at night while she sleeps. (the giant pregnant queen with that glow..that glow that pregnant ants have...) My first thought is, what if that ball of ants started rolling? would the ants let go and suddenly become more of an ant hill than an ant ball? last night, i got to thinking, really, do ants sleep? and also i google imaged "ant ball" and "army ant" and "army ant ball" and found that no documentation exists in the google image empire of the giant ant sphere of my dreams. maybe they do it sometimes and not others, and maybe it's a learned behavior of certain packs of them. culture, if you will. so in their different (war) zones each platoon of ants develops individualized characteristics, one of those perhaps being ant ball-ing.
afterall, nothing is 100%. yes, this is my new "theoretical framework." my new worldview. there was another word we learned in anthropology but all of that is dead to me now. excluding the earlier reference to learned behaviors.
i had it and i lost it.
Take Saturday night as an example. although thanks to no real guanxi of my own, I end up at Suzie Wong's. at a TABLE at Suzie Wong's, which apparently costs about a million bucks and is only really available to you if your dad is some kind of army general in charge of a large number of soldiers with machine guns. despite a fairly trashy facade, these corner booths are roped off with red satin and seat some of beijing's highest-rolling young ex-patriots. enjoying only a poverty-level income myself, i also only happen to be a friend of a friend of one of these characters. bottles of champagne and vodka kept appearing on the table and the thumping techno and strobelight and backless shirts made me dizzy, but it was the closest i've ever felt to being a movie star!
next thing that happens is that some of our other friends showed up, accompanied by david blaine, the magician. he's the brother of one of the kids we hang out with. so then i'm sitting with blaine, doing a really bad job of making interesting conversation. This is how it goes: me: "this must feel like a watered-down version of NY." him: "mm." Five minute or so tick by. Him: "yeah, this does feel like a watered-down version of NY." terrrrrible, i know, i dont like thinking about how awkward i can be. so then, possibly rather than continue to try to make small talk with me, he bites into a glass. chews up the glass. anyone can do it, he says. apparently he ate a couple of shot glasses the night before. you bite it with your canines, then crunch it up into sand. our other friend tried it and chipped two teeth.
as my dad pointed out after the obligatory "don't you dare try eating glass, mandie," one couldn't possibly consume very much glass over a lifetime without doing quite a bit of damage orally. and if you accidentally swallow a piece without crushing it up thoroughly? dont try this at home. or at suzie wong's. this will be my second claim to fame...david blaine ate a glass instead of talking me...the first claim of course being that jackie chan lives across the street, which may or may not be a sliiiight exaggeration.
speaking of magic and things that amaze me, i recently learned about army ants and how they travel in huge packs and destroy everything in their path. what really got me, though, is the way they link arms or feet or whatever it is they have 6 of and make a giant ball around the queen at night while she sleeps. (the giant pregnant queen with that glow..that glow that pregnant ants have...) My first thought is, what if that ball of ants started rolling? would the ants let go and suddenly become more of an ant hill than an ant ball? last night, i got to thinking, really, do ants sleep? and also i google imaged "ant ball" and "army ant" and "army ant ball" and found that no documentation exists in the google image empire of the giant ant sphere of my dreams. maybe they do it sometimes and not others, and maybe it's a learned behavior of certain packs of them. culture, if you will. so in their different (war) zones each platoon of ants develops individualized characteristics, one of those perhaps being ant ball-ing.
afterall, nothing is 100%. yes, this is my new "theoretical framework." my new worldview. there was another word we learned in anthropology but all of that is dead to me now. excluding the earlier reference to learned behaviors.
i had it and i lost it.
posted by Mandie at 2:08 PM
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