Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2010 4:00 AM
Subject: China - Day 5
I got my first decent night’s sleep since leaving the States. Fortunately, I did not need to get moving very early as I was waiting for my Boss Sam, and Larry’s Boss Raymond to arrive from Hong Kong. Sam and I get along very well. He has a unique sense of humor and enjoys messing with me at every opportunity. He has never been to China and I am looking forward to giving him a little in return – just need to find the right situation. The ferry arrived around 11:00 and we met for lunch in the hotel. Lunch was pretty typical, although the look Sam gave me when he realized he was holding a goose foot in his chopsticks was priceless.
Following lunch we took a taxi to the customer’s plant. Taxis in this part of China are nearly all Volkswagen Santanas like this one:
This is the only way to get around here. They are really cheap, they are everywhere, and so long as you have written down in Chinese where you want to go, you don’t even need to know the language.
The meetings went well enough, although they beat us up pretty good over some quality issues.
That evening, my customer’s company President invited us to dinner. They picked us up from the hotel at 6:30 and we drove what turned out to be only 3 blocks to a nearby building, probably 30 stories tall with a restaurant occupying the second floor, a place I have eaten before and a very nice restaurant. This was a formal dinner in a large private room, a large circular table in the center with a lazy susan. Sam gets to be the guest of honor (thankfully) this time. We all sat in our proper seats, Sam and I on opposite sides of our host, and the rest according to status around the table, twelve of us in all. Our host made introductions and invited everyone to welcome Sam properly (meaning toast him again and again I suppose). The beer and baijo came. Now I always assumed that there must be a full quality spectrum where baijo is concerned. I have had some that did not taste too bad and some that were downright nasty. Our host must have liked Sam and I, because he brought out the good stuff, “Mao Tai”. Mao Tai, according to all, was served to President Nixon during his trip to China back in 1974. Nixon commented on how much he liked it (and we all know how honest he was) and the reputation of this brand has grown ever since. According to Raymond, Mao Tai sells for around $350 US per bottle. I have no idea how many bottles were consumed but there was a whole lot of toasting going on! Sam and I both did “one by one”, toasting everyone at least once and several individual toasts as well. This continued for a couple of hours while we ate. Dinner came as always, plate after plate of food placed on the lazy susan by one of the four girls working our room. At one point, a whole fish was brought out and the President commented that we must reserve the head for Sam (yes!). The food kept coming. Lots of vegetables, duck feet with the bones still in (I know you are thinking there isn’t much meat there and you are right), and a few things I have never seen before and I don’t really want to know what they were. As I have said before, I try everything they put in front of me and I do not ask questions – it is just better that way! After a couple of hours of this, I looked over at Sam – you could tell he was really feeling the baijo. It was only upon leaving that I realized Sam had not eaten his fish head, and it had not even been placed on his plate! Lucky bastard!
We left the restaurant not ready to call it a night yet, so we wandered over to Beatles Bar for some beer and pool, and as it turns out thanks to Raymond, Karaoke. The Karaoke room (didn’t even know the bar had one) is a small private room with couches on three sides and a flat screen TV on one wall. We were escorted into the room, each by one of the bar girls who must have smelled blood, we all sat down and the girls sat with us and started asking for drinks. I was following Raymond’s lead by this time and we all ordered beers for ourselves and drinks for the girls (looked like coke and nothing else). By the way, just so no one gets the wrong idea this is pretty standard entertainment over here- no hanky panky from our group – their job is to get you to spend more money at the bar they appear to be good at their jobs. I have never done Karaoke before, but I surprisingly had fun (I am sure the baijo and beer had something to do with that). The girl sitting with me spoke almost no English (“buy me drink?” seemed to be the extent of it) but she could sing every American song that came up – and yes, I did sing and thought I sounded pretty good, but I may be alone in that opinion.
Looking over at Sam, I saw my opportunity to have a little fun with him. I have a pretty sick sense of humor some times and this seemed like a good time to use it. Sam was feeling no pain at all and the girl now seated on his lap was working him for drinks again and again quite successfully. She looked to be in her mid twenties, but nonetheless I went over to the couch where they were sitting and whispered in his ear “Sam, you know she’s like sixteen, right?” His eyes opened really wide, he looked at her, looked at me again with a slightly embarrassed expression, and decided to go play pool in the next room. I’m sure he will figure it out tomorrow, but tonight he had no idea I was messing with him. The hook was set - I should be able to work this for days…
No comments:
Post a Comment