Return to Yangzhou: A Farce in Two Parts

Given the trauma my digestive system suffered during my first trip to Yangzhou, it may surprise you that I had any desire to go back at all. However, I try be open to new experiences, especially with Chinese friends, as much of what I learn about Chinese culture comes from simply being present within it. Even so, when my teacher and friend Yuanyuan called and invited me to spend the weekend in Yangzhou with her husband and some of their friends, I hesitated, fearing that I might feel a bit out of place, the only foreigner among seven close Chinese friends. I decided to go in the end, though, as I knew pretty much what would happen if I spent the weekend in my room. Yangzhou had the lure of the unknown on its side, and in the end it delivered.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Sing Karaoke

The sense of being the outsider was most pronounced at dinner on Friday night. My Chinese friends had gone to college together and hadn’t seen one another for a while. There were innumerable toasts, and the more my Chinese friends drank, the less English they spoke, and the more invisible I became. I have trouble understanding Chinese in any context, so, not surprisingly, Chinese in slurred speech proved quite impossible for me. In the end, the two words I could comprehend may have been the only ones that mattered: gan bei! (Empty your glass!)

The evening improved for me when we left the restaurant and went to a KTV bar. You in America may not appreciate what a national institution karaoke has become in China, and in other Asian countries as well. There are many hundreds of KTV bars in Suzhou, and singing karaoke is the favorite social activity among most young Chinese. Each bar includes dozens of private rooms, where friends gather and sing, usually with enthusiasm and sour notes in equal measure. The song lyrics scroll across the large-screen TVs, along with often incongruous images. Last summer, for example, I sang “Roxanne” to a series of clips from The Shawshank Redemption. I don’t recall a prostitute in that film, nor a prison in the song.

Waiters will bring food and drinks on demand and, in the shadier establishments, I’ve been told, prostitutes and drugs as well. The friends who took me to my first KTV bar in Nanjing two summers ago described such places as “unwholesome KTV.” A couple of things made me think that perhaps the KTV bar we patronized in Yangzhou may have been a bit on the unwholesome side. The place had dozens of young women in skimpy black dresses lurking about, saying “hello” as I passed them in the hall. I noted a whole room full of them, in fact, waiting for something or someone. Then when I went to the restroom, a KTV employee surprised me by putting a hot towel on my neck and proceeding to give me a neck rub as I stood at the urinal. I was so stunned that I remained speechless the first time. I don’t think of myself as homophobic, but the last thing I want while my privates are out for a breath of unfresh air is for a strange man to start giving me a massage. The second time I visited the bathroom, I was ready for him. He approached with his hot towel and slightly leering smile. “Bu yao,” I said. (Don’t want). Sometimes, at such critical moments, even a little Chinese is enough.

As always there were plenty of English songs for me to sing, and I was able to sing a couple of challenging ones, including Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” In light of the Chinese government’s distorted coverage of the unrest in Tibet and the apparent willingness of many Chinese to swallow the distortions whole, I couldn’t help but think of a political subtext to the lyrics: “When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer.” I managed to go up a whole octave for the word “suffer,“ hitting a note I hadn’t known was in me. My Chinese friends clapped at that, fortunately unable to read my mind.

My favorite moment, however, had to be singing the Beatles’ “Revolution,” in particular the lines, “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.” I commented to one of my Chinese friends that “Revolution” had to be one of the only Western pop songs to mention Mao. I heard him repeat my observation, with minimal accuracy, to a friend who had not caught my words over the blaring speakers: “He said that the Western singers admire our Chairman Mao.” Ah, to be in China at such a moment…

Storming Normandy in a Dragon Boat

The next day, we went to Shou Xihu Gongyuan (Thin West Lake Park)--the most beautiful and famous spot in Yangzhou. I had visited the lake in November, but it is much lovelier in spring, with thousands and thousands of flowers in bloom. But with the flowers come the people--at least ten thousand, I would guess. In November, the place was nearly deserted and quite peaceful, so I guess congestion is the price we must pay for beauty in a country of more than a billion.

Speaking of price, the entry fee for the park led to a comic adventure. My Chinese friends thought that the admission fee was too high (90 yuan, or about $13), so they concocted a plan to lower the price. Two of them bought tickets and entered the park. They told me to wait with the others outside the gate. Then they rented two pedal-driven dragon boats, pedaled them out of the park, and picked the rest of us up outside the gate, on a bank concealed by an old stone bridge. After we’d floated back into the park, a man on the bank noticed that boats that formerly carried only one person now held four and started shouting at us in Chinese and gesticulating for us to come to shore. We pedaled harder and out of his view, but I saw him talking into a hand-held radio before I could see him no more. Soon, a police boat approached, and one of my Chinese friends went into a panic, certain that we’d all be going to jail. I found myself thinking about a report I’d heard earlier that week on NPR that cited China as the world leader in executions and noted that the country had sixty capital offenses. I wondered if illegally entering a park by boat might be among them. But the police craft went right past us, and we jumped to the shore inside the park, leaving just one person in each boat to pedal back to the dock.

I’m amazed that I at least wasn’t apprehended; I would have been easy to find. Of the ten thousand people in the park, I believe I was one of two foreigners, and the only other foreigner I saw all day was a woman of less-than-average height. How hard would it have been to find the tall waiguoren in the red cap, the one person in the park with blue eyes? It all made for a memorable entry. Who ever recalls simply buying the ticket and walking through the gate?

Yuanyuan had been in the other boat, and later she me that she and her party had been greeted with a hero’s welcome when they stepped ashore. An old man had seen us loitering by the canal outside the gate and had wondered what we were up to. He happened to be walking by the water when Yuanyuan’s boat came ashore inside the park. He began to clap with mock admiration. “You are storming the beach at Normandy,” he said. “Hurrah! Hurrah!” This landing, however, was uncontested, with no Germans in bunkers firing down, just thousands of flowers in bloom, and a sea of Chinese within which I somehow managed to lose myself.