Assignment due October 3: Draft of initial five pages of long essay

For the reader:  Did you like it?

James Bond in China

            From Russia With Love: Bond dials room service in Istanbul: “Breakfast for one at nine please: Green figs, yoghurt, coffee, very black.” After my short flight from La Guardia, as I walk through Detroit Airport, preparing for my departure to China, I am James Bond—self assured, comfortable in any culture. I seem to remember that in the movie the coffee is ordered Turkish style, “double sweet.” That is how we drank it in the Arab section of Jerusalem during the summer of ’69.

            Unfortunately, mirrors interrupt. I am not James Bond, but an overweight, over-the-hill, part-time professor without enough money to do Beijing right.

            China has been, for some time, on my reverse bucket list—things I know I will never do before I die.  The first: play fullback for the United States Olympic Soccer Team—a dream that died around 1971. Sleep with a Playboy Bunny—also 1971; become President of the United States—1980; Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States—1991. In fairness to me, I have completed the New York City Marathon, and eaten croissants for breakfast in Paris, although I did not think that at age 16 it would be for the last time.

            I am approaching the age at which Ernest Hemingway died. I am nearly two Charlie Parkers and more than two James Deans. Sean Connery is still going strong.

            Steppenwolf: “Looking for adventure, and whatever comes my way.” 

            Ice Station Zebra: The North Pole! I watch the flight tracker on the monitor in front of my seat on the Boeing 777: Due north from Detroit, across Hudson Bay and Greenland; the latitude rising to 85 to 87 to 89; the heading still due north. There it is: 90 degrees north latitude, heading north and suddenly, heading south—an unexpected, incidental reverse bucket list item. I move to the window. The midnight sun is blinding. Nothing is below but clouds and pure white. I don’t know what I was expecting. A thousand foot high flag pole? Peary only knew he had reached the North Pole in 1909 by consulting his magnetic compass and his sextant. He stops, squints into his instruments, then turns to his companions, "Well boys, I guess this is it."

            Frankly, going to either Pole was never on my list—too difficult. Being here at 38,000 feet, sipping a Dewar’s White Label is fine with me—the flight attendants did not have Johnny Walker Black. James Bond or not, screw a martini.

            Stirred, not shaken, I anticipate Siberia and then Mongolia. Who am I kidding? This comfortable seat might as well be the couch in my living room, except that the view from the television set is better than what can be seen for real from 38,000 feet.

            Moonraker: He brushes the black comma of hair from his forehead. Two in the afternoon in New York is two in the morning in Beijing—I will not reset my watch, although someone will have to remind me what day it is. I look at the printout of the download: space age-looking taxis can take me to Peking University—Peking? Beijing? Don’t ask—the Chinese themselves are not sure. Suavely, I collect my bag, cruise through immigration and walk toward ground transportation. OK OK, there has not been a comma in twenty years—just a big old forehead—nor a black hair in ten, but there is no mirror in the security sector of Beijing Airport to remind me. I buy a pack of Zhongnanhai for 30 rmb—$4.50.  Casino Royale: I have my first blessed cigarette of the day. Wow, the Chinese smoke indoors, in public places—how refreshingly enlightened.

            The web site says the cab ride should be 120 rmb—about eighteen bucks American. I am accosted by two seedy men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.

            “Taxi, mister?”
            I point to the printout with the address of my hotel on the campus of Peking University.     

            “How much?”
            “Five hundred.”

            Live and Let Die: “F*ck off.”

            What? Do they think I just rolled into town on a turnip truck? I am Bond, James Bond.

            The men follow me. “For you, special. Two eighty.”

            “Get lost.” I continue walking to the doors marked in English, “Ground Transportation—Taxis-Buses.”

            “Two fifty. You never do better.”

            The men have decided to stand with me in the line for taxis. The Chinese cops do not seem to mind. The men closely examine my face, wordlessly saying, “What are you, an idiot?” I am impressed that the faces say the same as they would in New York.    

            The taxi dispatcher seems perplexed. He has a two-page list of Beijing hotels, but “Global Village at Peking University” is not on it. He is trying to usher me to a van with no light on top—a limo.  I say, “No. A metered taxi.” He is not coming close to speaking English. I point to what I want. The dispatcher turns his face slightly to the side, scrutinizing me. That New York look again. These people have never before met a poor, penny-pinching American. I cannot begin to explain to them that my flight and hotel are being paid for by the people who have engaged me to deliver a paper on truancy among Cambodian street children, and that, indeed, I have no real money.

            The taxi driver who is next in line and the dispatcher are yakking at each other in Mandarin. The exchange is getting heated. Occasionally, one or both will point at me. Reluctantly, the driver places my bag in the trunk.

            “Do you know how to get to Peking University,” I ask. The driver wordlessly gives me a phony, New York taxi-driver smile.

            As we exit the airport environs, I am craning my neck to decipher the meter.  There are lots of numbers, but none of them are changing.  After a kilometer—Bond knows that he is thousands of miles away from miles—the “11.00” becomes “11.80” and I relax, and first notice that my feet are on bare metal—no floor mats in taxis? Apparently, that is why limos command the big bucks.

            I look at China through the open window of the cab. It is 3:00 in the morning. Stone abutments are on either side of the highway. I might as well be on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, except that the driver is going around 130—maybe 80 mph. Good. He seems confident. The meter is clicking along—mid-nineties now and we have been speeding along for fifteen minutes—no matter where the University is, we should be getting there soon.

            The cab exits the highway. All of the signs have both Chinese and English, but none says, “Peking University.” He knows what he is doing—he is a cab driver. A few twists and turns and we enter through a gate of a style that is my concept of authentic Chinese architecture. Harvard Yard, if you could drive through it and the buildings looked like pagodas.

            And that is how we spend the next fifteen minutes—going this way and that, and then doubling back through a lovely, deserted, middle-of-the-night Chinese college.  For the next five minutes I begin to check out the benches that dot the park-like campus, scouting a comfortable place to sleep al fresco until dawn, should that become necessary.

            My driver, an industrious, chain-smoking, balding man—he is me had I been born on the other side of the world—stops in front of a building with a well-lit lobby. He speaks with the guard inside the door who summons another man, who comes on the run. He senses my desperation and urgency. A few words in Mandarin, and we are off again.

            My driver exits the campus on to a broad boulevard, drives a kilometer, does a neat U-turn, backtracks down the opposite side of the boulevard, enters another, more modern campus, drives for a minute or two, and then makes a left turn on to a narrow, poorly paved, improbable alley. A brick wall is on my right and dense vegetation is on my left—vines brush the windshield of the taxi. Apparently, the cabbie has had enough and is looking for a secluded place to dump my body. So this is where I am going to die. 

            The driver comes to a dead end and stops. It is here that I learn that “oy” means the same in Chinese as it does in Yiddish. Hugh Grant’s best friend in Notting Hill: James Bond never had to deal with this sh_t!

            We back up—perhaps twenty meters in reverse—and make another unlikely turn, this time to the right, down a brick-paved ramp to a flat place, where my driver again stops. I look out the window to my left. There is a well-lit lobby behind a revolving door, where a young man, looking for all the world like a hotel clerk, is behind a counter, checking paperwork. The meter reads “123.50.” My watch reads 4:10. Thank you, lord.

            “Good evening, Professor Seagull.  We have been expecting you.”

            Although I have been advised not to tip taxi drivers in China, I give the little man 130 rmb. He fumbles for change, and I say, ineffectually, “Keep it.”  He does understand when I hold up both hands and push the air. It will not be long, I guess, before more Americans coming to Beijing will teach the taxi drivers to expect gratuities.

            You Only Live Twice: I bow to the driver.  He seems perplexed. They bow in Japan—not in China.

[My plan is to continue with a vignette about taking subways to various Beijing neighborhoods, exploring by walking the streets while wearing my Yankee cap. I meet a bi-lingual companion who ends up conning me out of $130 at a “tea ceremony.” This will illustrate the contrast between me as a wise world traveler—a savvy New Yorker—and me as a gullible fool, who let’s his desire for adventure and his vanity get him into trouble. A short vignette, which I have already roughed out, will deal with me and the mini-bar in my hotel room. The final vignette, which should get the piece to 10 pages, will deal with my refusing to be ripped off by the driver who took me to the airport for my departure.  This final segment will bring the piece full circle.]