Chapter One: James Bond Arrives in China
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 Metro Airport, preparing for my departure to China, I am James Bond—comfortable in any culture.
Unfortunately, mirrors interrupt.
I return to the image in my mind, rejuvenated by the prospect of China, which 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 sixteen it would be for the last time.
I am approaching the age at which Ernest Hemingway died. Sean Connery is still going strong.
* * * *
The North Pole! There it is: The flight tracker on the monitor of my seat on the Boeing 777 reads 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. What was I expecting—a thousand-foot flag pole?Admiral Peary squints into his instruments, then turns to his men: “Well boys, I guess this is it,” ending a twenty-three year quest. Being here at 38,000 feet, sipping a Dewar’s White Label, is fine with me—the flight attendant did not have Johnny Walker Black. James Bond or not, screw a martini.
Stirred, not shaken, I anticipate a look at Siberia and then Mongolia.
* * * *
He brushes the black comma of hair from his forehead. Three in the afternoon in New York is three 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—no mirrors in the security sector of Beijing Airport. I buy a pack of Zhongnanhai cigarettes for 30 cny—$4.50.
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 cny—about eighteen bucks American. I am accosted by two seedy men with cigarettes dangling from their lips.
“Taxi, mister?”
The scent and smoke and sweat are nauseating at three in the morning. I point to the printout with the address of my hotel on the campus of Peking University.
“How much?”
“Five hundred.”
“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 is 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 I am only a part-time professor, 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 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 wide-eyed, 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 3:30 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 cab exits the highway. All of the signs are in 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 with 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, a hustling, chain-smoking, balding man—he is me had I been born on the other side of the world—stops in front of a well-lit building. We get out, enter the building, and the cabbie speaks with the guard inside the door, who, sensing my desperation and urgency, loudly barks to summon another man, who emerges from around a corner on the run, and arrives in front of us with a sliding stop in his stocking feet. A few words in Mandarin with my driver, and we are off again.
We exit the campus on to a broad boulevard, drive a kilometer, do a neat U-turn, backtrack down the opposite side of the boulevard, enter another, more modern campus, drive for a minute or two, and then make 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. 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, Commander Bond. “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 cny. 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.
I bow to the driver. He seems perplexed. They bow in Japan—not in China.
Chapter Two: James Bond Orders a Beer in Beijing
James Bond suddenly knew he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. A clue to my level of alertness came when I had to go back to the front desk because I could not get my swipe card to open the door to my hotel room. The young woman from housekeeping who was sent to assist me was very sweet—she barely giggled when showing me that the door opened with a push rather than a pull. She would be back two minutes later to show me that, to obtain lights in the room, my room key-card had to be inserted and then left in a slot by the door.
While at the front desk, I ask the clerk how to say “thank you” in Mandarin.
He says “tshei tshei.”
I say, “shay shay.”
He says, “tshei tshei.”
I try one more time. He smiles patiently.
I go back to my room, practicing.
I unpack my bag and load my things into the drawers of the dresser in what is a reasonable facsimile of a modern American hotel room: king-sized bed—extra pillows in the closet; nice shower—plenty of towels; toilet that flushes: my fear that I will have to use the kind of toilet facilities I saw in Paris forty-five years earlier—a “squatter”—a hole in the ground flanked by two places for your feet—proves unfounded. I will have to wait until tomorrow, during my explorations of the hutongs—the famous Beijing residential alleys that date to Kublai Khan—to see my fears realized regarding toilets.
I may be tired but I am too keyed up from the stress of the trip to be sleepy. A beer would help. I see on the desk in the corner the price-list for the items in the mini-bar: “Heineken: 10 cny”—about $1.50. Not bad—about the same as the price in a New York City supermarket and one-fifth of the price in a New York hotel mini-bar.Tsingtao—a Chinese beer that I was introduced to on Delta Flight 188—is also 10 cny. Mini-bars are usually such a rip-off, but I decide that the time is right to indulge.
I look around the room—no mini-bar. Ah, the credenza: I open the faux-oak door, but where the mini-bar ought to be is just a hole in the cabinet with an electrical outlet in which to plug the non-existent fridge. I call the front desk. This is Commander Bond.
“There is no mini-bar in my room.”
“So sorry, sir, but we have no mini-bars in any of the rooms.”
“Good, because I did not want you to think I stole it.” Stuff like this falls out of my mouth all of the time—I am frequently in trouble.
“Zhink sold? Zhink sold? I do not understand.”
Slowly and carefully: “I did not want you to enunciate think I took it."
“Yes? Yes?”
“It is a joke.”
“A joke?”
“You know—funny.”
“Funny?”
“Do you have comedians in China? Silence. You know, Louis CK? Silence. George Carlin? Silence. Bob Hope?”
“I don’t zhink so,” the clerk says, and then quickly adds, helpfully, “I can bring a beer to your room.”
“Make it two. Tshei tshei.” This much I have learned.
