A Rainy Night in Beijing...without Vicki Lawrence
Trip Start
Dec 2007
1
41
Trip End
Aug 2008
Beijing,
China
Friday, March 21, 2008
On this night, a bitter chilly rain falls and the cabs disappear into the gloriously neon washed streets where huddled crowds wave their pathetic arms at any moving object that races by. I make it out to the street to join this mob, and briefly play the along in the every losing lottery along with my soggy brethren. A taxi cab is seen the distance, and we all jostle for position, only to notice the cab is already occupied. I give it a good 10 minutes, and then I'm on the move. Just like fishing, I figure you have to get up stream to land the prize. If this is a first come, first served world, I assume being the first one up the street will have a distinct advantage. So I begin walking...and it begins raining harder. Now at least 4 blocks into this new scheme, I realize that much to my dismay I am, by trying to distance myself from the pack that I am moving further and further away from my actual home. Decision making time....to retreat, retrace my steps back to my original position and possibly walk back closer to home, or do I continue the brave experiment? I am weak, and the idea for heading towards home is somehow more fulfilling than moving away, but I also just can't bring myself to splash my way back to where I just left, so I decide to cut the corner and move due East from where I am. Great plan except, although the grid street system is in place for most of Beijing's byways, this particular street isn't. I turn right on a very long, darkened Chinese charactered street and wander off into the unknown.
Immediately I know I'm on the right track with this move. Not more than 25 yards from the corner, a taxi cab is pulling over...presumably to drop off a passenger or two, and therefore, available for my magic carpet ride to a warm dry location. I make my way towards the taxi, and wait for whom ever is inside to join me outside. I wait...and I wait. Finally, I knock and window gaps. I notice that the inhabitants have a map spread wide. They are not leaving, but simply lost. Actually, they might be where they want to be, but perhaps they are using this whole map ploy to wait out the storm. Either way, I remain on foot. I trudge with my shoes filling up with the swamp like water washing months of grim from the streets directly into my socks.
I had great hopes for this enticing street of my new journey, but really there is nothing that screams, "Lots of Taxis here on this street. Excellent choice my friend!" As a matter of fact, I haven't seen a vehicle of any type in the last 3 or 4 minutes...is this street...? Yes, of course it is, well actually, no... I have chosen a street that is not open to traffic.... Um, let's see... Students, here's a math word problem for you. All Taxis are cars, All Cars drive in Traffic, if there is no traffic...how many taxis will be coming down your street? Did everyone get Zero? Very good (and those who got something greater than zero, you are a hopeless romantic, and you need to leave math class immediately, start writing poetry and is the case of all hopeless romantics, start drinking heavily.)
Now I'm posed with the same question I had earlier, retrace or muddle on. Those who know me...I don't even need me to explain the decision... It can't be closed all the way across the 3rd Ring Road? Let's keep going. More rain. More mud. I know you can ruin socks and shoes, but can a rain storm ruin your pants too. I'm thinking so. In the distance is the glow of civilization. A beckoning of yellow and green in the form of a store front sign with crazy looking Chinese letters and a big smiling face. I don't know what it is, but it feels like home. Unfortunately, it lives on the other side of a fence. Okay students, next question. If you have a street closed for traffic which is the most effective way to deter cars and trucks from driving on a closed street? Answer A, Ask them nicely not to. Answer B, Put up a very large sign telling them not to. Answer C, Hire an attack dog to chew the tires of any cars that try to. Or Answer D, Put up a 15 foot wire fence to block passage preventing them from trying to. Who got D? Very good.
So now there is me...a fence....and just a mere 150 meters away, as Bob Dylan would say, Shelter from the Storm. Retreat? Turn around and admit defeat? Ha...say I. Now I assume there must be an end to this fence one way or the other.. This is not the border to Mexico...there must be away to get around this thing. So I follow the fence line....and there at the end is a gap and I slide through...escape, and soon to my sanctuary. Not so fast...oh no. Now, that I'm through the fence I'm no longer on a paved street and the area where the new street will be placed is quickly becoming officially the Seventh largest lake in Asia. There is a massive expanse of water directly in front of me, and mounds of what was previously dirt piles on either side. We face another decision...Mud or Water? Students? Part of me says, "Your feet are already wet, what's a little more water?" and yet my even more insistent part of the Cortex screams..."Mud more better, ugh."
Over the mud I hike, in gingerly placed tiny steps as if the lighter steps would lessen the massive caking of clay on the bottoms of my feet. In a series of maneuvers that would impress most of those assembled for the 34th annual meeting of the Everest Summit Survival Club, I am through the mess and to the light at the end of the tunnel. A Chinese restaurant full of neon lights, Kung Pao Chicken and even more important Tsing Tao beer waits like a love-struck New Kids on the Block fan at a Mall Opening where the boys are going to perform. I decide to have dinner and wait out the storm, when like a miracle from above, a cab pulls into the parking lot to drop off some eager diners. Before they are able to get both feet on the ground and their umbrella fully deployed, I am in the front seat, with my taxi cab directions home at the ready.
This in brief is my story of survival, and I hope it will be an inspiration for those who follow in my footsteps. I'm hoping the folks at the Oxygen Channel, or the Hallmark Hall of Fame can turn this into a thrilling Wednesday Night at the Movies Feauture, perhaps turning my story into a heartwarming tale of one man's fight against nature and the enduring will of the human spirit. It the very least, I hope they get Valerie Bertinelli or Greta Scacchi or any other of those Movie of the Week darlings to play my loving wife waiting at home, worried by the phone. And to play me...most likely some former sitcom washout, Ken Olin from Thirty Something, I'm thinking, or better yet, Anson Williams...you know Potsie from Happy Days. That would be perfect. Let me wring out these socks and start writing out the pitch.
