Imagine if you will for a moment a TV scene á la National Geographic, set in the Chinese countryside. Wizened, sun burnt old faces, cigarettes hanging from lips, an array of army smocks and wellington boots dressed on their wearer haphazardly, tractors from the 1930s only a small child could fit into – but are the norm here, and vast, unending fields edged off by steep hills come mountains on the horizon. That’s what northern China looks like, and any National Geographic documentary you’ve seen is not some wishful stereotype.

What you won’t see on any such documentary will be a full on scrap on the roadside involving whole families. Yeah, truth is, the rednecks of China’s are even more redneck than anything you’ll have come across back home. Only America’s liberal gun laws will surpass such unfettered wildness.

A villager, no local bigwig though.

The weekend began when my Sanda/Kung Fu teacher’s nephew invited myself, my colleague from Ireland Sean, and some other Chinese friends to his town for the weekend. I had a class to teach Saturday so I wasn’t to make it until Sunday. Both the Sanda teacher and his nephew are a strange pair. Hunter, the former, is a shaven headed, sprightly forty something martial arts master, who chain smokes, gets drunk till three and yet feels no problem in springing out of bed for a 6am run. He works as a P.E instructor at a secondary school here.

His nephew is a tad more… shall we say, arcane? Dave, whose name means ‘Second Dragon’ is just thirty-one years old. He has a tattoo of a dragon on his chest, and further smaller varying tattoos on his left arm. At the dinner table, he’ll drink a bottle of red wine to himself. Red wine is quite expensive in China – one will spend between fifty to two hundred euros on a bottle that’d cost probably fourteen euros back home. Taking into account that any Personal Purchasing Power index should be multiplied by at least 3 and that equals alot money. So, tattoos, red wine, oh, and a chauffeur who drives the guy and ourselves around in BMW 4×4s…draw your own conclusions. His CV involves restaurant ‘insurance’ apparently. The oddest thing about the dude is, over the four days I met him, he wore the same clothes; a pair of Nike, a plastic-y , green-y black jacket, jeans and a grey t-shirt inscribed with the word in red “My other t-shirt is clean”.

Dave’s clout was further demonstrated to me on the Friday, when, the two of us drunk after a big meal hosted by Hunter, he insisted on bringing me to a KTV. KTV’s are basically these karaoke dens, where groups can hire out a room and, well, basically, shout into karaoke machines. We of course were given a huge ass room, complete with plates of fruit, beers, and two slappers1 who were pretty much offered to me. I had my fill of all but the latter two. We were joined by Dave’s driver and his beautiful girlfriend, who was certainly no slapper. Chinese tradition demands everyone leave a do, or function together, and after two hours of Chinese Triads shouting into karaoke boxes had left me dizzy, my wanting to get to bed meant that all left. No offence was taken, but it’s worth noting that if one is at a Chinese get together of any sort, one better have a good reason for leaving before anyone else.

This shows one of the kids who’d witnessed the roadside scrap earlier mess-acting with me. In the background, you can see the two families resolving their dispute…

On our jaunt to the countryside at the weekend, we would also be joined by Lois, a forty something business woman, originally from Chengde, but, having moved to Australia in her late teens, now has citizenship of that country. She’s back in China a year now, involved with both English schools and renting property. She met Sean a few weeks back while out running, and befriended both himself and myself because, whilst being in China a year, she’s only back in Chengde a month or two, and thus was wanting for company. She recently bumped into Hunter again, as the two were college friends. Finally, ‘Mary’ (again, not her real name; I never got her Chinese one) is a colleague of Hunter’s who also trained in Beijing Opera for eight years.

On Sunday morning, I was woken at around ten by Sean, who hinted that the pressure was on for me to get over to where they were. Chinese folk place great emphasis on face, and invites, and looking well. I had promised them I’d be more than willing to join them on their foray into the countryside, but had honestly thought to myself that I’d be strolling out into a cab about 1pm. No chance. My phone indicated that Hunter had actually texted me at 6am demanding to know what I was doing, as he wanted to go swimming. After they got me up at ten, I got no less than six phone calls and texts in the space of an hour thereafter, from both Hunter, and Sean, who was obviously being pressured into locating my whereabouts. The Chinese are generally relaxed about a few things but time isn’t one of them.

Eventually, I was to get a cab with Mary the Beijing opera singer, at 11.45am. We arrived in some one horse Chinese town at about 1.30pm and were immediately ushered into an upstairs room where we were seated at a table with some eight others. As well as those I’ve mentioned before, there was a farmer/village elder and his wife, and another village elder, a fantastic looking fellow in some battered old Green PLA Army tunic, complete with black lapels. He just looked too cool, red sun burnt face, a ‘tash, probably in his sixties. He would insist a toasting me throughout the meal with shouts of “Gam bei!”2 Also there was a sharply dressed fellow, who, I later discovered, was a, (ahem), “senior business partner” of Daves, and, finally, a young driver, amiable fellow named Eddie.

Why were the Chinese so eager to treat myself and Sean so well, only really having known us a week? Take into consideration that Chengde is a countryside town. A big town, of three million people, and home place of the Qing Emperor’s Summer retreat. The treaty that gave the British Hong Kong was signed here. Nonetheless, this place is not Beijing. Folk here will look at you in slack jawed amazement. Foreigners only come here in the summer months, and are generally busloads of boring, middle aged Germans. The few expat teachers here do meet up from time to time. Overall though, I find myself whooping in delight when I meet a familiar, European face.

Imagine, then, if you will, the sheer novelty it might just well be for a Chinese person to be seen knowing a white foreigner. I have been told some Chinese can be racially hostile to ‘laowai’3 but generally the Chinese are eager to know and learn both English, and connect with English speakers. English is the language for communication in today’s globalised economy, and this is something the Chinese believe very much in. Being seen with a foreigner generally means you’re the dog’s bollocks if your Chinese. Very cool, yeah! Kind of like black Americans were a novelty for Irish teenagers back in the early nineties, when gangster rap was embraced with much gusto by what was then a racially homogeneous populace.

This may well account not only for the generosity shown us, but also the intense eagerness to get me up on a two hour cab ride to the one horse Chinese town. While it was all smiles upon my arrival, there was a certain slight tension, along the lines of “Where were you? What took you so long?” Again, China is about face, so I couldn’t very well go “Look, fuck off, will yiz? Hospitality is one thing, brow beating someone into it is another…”!

Face was, nonetheless, saved on my part when I presented our village elder hosts with a bottle of Baijou, a fiery Chinese rice vodka, usually starting about 48% proof. The meal lasted over two hours, and table manners over in China differ considerably. As well as the communal aspect, which involves everyone tucking into varying dishes collectively, eating is frequently interrupted by chain smoking and Baijou toasts, (yes, they actually drink the stuff whilst eating). A strong stomach is needed, and not just for the eating whilst smoking/drinking aspect; the toilets are medieval, something which I’ll go into detail in a later signal.

After the meal, we were to drive off to the farmer’s house. I don’t know exactly what further yahooerey was to be had in mind, but this was to be cut short. A truck was stopped in the middle of the road. The road’s other half was still in the process of being built, and a number of cars were stopped in front of the truck. A family of drunks had removed themselves from their vehicles and were demanding the truck driver reverse. A tad impossible, given the size of the latter’s vehicle. The village elders removed themselves from their vehicles, alongside the farmer’s wife, and pretty soon tempers were raised. Someone said something and suddenly a melee broke out! The farmer’s wife was boxing the face off another woman, both of them in their sixties! Fellows were being pushed down into mud and pushed off the roads edge. Kicks, punches, and one fellow even getting a baseball bat out of his boot. Sean somehow had let himself out of his vehicle and grabbed the baton off the man.

It was funny to watch until I saw there were children witnessing this retarded nonsense. The funniness of the sounds of Mandarin yelling was lost with the wailing of one little fellow. Another sad moment was seeing a fellow my own age comfort his badly bruised mother. After a few minutes, things died down. Dave, who hadn’t thrown any blows, had some words and the family of drunks reversed their cars.

Further on, our convoy pulled into a small hamlet, whereupon the village elder’s house was clearly evident due to the fact his was the one with the highest gates. Myself, Hunter, Mary, and Eddie went off for a walk towards some hills and a stream. Hunter took arty photos, and at one point Mary stood atop a small hill, exclaiming “Look! I am …Song!” At which point she emitted the curious high-pitched wail that is Beijing opera sonatas.

When we came back, we found a police car waiting outside, the officer inside taking a statement from the elders. Sean it turned out was stuck inside, having to witness this but not having to give any statement himself!

Country ways are the same everywhere, I guess; the drunken family were there, and it turned out that these people all knew each other, and had been at loggerheads in the past. The same kids we’d see on the road earlier were now making friends with Sean and myself, and the cop who’d taken statements strolled back into his car, his uniform including trainers.

For an authoritarian state, China can be awfully laid back. Law enforcement regularly wear what they like, families have feuds, folk smoke beneath yellowed ‘no smoking’ signs and drivers never wear seat belts. They don’t stop at red lights either, and it’s only recently the law has started cracking down on drink driving, albeit only in the big cities.

I was taken on a drive then with myself, Dave, the farmer/village elder and Dave’s “Senior Business Partner”. We walked whilst the latter two listened to the older guy. In my naivety I’d thought the old man was giving the younger two a wistful history of the area. I later discovered they were planning a new real estate venture, one involving the building of a hotel. No wonder then one farmer on our way up and back was shouting at our 4×4 rather aggressively, with the farmer/village elder seemingly smiling at him whilst probably telling him where to go.

After our sojourn in the countryside, it was off to another meal in the town of Longhua, home of the place where a young Maoist cadre made a name for himself by blowing himself up under a bridge in 1948. Another meal ensued, this time in a shabby restaurant, but apparently famous throughout Hebei province. Four bottles of Baijou were ordered, alongside a crate of beer. An hour later, and myself and Eddie were head butting each other, in brotherly, friendly terms, mind!

Afterwards, we were put up in a plush, four star hotel.
The next morning, after drinking till three with Hunter, we were woken up at 6am by the man, yelping into the phone to ‘Come on! We walk! We must…QUICKLY’ Sean thought it wiser I stay in bed, and sure enough, soon I found myself getting sick into the sink. I’m still not sure if it was drink or a piece of undercooked pork to blame but I wasn’t able to eat for the next twenty-four hours, save for some ice cream. Needless to say, the breakfast of cabbage and cold meat was not missed.

TV is hilarious here. At one point, I saw a 16th century warrior type who looked like a Chinese Santa Claus singing to troops and being given celebratory drinks by a younger Emperor type. Another cracker was CCTV’s English channel, where a male British academic mentioned the black market in the trafficking of organs from executed prisoners. The female host asked him “How do you know the same isn’t happening in your country?”
“Yer man’s trying so hard not to laugh!” quipped Sean

I’m in China a month now, but have yet to see the Great Wall and Beijing. Given the fact that I’ve been witness to fights between northern Chinese rednecks, seen the dynamics of real estate politics at work, and had the opportunity to puke black bean pork in a sink at a four star hotel, all free of charge. The only thing I paid for was a taxi up to the place and the bottle of Baijou I brought our hosts, all of which came to thirty odd euro. So I’m not doing too badly so far. The only thing I wish I could do was end this ditty little piece of mine off with some original sign off, but truth is, I’m going to be in China for quite some time, so I don’t really have to worry; like Beijing and the Great Wall, that can wait. I’m not on some tour bus with a bunch of boring, middle aged, miserable Germans; I’m being taught martial arts by a P.E teacher come amateur photographer, whose shady nephew has brought me out to KTV and big dinners. All I owe him is English lessons, and he doesn’t even want them in a classroom type setting. Hope he can do the same for my Chinese…

1. Irish slang for loose woman or a whore – Editor

2. Chinese for cheers and literally means the glass has to be emptied – Editor

3. literally translates as “old” (lao 老) “foreigner” (wai 外). It is an informal word that appears in both spoken and written Chinese. Most people (i.e. Chinese people) who use the term consider laowai a casual and fairly neutral word. It is the shortened, informal version of wǎiguórén (外国人), which literally means “foreign country person”. (taken from Wikipedia)

Names have been changed.