A Red Carnation

I suppose I ought to start this story by telling you about Jimmy.

Jimmy is a Chinese guy from Guilin who happened to notice that I wasn't exactly Chinese. Now walking down the streets of the beautiful picturesque Guangxi city of Guilin, many people happened to notice this particular Thursday morning that I wasn't exactly Chinese, and their reactions to this differed wildly. Most of them tried to sell me something. A couple of girls laughed a bit and pointed, probably noting the caveman-like appearance my beard gives me. One lady even grabbed her small child who ventured perhaps a millimeter too close to me, sharply berating him for the rash action. The beggar kid didn't seem particularly mind my distinct lack of Chinese-ness, and went about his normal course of business, as if I had the faintest idea what he might be saying in Mandarin.

Jimmy, however, took a slightly different approach.

He furtively glanced at me to see if I'd bite, and clearly deciding I was harmless enough, decided to give his hard earned English a go.

"Hello," he declared, quite clearly and with careful attention to accent and intonation.

Alright, so I liked the effort. I decided to humor him. "What's up," I replied, rather noncommittally.

"Walking to town?"

"Yup."

"How long have you been in Guilin?"

"This is my first real day. Got in late last night."

"Ah. I wanted to ask you what you thought of Guilin."

And so I decided to tell him, relating the story of the cab driver from the airport who tried to tell me that my hotel was all booked, but he could find me a much better place and get me some discount tickets to all the attractions. I hadn't realized at the time that the expression "but I wasn't born yesterday" may take some time to explain.

After I realized that Jimmy didn't seem intent on hustling me, we ventured out to look at some of the sites of Guilin. We walked to the Solitary Beauty Peak / royal house, built back in the Ming dynasty. Jimmy carefully inforrmed me to take the left of three staircases.

"The center one is only for the emperor," he explained. "The right is for the path of the writer."

"What's the left?"

"The path of the Kung Fu."

I chuckled softly. "So we take the left?"

"Of course!"

I had a feeling that Jimmy and I were going to get on just fine after that.

We hiked up the solitary peak to gaze at the beautiful (if a tad foggy) vistas of Guilin. Jimmy turned out to be a fan of languages, and was surprised to find I spoke some Spanish. He immediately whipped out his Spanish phrasebook and I helped him with the pronunciation of some crucial things such as, "chica bonita" and "Tu quieres una bebida?" as we wandered back down the cliff into the city.

(It turns out that "May-Nu" is how you say "Beautiful girl" in Mandarin)

Around the corner Jimmy brought me to a place we feasted. We wiled away the afternoon getting to know each other as he provided excellent tour service, dutifully showing me the things to see in Guilin. We caught an amazing afternoon dance and acrobatics performance put on by people of the Yang ethnic minority, giving an insight into their culture and showcasing things that just make you think "ouch" as you contemplate trying to get into some of these positions (without alcohol) yourself.

The rest of the day was spent hackey-sacking (I translated "wandering attention" as "A.D.D." to two young girls kicking the footbag around with us) and drinking tea between occasionally plopping down at an Internet cafe to get some work done. At last, the sunset and the people began to flood en masse to the central square.

After a quick debate that concluded that it was probably too early to hit a club, Jimmy showed me a local bar where we could grab a beer and kill a few hours. The waitress turned out to be a friend of his, and there was a guy picking away at a guitar over at the corner of an outside patio that spilled out onto the street.

Yeah, you probably guessed it. That little detail about the "guy with a guitar in the corner" turns out to be relatively important.

A beer or two in (the Liquan local brew turns out to be pretty good, and I was surprised to find out that the locals quaff the stuff pretty fast), the only guy from a table of all girls went up and conferred briefly with the guitarist. The guitarist nodded, and the guy began singing away something or other in Mandarin that apparently was very well received; at least, the girls at the next table seemed to love it, and that was about the only meaningful definition of "good" that mattered to Jimmy and I at the moment.

He prodded me. "You should play.. You said you play guitar, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, go ahead..."

"But... Guitarists don't usually like to let random people just come along and play their guitars when they've clearly already got the gig.."

"Ahh, give it a try."

The waitress-friend of his just happened to overhear the last part of the dialogue.

"You play the guitar?"

"Uh... A little..."

"You should go play!"

"But isn't it his guitar?"

"Is ok, it's not his guitar. You can play if you want."

I waited until he finished off another two songs and layed the guitar down to take a break. Seeing the moment finally arrive, I walked over to him and asked if I might do a song or two. He mumbled something I took to mean acquiescense, and I was off.

The first song went a bit slowly, but then, they always do. I was quite convinced that everyone was struggling through the listening of it at least as much as I was the playing of it, but at the end I received rather more applause than I expected. Getting slightly charged off the energy, I decided to go for something a little more racy.

This time around the applause clearly split the audience in two. Half of the audience believed that I must be Dave Matthews himself and clapped and cheered appropriately. The other half preferred to believe the the first half must have had something odd in the water afflicting their judgment, and preferred to pointedly not make any eye contact with me. After a significant part of the latter half paid their bill and dissappeared, the first half seemed to take the challenge and began calling for "one more song!" as I made motions to put the guitar down. Who was I to ignore their desires?

Five songs later, I broke into a blues riff ("Pride and Joy", Stevie Ray Vaughn) that had people leaping out of their seats, though I was lost in thought wondering exactly what the noise pollution levels might be defined as in Guilin at that hour. Which had become another mystery to me; Jimmy had polished off his large bottle of beer after appearing to nurse it a bit, so I needed to start wrapping things up. I went for a big finish with "El Cancion de Mariachis".

Somewhere in the middle of the song, I heard the earlier group of girls starting to all clap out of time with the music, and heard calls that sounded like they were egging one of their brethren on to do something silly. About a minute later, I saw the nod on the cutest girl of the group, a nod known to anyone who's accepted to do something they definitely would rather not do, but are resigned to carrying out. The girl stood up, and approached the stage.

Concealed in her hand was a Red Carnation.

She stumbled through the words, "You are very good" as she presented the flower to me on stage. I was shocked enough by the moment, that the audience got quite a kick out of it, with poorly contained mirth escaping at every moment. The girl had turned color to slightly match the flower, and I knew that something had to be done to make her know that exactly this sort of behavior should be followed in the future, and not to fall prey to the masses.

So I did the only logical thing I could think of. I bit the carnation in my closest impression of a flamenco dancer, and began strumming a progression taught to me by Ritmo Gitano in Florida, by Aydin himself.

This had more or less the desired effect. Whatever else the Chinese think of us, "crazy" definitely plays rather importantly into the character profile.

After hanging out there for another hour or two, we went out to a local club in Guilin, with me rather eager to see what the local people did for going out on a Thursday. I was pleased to know that they can rock just as hard in the small hidden cities just as well as they move in Hong Kong, even if the town naturally has far fewer people (and venues) at which to rock out. Sooner or later and an adventure in the midst, it was time to go back and pass out, and get ready for Yangshuo tomorrow. That's about the time that Jimmy surprised me again.

I had let him know that I was going to Yangshuo tomorrow. He apparently decided that work wasn't really all that important to go in to (he's a cook at one of the local places) and said he'd accompany me, if I didn't mind. Which obviously I didn't, but I suppose he had just met me, so perhaps it wasn't so obvious at that point.

Sure enough, the next day, we were on the bus to Yangshuo. And what happened there is going to have to wait for another blog.

ttyl