“Hey you’re American?” Carl focused in on Chris who uncomfortably sipped his beer.
“Yeah, I’m American, but I’m not a big fan, that’s why I left.” It was getting more and more interesting all the time. Kane handed the menus to the group at the second table. Nodding as a few of them asked for beers. “Not a big fan? What do you mean, you don’t like America?” Carl sounded offended and accusing.
“What I mean is I don’t much care for American culture, government, or attitudes and before you tell me to leave it if I don’t like it, I want you to think about where we are,” Kane was as surprised as Carl looked.
“Yeah, well I think it’s the greatest country in the world. I’m an MBA on spring break and me and my classmates here are visiting China for the next two weeks. It’s great to be an American in China. What about you, where are you from?” Carl asked Sasha.
“I’m from Germany and the rest of these folks are from England.”
Sasha didn’t bother looking at the MBA and moved straight to a different conversation without any sort of segue. “Keith, how did you like Egypt?”
Carl either ignored or didn’t understand the snub. “Egypt. Wow. So how do you guys come here? Don’t you have jobs? Don’t you have responsibilities?” He looked at Chris and then quickly at the others.
“Susan and I both quit our jobs.” Kay said.
“I quit my job and sold my house,” from Keith.
“I quit my job, too” from Johnny.
“I was a homeless guy who hit the jackpot on a slot machine” from Chris.
Kane looked at him again. There was a stark contrast between Chris’s worn wool coat and the bright blue fleece. The attitudes of the two men were even more different. Kane was used to seeing Americans like Carl, Chris seemed less puffed up, less full of himself or his country.
“Come on…gimme a break,” Carl said. “You must have had a job. What did you do? How do you get the money to be here? What are you going to do when you get back?”
Carl apparently felt like he had been accepted into the new group. He didn’t seem to notice the subtle turning and sliding of chairs as he tried to squeeze in. All six were subtly blocking him out of conversation. He chose a spot directly between Sasha and Chris, who seemed surprised that their thinly veiled insults went unnoticed.
“So how much are you guys paying for a room? We’ve got these great 5-star rooms at the Hilton for only $45 a night. Can you believe that? I mean 5-star for $45! You can’t get that in New York.”
“Ohhh.” Sasha said it in a slightly mocking tone, “You’re from New York. Where are you from in the states Chris?”
“The Pacific Northwest,” Chris said, “It might as well be another country it’s so different from New York.”
“Yeah, America is huge,” again Carl seemed oblivious to the snub."So you guys are staying here? How much is it?”
“Well, Keith and I are staying in another place down by the train station. It’s 40 yuan a night. Chris and the girls are sharing the dorms here and that’s what 30 yuan?” Sasha looked at Chris who nodded.
“And Johnny has a room here by himself for…how much Johnny?” “80 yuan a night.” Johnny said it slowly and carefully.
“You three are sharing a room. Wow, kinky. Hey how much is that in dollars? I don’t know how much this monopoly money is worth.” Carl pulled a huge stack of Chinese currency out of the pocket of his fleece.
“It’s about $5.” Chris said it coldly. ”Excuse me.” He got up and left the table. Kane figured he was going to the toilet outside.
“Are the rooms nice? I mean you could get a room for just $45 at the Hilton. That’s where we’re staying…it’s so cheap.”
“How long are you here for?” Sasha asked him. “Two weeks?” The sneer was obvious in his words. “We’re all staying a little longer so we’re sort of…being careful about how much we spend”
“So here’s what I don’t understand…” Carl ignored his unanswered questions. “I mean, my visa is only good for a month. I don’t understand why the Chinese don’t let Americans and other westerners stay as long as they want. I mean it’s not like some Chinese peasant coming to America. I mean we’ve got money. The Chinese don’t have to figure out what to do with some stupid peasant. They should just let us stay as long as we want.”
“Maybe they don’t want you here.” Sasha indicated the rest of the group sitting around the table but Carl again ignored or didn’t catch the insult.
“Yeah, but why not? I mean, I’m spending a lot of money here. I’m making the economy better. I’ve spent about a thousand dollars and it’s only been a week. Everything is so cheap here. Not like New York where I have to pay $1800 a month for a studio apartment.”
Chris came back in and sat down, pulling his chair a bit further from Carl’s. Kane brought drinks for the second table and took their food orders. “Do you want anything?” he asked Carl.
“Yeah, do you have any Heineken?” Kane nodded yes and went back across the street to the tiny store.
“80 yuan.” He said when he got back. Carl gave him 100. “Keep the change.” The guy was an idiot, the beer only cost 20 across the street and the Singha were only 10 yuan in the café.
“Did you buy that North Face fleece here?” Kay asked him. “How much was it.”
“Oh no, this is the real deal. I got this at the outlet store in Berkeley. It was $250 but it’s the real deal, not a rip off like you find here.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard to tell the difference with the pirate stuff here,”Sasha said, “Seeing how they’re made in the same factory by the same workers. Good move getting the real thing.”
“Thanks, It’s worth it to pay more for the real deal. I took a special trip to Berkeley just to get this jacket. Why not? I’m going to be making $100,000 a year after I graduate. Hey what’s the story with all these books?” He got up, much to the obvious relief of Sasha and Chris. “Are they free?”
“No,” Kay explained. “Travelers trade the books they finish for the books here. It’s a straight trade. A book for a book. It’s good because sometimes it’s hard to find a good book when you’re on the road.”
“So all of these are available?” he was looking at a 2001 Let’s Go China guidebook.
“Everything but the guidebooks,” Kane said, “Those are for my uests to use while they’re here.”
“Great. Hey, I’m going to join my friends now.” Carl moved away from the pleased looking travelers and towards the frowning group of BAs who were now eating the food Kane had just put on the table.
No Cinese food. Hamburgers, french fries, burritos, and soup. Very different from the rice dishes the first group had eaten earlier. None of the MBA’s needed chopsticks for their food; they probably didn’t even know how to use them.
Kane listened to bits and pieces of the conversations going around the two tables. Sasha was telling a story about teaching English in Northern China, Keith talked about fishing in Russia, Johnny and Chris were discussing the mountains they’d climbed the week before, and the two English women were discussing their proposed itinerary for their trip around the world.
At the second table a girl was telling the others how much she missed her parents and her dog. A second was describing the horror of Kane’s bathrooms. “And it was just this horrible pit on the floor, there was no toilet paper, no way to flush it, I mean it was filled with poo. It was horrible. I turned right around and left. No way I‘m going to use a disgusting toilet like that.” Kane laughed.
Most of his guests complimented him on the cleanliness of his toilets as compared with others they had seen in China.
“Well, I’m not going to use a bathroom like that.” Carl said. “Why don’t we get a taxi back to the Hilton and have some more drinks there.”