Memoirs From
China
The Red Guards
Have Never Looked So Sexy
By Chad Pollock
Hideous Men
Essential Vocabulary:
Gambei (Gom Bay)- bottoms up
HeJiu (Huh Joe)- literally means “drink
liquor,” it’s said when one wants to toast but doesn’t
want to bottoms up.
BaiJiu (By Joe)-literally means “white
liquor;” Baijiu is the Chinese national drink
The machismo in the room is palpable. Testosterone oozes from
liquor-laden pores and stains the underarms of fifty white-collared
shirts. The black suit coats have long been removed, and the
matching trousers are now rolled up to the knees. It’s
a night on the town with Chinese men.
Here I am, a lank and effeminate lad, dressed in my standard
blue-jeans, t-shirt, and sneakers. I’m bleary eyed and
awkward like a thirteen year old virgin at a Hell’s Angel’s
picnic. My appearance is in stark contrast to my Chinese hosts.
8:00pm, I’m raising my glass for the 20th time as my host
proposes another toast. At least, I think it’s the 20th
time. I lost track somewhere around thirteen. I remember number
thirteen because that was when we switched from drinking Baijou
to drinking beer. Baijou is the nastiest of all the world’s
liquors. To a foreigner’s nose it’s noxious, but
an open bottle of Baijou is like potpourri to the Chinese man.
The smell permeates the room, a heavy smell that coats your
throat like molasses. It tastes as bad as it smells, and it’s
unforgettable, which is why I distinctly remember the switch
in drinks. I’m not as clear on how much beer came after
that.
All the Chinese men around me are in various states of inebriation.
Someone says “gambei,” and we are all guzzling another
glass of beer. Is that the 21st?
I reel for a moment, shudder, fight back the vomit, and take
a look around. I’m surrounded by red swollen faces with
Cheshire smiles. Look at my watch again, 8:25pm. How did the
time pass so quickly?
“Do you need to go?”
“No, I’m fine,” I lie.
“Americans are good. Chinese are good,” says some
man in the group.
I smile and raise my class. “He jiu,” I say and
take a swig.
Spending a night drinking with Chinese men is like running a
marathon. You need a plan if you’re going to keep from
loosing face. You must know your limits and how to pace yourself.
Their goal is to get you drunker than Scooter Brown. They want
you to embarrass yourself, but by proposing a toast instead
of merely accepting their toasts, I’m showing that I can
handle whatever they give, and I’m ingratiating myself
to them. They will love me for this show of bravado.
Over the past year I’ve uncovered these
rules for male friendships in China:
1. Hold your liquor.
2. Express all emotion through action.
3. Money lubes the wheels of friendship; therefore, be lavish
when spending on friends.
4. Friendship implies advantage. Don’t be afraid to use
a friend for a favor because he’ll use you at some later
date.
5. Just because someone wants to befriend you for the sake of
using your power or prestige doesn’t mean that he doesn’t
want to truly be your friend.
6. Women play an important role in society, and a big part of
that role is to keep men happy.
7. Hold your liquor.
“We are friends. You are my American friend,”
says my host.
Everyone grunts their approval and someone says “gambei.”
As I throw back my drink, my head collides with the thigh of
a scantily clad woman, and I realize for the first time that
I’m at a brothel. We have to shout because the music is
blaring and there are women gyrating in front of us.
How did I get here?
At 4:00pm, I was anticipating a quiet evening
at home. I went to the market to buy vegetables for dinner.
I greeted a man who shouted “hello” to me, and before
I knew what was happening, the two of us were drinking Baijou
and eating barbeque. I was contemplating eating a goat’s
penis when I noticed that the party had swelled from two people
to eight. It seems my host had called his friends and invited
them to join him as he entertained a foreigner.
We finished the barbeque, and I was sloshed, but it didn’t
matter because so was everyone else. My new friends grabbed
me by the arms, one on each side of me, and hustled me into
a taxi, like something out of a gangster flick. Thirty years
ago, this would have been an ominous sign in China. People would
say, “the last time we saw Chad he was being taken away
in a taxi.” Thirty years ago, I would have been spirited
away to a gloomy gulag. But in the “new China,”
I’m on my way to a men’s club.
9:00pm.“Gambei,” shouts my host.
“No, thank you. I should stop,” I say. He looks
shocked and hurt.
“You do not know Chinese drinking culture,” he says,
“if you are my friend, you will drink this cup with me.”
What can I do? We shoot the glass together just as the ladies
remerge from their dressing room for the final number. The DJ
is spinning a rollicking version of “The East is Red,”
a patriotic paean to Mao. The dancers, who up until now had
been dressed mostly in glittering mini-skirts, feathered head-dresses,
and boas, are now decked in crisp green army fatigues, cut to
accentuate their waif-like body structures, but they’re
still wearing stiletto heals.
This costume—minus the shoes—is the traditional
costume of the old Red Guard. The Guard play an infamous role
in Chinese history. In the late 1960’s, Chairman Mao proclaimed
the start of the Cultural Revolution. This was to be the next
phase of the communist liberation of 1949. The governmental
and societal structure had been thoroughly revamped and converted
to a communist system, yet in the hearts and minds of the people,
old ways still prevailed. What Mao called the Four Olds—Old
Thinking, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits—still
dominated Chinese society. Mao said that what was needed was
for those with revolutionary fervor to root out these last vestiges
of corrupt bourgeois thought. He called on the young people
of China to rise up in a spontaneous movement to complete the
revolution. Millions responded, and to them he gave the right
to be called the children of Mao, viz. the Red Guard.
These Red Guard were the terror of the city, the village, and
the countryside. They ridiculed, attacked, and sometimes executed
any person they perceived as clinging to the “olds.”
Schools were closed, and the students marched out to the countryside
to be reeducated by the peasants. The icons of the old age were
defaced or destroyed. If you go to the Summer Palace on the
outskirts of Beijing, you can still see statues of Buddha that
had their heads lopped off by the overzealous Red Guard.
Yes, the Red Guards were out of control. But they were merely
a product of their age. In reality they were pawns in a secret
power play between Mao and some of the other high-ranking communists.
Today, they are viewed with a mixture of regret and wonder.
People don’t talk about it except to say, “those
were different times.”
9:15pm. The young yellow ladies shaking their
four olds in my face weren’t alive for the Cultural Revolution,
but they seem to be swept up in a revolutionary frenzy of their
own. The music is still blaring:
“The East is red, the sun has risen,
China has produced a Mao Ze Dong
To work for the good of the people.
Hey, hey, hey, ho,
He is the people’s liberator”
“Do you know what this song is?” asks
my host.
“The East is Red.”
“Yes,” he says, “it’s a Chinese country
song.”
“It’s got a good beat. I can dance to it,”
I say. He looks puzzled. It’s sometimes hard to be witty
when you’re working cross-culturally.
“The Red Guards,” I say, “are very sexy.”
Now my host is tickled. He can’t stop laughing. He translates
my witticism for the rest of the group, and they are all laughing.
He’s still chuckling to himself as he pours me another
drink. “Gambei,” he says.
Sex and Patriotism is a crowd-pleasing combination
. There’s plenty of liquor being consumed now. Everyone
wants to drink a toast to China and to the departed Chairman.
Empty glasses are slammed on the table, refilled, and consumed…slammed,
refilled, consumed…slammed, refilled…. The foreplay
is over and the sexy Red Guards are stroking us all to climax.
They shimmy in our faces, and we grunt our approval. They strike
revolutionary poses holding Mao’s Red Book of Quotations
aloft in mock reverence as they slide their other hand down
their flank and tease a camouflage-covered nipple. The small
club is a stew of revolutionary fervor and pubescent hormones,
visceral, volcanic.
“Gambei,” says my host.
The East is Red dance Remix is about to end, and the ladies
are marching straight toward our table, unfurling a banner while
they march. My host and I gambei. In accordance with custom,
I show him my empty glass as sign of respect, but when I look
him in the eye, I can see that he’s in trouble. The Red
Ladies are now two feet in front of us, and my host can’t
hold back any longer. His first vomit hits the dance floor and
splatters the ladies shoes. Immediately his friends are hustling
him from the room, but its too late. The only exit is across
the dance floor, and my host is spewing and dribbling vomit
the entire way. The ladies can’t dance until the vomit’s
cleaned up. The evening is over.
9:30pm I’m sitting alone at the table now,
finishing my beer. Although I’ve exchanged phone numbers
with my host, I don’t think he’ll ever call me and
I never plan on calling him. His friends have stuffed him a
taxi and sent him home. Etiquette demands that they see to it
that I get home too, but I don’t feel like seeing them
again, so I slip away as quietly as a drunken man can and I
stumble off into the night. In truth, I don’t remember
how I get home.
When I wake up the next morning, my liver feels
hard. It’s like someone’s inserted a smooth skipping
stone the size of a fist into my lower back. To my surprise,
my host from the night before calls me and asks me to go out
again with him and his friends. What can I do?
“The Red Guards,” he says, “will
look sexy.”
We both laugh. I’ve made a good impression on him, I can
tell.
“Try not to puke on them, though,” I say.
....
memoir one
memoir three
Chad Pollock has been
a lawn-care expert, a pizza delivery driver, a
teamster, a barrista, a farmhand, a free loader, a preacher,
and a teacher, and from all this he's learned the importance
of a good pair of shoes. He currently resides in China where
the majority of the world's shoes are manufactured.
Chad's online journals can be found
by clicking here.
