The “Game” after the Olympics Games

The “Game” after the Olympics Games

I met a Canadian expat in Beijing who spent about 5 years here. I will call him Andy. Andy speaks some 50 essential phrases of Chinese with fluency and panache of a real Beijinger.

He introduced me to some rules for Beijing that he found useful:

1. do not expect any Chinese to speak English.
2. when they speak, do not expect them to understand you or you to understand them.
3. when they understand you, do not expect them to think like you.
4. best, do not expect them to think at all for they have a set way of thinking that is unfathomable to foreigners but is bound to produce confusion.
5. best not to ask for any directions as you will invariably be misdirected.
6. when you think you are having free information or a bargain, they may actually cost you more.
7. unless you really know what you are doing, stay on the tourist circuit and pay the price. At least you know what you are getting (or not getting).

Andy should know. He has been teaching English to Chinese students for a few years. He’s actually been sacked from one college because, he says, he was trying to make students talk and think in English, instead of memorizing grammar rules and meaningless pages of texts. His other job is sitting in the front office of companies as the notional “foreign” partner. He has represented 43 different countries and companies so far. Sometimes he is picked up by a street agent who looks for voice over talent in bars frequented by foreigners. He is paid peanuts, most of the money being pocketed by the pyramid of agents who skim the field. All he has to do is to pretend to lip synch Chinese, with a native voice over. He is the “foreign face” of products and services marketed in China.

He is also a fan of Kiyosaki and Donald Tramp and an avid reader of “The Game” a dating manual for males who think that seduction of women is the only game in town. He is having a ball. He says that to a young Chinese woman the average Chinese male is boring, crude, cigarette smelling and beer drinking brute. A Western man with a smattering of Chinese and a sense of humor is simply irresistible. Most young Chinese women have only had 2 partners – a young boy from their school they “experimented” with and a current boyfriend (but, upon a close questioning, had another boyfriend with whom she had an affair before but forgot about it).

Andy is worried whether he will ever be able to date a Western woman. He is trapped in a honey pot. It is like me saying I will not be able to enjoy Western massage after a Chinese variety. Of course, the honey pot has its downside, like the habitual lying of every girlfriend he had regarding every topic he ever discussed with her. Or her preference for her evening TV series instead of sex with him every time he is randy (which he is a lot of the time, he says). He sometimes feels like an old Olympic ticket sold by touts on the black market for the Chinese to simply boast that they have attended an Olympic event (sleeping with a Westerner who speaks Chinese and has a sense of humor being the next best).

Andy is worried about his future and thinks China is just a trap for people like him. But he enjoys the present while dreaming of becoming rich and famous when he writes his bestseller or makes that elusive business connection.

I was telling him a story about a relative in Moscow who was a sex addict until a jealous husband started chasing after him with a fire axe, and an attractive secretary he hired for her looks who turned out to be a corporate spy who ruined his business. He listened to me while chatting up an eye-catching young waitress in a restaurant we were dining in, pinching her and making her giggle uncontrollably. I am not sure he had heard my story. He was enjoying the only game worth playing during, before, or after the Games in China.

By the way, he told me that many Chinese moved out of Beijing before the Olympics, afraid of terrorism, increased security and loose foreigners. He also said that many Chinese salary men and women working in offices spend many hours on the Internet and chatting on their phones instead of working, like they are supposed to. Andy said that this and their inability to think independently is actually good news for the West. If they were as efficient and hard working and creative as Americans are supposed to be, we’d be in real trouble. But he is afraid that the Chinese girls are going to learn The Game, and that Chinese men will learn to think. He promised he will move out of China then and maybe go to Belarus, which he heard has attractive girls and men who also cannot think. He is learning Belarusian.