When you travel or live in another country, there are always scenes that stick in your mind, mainly because you think they really encapsulating the essence of the place. I still remember a certain gorgeous spring day in September 2002, when my most loyal reader (hi mom!) and I were ambling through a market in central Bolivia, and a woman dressed in the traditional highlands garb sauntered by while jabbering on a cell phone. In retrospect, I realize that it was more our ingrained belief that the traditional and the modern couldn’t exist alongside one another that made the situation seem, to us, so unique and odd. I’m sure the woman herself certainly didn’t think it was strange that she was chatting on a mobile phone.
Anyway, a couple days ago I had the privilege of beholding yet another such scene unfolding before my eyes, this time in the intimate confines of the bathroom nearest my office. Just a brief explanatory digression should help place the tableau in the proper context. To a good number of Chinese male white collar workers, a bathroom is not just a place to pee, nor merely a place to hide from the boss, but a place to smoke. It’s likely because of this that the bathroom nearly constantly smells like the inside of Joe Camel’s ashtray. It’s a rare day when I go to the bathroom to hide from the boss take care of business and I don’t find someone’s lit one up in one of the stalls, or in front of the urinal (the second one being only for the flashiest of smokers, both because of its blatancy and the degree of difficulty involved. I’ll spare anyone who’s not familiar with the process all the gory logistical details, but suffice it to say that a third hand would not be unwelcome in attempting such a feat).
Two days ago, though, I witnessed an act of such skill, such supreme mastery of both the environment and the self, that I don’t deem it likely I’ll ever see it again in my lifetime. I suspect that my life shall now be divided into two periods: the before, and the after. The gentleman of whom I speak was somehow-simultaneously-taking care of that which one takes care of in the vicinity of a urinal, speaking loudly into a cell phone, and smoking his preferred brand of cigarettes. I would probably need five or six hands to accomplish what he did with two. I’m still at a loss as to how he managed this, or why he even felt compelled to attempt it. All I know is, when pressed to recall those images that I felt really defined my time in China, certainly one of the first to spring to mind will be that of my new hero, puffing and yakking away, head in hand (so to speak), without a care in the world.
