Dancing at Oh Dear
       At around 9:30 p.m., Jamie, Fanny, and I left Jamie’s cousin’s coffee shop and walked east down Dong Ge Lu. (Steven and his
friend were not interested in coming with us, so they went elsewhere in Steven’s car.) It was a large and busy street, but there were
not so many people out at this time walking around. Everything was quiet. A dark sky full of dimly luminescent stars could be seen
over a long road that seemed to have no end. The newer magenta-colored buses were still running, weaving in and out from the main
street to the bike lane, which were both separated by a strip of land that had palm trees on it and was deliberately broken in many
places to allow vehicles to have access to the road. The buses would stop at the bus stops that were sometimes on the narrow strip of
land between the main road and the bike lane, or were sometimes on the side of the bike lane on the edge of the sidewalk. There were
also a few smaller and older looking buses cruising around with several different shades of green that were not attractive, and
sometimes the voice recording was broken and would play the same word over and over like a broken record. They looked like they
were about 20 years old.
       Oh Dear was not far away. We walked past a large parking area for bikes and scooters in front of a three-storey complex that was
divided into separate stores, and in the middle of it, there was a place called KTV Party Room with a sign written in English saying they
had karaoke rooms inside. Oh Dear was on the corner across an intersecting street just past the Party Room and other shops. On the
outside, Oh Dear looked like a giant hut with extremely wide stairs leading up to the front entrance. There were several people wearing
formal dresses and suits waiting at the entrance to greet those who would enter. People were always entering and exiting like it was a
tourist attraction. Once inside, there was a counter near the entrance with cubbies up on the wall behind the counter for people to put
their purses and bags to be stashed. Everybody except me knew it was a good idea not to leave anything important inside even though
they were supposed to be guarded, but my friends warned me about it first. We all left our bags there and put our identification bands
with numbers around our wrists and then walked into the main room.
       The center of Oh Dear was huge and laid out forum-style with many tables circling around more than half of the stage. We quickly
found one of the few unoccupied tables and sat down as the place was extremely crowded. There were many people ranging from mid-
20s  to about late forties40s or so. In the center was a stage with a ramp coming down to the stage from the rear wall where there were
probably some dressing rooms. There was also a path leading diagonally up to the stage that extended out from near where the
customers were sitting. Up on the stage, of course, were  performances of dancers and singers wearing costumes, and occasionally
smoke would spray out onto the stage to give some effect. At one point, two of the performers had a mock sword fight. The loser,
showing respect to his opponent, gave him a gesture of putting both hands together, one hand in a closed fist, and the other hand open
placing the palm against the fist with arms slightly outstretched at about neck level. I was told it is an ancient Chinese warrior custom
to show respect and loyalty to each other. People still do it to each other today, though it is extremely rare. Sometimes between the
performances, an announcer would come onto the stage with a microphone and speak to the audience in Chinese. Once in a while
some people would come on stage and throw small stuffed animals to audience members who were excitedly reaching out for them.
There was another room behind the stage that was blasting music, and whenever the performances finished, you could hear the bass
going ‘Bump Bump Bump,’ powerfully from behind the wall. It was a requirement to order something in order to stay at a table, so we
looked at a menu and decided to order a plate of fruit since none of us felt like drinking. Since the place was very big, and definitely too
loud for the fu wu yuans (foo woo yuen), or waiters, to hear us, we had to hold a candle that was placed in the middle of our table up
high so they would know to come over and serve us. While we were watching the performances, Jamie said to me, “At 11:00 they will
start playing music and everyone can dance at that time.” “That’s cool! I like dancing!” I said. Fanny was her usual quiet and reserved
self. I always found that quality in a woman to be quite alluring, and it was starting to take hold of me once again. Since resistance was
out of the question for me, how was I going to get through to her? Not only was she quiet, but she was quiet in another language.
       After an hour or so, the time to dance came. All of that night’s performers lined up along the stage and started dancing and
welcomed everyone to join them as the performance music transformed into dance music and the place grew darker. The usual strobe
lights and disco balls started flashing around the joint. Jamie asked me what I wanted to do. I wanted to stay and dance, but she and
Fanny wanted to leave. “Will you be alright here by yourself?” Jamie asked. “Of course!” I said. Jamie and Fanny walked through the
crowded place towards the exit, and many people started climbing up the stage and also danced along the pathway that was connected
to the stage. I got onto the pathway and started dancing because it seemed less crowded, but it was a headache every time someone
wanted to come through because there was hardly enough room for them to pass, and to fall off the path would almost certainly mean
injury. It was getting too hot, so I took my shirt off, but I still had a tank top on underneath. It was a dark blue tank top that I had bought
when I first came to Hefei when Summer took us all shopping on the Walking Street for the first time. I always liked the old expression,
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” Though it might have looked broke and out of fashion to others, I wasn’t worried about it. I’ll wear
something until it’s got holes in it. I think some of the people there were excited to see a foreigner, because down below me where
some of the tables were, some people kept handing me Budweiser cans to drink and sometimes we would drink together. I thought the
music was great. Most of it I had never heard before and I didn’t even know which country it came from, and it was very stimulating.
Everyone in the whole place seemed to be having a good time except for the strict and stiff-looking security guards. They were walking
around in dark uniforms wearing what looked like white construction hardhats and carrying maglites. Maybe this place had seen some
heated action in the past, but everything looked alright this time. Many places I had been in China, the Chinese people were afraid of
dancing, but it didn’t seem like a problem here.
       After a while, I went to the back room to see what was going on there. It looked like a regular bar, but it was a small dancing bar
with many small four-person tables that came up past waist level. People were doing the usual, playing drinking games with dice or
playing rock scissors paper while drinking Jack and Coke mixed together in clear thermoses. Up against the rear wall was a small
platform where people could go up and dance on. This place was also crowded and the music just as loud, though it was much more
claustrophobic than the main room. I saw one young man with a baseball cap who was standing at a table by himself with a bunch of
unopened bottles of beer, and he gestured to me to come towards him. He had a very warm and relaxed smile on his face. He offered
me beer after beer, and I accepted time after time. “What is this?” I asked myself. “How can I be so lucky to drink for free like this
tonight?” Chinese like to treat foreigners in public. If a foreigner ever treats a Chinese, the Chinese will lose face. The young man
couldn’t speak much English, but he was able to tell me his English name was Kobe, probably named after Kobe Bryant. A lot of young
Chinese people like to name themselves after NBA stars because it is so popular thanks to Yao Ming. Kobe and I exchanged numbers,
and then after a while, it was time to thank him and then head back to Guangxi University. Luckily my speech was not too slurred to tell
the taxi driver outside of Oh Dear to take me back to Guangxi University on the other side of the city.
Tiger
One day as I came back to Tai An building for some business, I saw English Jamie in the teacher’s office. “Hey Andrew, how is the
training going?” he asked. “Oh, it’s great! I like it a lot! Why don’t you come along?” I asked. “I plan to go soon. I’m interested as well,
and by the way, Paul from New Zealand said he wants to find a gym to start training in. He wants to start up sometime in November.” He
said. Just then, a man who called himself Tiger, a very large man with glasses and brown hair, came up to me. “Oh, so you’re training
how to fight, huh?” he asked. Then he got into a fighting stance in front of me, but he still had a little smile on his face. “You might get
hurt standing like that.” I said. Tiger got out of his stance and then turned sideways and paused in thought for a second. “I doubt that,”
Tiger reassured himself. “But this is MMA. The way you are standing you are leaving yourself vulnerable to kicks and more,” I said.
Then Tiger got back into his fighting stance, but this time he dropped down a little. “Then I’ll stand like this, a little lower, in case
someone tries to take me down to the ground,” he said while still grinning. Then he got a semi-serious look on his face. “If you’re going
to fight Chinese guys, make sure you don’t only punch them, but punch STRAIGHT THROUGH them,” he said. I could see already that
Tiger had an answer for everything. After meeting him several times in Tai An building, and being a person who likes to hear stories,
Tiger told me some of his greatest stories from his youth. He told me he was in the military, and he made himself sound like some kind
of Terminator. I wasn’t sure how that was possible though considering how out of shape he was now, but I wasn’t gonna call him on it.
He also told me that when he went to school back in Michigan that he played hockey. He said that one time he went to elbow a player
from the opposing team and missed him because the player ducked, but shattered the plexi-glass window behind him and scared the
$%^$ out of the other team. His team supposedly got fined $5,000  because he was so violent. “My teammates were wondering if I
went up against the zamboni machine, who would win, me or the zamboni?” he said.  Nobody believed his stories, but I thought they
were still interesting to hear.
At Green Mountain
       Back when I first started teaching for Webster, I once substituted for English Jamie when he couldn’t make it to class. I made a
couple of friends in that class, including a young lady named Jenny. Jenny later invited me to go to a famous place in Nanning called
Green Mountain. We met early one morning with her cousin at the front gate of Guangxi University and got on a bus and headed for
Green Mountain which was in the south eastern corner of the city. Surprisingly to me, we had to pay money to get in. We first went to
visit the Buddhist temple that was near the entrance. There were several Buddhist monks with shaven heads and robes in an outdoor
worshipping area with statues and shrines. “What do those guys do all day?” I asked. “They just read old books,” Jenny said. What old
books and why I didn’t know. All I knew was that they clearly had no knowledge about city life, at least at the present time. I was told
that some Buddhist monks are starting to sellout their old ways and do things just to earn money now. I didn’t know if they qualified or
not. We got our incense sticks in hand, gave a half bow to a shrine three times, and then placed them inside the shrine to continue to
burn until gone as is the tradition.
       There was a shuttle that took people further up Green Mountain. We rode the shuttle for a minute and then got off to continue
exploring. At this time, the ASEAN delegates were having an annual conference in a complex in Green Mountain, so many black cars
with police escorts drove up the winding pathway quickly past us, the police horns making the sound ‘Bop Bop Bop’ to warn people to
get out of the way as they were coming. Nanning had been chosen as the seat of the ASEAN conference, presumably because of its
location which is almost central to the seven member nations involved.
       We visited several other temples in Green Mountain, including a temple that was built according to Thai architectural design.
Inside of the temple they had a panorama of art depicting the life of Gautama the Buddha from birth to death. I got my camera out and
prepared to take some pictures, but the man working there said, “No!” and then waved his hand. I guess someone trained him to say
no to foreigners. Another interesting thing we saw in Green Mountain was a pond where we could see a boy inside of a bubble on the
surface of the water looking like a hamster running in those little plastic balls. He would try to run between five and ten seconds and
then fall flat on his back making a loud smack sound each time. We started laughing at him. It looked like he was falling on purpose. He
must have gotten tired because he started resting on his back with his hands behind his head looking casual. We went over to the
operator and had Jenny ask him if I could go inside of the other bubble and go out onto the water. He used an air machine to blow it up,
and then I stepped inside and he zipped it closed. It was hard to do! The only way to stand up was to run, and from lack of oxygen and
space, it was very hard to keep running, so I fell on my back just as the other boy did many times. Suddenly I felt something jolt my
bubble. That boy was running straight into me and looking happy. He was literally invading my bubble. He wanted to play, so I let him
know how I can play. I crashed back into him and sent him running in his ball quickly to the other side of the pond. He never came back
for a second try. After I had all I could take, I came back to be helped out of the ball. Jenny and her cousin were laughing and showed
me the pictures they took of me. The operator said something to me that I couldn’t understand and put his thumb up. “What did he say?”
I asked. “He said you are very strong and you did a good job!” Jenny said. Though the man gave me a compliment, I felt like being in
that ball was the next level up from where I was at. I don’t know how the hamsters do it.
Impressions
       After spending some time in Nanning, I was able to see how different it was from Hefei. In Hefei, all of the buildings seemed very
dull and to lack color even when there was color, but Nanning’s looked a little more vibrant. Many if not most of the people walking the
dirty and run-down streets in Hefei looked like they had no conscience or awareness beyond themselves, not in the “I’m better than
everyone else” sense, but more like “I don’t care about anything and my heart is empty.” If someone were to step on another, they  
wouldn’t have cared, and probably the one who got stepped on wouldn’t have cared either because it was part of their culture. Though I
believe the people were very intelligent, there was also something very cruel and almost savage about them, like they had no regard
for anyone’s life, possibly even their own. Sometimes you could just see the looks on their faces like “Damn anyone who gets in my
way and I will do nothing to avoid a collision with them,” though they were not actively seeking to clash with anyone. The atmosphere
was full of tension but not danger, and it seemed very alien to me. It was often better not to get noticed for anything because attention
left open the possibility for spite from others. Yet on some occasions, people were very civilized, especially during business
occasions or friendships. Everything still felt very communist with a slightly ancient residue, and like the government was everywhere
controlling everyone’s life with invisible strings, but Nanning didn’t seem that way at all. Everything was much more simple and
relaxed, and so were the people. There was nothing mysterious or complicated about them and they were friendlier in general, even
though they still had their fair share of cheats and thieves. The thing I did not appreciate about Nanning was that everything, the
buildings and the atmosphere, seemed quite new. Old things contain the wisdom of the ages, and there were almost none to be seen
here. Though everything seemed more welcoming, it was certainly less interesting, and the roads that seemed to have no end soon
began to have limits.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling
       Nanning adventures