In the beginning of May, there were two Internet bars around the city that had explosives detonated inside of them while they
were occupied by customers. Two people were killed, and several others were injured. I wasn’t sure where in the city they were
because there were several hundred internet bars in Hefei. After that happened, it was against the rules for internet bars to stay
open all night, but some of them stayed open anyways. It gave the rest of us who used the internet bars regularly something extra to
worry about in our lives.
       The foreigner named Eric from Hollywood, California decided to go into the service industry and reopen The Long Bar with
some Chinese business partners. I was concerned about his ambitious nature because that attitude can often lead to many
problems that had been overlooked because action was taken before careful pondering. Eric invited everyone to go to The Long
Bar’s reopening party one evening. I saw many of the foreigners I had come to know there. Actually, I didn’t know much about them
and their past lives in their home countries at all, but we still got along well, and there was never any doubt that I couldn’t trust
these people. It was like our friendship together had been formed long before we ever met each other and we naturally fell into
place with each other. There were also some Chinese there that wanted a chance to practice their English with so many foreigners.
There was one young Chinese lady who was tall and thin and had long light-brown hair who took notice of me as we were standing
together in the same area of the bar. Her name was Nancy. She had large deep looking eyes that made it seem like there was much
more to her than what could be seen on the surface, more than many other Chinese I had met, but she usually wore a polite smile
and was nice to talk to. I also saw Og from Ireland there. As we kept drinking at the counter with another foreigner from Ghana
named Garcia, Og slipped further and further away from his true self and started drunk rambling a little. He always liked to make
jokes about race. I wasn’t sure if it was his way of making light of what many people take seriously, or if it was his way of venting
his frustrations, but I tried not to take him seriously either way. I told him how it’s usually not very easy for me to get angry, and he
decided to put me to the test. He started pushing me and then slapping my face lightly to try and make me angry, but I wouldn’t let
him make me lose control of myself. I almost couldn’t contain myself, and I started speaking loudly to him, and he began to get
scared. “You’re not angry, then why are you talking so loud? You’re gonna get the Africans to beat me up, aren’t you?” he said. “No.
If I have a problem with you, I’ll take care of it myself.” I said to him. Og was harmless from my point of view. It wouldn’t have
made any sense to me to cause him any true harm. The next day, Spela saw him walking around Hu Po with his girlfriend. She
asked him if he remembered anything from the night before, and he said that he didn’t. Then she reminded him that he slapped my
face a little, with my permission, and his face turned red from embarrassment. Alcohol can certainly bring out a different side of
people.
       Mike from Australia, or Aussie Mike as he sometimes referred to himself, was organizing a soccer team, or football as
everyone in the world besides people from the U.S. call it. I heard about it, and decided to meet up with him and the others that
would play that Sunday morning at the Anhui Agriculture University. I sat down near the front gate on a cement ledge that was low
to the ground on Changjiang Road for about 15 minutes, where many people were entering and exiting the main gate before Mike
and several others came up. Mike obviously didn’t remember me from the one time we met at the Revolutionary Bar, because
when he came up to me, he said, “Tom from Greece?” “No.” I said. “I’m Andrew from America.” It seemed like everyone had a
different idea about where I came from. Some people thought I was from Africa, some thought I was from Europe, others thought I
was from Canada, Australia, and even the Middle East. My students at the middle school would always say to me, “Sa Da Mu!” ,
which is Mandarin for Saddam. I was once walking through the streets of Hefei, and walked by a group of men huddled around
each other sitting on the sidewalk across the street from me when one of them looked over at me and yelled, “Bin Laden!” and
started laughing. Some people even thought I was Chinese. In the north of China, there is a minority population of muslims that
wear small white caps and have facial hair, which is not custom to the majority of Chinese people.
       Mike and the rest of us walked to the football field inside of the university and waited for the other foreigners to show up.
Elvis, Evnas, Rodney, and Julius from Cameroon came. Alex from Ukraine was there. David, an older man with a full beard and
moustache from Australia came. Eric from Hollywood and Ted from Texas came, and a young German man named Florian also
came. We had a couple Chinese players on our team as well, one of them named Brian who was a waiter at The Long Bar. Nearly
every college in Hefei had a football team, and they were the ones we were going to play against. We first called ourselves the
foreigner football team, but then started calling ourselves the international football team since some of theplayers on our team were
Chinese. Our jerseys were royal blue from top to bottom, and Mike brought them over in a big suitcase. I was always waiting for
the right time to play this game, and finally the chance had come to me. John, another older man with a full beard and moustache
from Australia was the referee. Once the game got started, the only problem I had was that I didn’t have so much cardio training, so
each 45 minute period seemed like it was going to be a battle. But our team itself suffered an even greater problem. There was a lot
of ego playing out on the field. Being a foreigner in Hefei automatically meant that you had status of some kind, and everyone was
aware that they were being watched by at least a hundred Chinese college students.  Sure everyone had their show-off moments,
like when Ted dropped to the ground and started dribbling the ball around his opponent’s legs from down low, and Alex would
always take off his hat to head-butt the ball when it came flying toward him from great heights, and all of the Chinese spectators
started cheering, clapping, and laughing. But our main problem was communication and cooperation. We had never played together
as a team before, or even practiced, so not everyone could understand each other. Julius, for some reason, seemed to think of
himself as the team captain. “The defense is not strong enough! Where are the strikers?!” he would shout during the game. One
person’s complaining would turn into five or six people complaining. I stayed out of it because I didn’t care about any problems. I
was just glad to be playing for the first time ever. “Just play the game!” Elvis shouted wisely to them. That was truly all we needed
to do and what we were there for. Even with our lack of cooperation, we managed to win our first game with a couple of our
players taking injuries that were not life-threatening. A lot of players on the Chinese team lit up their cigarettes immediately after the
game was over. Smoking was the last thing I was thinking about doing to my lungs after all of that running around.
       At English corner, I made several more friends. There was a young student from the Agriculture University name Cody who
often went there. Though he was Chinese, he barely had any accent at all. He was always looking around the city for foreigners to
talk to. He was very light-hearted, but he was a very serious student. He could express himself like no other in the place. He was
full of idioms and knowledge about the world. His friends there gave him the nickname “Super Conversation”. He was always there
with his friends Bruce, Andy, and Stone. Another young man with glasses named George approached me one evening at English
corner to ask me if I would participate at an English corner at his school. His school was the police college, the one I had been to
with the middle school teacher named Ms. Zhen.
       One evening, I had an English corner at the police college much like the first time I went there. My friend George and several
others wore dark blue police uniforms that reminded me of naval officer uniforms. Most of the other students wore the green army
fatigues like the other students before. I answered many of the students’ questions as can be expected for this type of event. Near
the end of the English corner, the students asked me to come closer so I could speak to them directly. Some of the girls stood in
groups together with funny looks on their faces and big eyes asking me, “Do you have a girlfriend?!” George stepped in and said
something in Mandarin to them before I could even answer. After our one hour was over, George and I left the students in the
speech hall. As we started walking toward the staircase leading back down to the first floor, George told me to blow them kisses,
and I did, and all of the students reacted happily to it. Then George told me, “Some of the girls who asked you if you had a girlfriend I
think were interested in becoming your girlfriend, but I told them you were not interested in that. “You did?!” I asked.” Why did you
say that to them?!”
       Alex from Ukraine became a new bartender at Best Beautiful Club. He had done bartending in other bars in the city, and
declared himself to be one of if not the most popular bartender in the city. Other foreigners were always coming into the picture in
waves. There was a somewhat quiet and friendly foreigner from Sweden named Pondus who always came to Best Beautiful with
his Chinese girlfriend named Gao Feng. She was very beautiful, had long hair with small squinty eyes and heavily arched
eyebrows with a smile that looked somewhat devious. I observed her behavior toward other men in the club, and I commented
about it to Dushan, “I don’t know about her. She seems to be getting very close to other guys on the dance floor. I think that’s not
very respectful to Pondus.” “Ehhh. She’s just friendly.” He said to me. “I don’t think so.” I replied. Herman from Canada was the
tallest of us, making it very easy to notice his unique and suave dancing style of 180 degree spins and back and forth steps as he
danced through a large 20-person crowd of us foreigners spread across one area of the club. There was a young dancer there that
he liked, but she was forbidden to have a relationship with any of the customers, so they could only dance and talk with each other
at Best Beautiful. Herman enjoyed dancing with as many girls as possible. Another foreigner from Denmark named Klose with a
beard and mustache and leather jacket started appearing. He wasn’t so much into the dancing at first and just walked around the
darkly lit bar drinking beers at any table that had space and talking to a few other foreigners. It seemed as though he was new to
China, and didn’t exactly understand his place there yet. But there was room for everyone in this wonderful place that amazingly
had the power to keep all of us born and raised in different countries together.
       One night, the owner and co-owner of the Best Beautiful invited Dushan and a number of his friends to have a late-night meal.
The restaurant was high-quality, and there were only a few other customers there at that time. It was quiet inside of the restaurant,
but outside there was a big city with plenty of things happening and many interesting people enjoying the mystified ambiance of
Hefei. The boss was quite wealthy, and he had companies in different cities. He seemed very unique compared to many people I
had met there. He had a quiet and subtly intelligent look in his eyes. His eyes reminded me of a snake’s eyes, but he didn’t seem
intent on striking anyone. There were about ten of us there with the bosses and a few of their friends. Among their friends was one
of the tall Chinese girls that always danced when Dushan was playing his music. She sat in her seat very quietly and rarely ever
even turned her head. Now it began to make sense to me why she was always dancing there. The boss must have wanted her to
help promote their new foreign DJ. Pondus pulled out a cigarette from his pack that wasn’t really a cigarette and began smoking it
in the middle of the restaurant. I said to him, “Are you crazy, man? Don’t you think they know what that is?” “No.” he, said. “These
people have never seen the stuff before, but I bet you they think it smells good.” as he started passing it around the table to the
other foreigners. He’s just lucky there weren’t any police officers there. They certainly would have known something about it, and
punished him severely for it. Klose got very drunk, and started to finally open up a bit during the meal. He kept laughing and trying
to push Seth from Ghana, who was sitting next to him. He tried to push me too as he was walking away to go to the bathroom, but I
put up my defenses and kept him away, unlike Seth who kept getting pushed and slapped around by Klose. Both of them were
laughing about it, so no one took it personally. Finally Klose ended up breaking one of the plates on the table from acting so foolish.
I thought the people at the restaurant were going to be angry, but Dushan told me it is good luck to break a dish at the table in China.
Lucky was sitting next to Dushan, and it seemed like she was starting to have some feelings for him by her behavior towards him.
Masha had her birthday party near the end of June inside of The Long Bar. She and Alex had broken up, but they were still very
close to each other, so he still came. There were many new foreigners there I had never seen in the city before. There was a large
group of Russian men and women in their 20’s sitting at the largest table in back. There were also two young men from France. One
of them was wearing a rag on his head, and he began speaking to me as we were sitting at the table with the Russians. He told me
his name was Jiels, with the French pronunciation of J. He had plans to be in Hefei for about a month with his friend and then go
back to France. After having a few drinks and talking to many of my foreigner friends there, Alex approached Bernd and I as we
were having a conversation and said, “I think I’m in trouble, guys. I think two of the Russians are going to fight me because those
Russian girls like me, but they don’t like them. Can you guys help me?” I told Alex, “I will stand by you if anything happens.”
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling

“Warm” China days with foreigners