The Ambassador, the Whiffenpoofs, Dionysus, and other fortuitous events
[Don't be confused - this post is belated!]
After a short lull following the push to produce the Nightline
segment on Ai Weiwei, the drama of the Olympics has once again filled the news
void. Maybe this year I've followed the Games more closely than I have in the
past, but it really seems that there is an incredible amount of drama in
London. On even just the Chinese team, a women's badminton duo was disqualified
for trying to lose, hurdling champion Liu Xiang fell on the first jump and now has fallen from grace, 16-year-old female swimmer Ye Shiwen is apparently
faster than Ryan Lochte and maintains she's not doping, diver Qin Kai was weepy
because he failed the secure the final gold medal needed for a clean
sweep...but drama aside, I am wowed every day by the athletic performances of
the Olympic athletes. It's fascinating and compelling to watch them compete
given the pressure they are under, and also to see how they deal with it once
the results are out.
I went with my ABC colleague, Kaijing, to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China mixer event on Thursday, where I met a host of characters,
including the team at “the other ABC” (Australian Broadcasting Company), a man
who introduced himself as “the only Belgian correspondent in China”, a former
“Reuterd” who now works at Bloomberg, who declared that Romney would without a
doubt win the upcoming presidential election, and a
journalist-turned-independent-filmmaker who asserted that diplomats are
mindless government puppets, and that any allegiance to a news network,
station, or paper is the sacrifices pure journalism to the confines of a
bureaucracy. It was fascinating to meet this wide range of people each
reporting from Beijing through the lens of their company (or independently
funded-documentary). At the mixer, I learned about the jiantao, an idiosyncrasy of
reporting from Beijing. In short, if a journalist gets in trouble with Chinese
police while reporting (whether it be for doing an “illegal” interview or going
he or she shouldn’t), the police will take the reporter and team to the station
and require that they write jiantao, or self-criticisms. One of the mixer
attendees recalled his peeved cameraman writing a defensive jiantao, and then at
the reporter’s urging inserting honorifics with arrows (“I can’t believe
they wouldrespectfully defer to the
decision to take our cameras…”) The Belgian correspondent told a much more
sobering story about being severely beaten by police while trying to report on
the AIDS villages in China, where entire populations are dying after dirty
needles in hospitals and infected blood transfusions caused the massive spread
of the illness. The police confiscated all but one of his teams tapes, and beat
them to the point that the reporter thought he was going to die. While the police
eventually returned the tapes (blank) and sent them money, so shaken was he
after the experience that he has vowed not to return to the villages and
avoided reporting more controversial stories. (This is the sort of tale I’m
relieved my mom didn’t hear before I went to Beijing.)
With members of the Foreign Correspondents'
Club of China
With Kaijing
The Saturday that followed can only be described as incredible,
bizarre, and perhaps some of the most fun I have had this trip. I received an
email from Gloria the previous day asking, “Would you like to join me and Jim
[her husband, chief of staff to the US ambassador] to hear the Whiffenpoofs
perform at the ambassador’s home on Saturday?”, clarifying that the
Whiffenpoofs are a Yale a capella group and that Ambassador Gary Locke is a
Yale alum. Even with that explanation, I was essentially clueless about what to
expect, but frankly would have said yes to any chance to meet the ambassador.
With Ambassador Gary Locke
(and his priceless artwork)
Still, I would never have imagined that as I entered the ambassador’s Beijing
mansion I would come face to face with a host of priceless works of art,
including Lichtenstein and Warhol original works. As it were, the US embassies
have access to an enormous art collection, and so when they moved in, Gary
Locke’s wife decorated the mansion with their favorite pieces. (My jaw dropped
later that night when Ambassador Locke joked that they needed to move a certain
sculpture to make way for some Chihuly pieces—except he wasn’t joking.) Before
the performance started, Gloria introduced me to Ambassador Locke, and we
talked briefly about the need for American students to study in China (there
are 170,000 students from China studying in the US, yet only 14,000 American
students studying in China.) In talking with him one-on-one and hearing him speak
about the importance of cross-cultural communication, it was instantly clear
why he had been appointed to his position—he was both engaging and engaged,
very genuine and overwhelmingly gracious.
The Chihuly is going here...
The Lichtenstein is above a photo of Gary Locke and his wife
chilling and thrilling with the Clintons on the campaign trail
Yes, that's the real deal!
And then came the Whiffenpoofs—fourteen Yale men in tails and
white gloves singing show tunes and spirituals. The oldest all-male a capella
group at Yale, the Whiffenpoofs take a year off from school to travel the world
giving performances. And they really were jet-setting—they went everywhere,
from Bali to Madagascar (when we saw them, they had arrived from Japan and were
leaving the next day for Cambodia.) They are
phenomenal singers and showmen, and talking to them afterward dispelled any notion that their talent and smarts had gone to their heads.
After the concert, I grabbed dinner with Gloria, Jim, their nephew Austin, a junior at Columbia doing summer-study in Beijing, and his friends. After talking some politics and current affairs, Gloria and Jim took off, and Austin and his friends deliberated over how to spend the rest of their evening, inviting me to tag along. Apparently the Whiffenpoofs had made off with their women, and so they had to weigh the options: meet up with their female friends and have to compete with singing Yale men, or abandon ship and hit the club? We eventually came to the conclusion that "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and somewhat apprehensively ventured over to the Whiffenpoof after-party.
A drunken Whiffenpoof serenade at Chez Dionysus
I got my first sense that this gathering was unconventional as we walked up to the apartment and spotted a Whiffenpoof coat of arms mural in the stairwell. Little did I know that we were about to enter the lavish four-story apartment of a Whiffenpoof alum and come face to face with the Yale Club of Beijing, the Whiffenpoofs, a wall covered with Russian Orthodox iconography, and the hosts themselves, a charming, neon orange oxford-clad middle-aged man named Dionysus and his partner. An international businessman and amazing host, Dionysus' work apparently takes him around the world, and so he had arrived from New York the previous day, was hosting the party that night, and planned to return to NYC the following day. The apartment was crowded with guests, and so I got to talk to a whole host of interesting people, from the Whiffenpoofs to Dionysus himself. The group did a second, somewhat tipsier performance for the new crowd, and I daresay a good time was had by all, including us gatecrashers.
The following day, Wurihan and I did something extremely typical of us and went out for delicious food. The theme of the day was "Food from the Lands of China's Ethnic Minorities", so we went out for lunch at a Yunnan restaurant and dinner at a Xinjiang restaurant. Food from Yunnan Province (south China) is characterized by herb usage, and food from Xinjiang Province (northwest China) is halal and uses a lot of mutton. Rest assured it was delicious and we ate everything.
Monday last week was my last night swing dancing in Beijing, and it was kind of a bust because there were four guys who showed up, and at least three times as many girls. That kind of ratio doesn't really work for swing dancing unless the women know how to be leads. Still, I had a lovely time hanging out with Clare and my friend Yen, a Malaysian-Australian designer I've been friends with since entering the Beijing swing scene. I told them about my noise complaint story, which is rather embarrassing:
With Yen
With Clare
Clare invited me to a solo swing dance class, where we learned the shim sham (swing dance's most famous line dance) and some fancy new Charleston moves. So inspired was I by these new moves that upon returning home I decided to practice...in heels. Big mistake. Around 12:30 am I got a knock on the door, and immediately knew I was in done for. Opening the door, I was met by a girl in her twenties or so who requested that I be a bit quieter, as there were elderly people living below me. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" she continued to ask. I assured her that I did, and was extremely sorry for causing so much trouble. She assured me it was no problem—still, the next day I received a call informing me that the family had reported me to apartment employees. Given how many times I have called the apartment workers with apartment issues, from repeated electricity outages to the three times I accidentally pushed the emergency alarm button, I'm sure the complaint just solidified my reputation as a total nut. (So thus ends the tale of my hard-soled in-home dance career.)
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