by Eddie Huang
What she was saying was nice, but accepting compliments like this is what got Caesar killed. First, I didn’t think it was rare. Second, it was just game, right? It’s her job to massage lumpy pear-shaped men and act like it’s Tyrese Gibson lying there! I wasn’t trying to be another Captain Kirk swooping some destitute Chinese working woman off her feet, nor was I trying to get a cheap bucket on the slide. Then again, why was I trying to fit this exchange into some kind of category? She was a person! A person I had a real connection with even if it started in a fucked up indentured servitude setting.
I kept telling myself: “She’s not a massage girl; she’s a person who massages.” And what’s wrong with a person who massages? She had more poignant things to say than anyone I’d met in Shanghai—all those upwardly mobile shitheads educated abroad returning home to embrace the “Chinese Dream” blind to the static and unforgiving lives of people who bear the burden for this country. Mobility is a fundamental right afforded to few.
This is the real reason, I realized, that I came to China—to stare my other life in the face. I had to know who I could have been if my parents had never immigrated to America.
Dena had to see it, too: who I could have been, who I may still be. Maybe deep inside I am a Little Red Book–carrying communist!
Not only did I need Dena to see me in the context of my ancestral homeland, I needed to know she understood it and accepted it. Sure, acceptance extinguished Bob Marley and sentenced him to college dorm room walls next to John Mayer, but this is a different kind of acceptance. The kind of acceptance that fulfills you; the kind of acceptance that emerges from revealing every layer to your better half until all that’s left is a mangled, embryonic ego curled into the fetal position.
At that moment you’re just a pus-colored mass of fear and insecurity bubbling on two plates. And bae still wraps you up, and takes you to-go. I didn’t have to hide my secret identity any longer. It was time for Dena and Mr. Fusco to know.
—
Luckily all these thoughts were happening facedown. I collected myself and redirected the conversation.
“I am actually going to propose to her when she comes to China.”
“No way! Really? That is so exciting. Have you spoken to her father?”
“I tried about an hour ago, but he was weird.”
“Did you ask?”
“I was going to, but he offended me. He started talking about how China is not safe and communist. It made me mad.”
“Ahhh, Americans are just like this. They don’t know their place. They are big brother but don’t act like it. You shouldn’t be mad at her dad.”
“Yeah, but why should we let them constantly disrespect us? It’s not OK to say these things. We Americans have it better in every way, and we have no shame. We don’t realize all the advantages we have and how hard it is for everyone else, but we think it’s OK to criticize everyone, go into their countries, and tell them how to do things. Even if we are better at some things, at least be gracious about it.”
“People at the top have to remember the rest of us. All we want is a chance to be respected. Not even respect, but the opportunity to earn someone respect, you understand? We don’t even have that. Most people come here and see we are powerless, so they try to grab our legs, touch our breasts, take advantage when they should be doing opposite. You already have everything, still want to come disrespect me? OK, flip over.”
I flipped over, eyes red, lines from the towels all over my chest. I closed my eyes and hid the evidence.
“Do you sometimes want to date a Chinese girl?”
“No, but I think about it. I think about it a lot.”
“Does your girlfriend understand us?”
“I think so. I hope so,” I said and paused. I didn’t actually know.
“She is always learning,” I stammered. “I’m just glad she wants to. If she didn’t genuinely want to understand us, I couldn’t be with her.”
“That’s good. I just feel like you are a very special Chinese man, and I hope that she recognize this. It would be total waste if you have a wife that does not understand everything you are, especially being Chinese.”
“Think of it this way. I am a privileged Chinese-Taiwanese-American kid who really wants to understand you. She is an Irish-Italian American who wants to understand me. There’s a gap between all of us, right? Even though you tell me what it’s like to work at Noah’s Ark, I can’t possibly understand it unless I do it.”
“Right, I get that. But you want to. I’m just saying…make sure she wants to understand you. Women are tricky, and you really are a very special Chinese person.”
“You don’t have to flatter me. We’re friends now.”
“No, I know. I’m not saying it because you are a customer. You really are special. You shouldn’t forget it. Not all of us get to be special.”
* * *
*1 A place in the East Village that used to sell TERRIBLE home furnishings to NYU students.
*2 Mrs. Fusco is an art teacher and, being in Scranton, knows she’s missing out on a lot of what’s going on in art currently but stays really curious about street art and graffiti, constantly going into the city to see what’s going on.
*3 Jane Jacobs wrote the seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which explained why the garden city and urban sprawl would lead to the demise of our cities, which are much more efficient, sustainable, and safe ways to organize society.
*4 Freebasing weed in wax form.
*5 To this day I have not seen The Firm, but my editor assures me it has nothing to do with China. To this day I also have no idea what the fuck Mr. Fusco was talking about.
*6 Jason Miller, who played Father Karras in The Exorcist, is from Scranton.
*7 “Hello, handsome brother!” is a common greeting in service-industry China.
*8 We started calling things dope spices that year because the homie Benny Blanco told Emile that he made this “dope soup” and we were like, “What’s in this dope soup?” and he couldn’t say. When we pressed him on it, he says, “I don’t know, man! Like fucking dope spices.” So the recipe for Benny Blanco’s dope soup is, of course, dope spices. Don’t tell anyone….
*9 The girls spoke no English, but all of the dialogue has been translated so that you don’t have to look down at footnotes every sentence.
*10 Google LeBron’s feet. RIP toes….
*11 At Katz’s, there’s a sign pointing down at the table Meg Ryan sat in for When Harry Met Sally.
*12 Chinese massage technique, literally “push-pull.”
*13 Wow.
*14 Don’t give two fucks about Chinese men.
*15 $728.
Mr. Zheng
We took a cab home from Noah’s Ark, and greeting us downstairs from Hakka Homes at 1 A.M. were two giant pots of crawfish boiling. Was this the new wave?
Usually, if you walked by a stall, the owner would bark you into buying an order, but crawfish homie just sat on his metal stool reading his newspaper and smoking his Hong He cigarette. Not only was he uninterested in selling crawfish, but he had a polo shirt covering his stomach and a haircut that you might have described as…flirty? I think son used pomade. By Chengdu standards, he could have been an i-banker if he hadn’t been wearing shower sandals.
I walked up to the two pots of boiling crawfish and poked my head into the steam expecting it to melt my face with chili and peppercorn vapors, but all I got was aged rice wine. Strange. It didn’t even have the dry mild heat of Old Bay or Zatarain’s you’d see in a New Orleans boil.
If I had been to this spot my first week in Chengdu, it would have been a godsend. I spent hours that week trying to find food from someplace other than McDonald’s or Hooters that wouldn’t set my asshole on fire, but after two weeks my body adjusted. I didn’t have diarrhea every day and I craved chilis. Not to torch my palate, but just to know it was there. Like the scent Dena left in the “Virgin Vagina”*1 T-shirt I subconsciously packed
in my suitcase and took to Chengdu, chilis were there even when they weren’t.
“What’s up with these crawfish?” I asked in Mandarin.
“Forty RMB a kilo,” said Crawfish Man as he folded his newspaper and stood up from the stool.
“You guys want crawfish?” I asked Emery and Evan.
“I’m tired, man. I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Evan.
“I’ll hang. I’m not hungry but I’ll try one,” said Emery.
“All right. One kilo, please.”
“OK.”
Crawfish Man went to the pot closest to his stool and started scooping out a kilo of crustaceans.
“Do you have two different flavors in the pots?”
“Nope. One flavor. That pot is still soaking. This pot is ready to serve.”
He came over with a Styrofoam plate and a plastic bag full of bright red crawfish topped with chopped scallions. Nothing else.
“You guys aren’t from around here, are you?” he asked.
“Nah. I’m from New York, he’s from Florida.”
“Enjoy.”
I put my face in the bag to smell the crawfish close up.
“How is it?” asked Emery in English.
“It smells more like lu wei than a crawfish boil. There’s a lot of sweetness, like a five-spice stock.”
Emery got closer to smell it.
“Weird. No pepper. No lemon. No cilantro, even.”
I picked up the crawfish, twisted the head, slurped the guts, and squeezed the tail. For a second, I was confused. The taste was so clean, yet rustic, like braised yellow croaker. It was a simple concept. He’d taken EBT*2 lobster and turned down the muddiness, while accentuating its essence without overpowering the natural sweetness of the protein.
“Yo….You’re not from here, either,” I said to him.
“Ha ha, why do you say?”
“This ain’t no Chengdu crawfish.”
“No, it’s not. I’m from Shanghai.”
“Ahhh, that’s why you don’t have your belly out.”
He laughed, folded his newspaper, and pulled up a stool.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“I do. I like it a lot.”
“In Shanghai, this is how we do it. Milder, sweeter crawfish boil. But even in Shanghai now, many places use chilis and peppercorns. Sichuan cooking is very popular. I came here to bring Shanghai style to Sichuan.”
“Doesn’t Shanghai have better potential for business, though?” asked Emery.
“Not for food. Everybody in China knows. If you want to be known for food, you come to Chengdu. Here, they have tze huo.”*3
By now, my attention was being torn at the ends. I was so interested in the conversation, but my hands kept digging into the crawfish. When he brought up chowhounds in Chengdu, I was intrigued but also bugged out because I looked down and I was out of crawfish.
“Hey, no disrespect, boss. I definitely want to keep talking, but do you think I could get another kilo of crawfish?”
“Ha ha, no problem. I’m glad you like it….You know my business is good, but Chengdu people just don’t get it. Everyone comes and says they like it but that I should add chilis. I don’t understand. If you like it, why do you change it? If I add chilis, then it’s not Shanghainese flavor. Then what’s the point?”
A couple days later, I stumbled home after karaoke and found Crawfish Zheng outside again.
“Hey! Mr. Zheng, how’s it going?”
“You know, same old, same old. How are you, Xiao Ming?”
“I just killed it at karaoke.”
“Oh yeah? You a good singer?”
“No, I’m more of a karaoke performer.”
“Ha ha, OK, I understand.”
“Lemme get two kilos of crawfish!”
“OK, no problem.”
I handed him the money, and he tried to turn me down.
“Come on, lemme pay.”
“No, no, you are a guest, it’s on me.”
“You are too kind. I’m a customer here.”
Eventually, I left the money under a bowl of cilantro and dug into the crawfish. I really liked Mr. Zheng and I realized that I hadn’t cooked with anyone in China yet. I’d been doing a lot of eating, a lot of talking, and a lot of thinking about Dena, but I’d forgotten to cook. Of course, I’d cooked at Hakka Bar and Evan helped me out, but I wanted to cook outside. With Mr. Zheng. I wasn’t particularly sure what I was after but the idea met me with great certainty.
“Mr. Zheng, I was wondering. Do you think I could come cook with you one night?”
“You want to make crawfish?”
“No, I want to make Taiwanese beef noodle soup! It would go good with the crawfish.”
“Ahhh, Taiwanese beef noodle soup! I love it. Very hard to find.”
“Yeah, they got a lot of Sichuan beef noodle soup here, but they don’t focus on the soup, it’s flat and they just top it with chili oil.”
“Exactly. Taiwanese food is great but hard to find in China.”
“Yeah, I’ll pay rent, too. Lemme know what day I can come.”
“No rent, just come, Thursday night we’ll have fun. Pay me in soup.”
The next day, I went down to see if Mr. Zheng wanted to get lunch, but the grilled-skewer dude who was in his spot told me Zheng wouldn’t be back till after ten.
Since I couldn’t get lunch with Mr. Zheng, I went through my phone to see who was on WeChat. Emery and Evan were still asleep. Corky had apparently just gotten home from karaoke in Shanghai. And Hakka Heather was out of town. But there was Rabbi, the homie with the Fabolous tattoo. I messaged him.
Yo, Rabbi! You eat lunch yet?
Hey man! Wassup? No, not eat yet. You want to come studio, bro?
Yeah, where’s your studio? I’ll take a cab.
No, no, no, I come pick you up. Be outside in ten minutes, I have black car.
Chinese hospitality never ceased to amaze me. Whether it was Hakka Heather, Corky, or Rabbi, they always insisted on picking me up and fighting for the bill. None of them were wealthy by any means, at most middle class, but as a guest in China, I wasn’t allowed to pay for anything. I tried to repay them or give them things like books, hats, or liquor I had brought with me to China, but later reversed strategy because anytime I gave them gifts, they went over the top and bought me one better. You couldn’t win with these Chinese people. I remember Corky said that China was a country full of only children serviced by six adults, but for me China felt like one giant country full of aunts and uncles picking up the tab.
Rabbi picked me up in his car, which was definitely black, but in New York when you say black car, you mean “Town Car or better.” This was a China-Russia-only brand ride.
“What kind of car is this? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Some Russian shit, you don’t get this in America. You got to be down to get this limited edition Skoda, man,” he said sarcastically.
“Skoda, huh? Kinda like a Volkswagen that wants to be an Alfa Romeo.”
“More like rickshaw that wants to be Volkswagen! This made by same company as Volkswagen, but Russian shit,” said Rabbi.
I looked up Skoda on my phone.
“It says online that it’s actually a Czech brand.”
“Like I said, Russian shit,” he said, laughing.
“Ha ha, a lot of Russian cars in China, huh?”
“Yeah, man, good stuff at good price. Russia is neighbors, so they come here buy fake leather shoes, fake fur coat, fake Apple stuffs, other Chinese fake shit. We buy the cars, sometimes they send the girls, sometimes we send the girls. It’s cool. China-Russia always trading.”
To date, that is still the best distillation of Russia-China relations I’ve ever heard.
Before I had a moment to think about it though, I noticed Rabbi’s T-shirt. In the midst of all this faux goods talk, I realized Rabbi was wearing a “Don’t Buy the Fake Shit!” tee.
“You know what ironic means, Rabbi?”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, man, I read about this. Like when you say something but gives weird feeling because you do something kind of opposite you saying, right? Like hypocrites funny.”
“Ha ha, yeah, you mad ironic because your shirt says ‘Don’t Buy the Fake Shit’ but you’re driving a bootleg Volkswagen.”
“Yeah! That’s sneakers, street wear, shit I like, I don’t buy the fake shit. Other stuffs, car, computer, who cares, but things I care about like hip-hop culture, I buy the real. You got to support the culture, man. Things with no meaning, you buy the fake shit smart.”
We got to his studio and parked the car downstairs. It was next to a parking garage and a bakery on a relatively busy neighborhood block in an area near Chengdu’s colleges.
“So, see, this my studio.”
It looked just like every skate shop office or college DJ dorm room I’d ever seen. Shit, it kinda looked like my apartment on East 12th Street in New York when I was selling sneakers and street wear.
Somehow, even without ever coming to America, but just being into the culture, Rabbi had channeled it perfectly. Everything was effortless and so fucking futuristically real. When you came in the door, he had leather house slippers. There was an electric flyswatter, a Japanese brand hot water heater for making tea, a small alcove kitchen, a beat-up futon couch for listening to beats or seducing some girl you told to come over and listen to beats. Then he had two turntables, some of the same stickers I had, some anime posters I didn’t, records, computers, and cords everywhere. I’d been in so many places that felt like this but not with the Chengdu accents and chili-infused everything. Another vision of my possible double China life presented itself.
“You record here?”
“No, we make mixes, tapes, flyers, party stuff.”
“Word, you DJ, huh?”
“Yeah, DJ Super Best Friend. That’s me.”
“What? Your name is DJ Super Best Friend?”
“For sure, that’s cool, right?”
There was a pause, as I thought about whether my alternate universe name could have been DJ Super Best Friend. Possibly. I mean why not? It’s nice! OK, no, my name would never be DJ Super Best Friend. My name might be DJ No New Friends or DJ Slap Your Super Best Friend or DJ Tanner or Uncle Jesse, but no, my name could not possibly be DJ Super Best Friend.
