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RAW CHINA - THE CORSICAN ISN'T GOING TO STAND FOR IT

Raw China was a series of articles skateboarding-writer-of and zinesman Jocko Weyland wrote for us while he was living in the weird 3rd-through-1st-world limbo that is contemporary China. He's been back in the US for a while now (or possibly France? Unclear) but his tales of sinomania continue to lap in unabated. Here's one about a dispute he got in right around the Beijing Olympics.

Beneath unusually clear skies courtesy of numerous weather manipulation rocket firings a mood at odds with the celebratory nature of Beijing's 2008 Olympics could be detected lurking under the surface. With genuine jubilance and excitement also came forced festivity and heightened scrutiny, and the strain showed behind the smiling faces as citizens and foreigners alike grew tired of being told how to act. For locals it was don't spit, no pulling your shirt up to cool off, and cheer politely, for outlanders it was watch yourself even closer than usual. An immense amount of justified and understandable pride and joy surrounded the games, but as they wore on fatigue began to mix with annoyance. It was like, sure, they're great, but let's get it over with and get back to normal. Amongst the Chinese this agitation was more sensed than expressed, while with hometown foreigners overtly stated exasperation might not have been the rule but was certainly heard, and the influx of tourists in town further upset the balance of things and contributed to the undercurrent of apprehension and discontent in the air. Reports of fights between visiting sports fans made the rounds, long lines clogged the security checks in the subway, murmurings of possible terrorist attacks circulated, and on the first day of competition a Chinese man from Hangzhou fatally stabbed an American and seriously injured his wife at the Drum Tower before leaping (or being pushed by guards who hadn't prevented the attack, depending on who you believe) to his death below.

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Halfway through those long two weeks of super excellent sporting achievements and zealous patriotism I went to a small restaurant near Dongsishijiao called Caribou one evening. With western magazines and books lying around and a partial continental menu, it nonchalantly catered to foreigners without trying too hard. Often it seems there's an extreme, with super Chinese on one hand and bizarre, trying-way-too-hard to not be Chinese on the other, and it's not that common to find the comfortable middle ground of Caribou with its relative quiet and decent food on both sides of the east-west divide, as well as real coffee and liquor besides beer and baijiu. So I ordered lasagna and a glass of wine and enjoyed the mellow ambience while opening up Mistress to an Age – A Life of Madame de Stael by J. Christopher Herald. The whys and wherefores of reading about a now forgotten but famous in her time French writer, keeper of a celebrated salon, and correspondent of Goethe's (amongst others) in a restaurant called Caribou in Beijing are neither here nor there, what is relevant is de Stael's relationship to Napoleon. She was obsessed with him, he had her books censored and exiled her three times, and she by turns tried to court him and flouted his authority. In the section I was reading the Corsican who tried and almost succeeded at taking over the world got mentioned on every page. Napoleon, Napoleon, Napoleon.

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Occasionally, I'd look up to check out the only other customers, a young Chinese guy tapping away on his computer across the way and a western man and a Chinese woman about ten feet to my left. I hadn't been paying them much mind, but as time passed they started to ruffle my reverie of early 19th century French political intrigue. Hell is other people, as a Frenchman once said, but on a scale of bother, at least initially, these two were down really low. Somewhere north of her thirties, she was attractive, dignified, well dressed, spoke almost perfect English, and had a softness to her mien and voice that, particularly amongst middle-aged women, is quite uncommon in these parts. From what I gathered he was a television journalist covering the Olympics, about fifty, with grey hair and glasses, not that tall, and a bit burly. In his pronounced French accent he asked her about her family and the Cultural Revolution and did a lot of intent listening while lauding her for being "an independent woman." It didn't appear to be a date per se but you could tell he was trying to take it in that direction. Now, trying to get laid is certainly no crime but he was laying it on very thick, and though he wasn't guiltier than millions of others, his behavior laid bare the disparities and unsettling connotations of relations between western men and Chinese women. Western men who are in China to fuck little girls (even if they aren't technically little girls), and the "girls" who love them, not too put too fine a point on it. It's a time-honored cliché. This was different as she was fairly self-assured and most definitely a grown woman instead of a doll-like teenager who looked like a cartoon character. So, on many levels they were the opposite of the trope, but for whatever reason, by proxy their tête-à-tête brought up the disquieting reality of sexual power politics involving oriental service providers bewitched by Occidentalism catering to equally besotted Occidental Orientalists meeting and copulating at the raw frontier of transactional mutual wish-fulfillment.

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That scenario is in your face every single day in China. Just part of the landscape and you get used to it. She seemed nice, he might be a jerk, but who am I to care? Not really my business. I went back to Madame de Stael and tuned them out until I couldn't help but hear him angrily declare the waitress "rude, very rude." This came after a gruff request for salt and pepper in English and then a louder repetition of the demand, as if she could miraculously understand the language at a higher volume. Always a winning strategy. After the salt and pepper arrived he began complaining about how "they" can't do anything right and trafficking in all sorts of other broad, mostly untrue generalizations. The thing was the waitress hadn't been rude at all, he was the rude one, and now he was indiscriminately denigrating China to this Chinese lady. Kind of offensive. Whatever, no big deal, back to Paris, finished my meal, and went up to the unmanned counter. Standing there staring at the prints on the wall I heard a new outburst in that increasingly irritating Gallic accent. He'd given the waiter 100 Yuan and thought the kid wasn't giving him back the right amount of change. Another cliché, middle-aged white men thinking it's all a yellow devil conspiracy to rob them blind. Certainly that happens, but it doesn't mean every monetary exchange is a rip off. Later I found out the waiter just hadn't told the owner (who'd gone outside for a moment) that the change needed to be brought back to the agitated Frenchman. No conspiracy at all, but he was sure, and went on about how "they" were always trying to pull a fast one and that "he wasn't going to stand for it."

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You sigh and think, "What an asshole." What are you going to do? Say something? Intervene? Probably not worth the trouble and possibly an invitation to an assault. Best not get involved. Still, not only was this guy aggravating with his smarmy pick-up moves and ill-mannered treatment of the wait staff, he was now extending his offensiveness into my zone over at the counter. Not cool dude. Standing there watching it unfold, he started to embody all those other fools suffered over the years, the blowhards, the boors and various clods who make a scene and yell at defenseless service workers, thereby disrupting perfectly serene situations. By now the owner had come back and the offending Frenchman was yelling at him too, the waiter was cringing, and the woman looked aghast. He kept at it, calling the Chinese crooks and the waiter a liar. He was getting really abusive, and proclaimed "You won't see me in here again!" His personification of all the other loudmouths over the years reached a point where somewhat to my surprise I said something I've often wanted to in those situations for a long, long time. Since he was taking a breath there was a slight pause in the harangue so it came out loud and clear, and the question was, "Why are you being such an asshole?"

I got it out of my system and it felt good. All those uncomfortable moments at different counters in the past the question had been simmering and I finally got to ask. Oddly enough, it didn't go over too well and I didn't really get a satisfactory answer. He was obviously taken by surprise that someone interrupted his performance, as were the other actors in the little unfolding drama. Somebody else had walked on stage and they didn't know what to think. He was caught off guard but in his belligerence managed to recover quickly and with real vehemence sputter "You, you're an asshole!" "Fuck you," I spat back emphatically, because it was like, fuck you, you're an asshole and now you're calling me an asshole? I really hated him right then, this rude, obnoxious, offensive Frenchman screwing up my quiet night at Caribou, and somewhere in the back of my mind I started to suspect he wasn't French exactly. Having just read so much about the real Napoleon, it dawned on me that this ersatz Napoleon with his textbook case of Short Man Syndrome must have been Corsican. There was a swarthiness about him. After I said fuck you he barked back, with the veins in his neck bulging and eyes ablaze, "You, you, you stay out of this!" Then he jumped up, dramatically tore off his glasses, and charged across the room in my direction.

Being ten years his junior and at least six inches taller I could have taken him, though I would be lying if I said I wasn't a tad alarmed as he barreled toward me with smoke coming out his ears. Small man, big mouth, crazed and violent, a suspected Corsican bulldog off the leash. The adrenalin started flowing. He got right in my face and demanded, "Say that again!" I saw spittle fly. "Why are you being such an asshole?" I repeated, literally following his request, as the woman ran over and started tugging on his arm. Pushing her aside he pulled out the nationality card with "You stay out of this, you fucking American." "You're being an asshole," I shot back. By then it was a mantra, and in retrospect you wonder why you couldn't have been wittier or more eloquent. He was fuming, she was pleading, and his next challenge was a classic. "You motherfucking American, you come outside right now and we'll settle this." "What's wrong with right here?" I was expecting the first punch any moment but my deadpan response seemed to throw him off track. There was a pause, with utter silence reigning, and then as she pulled him back to the table he repeated over his shoulder "You fucking American, stay out of this."

And then he went right back to it, verbally abusing the owner and the waiter while fending off that poor woman's attempts to diplomatically end the incident. Unbelievable. I took it all in from my spot by the counter until, for better or worse, I decided to speak up again. "Jesus, why don't you leave them alone and get out of here?" As if he'd presumed I'd been silenced for good and couldn't believe I was talking again that new question provoked a rather comical double take before the next eruption. "YOU! YOU! FUCKING AMERICAN, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, YOU FUCKING AMERICANS ARE ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE WHAT TO DO." He was screaming now, spewing anti-American vitriol, and then came out with the coup de grace. "YOU, YOU." "What?" "YOU FUCKING AMERICAN CONARD." Now he was calling me what I assumed was "asshole," but in French. Getting really serious. Simultaneously she exchanged rapid words with the owner, the waiter stood there dumbfounded, and I was shaken but also gratified that I'd finally gotten to call one of these conards a conard. A small personal victory. Money was thrown down and she escorted her truculent charge to the door, and as they went out he turned around and hurled more threats. Conard, conard, fucking American conard echoed down the street into the night.

And that was that. No punches, no eye gouging, no broken glasses, and no fight at all. A mere kerfuffle really. I looked over to see the wide-eyed Chinese guy in the corner and then turned to the owner and the hapless waiter. "Jesus, what was that all about?" Astutely, the owner answered, "I don't know." He introduced himself as Lung and asked if I wanted a drink. "Sure, I think I could use one." He brought out a bottle of whiskey. "That guy was crazy," I marveled, and in a fit of redundancy muttered "What an asshole." "I've never had anything like that happen here in four years," Lung replied, and we shook our heads. He thanked me for my attempt to do whatever it was I tried to do and we clinked glasses and drank. "I mean, everyone wants to get laid, that's normal, but what was wrong with that guy?" Lung had a handle on the idiomatic aspects of the English language. "I have no idea," I replied, "But I think he might have been Corsican." Then, pondering the overseas inquiries as to whether the Olympics were making life difficult, and the various tales of fisticuffs and other scrapes on top of all the suppressed anxiety, I opined, "Maybe it's the Olympics," and we both laughed knowingly and drank some more whiskey.

JOCKO WEYLAND
PHOTO: REUTERS