I Grew My Boobs in China (31 page)

Along with the beggars, we saw the occasional drunk staggering down the street at nine in the morning. On one occasion, Ammon declared, "Now there’s a sight for ya!” A man who was happily on his way to a serious hangover was swaying down an alleyway carrying an empty beer bottle in each hand. This was not such an unusual sight, but this guy was wearing nothing more than just his hiked-up socks, dress shoes, and tightey-whiteys. One side of his hair lay flat against his head, while the other half stuck out like a mad scientist’s. He did not seem to be aware of his state. In fact, he looked quite pleased with himself.

“I mean, he’s wearing no clothes, but he still found time to put his best shoes and socks on,” Ammon smiled. Mom suggested that he might never have completely undressed.

I loved a lot of the street food, particularly because I seemed to be constantly hungry. The streets were overrun with venders shouting “EE KUAI, EE KAUI!” (fifteen cents) and waving their items in the air. There was a wide variety of fruit, freshly cooked meat, and various dumplings to choose from. Although food prices were easy to gauge by watching how much the locals paid, bargaining was still very much part of their culture. After visiting so many markets on our journey, the constant haggling and pantomiming became almost second nature. Sometimes bargaining took little effort, while other times it involved a long “discussion” over a hot cup of tea. However, despite Ammon’s insistence that “it’s part of the culture,” I still found myself feeling guilty when we haggled prices down from one hundred ninety to ninety yuan, or from thirty-five to four yuan.

“Hallo. Come you look,” a middle-aged woman shouted from her little shop in the middle of the market’s excitement. Ammon slowed down slightly, something which happened rarely, if ever, when we shopped. It was always he who pushed and pulled us along. We loved to window shop, even though we were never allowed to actually buy anything, firstly because of the weight and lack of space, but more importantly, because of our strict budget.

He glanced in the shop window and wiggled his chin before whispering, “Well, I was kinda thinking about getting one of these silk shirts.” He initially kept his distance so as not to show interest and thereby immediately lose the upper hand in the negotiating game.

“You come. You looking. Is nice,” she said, waving an arm at the dozens of shirts hanging above her head. Ammon kicked the dirt and swayed his head side to side. As part of his strategy, he was stalling just long enough to give her time to make the first desperate move.

“Dis. Three hundred fivety. Is nice?”

“Three hundred and fifty?!!” Mom repeated, as usual. This time I couldn’t tell if she was supporting Ammon’s bargaining position or if she was truly shocked,
again
, but I was not surprised to feel her warm breath on my neck and hear her ask, “How much is that anyway?” It was fifty-two dollars and fifty cents.

“Three hundred twenty,” the woman said immediately as she stepped out of her shop, sensing us warming to the product. I knew Ammon would never pay that much for a shirt and really doubted he would be able to negotiate the price down to one he
would
be willing to pay. In fact, I hadn’t yet seen him buy anything that wasn’t absolutely essential, like water, food, bus tickets, accommodations, or toilet paper (and not much of that!). He was a real cheapskate, unlike we three girls who would splurge on pop, hair conditioner, and chips.

He stood still and maintained his sceptical look for a bit, as if to say, “Hah! Never in a million years!” “But what is the discount price?” he finally asked cheerfully.

“Three hundred.Is good price.”

“I am a poor man. I can’t afford that kind of price. You’ll have to do better than that for me,” he said in a friendly, joking manner.

“Okay, you come. You look. Feel. Is very good silk. Real silk,” she said as she ran back inside to get a sample for him.

“Ammon, that’s a really nice shirt,” Mom said, when the lady was no longer within earshot.

“Yah, they are actually pretty nice,” he admitted, shortly adding a strategic and honest, “but what am I going to do with it, even if I could get it for a good price?” Just then, she reappeared with a very attractive, black silk shirt with a subtle but sexy Chinese dragon stitched on the front. He obviously liked it, because he lifted a brow in the woman’s direction and started low. “How about thirty?”

She waved her hand out in front of her to signal, “No, no!” and defensively clutched the shirt. We girls could tell this was the start of a long process with that kind of price difference, so we left them to it.

When we came back forty-five minutes later, he was sitting just inside the doorway on a tiny wooden stool, his knees practically hitting his ears, sipping tea. We entered curiously, wondering how the bargaining session was going and whether they had come to any kind of agreement.

“Is good man,” she told us when we entered. “Is good bargain man!” she said, almost proudly. She immediately began telling us how so many tourists came by her shop and bought things without even trying to bargain. “My friend there, with bracelet shop, she say fifteen. American, he buy fifteen! No bargain. No even try,” she said, shaking her head like it was craziness. “We laugh at this people. We don’t give respect. Next time we say twenty, France, he pay twenty.”

I was surprised and relieved to hear that. I had been slightly worried about how our bargaining appeared to the locals, despite Ammon’s reassurances. A few times when I had negotiated a ridiculously low price, I had felt somewhat guilty that I may have ripped them off. But she confirmed that bargaining was a respected part of the culture, and that they wouldn’t drop their prices any lower than they could afford to go. At the same time, I hated that Ammon was right again!

In the cities, more people spoke a bit of English, so we were able to get some firsthand information about their culture, lifestyles, and perceptions of things. She appeared very proud of her culture and was not impressed by the tourists’ evident lack of awareness.

While the three of us took this opportunity to refill our stock of feminine needs, like trying to find tampons or deodorant and any type of skin lotion that didn’t contain bleaching agents. Due to light skin being highly valued in China, virtually all skin-care products contained some sort of bleaching compound. Ammon had managed to get a lot of information from her. While they had enjoyed tea, he learned that she lived above the store with her parents. Since her husband’s house was too small for them to live together, it made sense for her to care for her elders there. In this culture, children often took care of their parents when they reached the age of retirement, and many of the shops are family run and have living quarters upstairs. I felt a bit sorry for her, and wondered if she had any siblings, and whether she and her parents got along.

When she saw that we were ready to take Ammon away, she got off her small stool and grabbed the same silk dragon shirt we’d seen before.

“Here. You take. One hundred,” she said, smiling graciously. Ammon raised his brows and then let out a surprised laugh.

“You are a good lady,” he said, nodding to her as he took it.

“And you, very stubborn man,” she said with a wink.

On second thought, she doesn’t look unhappy.
She seemed to be quite light-hearted and energetic, and not the slightest bit unfriendly. I couldn’t see how that was possible. I could not quite comprehend how someone with so little could still appear to be as happy as she. At home, I’d somehow come to believe that only homeless people lived in apartments. The only nice apartments I remembered were five-bedroom penthouses, so now, I couldn’t even come up with what I considered a suitable word to describe her circumstances, living in a two-bedroom flat above a shop with her aging parents.
But still, poverty and happiness don’t go together...do they!?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Every day that we got closer to Tiananmen Square and Mao, I felt myself becoming more and more anxious. I couldn’t believe I was really getting excited about this. Ammon had gone over the basic historical facts with us earlier and managed to really intrigue me. It was like reading a textbook out loud and then jumping straight into it. The information was still fresh in my mind, and I was as thrilled as if we were going back in time to see cavemen. I never imagined how fascinating a boring square and a foreign leader could be.

I was surprised to hear how recently the 1989 protests and the massacre had taken place
.
I didn’t think things like this still went on. Heck, Bree was born just before it all happened! The story of the “unknown rebel” who singularly made history by standing up to a whole column of tanks impressed me the most. With nothing more than an outstretched hand, he stopped the military tanks that were ready to crush him like a tiny bug. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of him and was eager to see the famous photo one day.

“That guy became a powerful icon of the last century,” Ammon told us as we emerged from the crowded streets into the third-largest square in the world.

“What made him do it!? What did he say about it?!?” Bree sounded equally impressed, but I was busy watching the pods of soldiers kicking one leg straight into the air as they marched in unison. There was no doubt the square was huge. It was 440,000 m² (4,736,120ft²), almost as large as eighty football fields. A very large museum of history, Tiananmen Gate, an old railway station, and the Great Hall of the People made up the square’s perimeter.

“Well, that’s the thing. No one ever found him.”
Wow! A real live mystery! Imagine if we found him and could talk to him in person? That would be amazing!
The fact that I found myself unintentionally inspecting each young male on the off chance that I’d be able to pick out a face I’d never even seen before gives you some idea of the effect the story had on me.

When I spotted a particularly large poster of Mao Zedong, I remembered what we had come for. We quickly found the long line snaking outside his mausoleum, and we stood and waited in it with hundreds of others. The old dictator could often be seen on posters, and because his face was displayed on all Chinese bills and coins, I felt like I already knew him.

“So, what can you tell us about this dead dude?” Bree said.

“First, he’s not just a ‘dead dude’,” Ammon said almost defensively. “This is major history. He’s been dead for thirty years, since September 9, 1976, and he’s fully preserved and looks as if he’d died yesterday. So you’re literally going to see his body. You won’t just be looking at a coffin.”

“Oh, gross!” Bree said, realizing the implication of that bit of information.

“Crazy! Who would want to do that?” I asked.

“I think he, like Ho Chi Minh – the guy who won the Vietnam War, actually wanted to be cremated. They both specifically said they didn’t want to be put on display, but the people missed them so much that they did it anyway. Lenin was preserved because he was “The Man” in Russia, and Mao made China what it is today. They’re the great communist leaders, and now I’ll be able to say I’ve seen all three!”

“Good for you. You go ahead and collect your dead body sightings. Next you’re going to expect
me
to have an embalmment count,” I said, refusing to become caught up in anything so ghoulish.

“I’ve never heard of any of them,” Bree said, and I nodded in agreement.

“You will, especially since we’re going to Russia soon,” Mom said, shuffling along in line.

“People seem to really love him,” I whispered an hour later, acknowledging the number of people laying flowers for him just inside the building.

“He was, among other things, a scholar, a poet, and the founder of Communist China. Oh, and he killed seventy million people,” Ammon threw in casually but very quietly before entering the chamber where he lay. I choked at that. My eyes bulged and Ammon, moving forward with the line, warned me with one of his looks that I should stay silent.

“Seventy million!?” I mouthed silently. I was still reeling over that figure when we entered the room where the great emperor lies for eternity. There is no speaking, taking photos, or stopping allowed; you just trundle along in single file on the red carpet encircling his crystal coffin and glance at him as you pass. I stared curiously at his sallow skin and imagined him standing in Tiananmen Square just outside the doors in the sunlight.
I guess this must be what evil looks like.
There was no remorse in his expression as he laid with his arms crossed nobly over his belly. I wondered whether his spirit lingered there in the room, full of guilt.
Would the spirits of all those people be chasing him, holding him down or standing guard at the gates of heaven to refuse him entry? Or would they be able to forgive in heaven? Why would I even assume he’d get as far as the pearly gates?

“He looked a bit like Snow White!” Bree said when we were back out in the daylight. “Do you think if a princess came and kissed---”

“Bree, how impossibly irrelevant can you be?”

“Very!” she said stubbornly, ignoring Ammon’s jibe.

“Plus, the bigger question is, why would anyone want to go down in history with that haircut?!?” he said, abruptly changing his tune and smiling at her.

“But seventy million?! That’s unbelievable,” I said.

“Yep! Hitler is said to be accountable for only seventeen million, and Stalin killed twenty-three million with his genocide and everything else,” he continued. “That makes Mao the single, greatest mass murderer in human history. And just to make things really interesting, you know our most wanted criminal, Bin Laden? If what they say is true, he killed only a few thousand in the Twin Towers, and we’re talking millions here. It’s truly unfathomable.”

“This just boggles my mind,” I said.

“They worship this guy even after he lived an evil life and murdered millions of their people?!” Bree asked, understandably clueless for once. “How did he even manage to kill so many?!”

“He was responsible for the mass famines, which resulted from how he implemented the Great Leap Forward. But I don’t think he necessarily did it intentionally like Stalin, who purposely cut off the food supply to starve the Ukrainians. Never mind, I’ll tell you more about Stalin later.” We were grateful Ammon left it at that and didn’t go into whatever the Great Leap Forward meant. We’d been overloaded enough for one day.