|
|
|
|
Snakes and Stingers in Beijing |
by Catherine Juliusz
Beijing at night is the kind of place that makes you feel drunk even without the help of Tsingtao beer coursing through your veins. It's a city where all of your senses are heightened, as all kinds of stimuli—and people—rush at you, fighting for your attention. People jostle you from the front and back. Steam rises from a street vendor's cart, hitting you in the face and fogging your glasses. The sidewalks are slick with rain and potholed, so you struggle to maintain your balance. Everything's in motion and noisy and in your face.
Beijing while drunk is like being in an Edvard Munch painting, but with less screaming and more karaoke and scorpions. Should you wish to be drunk in Beijing, due to heartache or for the sheer fun of it, choose a hotel near the city center thereby garnering both a beautiful place to wander and the opportunity for plenty of interesting interactions with fellow travelers/drunkards.
Start with Zhujiang or Yanjing beer, or the omnipresent Tsingtao. Have a few with fellow tourists, most of whom are younger than you, and a surprising number of which are Canadian. Flirt with pretty girls studying nursing, talk traveling with the former Army man on leave, decide as a group to hit the Donghuamen Night Market, and then giggle at the word "dong". Rouse yourself from your bar stools and stagger out.
Stumble through the rain. Decide to take a taxi. Buy ponchos of clear plastic. $1. Very effective. Very unflattering. Arrive at a street lined with 100 vendors that stretches to your left and right in a neat row.
Wander up to the nearest stall:
Scorpions, ranging from the size of your pinky to the size of your face.
Cocooned larvae, so fresh they're wriggling.
Snakes the size of your forearm, pale white and skinless.
Crickets in aquarium tanks by the hundreds, bouncing and reeking.
Dumplings.
Egg rolls.
Candy.
Note that it's 10PM, raining hard, and many vendors are closing up. Choose a snake, a squid, and a scorpion. Everything's deepfried and put on a stick, though the snake gets doused in a sort of barbeque/teriyaki sauce. The scorpion goes down quickly. It's crunchy and tastes of protein and grease, but unremarkable. The squid tastes like calamari, and the tentacles flop about as you try to get them in your mouth. The snake is salty and awful, and very chewy. It's like eating rubber or tripe. It also keeps sliding off its stick, and you need to keep draping it around its perch, like climbing vines on the side of a house.
The night is young, so stumble to a place labeled KTV. Get a private karaoke room. Order more beer and salty snacks, including squid jerky. Flip through the catalog listing songs in four languages—Chinese, English, Korean, and Japanese. Belt out songs so loud your throat hurts. Feel your ears pound from the Beach Boys and Bon Jovi songs filtering in from other rooms. Feel your head begin to pound from all the watery beer you've had, but decide to do "just 5 more sets".
Wake up in your hotel next to your fellow traveler.
Drink the next night to forget the first.
Catherine Juliusz lives in California.
| home |
|
|
|
|
