Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [129]
But today I had newspapers. And I was connected to the outside world.
“Excuse me,” said a very tall, thin laowai with a wispy mustache. “Can I buy you a beer?”
Well, okay, I thought. I have newspapers, magazines, and now complete strangers want to buy me beer. Good call, coming to Chengdu.
His name was Max. A Dutchman, he had on a uniform not unlike a chauffeur’s. Gaunt and with a cadaverous pallor, he reminded me of a very young Vincent Price.
“So what brings you to Chengdu?” he asked as he settled at my table.
“Just traveling. You?”
“I live here,” he said as our beers arrived. “Seven years now. I even married a local. And now I have a son. He is one month old. Everyone wants to look at him, this mixed-race child. They look at him like he’s an alien.”
The Chinese are nothing if not curious. I asked him what exactly he did in Chengdu.
“I’m a bodyguard.”
“Really?” I had not in my lifetime actually ever encountered a bodyguard. The number of people willing to take a bullet for complete strangers is, presumably, small.
“You see, it says so here on my tag.”
Indeed it did. Bodyguard.
With evident pride, Max showed me his gear: a walkie-talkie, a fold-out spring baton, and an electric shock zapper.
“I’m licensed for weapons here,” he went on.
“Guns too?”
“No. But if you want a gun, I can get you a gun. Or cocaine, heroin—whatever you want I can get.”
“I’m good with beer right now,” I said, “but if I change my mind, I’ll let you know.” Though that seemed unlikely. Thus far, I had maintained a firm Just Say No policy when it came to drugs in China. I was confused enough as it was.
“I don’t do cocaine anymore,” Max explained. “You never sleep when you do cocaine.”
I’d already discerned that Max was unlikely to be helped by cocaine. He was a little bouncy, a little jittery, a little manic. His movements were sudden, jerky, as if he’d been seized by tics. I couldn’t even begin to wonder what he might be like high on coke.
“You hungry?” he asked me.
“I am, actually.”
“Do you want to get some hotpot?”
We finished our beers, hopped into a taxi, and sped through the glittering lights of the city. Although half the size of Shanghai, Chengdu is still an enormous city of 10 million. As the cost of doing business in Shanghai rises, ever more companies are moving westward to cities like Chengdu, another place where wrecking balls and cranes are transforming everything old into something new. It, too, is a city of vast buildings and construction, of crowded streets and honking cars, of beggars and entrepreneurs forging their way in the new China. As I watched the city unfold, Max turned to me.
“Just pretend you’re my client, all right?”
“Um…okay.”
Clearly, this was a man who loved his job. He got out of the taxi and opened the door for me. He began muttering into his walkie-talkie, his eyes darting through the crowd. He circled me closely, muttering away. The crowd stopped to stare. Well, I thought, we all know whom to shoot now.
As Max hovered protectively beside me, prattling into his walkie-talkie, I noticed a sign that informed us that we were on “a provincial-level model street without any fake product, striving to become a national level.” We’ll just bring the fakery with us, I thought as Max forged a path through the crowd for his pretend client.
Inside a restaurant, we dipped various meats and vegetables into a burbling vat of spicy flavored oil. This is really good, I thought. I was totally digging Sichuan cuisine. True, my eyes were watering, I was sweating, and my mouth was ablaze from the red Sichuan peppers that locals use to flavor everything, but this was some good food. Incendiary, but good.
“So who do you work for?” I asked Max as he scanned the restaurant for any patrons betraying malicious intent toward his pretend client.
“Businessmen. Mobsters,” he said, momentarily relaxing.
“It’s the same thing here. They like to hire a foreigner as a bodyguard. It gives them prestige. I had a client yesterday, he asked me, ‘Why aren’t you wearing sunglasses?’ He thinks