I had been living in Zhengzhou for about two months and I was in dire need of native English communication. Anyone who has live in a foreign country will know how frustrating it can be, to have to speak either a foreign language or broken pigeon English in order to communicate. After a while, you just need to speak with another native speak for the sake of your own sanity!
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| A bar which is not the Zhengzhou Target Pub, but looks a lot like it. |
After work, I went with a South African friend to a bar called "Target", the place where all the foreigners in Zhengzhou hangout. We arrived at around 10pm and were the only foreigners in the half filled pub. We ordered a couple of Tsingtaos and drank. We amused ourselves by looking at a website called "china love cupid" (I won't link to it as I really don’t want to degrade my blog) which is a site devoted to helping Chinese women find foreign husbands. After identifying about 10 of our predatory students. We found we were now surrounded with tables of other foreigners.
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| China love cupid, where most Chinese international visa marriages are spawned. |
My South African friend went to talk to the landlord (in fluent Mandarin) so I glided on over to a table of around six American girls in their early twenties and two Hungarian travellers who looked about ten year older. I broke the ice with my amazing Hungarian Language skills (Skills which have been surprisingly useful).
"Egesheegedre", I said, meaning cheers.
"You speak Hungarian!?!?" the Hungarian man said in astonishment.
"Nem Bessilek Mud Yarool" - I replied, (no)
"oh".
After about an hour discussing life in China with my new Yi Guo Ren friends, one of the American girls pulled out a seemingly innocuous looking cigarette and lit up.
I'm sure you know what was in that cigarette.
As soon as the odour wafted through the noses of the Hungarians they were off like a shot.
"I just remembered, we have a meeting", one of them lied.
I would have gone too but for being too drunk and comfortable to move. So I decided to interview the American girls.
"Why did you come the Zhengzhou"?
"We came cos life's really easy here, we get to work, like, two days a week, then the rest of the time we get, like, drunk or stoned. Teaching is so easy, they dont even listen to what you say half them time! We couldn't live like this back in the states!"
"Do you have many Chinese friends?"
"Not really, we kinda just hangout with our click, Chinese people don't like drinking and partying and shit. We don't really like them".
"Is it okay to be smoking weed here?"
"Yeah, we do it all the time, they don't know what it is so they don't care, they just think it's like a funny flavour cigarette, hehe"
"Where do you get it from"
"I've got this really cool dealer, he's not like Chinese, he's like a Muslim or something, I'll introduce you to him".
Feeling like they were trying to suck me in to their world high school clicks, drugs and ignorance I changed the subject to funny videos they'd seen on youtube.
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| Smoking cannabis in a country like China that will kill you for it is a bloody stupid thing to do. |
These were the sorts of idiots that get thrown into jail for 40 years in Thailand and Indonesia. You can find them every weekend in Zhengzhou's Target bar or JingYi Lu. Whether they even realize whether they've left the USA and now live in a country where drugs = a bullet in the back of the head is a question I cannot answer.
If you are a traveller, you are a guest in someone else’s country. Don't break their house rules, it's rude and stupid, not to mention dangerous.
