Joe and the Viking in Xi'an

Xi'an wasn't bad. The terracotta warriors were impressive, despite being encased in the we're-expecting-a-billion-tourists-a-day shell of knick knack shops, just like all famous Chinese places. My first night in town, I met Joe and Andreas, two other solo travelers. Joe is a lanky 37 year old bartender from Hawaii with a real free-and-easy, live-it-up outlook on life. After we parted ways, I would have an 'aha' moment. Joe looks exactly like David Carradine, the guy from "Kung Fu" and who also played Bill in "Kill Bill". Joe is the quintessential bartender with his laid back life philosophy and stock one-liners for every situation. The one-liners were so steeped in American pop culture that 80% of the time they went way over the heads of any Europeans present, not to mention the Chinese. Joe was unphased and kept them coming. I learned a couple of new dirty jokes.

Joe called Andreas "the Viking" because he pretty much was one. Andreas is a 28 year old dude from Sweden. He lays pipe in apartments for a living. His hair involves some of the most gnarly dreds I've ever laid eyes on. Andreas is built like a little teapot, short and stout, and huge tats were visible on rock-hard arms poking out the sleeves of his t-shirt. Joe and I were wearing coats, but I guess Vikings don't experience cold in the same way as the rest of us. Andreas was quiet most of the time, but he often had a little smile in one corner of his mouth, like he was thinking about something funny. Judging from his comments later in the evening, that something was probably either dog meat or pornography.

The three of us talked for a while in the restaraunt, then decided to hit the only club mentioned in our travel book, 1+1. Clubs can be fun, and this one would have been fun with the CET crew I'd gone out with a week before in Beijing. It was pretty lame with the three of us. The night was routine for a Chinese club: we stood around, we drank beer at 20 times the street price, we were offered better drinks by the plastered overweight chinese guy with his shirt pulled up and rolled under, exposing his belly and nipples (I'm sure they do this for reasons of comfort, needing ventilation). We accepted the drinks, danced with him a little as he implemented an old standby Chinese groove, the thumbs-up jerky tilt, and got out of there. Only Chinese guys can make white guys look cool on the dance floor.

As we exited, Joe and Andreas were hungry. We stopped at a street vendor and they had stir fried noodles, a big bowl for each of them which got good reviews. The Viking was still hungry. He explained that he'd never eaten dog meat, and felt that this was one of the must-do's in China. Since he couldn't speak Chinese, and I can, he saw an opportunity to eat the stuff without doing an embarrassing pantomime in a restaraunt that may or may not serve dog. The pantomime would go something like this: woof woof, pant pant, stick tongue out, "here fido, come boy!", eating motions. The pantomime would fail regardless of whether or not the restaraunt served dog, because in China dogs don't say 'woof-woof'. According to the Chinese, the sound is 'wang-wang'. Seriously.

I facilitated, and a generous helping of dog stew was prepared for and eaten by the Viking. As we were leaving, we noticed suspicious looking meat items being sold nearby, which indeed turned out to be the male organs of various animals. When I asked, I was told that only the pig and cow were on display, but they could get the chicken ones out of the back if I wanted. When I relayed this to the others, it was the beginning of non-stop references to pornogrophy by the Viking. He was pretty drunk. The juvenile references came out of nowhere, often in response to Joe's comments, and didn't make much sense. They triggered confused silences from Joe and I, which Joe would fill with a bartender-style courtesy laugh.

Joe: yeah, back at home, I spend a lot of hours at the bar. That's my job, I'm used to it.
Viking: you mean back at home you spend lots of hours watching porn?

Joe: hey, this place has a tv, do you think they'd let us put a dvd on?
Viking: yeah, a porn!

All of his happened on the evening of December 23rd. The next day, I knew two guys in all of Xi'an, and these were the guys who I spent most of Christmas Eve with. Nice guys, but not the usual suspects.