“您好！你喜欢啤酒吗？“ ”…是“ ”我喜欢啤酒也。你想吗?”
Innocuous is not the word to describe this man in his awkward rotundity. Falling to one side of the bar stool and then the other; then the other; then again, the other; like a wormy dog on the edge of a step; his inability to manage his extreme weight, coupling with his profuse and profound sweating belied his identity as a vicious, gay-curious gangster.
But that he was, and in spades.
Not long enough ago (as it is so today), 中国 was emerging as the domain of the brand new class known as “新新的人”; of the burgeoning capitalist; of 12 lane highways and three car households. 中国, as we know it now, was then in its infancy.
The cities still believed in the 目标 and 毛泽东 wasn’t an anachronistic embarrassment. It was a strange, proletarian wasteland desperate for identity midst the burgeoning consumer markets of Asia and still tamped by the 毛泽东思想 elite. 中国, a decade ago, was the new Old West: poor, hungry, rich, decadent, corrupt and fitful. Even in Beijing, the age-old Mafia so well quashed by 毛泽东思想 morality and rampant poverty, resurged. It controlled, infiltrated and shaped 新新 中国, especially where foreigners were found in numbers.