February 20th: music store recitals and back alley dogmeat

Day 157

Woke to sunshine, which in itself is good news but Haimen is taking its sweet time to thaw out. After some lunch, I went to the arts building, but the weird paper seals were still on the doors. Returned to my room, blogged for a bit, got a phone call. The anthropomorphic hamburger was belting its tune into the receiver. Jenn! She had gotten the box already. Huzzah for air mail. We chatted for a bit, got me excited about the July possibility of she, Gabe and Steve coming to collect me in Moab, taking me back to Cincinnati. Since she was on the dark side of the planet, she had to go to bed.

Matt, Erin and I rode over to Dongzhou, they for Muslim noodles, I for the purpose of checking out the music store, perhaps getting an instrument. We went up there en masse, perused the erhus, pipas, guitars, flutes and such. A banjo-looking pipa (ruan, also known as the moon guitar) caught my eye, but it was missing its pick-up. The store is owned by the family of the eldest music teacher at the experimental school, and she came in, all smiles. "You can come and play the pianos every day because we are........colleague."

Then she led me to a tinny-sounding baby grand, bade me to sing a song. My pipes were still a bit strained from MCing the night before, but I indulged her with half a song, moved to a different piano. When I played "Bluestar" Jeni began crying again. She had been homesick after an online chat with her mother, missing out on the little details that thread linear memories. Or perhaps it has the ability to make every Jennifer weep, who knows. At any rate, it's the highest compliment anyone can pay something I've written. Applause and praise are ok, but a true emotional response is golden.

After a few tunes, she told me that one was sold and she preferred I play a different one. What was I going to do, set it on fire in a Jerry Lee Lewis finale? I was just playing the damn thing, and none too roughly. Christ. She led me upstairs to a practice room where Heather sat and basically ran me through my catalogue. It was a little embarrassing, but good to practice in front of other people. Each time I'd finish a song, she would grin, say "Another one!" Eventually my hands got too cold and I started blanking on how to play "Favorite Witness."

Rhys bought an erhu, Jeni a pipa. Mike considered getting a guzheng, but had to consider shipping it to the states or even within China (risky!), since it's basically a surfboard coffee table with harpstrings. We went back to Rhys and Jeni's room, tried tuning his guitar, fiddled a bit with her pipa. Then we decided to get some sustenance on a street parallel to the main drag back where the internet cafe is. We rode our little Anglo bike gang back there, debated which place to go into since they all advertised dogmeat. (This is what happens when you leave the main drag.) We eventually chose a place convinced we weren't going to "accidentally" get dog for chicken since dogmeat was much more expensive. We did not eat dog. We did not eat dog. We did not eat dog. We did not eat dog. (This detail must not be overlooked since certain people would divorce me as a friend if I did) We did not eat dog.

Our mutual disgust at the dogmeat situation was eased by joking. "A good dog to the last bite," "the meal will be fine as long as they keep Fufu in the kennel," "there's a little bit of Rex in all of us," etc. The slowness in service resulted in accidental meal coursing, and our girl was determined that we not have rice until the end of the meal like regular people.

Afterwards Heather and I got a pumpkin cake at a tent, but they were not very fried. At least they kept the chill off. The others rode on and we checked out the mysterious bar nearby, which turned out to be a tea bar. I was admonished by the owner for wanting ginger tea, which he didn't have and on top of that, apparently it's only for sick people. We wanted a highball and they had none, so we left.

On the way back we swung by Shishan Lu, ducked into the DVD store, gave them their bunk copy of "Welcome to Collinwood" back. I traded it for a fresh copy of "Team America: World Police" which I've been dying to see since its release in October. We pedaled back had some rum-n-coke, invited the crew in to watch the film. After 15 minutes of hilarity, it pixelated and froze. D'oh! Now I have to go and return another faulty product, a huge pain in my ass. We watched "Flirting With Disaster" (David O. Russell film) instead, which I was amazed and overjoyed that Heather had.

I scaled the gate, pedaled on home, fell asleep in the knowledge that I had one more day off before teaching again.