Gan Bei!, Kevin Smith [sad books to read TXT] 📗

GAN BEI!

By Kevin Smith

On a lone, cobblestone alley, secreted away from the thirteen million that inhabited Kunming, or more affectionately known to the Chinese as the City of Eternal Spring, a rare frost had begun to form on the edges of a small eatery’s plate-glass windows. The English word ‘vegetarian’ on a restaurant famed for its dumplings was appropriately obscured under the frost.

The tall man could see that the place was empty. He wasn’t surprised. Heating was an unheard of invention in Yunnan’s capital and with a streak of record lows the city slipped under rarely used quilts and hibernated. A Northern wind caught in the tight alley swirled around him. He dug his hands deeper into his coat pockets. The small eatery’s bright halogen lights and the steam rising from its tiny kitchen attracted the lanky westerner.

“Eternal Spring my a-” he started to mutter when restaurant’s sliding door rolled open.

“Ah, Blue Eyes…welcome back,” the middle-aged woman said with a wink.

“Boss Lady Wang ready to add some warmth?” he asked.

“Americans speaks first, thinks second, not like Chinese, aye Blue Eyes?” she laughed.

Shaking his head and giving her a shrug, the Cleveland native unzipped his parka and sat down on a plastic bench. Elbows still stiff with cold rested on the aluminum table.

“A bottle of Er Guo Tou

!” the customer told the wife of The Manchurian Dumpling’s owner and sole cook, Boss Woo.

“Big or small?” she shouted back in a northeastern accent words mashed together as if her mouth was wired shut.

He appreciated the affectionate nickname. It was in stark contrast to what he was normally known as in these parts – Big Red Nose.

“Small,” he answered, following the weekly routine.

“56% not too strong? Not Chinese nor from the Northern steppes. Tall, blue-eyed man eats our dumplings, now thinks he can drink our white liquor?”
The American laughed loudly and waved her over, motioning for the bottle.

“Ah, a strong man, eh?” she mocked her customer mischievously.

“A dozen dumplings!” he barked, having grown used to shouting in China.

“Pork, beef, shrimp or vegetarian? A handsome single man needs his vegetables!”

He growled, revealing canines not meant for grazing.

“Pork. And one bottle – small – Er Guo Tou

!”

A small glass pint bottle slid across the table top, toppling on its side.

“One glass – small!” she plunked down a thick shot glass in front of him.

The green bottle’s red and white label read – Hong Xing Er Guo Tou

or ‘Red Star’s Head of the Second Pot.’ It was the flagship brand of the Chinese working class. With a twist of the cheap cap, a shot was poured.

Big Red Nose’s head tilt back and with the fumes brushing against still frozen nose hairs he tipped the drink into his thirsty mouth. The sorghum alcohol quickly stripped away the upper layer of his mouth. His eyes watered. He gulped quietly, a river of liquid heat traversing from his throat down to and finishing with a splash against the tips of his toes. For the first time in days, his body had thawed out. Under the table, he secretly squeezed his knee as his body cringed from the drink’s powerful aftertaste.

Sliding back on the bench, enjoying a second shot, his body beyond the always existent initial shock, a crumpled pack of Double Happiness was pulled from his back pocket. He shook the packet and chapped lips closed on the butt of a tarry cigarette. Big Red Nose exhaled heavily, removing all traces of alcohol before striking his match, worried about a potentially fatal combustion. With the end of the cigarette crackling under the match’s flame, Boss Lady Wang poured him another. The smoky tobacco took some of the edge off of the stinging firewater.
Two smokes later and the bottle was empty.

“Fried dumplings.” An oval plate - twelve fried dumplings – knocked the now empty bottle back on its side.

“Good job, manly man. Another bottle?” Boss Lady Wang asked, the sarcasm thick as the flour caked on her apron.

Half a dumpling steaming in his mouth, the ‘Nose’ motioned with a cheap pair of wooden chopsticks for another.

The boss lady, possibly pretty in her youth – but worn from the confines of a tight kitchen and splattering oil - showed a slightly blackened smile, and unscrewed another bottle for her sole customer.

Every other dumpling was comforted with a shot of the clear firewater.

With two crisp dumplings left, the glass door swung open, striking hard against its metal rail.

A stout, smoking man sauntered in, eyeballing the foreigner.

“Eh? Foreigner drinking Er Guo Tou

? Can’t be,” he wasted no time in saying, rubbing a well-wrapped belly, straightening pants that were beyond an iron’s help.

“He’s always here. Can even drink. Well, at least for a foreigner,” the boss lady said with an adoptive mother’s affection.

Following another flirtatious wink, for the first time the American saw that she had a barely visible, but lovely little dimple.

“Hey, what are you looking at Blue Eyes?” she asked. He didn’t realize he was staring.

“Look at the foreigner’s nose, big and red. Foreigners afraid of the cold?” the man asked the boss’s wife as he sat down across from the American.

“Always like that, no matter cold or hot,” she answered simply.

The American only shook his head as the two carried on as if he didn’t exist.

“And, whoever heard of cold weather making a nose bigger?” she asked with annoyance.

“You like our white liquor?” the stranger asked.

Knowing that pointing out the obvious – an empty bottle and a second, freshly opened - and any sarcastic remark would be lost on this man, the ‘Nose’ only muttered, “Yep.”

“We drink together, okay?”

With the last dumpling gone, feeling loose, Big Red Nose agreed.

“Twelve pork dumplings, fried!” the blue-eyed foreigner shouted to the kitchen.

A loud crash of pots came from behind the hidden kitchen.

“Aye?” a familiar and playful voice came from the back room.

“Look, husband, a contest in our restaurant,” Boss Lady Wang said to the man shuffling out of the kitchen.

“Hey, my foreign friend. Er Guo Tou and two dozen fried pork dumplings…I should have known its you!” the owner, Boss Woo said, wagging a dough-covered finger at his old customer.

“Big Red Nose,” Boss Woo stretched every word in his own barely understood northern accent. It was the role he played on every visit and the foreigner was in good spirits to along with it as always.

“Wah..today..not just the nose, but the face too, glow like the flames beneath my wok! Beautiful!” he said with great exaggerations.

With his fingers tapping the front of his soiled apron, he nodded to the new customer and chirped in the local language, leaving Big Red Nose and his limited vocabulary in the dark.

Two more bottles were set between the diners. Each poured the other’s glass.

“Gan bei

,” they both said, saluting one another with shot glasses.

Cigarettes – both Panda and Double Happiness - burned as quickly as alcohol was downed.

Another bottle fell. Three for the ‘Nose’, two for the stranger.

Big Red Nose was feeling light-headed and overly warm. Neither feeling was unwanted.

“Tst, tst, tst…be careful of the white liquor, blue eyes,” Boss Lady Wang said with concern.

With her hands firmly on her hips, Big Red Nose, began to imagine the boss’s wife fifteen years younger, and began to warm in yet another place.

“Hey, you’re doing it again. What’s wrong with you today, Blue Eyes? You look at me like I’m one of your pork dumplings…eh, careful, blue eyes,” she smiled slightly, her eyes narrowing.

Halfway through the fourth, the challenger motioned with his hand to stop, uttering, “Sah, sah, sah…”

A momentary truce allowed both to consume their dishes, one fried, one steamed.

The glass door crept open on the metal track. A tall, boney, speckled European – similar to an overgrown Sigmund Freud - stepped in.

“Hello,” he said to Big Red Nose.

“Ni hao

,” he said to Boss Lady Wang, who was wiping down a glass counter.

“What can I get for you?” she said, slapping the wet rag over her arm.

“Dumplings – vegetarian,” he mumbled in broken Chinese, his German unmistakable.

The type of filling mentioned seemed to antagonize the Chinese man, who looked at the German and grumbled audibly.

“Steamed, boiled, or fried?” she asked, her voice taking on a sexy tone that the ‘Nose’ hadn’t noticed before.

“Boiled,” the German said.

This time it was Big Red Nose who was annoyed and glanced at the German as if he’d just called his mother a one-legged dog. Besides a mother’s chicken noodle soup, the American believed that boiled anything was to desecrate, even when it came to vegetables.

“Russian?” the Chinese man asked.

“What?” the German responded.

“Swiss? French?”

“Ah…no…no…I’m German,” he said.

“Boss, a plate of meat for my new friends!” the Chinese man snapped at Boss Lady Wang.

“Ah, we toast to good health, China, America, and Germany, okay?” he said, already smacking the table and shouting for another shot glass.

Another shot was downed.

The German coughed hard in his hand, his head looking like a ripe apple ready to blow.

“Hey, blue eyes, look at his red face, another monkey-ass like yours!” the boss lady shouted, laughing gleefully.

Boss Lady Wang’s stock continued to rise and Big Red Nose wondered what it would be like to kiss those sassy lips.

“Hey! Again, okay?” the man asked, but was more a demand.

With glasses full, but the Freud not reaching for his, the Chinese man was staring down the German.

“What’s the problem? What’s his problem?” he asked the German, than the American.

In slurred English, realizing for the first time that the Chinese firewater was working on his system, putting his tongue to sleep, the American asked if the German could drink.

“I don’t drink…especially not this. So bad!” he spat out.

Big Red Nose translated to the Chinese, who muttered under his breath.

“Meat,” the boss lady said, setting down a plate of thinly sliced beef.

“Eat, eat, eat…” the Chinese man repeated.

The American didn’t hesitate and started to pluck up the cured meat with his chopsticks. The German put up a well-manicured hand and turned his head back and forth - a ‘no thank you.’

“What? No eat the meat? No drink? What’s wrong with you, you mentally ill?” the Chinese man asked harshly.

“Vegetarian,” the German said, accentuating each syllable to make sure he got it right.

“Vegetarian? Rabbit’s vegetarian, not man! You a man?” the Chinese snarled.

Ready to play diplomat, Big Red Nose held up his glass and barked louder than he wanted, “Hey, hey, hey, for a China, aye?”

“Ha, yes, very good. Good, good…and for America,” he shouted, spilling half his drink, the loss of face by the German forgotten.

Ceremony was lost as another bottle fell and another lined up.

“Hey, Blue Eyes, you want me to have to carry you home? Careful,”