Bar Fight at the Prop

Well, then there was the time I got into a bar-fight stone-cold sober.

The club-and-bar was Chinese, which meant it was crammed into a place about the size of my bedroom back at home, only a little longer and a little fatter. It was mostly dark, with lights under the tables and along the walls at waist-level, and behind the bar, so you couldn’t see much too well, and everyone’s face was bottom-lit, so we all looked funny – everybody with little triangles of light on their faces except the dancers, who blent into one great roiling strobe-lit mass.

The place was called Propaganda.

I didn’t drink back then, which for a college student was weird. The rest of the Americans kept asking me, “don’t you want something?” “c’mon, I’ll pay for it.” “not even just a coke?” No, not even just a coke – the Prop didn’t have a cover charge, so they scalped on drinks. I wasn’t paying twenty kuai for a coke, not when you could get one for five kuai at the convenience store next-door.

For an American, China is cheap. So when we, all Americans, all here to study, had dinner back on campus, it was maybe 20 kuai a head - $2.50 per person. And when we, all Americans, all here to "study," returned to our rooms, it was fairly inevitable that, on the way back, someone or other would suggest, "hey, guys! Wanna go to the Prop tonight?"

Most of us did. The ones who didn't - well, it was obvious why they didn't come along. Two married women. One geek. The chaperoning professor. Everyone else piled together by the glass doors to outside, waited impatiently for Things to be dropped off in Rooms, then, in a conglomerate amoeba, rounded the dorm's corner, passed through the campus gate, and started down Chengfu Lu toward Wudaokou.

Any and every city has its own districts, each with reputations to uphold. Wudaokou is known as the student district, for the ten-some major colleges within walking distance; its reputation, of course, is built on what students want. Restaurants. Tea shops. Clubs. Clothings stores. Food stores. Stores for everything else - one devoted to cell phones, another to combs, a third to wispy clothing. Food carts stop in the middle of the sidewalks - or, if they're more enterprising, the streets. People and bicycles and food and tiny buildings and cars all crowd on the once white, but now spit-grey sidewalk tiles. The metro line runs overhead, and the train tracks run below-beside it; trains run by periodically. Passenger trains are always red.

This being a city, nothing stops running at night. Wudaokou picks up, in fact: the night market opens; people drag blankets full of clothes, books, writing pads, fruit, baby toys, candles, scarves, everythings, and spread out like picnics on the sidewalk. Bicycles park in long, rusty rows, and outside Cool Hangouts crowds of young people stand and smoke and talk.

The Prop was definitely Cool. It couldn't have been more than fifteen feet wide, squished between a Seven-Eleven on the one side and a tea-shop on the other. (The Seven-Eleven was deemed almost as Cool as the Prop, actually.) It served as club and bar for both foreigners and locals - for any students coming by. The cover charge was 25 kuai - three dollars.

Propaganda outside was small, city-soot-stained, with a big red star hung by the door and tall iron shutters soldered above. Propaganda inside was smaller - there was a bar, there were booths, and the space between the two was just enough for one person to walk, or two people to squeeze past each other. Everything was done up in blue light, and at the back, there were stairs down.

We, still in our group, took the stairs down. A huge, heavy steel door was at the bottom; shoving it open brought a blast of music. We, still grouped, piled through.

A bar is a bar is a bar, so of course people started drinking. I didn't. I went and danced, then got tired and sat. There were tables and chairs down here, and our group commandeered one, and the drinkers huddled around it territorially like it was Home Base. They tagged foreigners to come and talk with us; they mostly ignored locals, since none of this group spoke Chinese all that well. (Of course: we'd left the geek back at the dorm.)

The evening wore on, and got drunker and drunker. I was on my second "naw, you go ahead and dance, I'm tired," my fourth " no, go ahead, keep talking, it's fine," - everyone talks to the sober person - and my two hundredth "no, I don't want to drink," when finally, and probably understandably, I accepted. "Fine, if you really wanna get me a Coke, sure."

The boy who'd been badgering me went to the bar, pleased as punch he'd finally gotten me to get something. Well, gotten to get me something, but when you've had sixteen shots as 30 kuai apiece, you don't mind details like that so much. He came back, balancing two more shots in one hand, and stretched out the Coke to me in the other. "Sure y'don't want something in that?"

"Yes," I said, and smiled patiently (god! boys!) and took the drink.

Here, of course, shenanigans struck. As will often happen in crowded rooms, there was a break in the noise, or maybe in the drunk-listening continuum. What happened was that Dan, the guy next to the one that'd gotten me the Coke, heard that it wasn't spiked.

"Aw, man, that's no fun!" he said, and tipped his own drink into my cup.

Both drinks were overfull. And I didn't want Coke and vodka all over me, so I shoved the drink back at Dan. "Dude, what the hell're you doing?"

Dan probably thought - I don't even know what he probably thought. But maybe he got knocked from behind, or maybe he was just pissed his ploy hadn't worked; he shoved the glass back at me ("I ain't takin' that, it's yours") and then I back at him and somewhere in there someone dropped the glass, splashing coke and vodka over both of us anyhow, and getting broken glass all over besides.

Dan, of course, barely noticed. He just kept yelling, and I, not about to be out-yelled by a drunk, kept yelling back. Someone with more sense than both of us shoved us out of the room, through the heavy steel door, up the stairs, through the blue room, and out onto the sidewalk.

And that's where we both shut up. Because in the crowded night market, Chinese people selling and buying and walking three abreast and stopping to smoke by the Prop - yeah, they were all interested in seeing a tall black guy and a small white girl yell at each other while picking broken glass off their jeans.

The first thing you learn as a foreigner in China is this: you are a novelty.

And as drunk as Dan was, he was as tired of being a novelty as I was. So we simmered down. We had a civil discussion about drunkness and China and the existance or nonexistance of ADD and ADHD and our places in the school and the universe and why we were here and where was everyone else.

Everyone else was back inside, except for the guy who'd steered us out. He was off smoking with the locals, watching us, and being watched watching us.

We talked. Dan, exhausted, or maybe just drunk, sat down, then lay back on the sidewalk to continue the discussion. And I, smelling like smoke and bar and Coke and vodka, tiny scratches on my fingers from picking glass slivers out of my jeans - I was just spiteful enough not to tell him: Chinese sidewalks are spit-grey for a reason.

[words: 1321]
[due: 2/10/2010]