D-22

Friday, August 24, 2007
Wudaokou – the university district, looking for the infamous bar, D-22.
Beijing, China

Over an hour on the subway to get there, an endless hot maze full of shuffling figures, girls in short skirts and skinny tops declaring sassy, senseless English (“All love you for tell now;” “Shining seduction;” “Wind wings all together now dreaming;”), hunched women with leathery faces and eyes full of humor and loss; young men jostling one another and laughing; tired men in polo shirts with briefcases and flat looks. We followed Wendy up and down frozen escalators, through winding halls with columns lined in lifeless neon tubing and inert security cameras, past hive-like turn upon turn, down corridors of echoing tile, here and there a beggar sprawled and sleeping, or hunkered in utter obeisance, hands tightly folded above the head in a gesture that went beyond begging into something uglier and more desperate. The crowds moved like blood through veins, rushing, stopping, rushing again. At one point, we all shoved and sweated up a staircase and into what can only be compared to a cattle pen, above ground and along a highway. Enormous sodium lights glared down and we filed back and forth in a zigzag net of switchbacks on a large concrete pad until we came to the funneling off point for our line entered another network of trains. I commented over my shoulder that I was pretty certain that this was what it would look like if New York were transformed into an internment camp. “Fever dream,” came the reply.

We finally got to the Wudaokou stop and poured forth onto a buzzing nighttime street. It was a funhouse, a Pleasure Island of lights, a 10-storey hall of mirrors twisting and belching out sounds and blinking lights and voices and bar after bar after bar. Neon spelled out entertainment in Chinese characters, Korean, English. Blonde mannequins draped in impossibly thin fashions stared out from a number of brightly lit window displays. Couples and groups sat at tables near the windows over steaming pots of food and mugs of beer; dubiously effective bouncers smoked in front of doorways, their bodies all angles and sharp baggy clothes. We wandered through the heat and sea of 20-somethings, across train tracks, dodging cars and horns and bicycles. One bike scooted through an intersection laden with a household of boxes and chairs and bundles piled high. Several family members dangled from the sides of the load, all perfectly balanced and squeaking past on thin, overtaxed rubber tires. We all smiled. “Well, I feel better now,” said Nolan, as the ghost from the past disappeared in the riot of taxis and young people.

Paul and I split off from Nolan and Wendy and found a small Korean restaurant across the way from the big lights. The exterior was green in a way that suggested it was nestled in a tree, and little white lights flickered around the door. Korean elves, I thought to myself.

Thankfully, the menu had photographs and we could see pretty clearly what had meat and what did not. One particularly vegetarian-looking soup was photographed next to an enormous head of garlic, so we ordered beers (safer than water) and a couple of soups and what looked like a tray of raw vegetables. The soup was outstanding, and turned out to be something like a Korean gumbo, minus the sausage. It came boiling hot and with a small pot of dense rice on the side that could be added as you ate. There were a number of different vegetables floating in it – some identifiable (zucchini, black straw mushrooms, enoki, onions, potatoes) and other that weren’t (something red and squeaky, something granulated, something white and bitter and excellent), along with tiny clams and what we decided was a miso base, due to the familiar blooming clouds that formed when it was let sit for a while. The tray of vegetables turned out to be an enormous platter meant to be transformed into little wraps with nori and lettuce, then dipped in either a disgustingly sweet and sticky peanut sauce, or the hottest wasabi we’d ever had, which was an experience that bordered on the religious/ecstatic. It also came with a small dish of diced hot green and red chilies, which our waitress tried to take away from us, seeing our gringo-hood. We waved it back, but she insisted.

“La!” she explained. I think that means hot. “La! Lajiao!” She waved at her mouth, as if to cool it. I remembered the word “lajiao” from the flight over, when I’d told Paul we needed to tell everyone that we liked it.

“Lajiao hen hao,” I attempted, which I hoped meant something like, “Yeah, chilies are great!” She laughed and left the bowl, and I imagined that they were watching out of the corners of their eyes to see if we ate them or not. We did.

After dinner, we met up with our friends again and began the search for the bar, D-22. It had been mentioned several times in local English-language about-town magazines, and supposedly, tonight promised “mohawk mayhem as Beijing’s best punk bands hit the stage,” (City Weekend Beijing Entertainment Guide, p. E18). Jet-lagged or not, we were not about to miss an opportunity to check out some Chinese punk rock in the nation’s capital.

We slogged along a major thoroughfare for around half an hour, past storefront after baffling storefront (“Eskimo Hair,”) past carts bearing small crabapples and other, nameless fruit stacked neatly in gleaming little piles, past men with their pants rolled to the knees and their shirts rolled up to the nipples (a common Beijing fashion statement – even in the ritziest commercial districts), and beyond. A freshly-scrubbed and shaved little skinhead in dark-rimmed glasses and immaculate boots asked us for directions to the same bar and then invited himself along when we said we thought we were close. Sure enough, along the next block was a clot of young Chinese punks squatting in the gravel, smoking and scowling as we approached. I grinned at their heavily studded jackets and spiky black hair. “Close the fucking door” read a sharpied sign where a man was taking cash for the cover. D-22. Excellent. We paid a handful of yuan and stepped inside, to what could have been any bar in Seattle or Minneapolis.

Mostly caucasian bartenders ran around serving beer and whiskey to a predominantly expat clientele. Aging, overweight white men leered and pinched and smooched on ample, young Chinese women. Australians and Brits and Canadians chatted with locals, often in Chinese, mostly in English. The bar was red and black, small and cramped but rimmed with a tiny balcony that surrounded the room and overlooked the stage. A little sound booth perched at the end of the bar, manned by a young-looking guy in a white t-shirt and black fedora, looking for all the world like a guy I went to college with who has since gone on to play lead guitar for one of the hottest pop-alt acts around. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah!

So, the first band went on 2 and a half hours late and noodled around and did a soundcheck that pretty much included their entire set. I forgave them, since the guy in the hat was playing Sonic Youth and Interpol and Sex Pistols and other things great, and I really hadn’t expected to hear that out of anything but my iPod for about 10 months. Once they got going, though, it was worth the effort. I think. “Gang Bang Sex Abuse” was their name, and yes, they wore their own shirts – except the drummer, who ripped his off. A perfect blend of Hot Topic and leftover grunge chic, these guys had it all, from the bullet bandolera to the stocking cap in 100-degree weather. We weren’t sure if they were singing in Chinese or English, but they were loud and shreddy and the lead singer dropped the mic towards the end and that must have pissed him off because he kicked over the stand and it hit the drums and the set was over. Okay!

We took a cab home.

~ by knifemaker on August 27, 2007.