I never was sure what this fellow's name was but he was to guide us through the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibits, be our constant companion that day and, eventually our dinner guest. He spoke a form of garbled English which he was sure I totally understood.
To deal with this circumstance, it helped to mirror his expression, so I smiled and nodded a lot. It helps, too, to punctuated my silence with "Exactly!", "You said it!" and, " I couldn't agree more!" I think he must have had a point somewhere in there.
If you have seen the musical Miss Saigon, and recall a character named Engineer, a wheeler and dealer, always on tap for the fast buck, this was him in the flesh.
"I'll give you 2800," I countered. The goods were an assortment of scarves, grandkid's stuff, and some jade things we tourists buy. A yaun came in at 14.5 cents, give or take. (Don't tell Dolph. He sold $637 worth of them to me at 13.5 cents.)
"Thirty-two hundred and it's yours," Engineer responded. "Deal?"
"Deal."
I was rather smug about my negotiating skills. But, as we walked out of the store, Michael whispered, "I got him down another 400 to 2400." Asian ways are mysterious and awesome.
We had started the morning with a driver who was to be with us all day. So much so that he, too, joined us for dinner. I never knew his name, either.
But start at the beginning. In local soil is a clay, that undoubtedly was used to make the original Terra Cotta Warriors. It's cheap, readily available and used for modern-day replicas.
To show me how, a young lady pressed some in a half-mold to conform, then, did the same in the opposing mold. Making sure there is a hollow space in the replica, she slapped the two molds together. Then, she carefully peeled the molds apart, and the resultant replica is fired in an oven. In fifteen minutes, the replica is removed and handed to scores of ladies with scalpel-like knives, who hunch over dimly-lit benches and carve off the flash.
Engineer told me his 500 employees work 8-10 hours daily, the more if they want to earn more money, and net about $90 a month for their seven-day stint.
"But what do they want to do with more money when they never have a day off?" I asked.
Engineer shrugged.
That's more than you need or want to know about the process but I had to go there so . . . hey!
The factory tour was a oner. No one gets it except Michael, with his Dawg at his heels. We had begun the day with a stop at a place where a slew of dynasties had flourished thousands of years ago.
Dianne's Pilgrim ancestry of the 1620's Mayflower voyage--that seems so amazing to me--is but a blip of recent history in comparison. I had no real concept at what I was viewing, since the original inhabitants had lived before Christ. (My Uncle Cecil always said our family came over in a washtub tied behind the Mayflower. Seems more than likely.)
The Warriors, added to the Great Wall, are another of China's contributions to the Great Wonders of the World. And, well, no wonder. Giant buildings, resembling airplane hangars, were built around the three pits that harbor them, and the efforts to preserve their heritage are inviolate. Since they had already been unearthed--when some local farmers dug a well--the building had to be done with great care so as to not destroy an iota of this priceless cultural heritage.
After our day-long tours--replica factory and Warriors--we added two more people to the entourage and returned to our hotel for dinner.
That was Sunday. On Monday, Michael returned to his cadre of merchants and I spent a lazy day, shopping and receiving an awesome Chinese oil massage.
At dinner, Michael showed me pictures of the furniture he had seen that day, and now wanted for the Purple Star. Also, he had purchased all the plates, glasses and silverware he needed, too. I had to ask him as he didn't volunteer his conquest.
When our waitress arrived at our table, he gave her--as he had all our waitresses--explicit instructions on how the fish had to be cooked: It must weigh no more than 1.25 pounds and must be cooked 8-10minutes, no more.
Restaurant protocol in China dictates that the live fish is brought to the table for inspection, prior to cooking. Somehow. the flapping fish in the plastic box, or in a sack, seems slightly bizarre.
The fish was delectable and as we ate the chef came into the dining area to survey his diners. Obviously, he wanted to see who was giving him--the chef of a five-star hotel-- orders on how to cook a dinner.
But Michael called him over and a half hour of animated, chop-chop conversation was capped by the two men trading names and numbers. If he's good enough to cook there, he's good enough to cook for Michael, so the reasoning goes.
Now we're in Hong Kong readying to head home. Michael wants to visit another chef of a five-star hotel here, so he's staying another two days.
In the airport hotel, I splurged on a hamburger and fries.
At last! My culture.
A final tidbit of Chop Suey
* The Chinese joke about what they call their new national bird: The Construction Crane! In the threee cities we visited, it was almost impossible to to look in any direction and not see scores of cranes, roosting on the rooftops of 20-40 story buildings.
China's building at a sizzling pace. Don't ever sell them short. Today, they have surpassed the USA in the numbers of internet users. And cell phones are the new appendage attached to every Chinese hand that I saw.
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