the universal language

They had put in a new train to Beijing six days before I arrived. White, slim with a sloped nose like a pencil, the interior had individual reclining seats like a jet. This shaved down the commuting time down from ninety minutes to a nice round sixty. Thirty more minutes in your day, thirty more minutes into the Chinese economy.

Like pretty much everything else of consequence Tianjin’s train station was closed for renovation, and our taxi dropped us off at the place they were using in the meantime. The interim station was a camp of sheet-metal barns. A thick mob of scruffy men with chattering laughter and quick eyes milled in front of the station: outnumbering the small trickle of travelers by at least three to one. They made driving motions with their hands and repeated the words Beijing? Beijing?, hoping to get three times the train price out of you. As we passed through they parted like smoke, their questions and their worn jackets brushing faintly against us. One of the shacks revealed a ticket office, another opened up to a long dining hall where we sat down to kill an hour. Which is where we met Charlie.

Luck had given Charlie a bony little body and a head like a flattened basketball, which he kept permanently decorated with a half moon grin, whether his eyes agreed or not. He was on school break and heading back to his home in Beijing. That’s where we were headed? On the 4:15? Perfect! I’m hungry, let’s… WAITRESS! Bring us three orders of goburi dumplings. Yes, yes, now. What? You’re not hungry? Oh, but I insist! So you are traveling here in China? Why are you Tianjin? You should be in Beijing! Tianjin is terrible, the people here are so stupid. They are… hicks? Yes! They are hicks! I am an English major here at the university. I go to school in Tianjin but my home is Beijing. That’s right, I don’t have any brothers or sisters. I am a little prince! Here, eat! Oh, you like these dumplings? Tianjin’s goburi dumplings… well, they’re not as good as Beijing dumplings. Come on, come on, eat up. Oh! It is time for the train! Just give the ticket to that woman, yes. What? Oh, this train is new! I’ve never seen this before! What? Looks like the Japanese bullet train? No, not the same company, this is Chinese. This is China. Here is your seat? Hello, excuse me mister. You. Yes, you. I want to switch seats with you so I can sit next to this American and practice my English, alright? Ok? Ok? Good. Are you comfortable? This is my laptop. It is a good one. A bit old, but very good. Would you like to watch a movie? No? But I have so many. Here, what do you want, action? What? A Chinese movie? No, I don’t have any of those, Chinese movies are terrible. Here, what about comedy? Do you like “Mr. Bean”? Here, you take one earphone, and… yes. Okay, here we go, Mr. Bean.

For those of you who don't know Mr. Bean is a British export, physical comedy about a little man in a brown suit. In each scene the character stumbles through modern set-pieces like the hotel, the shopping mall, the parking lot. He fumbles, breaks things and spends absurd amounts of energy (and physical comedy) trying to get out of situations without looking stupid. He stumbles through modern civilization with a complete ignorance of how things work and a terror of looking foolish in front of other people. Perhaps because of all this he is extremely popular in Asia, where whole populations are bungling through the new and strange paraphenalia of Western civilization, trying to make sense of it all and terrified of looking stupid in the process. For that matter he looks a lot like me in China.

As one of the first English speaking Chinese I'd stumbled across I was eager to pick Charlie's brain, but instead we just sat and watched Mr. Bean devising more and more elaborate ways to peak at his neighbor's paper during an exam. Charlie and I exploded in big horking laughter as we sped to Beijing at 160 miles per hour.