The ZhongNanHai-light of my day

"You are given a complimentary hat and shirt, then you float down a river in a tube with two long cigarettes, and whoever keeps them lit the longest is the winner," Baba told us about a week ago. After hearing this from Matt's host-father, we turned to each other and had one of those telepathic moments in which we agreed that we must sign up for this fierce, unique sporting event.

Over the next week, we familiarized ourselves to the rules of "Smoke n' float," and found that some of our intelligence may have been a little off:

1. We thought maybe "long cigarettes" meant cigars... it just means normal cigarettes.
2. There will be no tubes, you are swimming.
3. There is no competition, you just swim and smoke with some old Chinese people.
4. The event is sponsored by Zhong Nan Hai (中南海), a popular cigarette brand in china
5. They heard about our signing up... and they want to take pictures and put us in an advertisement

After taking the Beijing subway line 1 all the way out to Pingguoyuan(苹果园), we took a public bus out to some far-off river on the outskirts of Beijing. We put on our Zhongnanhai T-shirts and took pictures with "Pretty women and foreigners in front" as directed by the event organizer.

The river shore was a cache of buried treasures - old melon rinds, instant noodle packets, and brilliant, shining glass-shards as far as the eye could see. I had neglected to bring my bathing suit, but found that the swimming garb of choice was the speedo and I would be quite normal in my underwear. In fact, Baba had revealed his swimsuit earlier: a knit loincloth that he tied up, protecting his...wontons, from whatever garbage and pollution lurked in the river.

I, having been rather drunk the night before, needed to use the restroom before swimming. I walked up to the public toilet, which, I kid you not, had a number of beehives in the poop-area. Most Chinese toilets are "squatters" which means there's no bowl, there's just a hole in the ground, and you go for it... you squat, and you do your business. I pulled down my pants and began my descent into the squatting position, the fury of the bees and flies in that toilet was tangible; they poised to strike as if I had threatened to desecrate the sacred breeding ground of their ancestors.

I squatted in a secluded, forested area then returned to the shore. The water was surprisingly warm, most likely from the fishermen who were peeing into the river upstream, but pleasant nonetheless. An old man asked me: "How many hundreds of meters can you swim at once?" To which I answered "I can barely swim one meter," which was true. I tread a mix of instant noodle broth and polluted water for about 20 minutes then returned to the shore.

A woman who came on the trip offered me a snack of dried miniature shrimp skins. I politely accepted a handful of about 20. While munching respectfully, Baba took the bag of shrimp skins, dumped the entire bag on a piece of bread, and devoured the oriental delight.

We dried off and took the bus back to Pingguoyuan. China is weird.