A wise friend once told me that in China, I’d have many moments where I would really wonder, “How did I ever get here?” She has been right many times over, but what I love is that whenever I find myself in one of these situations, it inevitably gets stranger before it’s over. This is about one of those situations. I really hope I can do it justice, and I'm sorry it’s so long.
A couple of weekends ago, I went with two American friends to the Kunming tea market, which is basically like a tea strip mall (but with traditional Chinese buildings). At one shop, we sat with a tea master drinking Pu’Er. It started to rain, so we lingered and got into a conversation (as much as is possible with my still so limited language skills) with a nice Chinese family. They invited us to have dinner with them; the mother wrote her phone number and address on a slip of paper and told us to come anytime.
Let the Disorientation Begin
Jenny and I went to see them about a week later. I didn’t really check out the address before we left, thinking I would just hand it to a taxi driver. But I spoke to the family shortly before leaving and found out that they actually lived in a town about an hour’s drive away. So we caught a long-distance bus, which was surprisingly comfortable. We were surprised when, 20 or 30 minutes from the station, the scenery changed from dreadful, endless urban cement-ness to pleasant, rolling green hills.
We were even more surprised to arrive at our destination city, Kun Gong. I suspect that five or ten years ago, Kun Gong was a small dusty town based mostly on agriculture. Now a shiny new Volkswagen plant and a local iron and steel company dominate its economy. When we rolled in at around 7 pm, it felt as close to American small-town living as I’ve seen in China; wide clean streets with few people on them, and a big park in the center of town and bright storefronts.
The family met us at the bus stop and took us to an excellent restaurant for dinner. We shared a bottle of Yunnan red wine, following the Chinese tradition of toasting constantly throughout the meal. I really wish I knew how to say some good toasts in Chinese. Unfortunately, I now know that I know just enough to be very dangerous. I had two great foot-in-mouth moments, which I still don’t quite understand. The first involved confusion when Mrs. Zhang asked a question about ji, and I thought she was referring to prostitutes and really she was talking about chickens ("chicken" is slang for "prostitute"). The second time I thought she made a joke about her husband also being my husband. If that had been what she said, I think I handled it pretty well. Unfortunately, it was not. Despite my stupidity, they seemed to like us.
The Kidnapping
When they had picked us up earlier, we had told them that the last bus left Kun Gong at 9 p.m. When we got up from the table, Jenny pointed out to me that it was 9:03. We got in the car and I held out hope that they would drive us to the station and there would still be a bus at 9:05, but it soon became clear that we were not headed to the bus station.
“This is it,” I told Jenny. “We’re being kidnapped.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’d pick this family to be kidnapped with.” They drove us to their home, the most tastefully decorated apartment that I have seen in China. It has a tea house theme, dominated by shades of brown, and while undoubtedly Chinese in style it lacks the embellishments that I find a little kitschy in most homes here. The husband, Mr. Bai, brought us gifts of blocks of Pu’Er tea, and we went up to their rooftop garden/patio to drink some tea. Up there, they started inviting us to stay the night, telling us that they have space in their home. Mrs. Zhang’s friends started calling her cell phone.
“They are at KTV,” she told us, referring to the ubiquitous karaoke lounges that are the number-one local nightlife option, which I had thus far managed to avoid all but twice. “They are like monkeys, asking when am I coming and where are my laowai friends. Will you come to KTV?”
I wanted to go home and study and I don’t like KTV, but it would have been very rude to say no at this point. And we still didn’t know how we’d get home, so when we’d drank the last of the tea, we left with Mrs. Zhang and went to nearby Anning. 
The scene at the huge KTV room they’d rented was straight out of a Tintin comic book, with drunk old businessmen and policemen lounging on the couches against a backdrop of wallpaper from the "Psychedelic Barf" series. When we came in they started jumping and flapping their arms; apparently, Mrs. Zhang was right and they were very much like monkeys. One was completely passed out, sprawled facedown across the cushions. But our posh room featured good ventilation that kept me from gagging on the smoke, and three of our own personal fuwuyuans tended our private bar.
Jenny picked out “My Heart Will Go On,” and a fuwuyuan shoved a mike in my face. I don’t sing, can’t sing, and despise Celine Dion and the movie Titanic equally. Instead of singing the song, I improvised lyrics about the absurdity of my situation and somehow compared it to the movie. It didn’t matter; no one knew what I was saying.
We stayed at the KTV for a couple of hours, drinking Jack and Cokes that had been appropriately weakened to keep the rest of the group from getting too sick. We found out that they were all either cops or big-wigs at the steel company. Jenny kept picking songs; Mmm Bop and Billie Jean were attempted, and Eidelweiss, complete with Chinglish lyrics, was sung. There was also some awful dancing to awful music.
So meone picked the Peter, Paul and Mary song “500 Miles” (The hook: Lord I'm 500 miles from my home./ 500 miles, 500 miles, 500 miles, 500 miles./ Lord I'm five hundred miles from my home.) It was at once perfect and completely inadequate.
Passed-Out Guy woke up at some point and started falling all over me and saying things that I’m pretty sure I’m glad I couldn’t understand. His embarrassed friends peeled him away and tried to give him more to drink, hoping he’d pass out again. Which he did, in a dark corner outside the door to our private bathroom. One guy spent the rest of the night saying to me, “I’m sorry. Cheers. I’m sorry. Gambe.”
Jenny and I were relieved when Mrs. Zhang asked if we were ready to go home, but our relief didn’t last. “He will drive you home,” she said, pointing to a friend who was a little bit drunk and probably still getting drunker since he’d only recently stopped sipping. Unfortunately, the message about drinking and driving hasn’t really arrived here. Add to this the fact that they seem to get loaded twice as easily, and you’ve got a MADD nightmare. I explained to her that we did not want to ride with him, and would rather pay the 150 RMB for a taxi. But she insisted that we not take a taxi, and in the end drove us herself.
We arrived home at one a.m., but I was so buzzed from the Coke-heavy Jack and Cokes that I couldn’t sleep until about three. The next morning at school, I just kept laughing to myself, at how I’d went for a quiet dinner in Kunming and ended up at a cops-n-robber-barons stumblefest at a KTV in Anning.
