The Zodiac Schmodiac Story Cycle

Spicy Mice

The most memorable of all my trips happened after I had been in Beijing for about a year. My parents had asked perhaps once if I had any plans to come back home, and I had answered that I didn't yet. When they didn't ask again I decided that I'd just plan on staying in China for a while. This made my really popular with the boss, and I was soon the go to translator in the agency. Most of the other translators never stayed more than six months. I was also popular because I was white. The other folks in the agency were ABCs, even though they were North Americans they still looked Chinese, but I'm white, and somehow that made the businessmen trust me more. One day a man came into the agency looking to hire a translator for a three week job. The CEO of a big American company was coming to China for a tour of all of his company's factories in China, 15 total, all in different cities. He needed to find a translator that could travel around with the CEO's group during the whole three weeks. The boss called me in, explained the details, and asked if I was available. "Sure, that sounds like it would be an adventure," I answered. We set up the contract for two months later, and I went back to my desk.

John Cline and his entourange arrived seven weeks later. Cline was the CEO of a big US computer company, one that you've probably heard of. He was the world's biggest jerk. After 15 minutes together I was ready to quit. He talked to the local workers as if they were not quite slaves, but definately not normal people. By lunchtime he had started to call all of the locals "monkeys," and told me that he couldn't stand to stay here any longer. When his assistant heard that he flipped open his phone and began cancelling appointments, and I thought that Cline was on his way back to the airport, but it turned out that he often cancelled everything after lunch if he wasn't feeling well. He did it over and over during the next weeks we were together. It was something everyone around him just got used to.

After three days I was ready to quit. I really loved working with the local people. Heck, I had loved Chinese people ever since I discovered on that day in Andy's house that a little Chinese goes a long way to melting their hearts. When we went into a restaurant, as soon as I started to speak Mandarin the ice would break, and by the end of the meal I would have some new friends on the staff. They were so good to me, and I liked them too. Cline hated having to use an interpreter. He thought anyone who didn't speak English was just stupid, and treated them like they were. 

On the evening of the third day I went out for drinks with some of the local workers who were attached to the group. One of the porters, Bao-jin, and I were sitting in a bar complaining about Cline, and he started to smile at me. "Oh, if we could just get him to eat some Chinese food, then we could get him back," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "He eats the food, it's about the only thing he hasn't complained about so far."

"You know he hasn't really been eating the local food, though, he's just eating the Chinese food in the Western restaurants we go to. If we could somehow get him into the markets when we leave the city, then we could feed him some crazy stuff." 

"Come on, Bao-jin, there's a lot of good stuff to eat in the markets. I like eating there." 

"You do pretty well, you're right, but there are a lot of things even you have never tried," he said. "How can we get him out into the local markets?"

"I think I can arrange that," I said. "He hates it here, but he seems to understand that he needs to do some local stuff to appease the companies. Get me a list of the places we should take him and I'll do my best to make him get out there," I said. 

So our plan was hatched. On the fourth day we left the Beijing area to begin the tours in the countryside areas. While we were traveling on the bus I pulled Cline's assistant aside and told him that we were going to run into a huge problem in the next area.