When I met up with The Chairman mid-evening yesterday, we were both pretty darned hungry after a long day with hardly any food.
We rendezvoused in The Worm, but I've mentioned before that the food there is a tad pricey and rather variable in quality. The Den seemed like a good option - standard pub grub at reasonable prices, and 75 minutes left to run on their very generous Happy Hour (till 10pm). The Den, we found, had closed - "for refurbishments" - that very evening. Damn.
We had a debate about whether to try a good Thai place nearby (too expensive), or the recently-opened Hooters (too tacky), or the new pizza joint at Gongti Beimen (portions too ridiculously large); eventually we decided upon the new Nanjie (5 minutes walk back the way we had come, but still...), which offers standard, no-fuss bar fare. When we got to Nanjie on the stroke of 9pm, their nightly DJ was already warming up - eardrum-bludgeoning house music: brain-squelchingly intolerable downstairs, still loud enough to be very, very annoying upstairs. We turned on our heels and left. (The new Nanjie, alas, is not going to make it on to my 'fave bars' list; and, on this showing, it could well wind up on the 'hate list'.)
There were no other decent options in the neighbourhood (The Rickshaw does decent grub, but is otherwise an execrable bar - and too bloody expensive once 'happy hour' is over), so we decided to head back towards my 'hood. Hailing a cab immediately outside Nanjie (and noting a driver number around the 100000 mark - usually a good sign), we thought we'd soon be on our way. But no - the driver resisted all attempts to persuade him to pull a U-turn and head out of the parking lot area back past The Worm (which I'm sure he's allowed to do, since the traffic through the barrier in front of the Worm is two-way), instead obstinately steering towards the north exit on to Gongti Beilu - which would require him to turn right (the wrong way - there being a barrier down the middle of the road preventing you from immediately turning left on to the opposite carriageway), and go half a mile out of our way, all the way down to the junction with the 3rd Ringroad, before being able to pull the necessary U-ey. At least, that was what we hungrily hoped would happen..... but, for some reason, traffic eastbound on Beilu was completely gridlocked, and 10 minutes later we were still queueing to get out of the carpark. We abandoned our shithead driver, and crossed the road in search of another cab to take us west (no traffic problems at all in that direction).
From there on, things went pretty smoothly, and by 9.45 we were happily chowing down on Nanluoguxiang. But when you're that hungry, an hour's delay can seem like 3 hours. And it was a particularly strange and vexing combination of thwarting circumstance we had suffered. We had really, really wanted to go to The Den.
[An aside. I presume there must have been some big event enticing taxi drivers over towards Chaoyang Park last night, because almost all the vehicles in the gridlocked line creeping east along Gongti Beilu at 9pm were taxis - without any fares aboard. Strange....]
3 comments:
why did you choose "fatalist paranoia" as your post title?
and weird how that happens sometimes, huh? Especially when you're just about hungry enough to eat an antelope (of the fuwa gang, The Knockoffs).
It does seem eateries in this town open and close more randomly and more often than any where else. I wonder what the inside story is about Food and Drink Licenses and Health Inspection Penalties.
If only we knew a Chinese Lawyer and could ask them...
You do, you could. (Know Chinese lawyers, that is. So do I.)
My impression (from asking bar owners about it, from time to time) is that these issues are really a matter of fee-paying rather than meeting standards. It's not a whole lot different from paying 'protection' money.
I sometimes wonder if this is the only country where businessmen have to pay off both the police and the gangsters?? It is probably the thing that makes me most hesitant about getting involved in the bar/restaurant business here.
Post title? Er, because I'm paranoid about Fate - I thought that was fairly self-explanatory.
In the immortal words of Kenneth Williams (as Julius Caesar in 'Carry On, Cleo'): "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!"
I swear I once heard Richard Briers throw that in as an improv when he blanked on one of his lines as Richard III, right near the end. Can it really be so? Memory plays funny tricks on all of us. That this would be 30-odd years ago.
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