My name is Sam, Sam Iam.
When I was 25 years old, I decided to go on a backpacking adventure across China, starting from Beijing and ending in Tibet. I was at a crossroads in my life, trying to figure out how to forge a sustainable future with little more than my good looks and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. This alone was cause for despair, but deepening my anxiety was the fact that I’d spent the last two years coaching Japanese businessmen to pronounce “hamburger” properly and had utterly failed.
One thing to know off the get-go is that I could’ve easily passed as Chinese. This search to connect with my “Asian-ness” was, from the beginning, a blurry and generalized quest. I had no personal response to the traditional architecture or the tantalizing dishes I tried, no memories of grandma’s dumplings to compare the street food with, nor fuzzy Polaroids to remember myself as a child posing in front of the Forbidden Palace twenty years later or anything like that.
Like so many of the American forms I’d filled out in my life, my understanding of self was more realized in what I was not rather than in what I was. My main choices in life were “Asian American” or “Samoan/Pacific Islander”. Most of the Asians I knew then and know now belong to the former category. The latter category, as far as I understood, was reserved for the spectacle of inclusion. Sorry, Puerto Rico.
My trip across China began one early November in Beijing. On the other side of the country, freedom fighters were strapping bombs to their chests in a desperate cry for visibility while self-immolating Tibetan monks burned in the streets. Violent clashes with the police were censored from state media and there was a systematic displacement of Tibetans in Lhasa to replace them with Han Chinese. Islamic Uighurs were being shuttled into reeducation camps and detention centers daily.
As I milled around Tiananmen Square taking selfies, it was obvious that I had no idea what was going on. In this land without borders, politics were always in the background, but I couldn’t understand any of the grainy CCTV footage being looped on state-run news programs. I barely noticed the soldiers on guard around the perimeters.
As dusk settled, however, a spectacular monument rose from the mist like a gargantuan boner. I circled around this phallic symbol, almost laughing out loud, and was struck by the audacity of the Chinese to take one of our most precious symbols of Americanism and place it right here in Tiananmen Square. Was it a coincidence? Or was it some sort of mind game?
Curiously, the Washington Monument was taller and longer in its shaft while the People’s Monument was shorter and more ornate at its base. But there was no getting around it: the People’s Monument and the Washington Monument looked remarkably similar, like odd twins.
Everywhere I went, I saw Mao’s benevolent smile. In China, Mao is Jesus Christ.
I went over to his mausoleum and stood in line for well over an hour to look at his corpse. He had a distinctly orange spray-tan, a shade of tangerine that I was already well familiar with as a native New Jerseyan. He looked like he could’ve been at a hotdog eating contest down by the Shore.
My visit to Tiananmen Square was just a warm-up. I wasn’t interested in getting bogged down by souvenir traps to begin with, and my experience upon trying to leave the never-ending square further convinced me to stay off the tourist circuit. I was accosted by aggressive old ladies who tried to goad me into rickshaws. Peking duck was advertised with gaudy neon as the glazed and featherless birds hung in the windows. There was a wondrous air of history and culture mixed with the rush to sell whatever they could for cheap.
With my rucksack strapped to my back and enough yuan stashed in my socks to keep me fed and sheltered for a month, I was ready to get out of the city and go backpacking across the country. Beijing was just the natural starting point, but I didn’t want to stay there for more than a night. I wanted to wander into the expanse without maps or guides of any kind. I didn’t know what I would find, but that was the whole point.
As the sun set behind the gloomy brick buildings, I found myself in a sea of bicycles near Beijing Railway Station, contemplating the man’s words trailing after me. “Two-stah hotel! Two-stah hotel!” The giant Chinese characters on top of the train station penetrated the twilight and colored the smog with a red glow as locals cycled their way home. Feeling famished, but not quite brave enough to sample anything that didn’t have a corporate seal of approval on it, I entered a California Beef Noodles chain restaurant and ordered whatever the first picture advertised.
Setting my rucksack down, I sat among local patrons loudly squawking and slurping from soup bowls paying me no mind—all except for a young, bearded white guy who peered at me with interest.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” he said with a South American accent. “Where are you coming from? More importantly, where are you going?”
The bearded guy gave me an affable grin which assured me that I could relax; he wasn’t going to hustle me. I smiled back and we made introductions. His name was Lonzo, and like me, he was twenty-five years old. He was originally from Brazil, and he also taught English, and this led to plenty of rabbit holes as we compared our lives in Beijing and Tokyo, with a few laughs in between.
As we finished up our noodles, Lonzo asked me where I was staying, and I mentioned the two-star motel that guy outside was on the street barking about. Lonzo laughed and invited me to stay at his place. I almost refused, but when he mentioned that he was going to a friend’s goodbye party that night, I couldn’t resist.
“There’s always a goodbye party in China,” Lonzo said as we exited the restaurant and headed toward his place. “It’s just an excuse to drink.”
We got in a cab and rode for about twenty minutes to a neighborhood called Wudaokou where I felt the city shift into a younger, college-town energy. Lonzo lived somewhere nestled in a maze of backstreets in what seemed like a charming and rustic little alley lined with stone walls, old apartments, and a few of the traditional-style homes which were built with a courtyard at the center. He rented a basement in a brick and cement villa, but we only stayed at his humble pad long enough for me to toss my things onto the couch before we went right back out the door.
“I’m here to learn Mandarin so I can take over my father’s factory in Brasilia. We do a lot of business with the Chinese.”
“I should’ve studied harder in Tokyo,” I confessed. “Get me inside any sushi bar and I’m your man. Outside of that, I’m pretty useless.”
“How do you plan on getting around in China?” asked Lonzo.
“I’m not sure. The only words I know are ‘shi shi’ and ‘nihao’. I should probably learn how to ask to use the bathroom now that I think of it.”
“I can teach you a few phrases, but tonight there’s only one phrase that you really need to remember. You can use it later at the bar,” Lonzo said, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Wo a ni.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Just try it,” he said with a grin, then he proceeded to fire off a string of beautifully pronounced phrases in Mandarin to an idling taxi driver.
We got in the cab and sped off to the party. We were dropped off in front of a skyrise located on a street pulsating with neon. We entered the building and rode a glass elevator to the top floor—the penthouse suite. Whoever his friend was, it was obvious that she was from a family of diplomats or something.
Lonzo liked to move fast, and it was my job to keep up. He knocked on the door and someone he knew let us in immediately. There was a lot of Spanish and the kissing of cheeks. I didn’t get a kiss, but received a brief appraisal followed by a swish of hair in the face and a trail of perfume as we were led through the foyer into a plush apartment filled with white foreigners, Latin music, and red cups.
I transitioned into soiree-mode and stood around, ready to jump into any conversation if the opportunity should present itself. It was like the equivalent of watching a soccer match on Telemundo. Everything was in Spanish, and ball kept getting passed back and forth before I could make a move.
Lonzo neglected to introduce me as he was taken from one acquaintance to the next. These were friends he hadn’t seen in a while, so I played it cool by a bookshelf. Suddenly, I was tapped on the shoulder and found myself face to face with a green-eyed girl who was intimidatingly beautiful, but decidedly hostile.
“Who are you?” she demanded to know.
“I’m Sam, Sam Iam. I’m here with Lonzo,” I explained.
“Who’s that?” she countered with a hint of disdain.
“I don’t know,” I stammered in surprise, glancing around the living room. “He’s not here.”
She quickly lost interest, but an air of suspicion remained.
I did my best to blend in, but it was hard to remain incognito at a house party with only one other Asian guy in it. It didn’t help that this other Asian guy was a lot cooler than I was. He had a Latina girlfriend who did all his talking for him, was dressed in edgy street fashions, and wore sunglasses indoors which no one seemed to question even though it was nighttime. Eventually I found out that he was a deejay from Hong Kong, and for the rest of the night, it seemed as if we had a silent understanding that there could only be one Asian per room at this party, and we did not mingle.
There were a few Chinese girls also, but it was pointless to form any cohesion with them. I began to lose hope of ever seeing Lonzo again and began to drink copiously from the punchbowl. I would have to make new friends if I wanted to survive without even a couch to sleep on.
My efforts to socially lubricate began to pay off. I felt the punch and whatever was in it start to lower my inhibitions to the point that I just barged in on any conversation I was in proximity of, forcing the language to switch from Spanish to English. Surprisingly, everyone seemed relieved when I began speaking English. Now that I was getting thoroughly sauced, I decided that everyone at that party was great. These were deep and philosophical people. Drifters from South America and Europe who’d seen the world and its nether parts.
Once a traveler gets started on a trip, you’ll know their philosophy on basically everything. I found myself mimicking their behavior, taking on their political views, and even considered converting to their religions, which were strange hodgepodges of Buddhism and atheism. Suddenly, yoga seemed important. So did avoiding palm oil for the orangutans. I was invited to join them everywhere to see everything that China had to offer as more and more libations were poured.
Lonzo finally returned an hour later wielding a joint.
“Hey Sam, do you smoke?” Lonzo asked me with that boyish grin of his, and all was forgiven.
“Are you sure we’re allowed to do this?” I asked before taking a puff. “I don’t want to be sent away to some reeducation center.”
This made everyone laugh, and more jungle juice was mixed in the large party bowl. The Spanish girls edged closer to me after I made a rather big show of shot-slamming and hitting the joint. “Call me Big Brother,” I whispered to a pretty brunette from Catalonia. “Call me George Orwell.”
But before I could walk down that road, it was decided that we should all leave the apartment and hit up a salsa club.
“There’s a salsa club?” I nearly screamed.
Before I knew what was happening coats were being tossed to their owners and everyone vacated the premises.
Downstairs, there were a series of taxi-vans waiting for us. I piled into a van with Lonzo and a few others whose names I never caught, and the taxi-driver sped us to the club like he was going for the high score in a video game. There was a plastic jug filled with what was left of the jungle juice and this was passed around as a million rolling r’s ricocheted off the backseats. Everyone was in high spirits, and I’d never felt more Latin in my life. As we swerved around the corner, I took the bottle, took a huge swig, and screamed, “Arrrriba!” in a perfect Spanish accent.
The van opened and we rushed towards a red light emitting faintly from an open door. The outside of the club looked like an unassuming industrial building, but once we were inside the heat swallowed us up like we were coals in a furnace. Everywhere I looked there was music and darkness, flying hair and twirling bodies. And just like that, everyone I’d come with was gone! Where the hell was Lonzo?
I was alone again, with no way of reconnecting with Lonzo. How would I find my way back to his place to retrieve my bag? I couldn’t think straight surrounded by that many writhing bodies and the amazing Spanish rhythm. What was in my bag? Hmm…passport, cash, a slew of other worthless items. All meaningless now that I was free! Perhaps this was a sign from heaven. Maybe I was always meant to lose Lonzo and be stripped of my possessions. I’d simply have to survive for the present with whatever I had left in my pockets. It wasn’t much, but I could still buy a few more shots!
I immediately forgot about my rucksack on Lonzo’s couch and dove deeper into the steam of this heat. There were sizzling bodies, a fiery trumpet, and a singer in a half-buttoned silk-shirt with sweat dripping off his mustachio. The singer was Chinese, but it almost felt like I was in Mexico.
“Buy me a drink,” a girl said in a Chinese accent from somewhere in the darkness. As I turned to see the owner of the voice, I saw her round face, caked with foundation, appearing almost moon-like in its luminosity penetrating the lurid darkness of the nightclub.
“Wo a ni,” I replied confidently, as if I had any idea what it meant.
I then felt her chubby arms around my neck as she painted my mouth with her tongue and lips, and I went along with it for at least a minute. After breaking free for some words and a breath of oxygen, I ordered two shots of tequila with a snap of my fingers. I asked for her name, but even this routine exchange of information proved difficult in this wild atmosphere. “Cheers, Moon-Cakes,” I said and clinked her glass before we each took one down the hatch.
She was soon taken by some goofy British guy who seemed to be about seven feet tall. But I knew I could still win her back somehow if I really wanted. What if we ended up at her apartment? It was a place to sleep after all. Suddenly, I wanted to tell her everything about my life, and more importantly, my purpose in China, to wander at random to confirm the existence of a loving Cosmic Being through the act of aimless travel. I needed to know the deep universal truths of this existence, whatever that meant!
Maybe I just wanted her dumplings.
I ordered another round of tequila shots and took them both one after another. I found myself swept into the action. My shirt mysteriously vanished, and I was now doing salsa on the dance floor.
Back at the bar, I found that infantile creature making out with the goofy seven-foot Brit as I returned shirtless and sweaty. I felt jealous, and then touched as she released herself from his grip, sent him away, and cuddled up to me. I made out with her obscenely, just to prove a point.
Finally, in a swirling blur of Cuervo and shame, I stumbled out of the club and into the streets. I wandered all night, moaning to everyone I met about Lonzo and my bag. Miraculously by morning, I found Lonzo’s place. The door was carelessly unlocked, and my rucksack was still there on the couch, waiting for me like an angry wife, wondering where I’d been all night. Lonzo was nowhere to be found. It was evident that his mission for ass was a complete success.
Still drunk, I helped myself to a free roll of toilet paper and staggered out the door.