A Birthday Surprise
After a widely-considered-to-be-successful opening ceremonies (except for the fireworks snafu), the city was in a celebratory mood. Even more, businesses which had been struggling because the promised crowds of rich foreigners did not arrive** were slavering at the thought of rich Beijingers heading out and spending some cash.
My birthday happened to fall shortly after the opening ceremony, and we decided to celebrate that weekend. Since we’d been eating low- or middle-class Chinese food for the entirety of our trip, we thought it’d be fun to dress up and go to a fancy Western restaurant in the middle of town.
And what a restaurant it was! They had a caucasian maitre d’, and the waitstaff’s English was as close to accent-free as I’d ever heard in my time in Beijing (the head waiter was also caucasian - a shockingly expensive luxury). We even had a table that overlooked the Forbidden City. Perfect.
There was only one thing off, which we’d discovered after we’d sat down and made ourselves comfortable: for the opening ceremony weekend, they only offered 3 prix fixe menus. At a cost of 1338, 1668, and 2008 local dollars (each, of course). We didn’t have enough cash on us to afford dinner (most of the transactions in middle-class China is still cash-based, though the upper class is slowly picking up credit cards), but the waiter told us they were happy to accept foreign credit cards. We gulped, looked at the two other (foreign) couples in the restaurant, and accepted the menu.
It was a lovely, lovely dinner. It was perhaps the first “mental health” vacation I’d had in Beijing to date, a place where I felt comfortable and accepted as an English speaker. I ordered a beautifully prepared salmon dinner (being a Seattleite it didn’t taste fresh enough to my picky palate, but the preparation and presentation were perfect) and had a thoroughly wonderful time with my sweet husband. When I got home, my in-laws pulled a Hello Kitty birthday cake out of the fridge and sang “Happy Birthday” to me. I tumbled into bed exhausted and very very happy.
In retrospect, paying almost 4000 “local dollars” (almost $500 USD, OMG!) was exceptionally foolish. We’d stayed in Beijing long enough that our sense for US dollars was completely off, and even though we knew 4000 “local dollars” was ridiculously pricey by local standards, we thoughtlessly fell back onto our default behaviour: following what everybody else was doing. As non-speakers of Chinese, it’s an extremely necessary survival skill, but it was not applicable in a high-end English-friendly restaurant … nor prudent.
The story gets even worse: the next morning, I woke up with the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had in my life (I knew I should have trusted my instincts about the salmon!). Cold sweats, followed by hot sweats, followed by puking, followed by the occasional loss of consciousness. I terrified Albert and his parents when they discovered me in the bathroom the next morning, white as chalk, sweating buckets, and complaining of being cold. Albert hefted me back into bed and took my temperature, which rung in at 39 degrees celsius (brain damage occurs around 42). It was a scary time for all 3 of them: Albert looked into whether our company would cover medical evacuation costs, Albert’s mom (a retired pharmacist) played around with various dosages of fever reducers, and Albert’s dad fretted.
My fever finally broke 2 days afterwards (fortunately, the day before Albert’s parents left). And I now have what is possibly the best birthday story ever!
** My friends had experienced the visa issues personally, and the rationale was quite straightforward: the Chinese government wanted the Olympics primarily as an awe-inspiring show for its people, and only secondarily as a coming-out party for international observers.
-- Cross-posted from http://blog.albertandhannah.com/hannah