TheBalladofCrazyLiu

[thankfully I have not photos of crazy liu, as he is not appealing to the eyes]

So... I have been posting tons of stuff to make up for the fact that I did not post for a long time. There are a total of five new entries up, so check them out if you haven't already. And If you are new to this blog, make sure to go back and read the long winded, hard to follow, and mostly inane stuff that I have posted since late August. It turns out that I have another week off ( I am fine with money; I make enough to get by during the break), so I am looking forward to another week of just getting caught up with shit and ready for the coming semester. After this post, I will post once or twice a week. A word of warning, this post is a bit darker then the majority of them.

My experiences in China would not be complete without some Crazy liu stories. We met liu a few months ago while waiting for the bus. He just came up and started talking; his English isn't that bad, but has holes in it. Now, from the moment I met Liu, i had a funny vibe. Given my past, and the sort of characters that I have met in my life, I seem to have developed a "spider sense" when someone may be not good to hang around with. But in China, a foreign culture with people who act in ways you may not fully understand, its hard to know when to follow that sort of impulse. However , i have learned that lesson. Anyway, Liu was very friendly but there did seem to be something off about him,, nothing i could really put my finger on. The fact that two Chinese people came up to us while we talking to him should have been a clue! ?That doesn't happen often! They just came up out of the blue, a middle age teacher and a younger student guy, looked at Liu sideways, and left when we said we ok.But if your American, its very normal for someone to just talking to you on the street. They might be curious or just want to practice their English. The vast majority of them have turned out to be very nice people; well , all but one. Anyhoo, Liu got on the bus we were getting on, the dreaded 501 that I hate so much, and i kind of got sick of talking to him ( he really doesn't listen to everything you say and talks over you, and then says," I don't know your words"while you are still trying to explain something to him). I mentioned to winston that i got a weird vibe off of liu, but Winston's strength and weakness is that he tries to see the good in everyone. i even named liu "crazy liu"" right off, becuase he seemed different than the other chinese, which turned out to be foreshadowig. I now know to trust my "spider sense". I guess I gave Liu my phone number ( this is not uncommon, i have given my phone number to tons of Chinese, most who have never called me), and that was that.

Now, in the following , I am going to get the actual events and days and such confused, I am sure, but the gist of what happened is true. About a week later, liu called me and said he wanted to go to the English corner. I said sure. It turns out he live about two blocks away from me! So we made plans to go, but when the time comes, he doesn't not show up. A few days later, he calls and says he wants to take Winston and me to dinner. Again, this is not uncommon; I have had many dinners with Chinese people who want to befriend and talk to me. So we go to a local place on Ba Yi Lu, cheap but good. Liu orders a good amount of food for W. and I but does not eat. He drinks. i also have a few beers. liu stats to act strange after one beer, which we thought was funny. He starts singing ballads; one of the funniest things about the chinese is that they really love soft rock. So you get a guy who thinks he is manly, but he will be singing richard marx or something like that. Liu kept singing "can you feel the love tonight" the way a redneck will sing Tuesday's gone or some college kid will sing dave matthews. Anyway, he really didn't act like a normal chinese person. Yeah, getting drunk fast is normal, and singing is a bit accepted, but Liu just seemed to stand out. Some real manly middle age guys actually told him to pipe down with the singing (it was starting to get annoying). After about three beers, he was pretty drunk. He was pretend fondling winston as a joke( which was funny), he called Winston a boy because he does not drink and smoke( which actually happens alot; the chinese love winston, but many of them make it their mission to get him to drink). He won't though, and I admire his sticking to his values)he offered to have sex with me for 100 yuan ( a joke, i was hoping!), and told us about his life and such. Essentially, he reminded me of alot of people i knew back home. He feels that he does not fit in with the chinese. He is generally creative and funny. he is smart(BUT NOT AS SMART AS HE THINKS HE IS) but not disciplined enough to get fully educated. He is supposed to be a wiz at chinese( think like english as a subject and not a language) and japanese, but struggles with english. He went to university but dropped out. In short, he was not that different than i was at his age( 24). And he could be really fucking funny. He had a girlfriend, but he said he didn't like her because she was fat and ugly... but she was the only girl who liked him. In other words, he was a lost soul, and since i have been one myself and am fond of many such people, we did bond.
Any after that night, Liu started calling alot. he would usually just want to hang out, but then it would turn into drinking. I was pretty burned out from teaching and maybe the stress of adjusting to a new life, so i would usually go along with him. He lost his job after that night at the restaurant due to his boss getting sick of him being drunk and or hung over. I would resist him in the beginning, but began to hang out wit him more and more. Since he had lost his job, i would offer to pay for dinner and drinks usually. We would go to very small places that had food and beer and usually are very cheap. Although bars are very common here, most chinese prefer to go to restaurant , drink while eating, and then stay and get loaded! It is not uncommon to be in a restaurant and have a table of about four Chinese men that have about 20 to 30 bottles sitting on their table. Winston says that he is always seeing groups of them stumbling out of places in to cabs. its a pretty common thing. And, while i plan to address this in a later post, our image of the average chinese man is wrong. The average middle age dude is fairly big physically, tough looking, and loves to drink and be manly for the ladies! Anyhoo, liu did teach me that its better to drink at restaurants then at bars.
At first, he would put up a fuss about me paying, but as time went on, he began to get braver. It would start out with going to place and saying that he had no money, then he would add things onto the bill without asking me or winston for money. I would get pissed off and bitch at him, and he would say it was a mistake or some shit, but then he would do it again the next time. a few time, i got stuck with his bill from previous occasions. At this point, He was seriously pissing me off. We had been warned about chinese users , but i still feel that liu generally is a good person, but he has serious problems. I began to get the feeling that you get when someone is about to go down real hard, and many of you know enough people that have to understand what i mean. I think i kept hanging around liu becuase, even though he was using me and I knew it, he reminded me so much of myself at certain points in my life. He has a good soul, but no idea how to live. The difference between us is that when i go down, i try my best not to take anyone with me. Liu, on the other hand, will grab as many hands as he can and hold on as he sinks down.

There were many little fucked up instances in a short period of time that i don''t want to get into, but i knew i was going to have to cut him off at some point. he just didn't get that he was going down a bad path. I think having American friends who he thought were rich made him cocky. He was on the path down before he met us, but he got worse as he hung around us. He had many Enemies in the neighborhood ( one of the DvD street vendors hated him becuase he borrowed porn that he never returned!) because he had fucked over someone with money or such. He is a very nice, charming guy, but he doesn't have certain values when it comes to fucking someone over. It was all small shit, but it was alot of small shit. Anyway, He was was always trying to get me to drink and started to ask both of us for money. We met his parents, who are very poor and live in a very small apartment. My apartment is about twice the size of theirs and much nicer. They all sleep in one room, liu sleeps essentially on what is a very big shelf. His parents are very nice and have had hard lives. Liu, i am sure, does not make their life easier. Liu was also obsessed with women and sex. He knew every place that had prostitutes in china and changed my view of this place considerably. Prostitution is highly illegal here, but is also part of the culture. There are many places that you walk past that you would never think had them if you didn't not know, but they could be right next to a legitimate business. Its sort of interwoven with the regular society, if you are not in that world, you just walk right past it. But you can find it everywhere. I had no clue of this until i met liu.

Well this had proven to be liu's downfall. I had decided to cut him off but was having trouble doing so. i didn't not want to get into that dark world. i was curious about it, but had had my fill of dark worlds in pgh. I prefer normal china... Plus, as i said, liu gave me that feeling that you get when someone you know is using heavy drugs; they are going to go down and hard. I told Winston this, but hes so damned nice, he didn't believe me. the drinking and other things had caused serious problems with Yipin that i have already talked about. At the end, i was just yelling at liu and trying to tell him to straighten up and he would agree and then ignore me. Liu has the problem that alot of people do; he just assumes that he is smarter than everyone else. The chinese all think that they are very clever, and they are. Many of them are wicked crafty and cunning. liu really wasn't; he thought he was manipulating us, but we knew he was doing it the entire time. We just let him because we could see his good aspects. However, i was getting very sick of him.

He invited us to a restaurant to meet his friend andy. Andy is a good guy and I still see him occasionally. Liu was a complete ass; very drunk, obnoxious. I yelled at him and felt bad about it afterwards. I decided to come home and have a few drinks and invited liu. this was very stupid. Liu was so drunk, he spilled coke everywhere. he kept saying "i like the coca cola."i was sort of drunk myself, and i think i hit him a few times because he was so fucked up and insisted on sneaking coke and rum and then spilling it everywhere. eventually, he passed out on my floor. The next day, i woke up and he was at my computer, listening to chinese music and eating tons of my food. I had already decided to cut him off for good, so I threw him out of my house physically! He called my many times that day, but i told him to fuck off. He called winston. I told winston to hang up on him, but winston is too nice. Anyway, Yipin doesn't believe me, but I was done with that fucker from that point on.

So the next morning, Winston calls me. He said that liu had called him and was in a bathouse in ba yi lu. he owed them 25 yuan and they would not let him out until he left. I told winston to let him rot, but winston went down anyway. I told wisnton that he had only insured that liu would do the same thing again. Anyway, the next day, Winson left with his girlfriend maria to go travelling. I started tutoring that morning. On the way to work, i got two phone calls from liu, i just answered fuck off and hung up! then Winston call me while Ed and I were having breakfast. he was on the train and liu had called him from a bathouse again; most bathouses are legitimate places that are enjoyed by all of the chinese, but many of them offer prostitutes. again, its that shadow world that exists in the open. It's not there if you don't want it to be. Liu said that he owed 1200 yuan! In nearly spit out my orange juice. I think that the bathhouse girls usually charge about 200 yaun and i still have no clue what the hell liu had done to ring up such a high bill! i don't think Iwant to know! I told winston that their was no way in hell i was going to help liu and he should just not think about it and enjoy his vacation. It turns out that Liu did call wisnton again and asked him to get off the train and transfer money into his account! Maria pretty much told winston no, which is good, because i think he might have done it. Liu called me thourghout the day and i told him several times to fuck off. around the evening he called again, and I listened to him. He said that they had beat him up ,and that they were threatening his life. I almost caved but then told him that i could not help him. I was worried for him, but had a feeling he was bluffing in some manner. He said he had a credit card at home and would pay me back but of course that was bullshit. Anyway, I woke up the next morning and he called again. He again begged for help; again i told him that i could not. So he hung up. a few hours later, he called and said that he called his dad and he came and got liu. He could have done that the entire time, but he knew he would be in serious shit with his family.He was trying to be liu, do what he wanted without having to pay for it. So he was in not real danger, he just didn't want to make that phone call to his parents. His dad took him to a mental hospital directly and he was there for a month. He called while yipin was visiting and of course, she went mental on me, understandably. i have told her that i am done with him, but she is worried about me. nothing to worry about, lesson learned. The funny thing is that he has not called since that weekend. I think that he got out of the hospital, went straight back to his old ways, got into some sort of absurd mess again and ended up in jail or the mental hospital again. I just can't see him not calling me and winston so abruptly. Winston thinks that he is just laying low, trying to get back on track. time will tell who is right, but i know that i am!

So ends the ballad of Cray liu. its not a particuarly happy chapter in my journey, but its real life. I learned alot, especially about not slipping back into the darkness. Liu had his good points. He was a user, but if he had money, he would help out his friends. He was very funny. hearing someone say "i like Satan, Satan is good"in a very thick chinese accent is hilarious. But he , like many people i have know, could not stop the bad shit in him from overcoming him. I am lucky, i went there and came back stronger. this time I went to the border of that world, but stopped before the point of no return. It was good in the way that i feel that i have finally conquered my attraction to that world. maybe liu was neccessary in my process of self transfomation, the path of drunken dishwasher to academic that I have been on for the better part of this decade. And before any of yuu write; don't worry, i am fine. I was never in any real danger as long as i stopped it before it got to far. and while i came close, i did. It really was an educational experience. But to be honest, I prefer my normal chinese life. Being a teacher, talking to hard working chinese who actually know how to behave in public. I guess i owe liu if only for showing me that I like living in the light much better than the shadows....
please forgive my mad metaphors!
anyway, next entry, various observations. much more upbeat and postive, i hope! things are great here; don't worry about me!