Best reply of the day: “Do you have email address?” The reply was to my now standard response to people hawking or touting things, which is “No thanks, I’m only interesting in drinking and girls”. This is used all too often now that the city is crawling with ‘art students’ who want to sell you their work. Out of curiousity, I have accompanied a few such ‘art students’ (with a remarkable grasp of English), and seen their galleries. It’s a standard tourist trap; the deal is that they try to get you into the gallery, saying things like, “We are going to display Chinese art in Europe and want your opinion”, and once trapped, they see “Which painting you like, we need your opinion”, then they single it out and try to sell it to you. A couple of tactics are used: one is to look really sad (they are struggling through art school), another is to tell you how brave and clever you are (?)
The best thing is, they are Chinese, and therefore terribly polite. So you can get them to do things for you. I got one girl to guide me to (Mini-)Mao’s Mausoleum, another to get me a taxi to a place full of bars, and a third to interpret my difficulties with a bank teller. It’s great! Whereas taxi drivers look at you blankly when you demand to be taken to somewhere that serves booze, ‘art students’ are bound by courtesy and their knowledge of English to help you. Free guides! And when you start trying to knock them back by asking for “drink and girls” or “drugs and sex”, an ‘art student’ will sometimes give you her email address…. the mind boggles.
Though I may have to give up on Chinese beer. The stuff I have managed to source so far is piss weak, and however fast you drink it, it won’t get you drunk. I reckon you could use it as a ‘nicorette patch’ type approach to hangovers. It’s distantly related to real booze, but will rehydrate you. Looking for hard liquor later….