My cultural third-eye was squeeged quite cleanly last night. Me and five or six of the high-ups in the company (all Chinese -- be it Taiwanese, Malaysian, or...well, Chinese) went out with two Swedish business men.

It started out normal enough. We went to a western food joint, the equivalent of I'd say a $40 a plate restraunt in America. Except of course the cuts of steak were way way thinner. And damned if they didn't know what ranch dressing was. They brough me mayonaise, French's mustard, and a vinegar dressing before I gave up. Now if you know anything about the salid dressing universe, it should be obvious that:

<---Milk--------Ranch Dressing--------------Water--------------------Vinegrette dressing-------------vinegar-----------oil--->

See? Completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Still, I guess vinegrette is better than mustard.

I don't really have any expectations of service and it didn't really bother me. You want American food, go to America. You want mayonaise when you ask for ranch dressing, come to China. Duh.

Now I knew drinking was a huge part of business culture here. An even bigger part then it is in America. And to my advantage I can put away a lot more beer than the teensy Asian business men before I even feel a thing. Add to this the beer they drink here is really really weak. Tsing-tao and the like, goes down easy because it's really quite lame.

So I can keep up with the drinking pace no problem. And heads up, this story does not end up in me getting drunk. That's not my bag. However, as a guy to not completely stick out you have to drink. Period. So we did, and inevitably karaoke was next.

I have karaoked before in the states. You get your own room, a few noteboooks of song selections, a couch to chill on, good times. I was not prepared for karaoke China style. The karaoke bar is connected to my hotel. Boy do I know this as I can hear bass hits till one in the morning. We walk into the karaoke bar.

Cute. Girls. Everywhere.

We walk up a flight of stairs and see a stage framed by a circular dance floor with railings around the perimeter. There are around twenty girls with two or three guys getting down congo-line style to chinese techno music. They try to suck me into the congo.

Hell no.

This is the beginning of mixed feelings. I don't understand Asia. So I'm try to be careful about placing value judgements on the culture. I usually try to give it a shot. I grade myself an F tonight on participation. I resisted at every-turn. Except I still drank of course, which is basically all you ever need to do to fit in. So that's my safe harbor.

A hostess puts her hand on my back to lead me. I stare her down, she gets the message, and takes her hand off me. We are chilling in the private room. There's me, two Swedish guys, and seven Chinese guys. I'm introduced to the manager of the karaoke bar. He owns one of the factory spaces that we lease from. So we know him pretty well. Christ, make the eight chinese guys. Mr. Chen shows up, I toured a factory with him earlier today.

Then it happens. Fifteen betty chinese girls, all dressed in tighter-fitting outfits then the next one, enter the room in a line. We're supposed to pick.

Now what kind of geek am I? Fifteen cute chinese girls for the picking, and I'm thinking of an episode from Twink Peaks the first season. Benjaim (I think that's his name, the hotel owner) goes with his brother to One-Eyed Jacks. A casino/whorehouse right across the Canadian border. They arrive, and well, about fifteen girls line up and they pick. The similarity was unmistakable.

I don't know what to say about the girls, it all went by pretty fast. Most were cute, some weren't as much, none I would say were flat ugly. So the picking went down, in the end only four girls were picked. I was all but forced to pick a girl, but I managed to get out of it.

The girls are there to sing songs, pour your beer, laught at your jokes, and even clean-up your mess. I had two sitting next to me, though they did not "belong" to me. I think I'm so damn clever. I ask one of them something like "Do you think the sum of all entropy will ultimately make all energy inert?" Whatever, it really wasn't that funny in retrospect. And I'm pretty sure that question makes no sense in English.

Then I ask a real question via translator. Where are you from? I ask this of the girl next to me in the light blue dress with flower prints. She has painted on eyebrows and very fair skin. I get a translation back, the North part of China. I learn that most of these girls come from the North part of China where poverty is huge. They work here and send money back to their families.

And yes they will sleep with you if, like Bob Barker says, the price is right.

Karaoke with priviledges.

In fact, one of the girls went home with a member of our party that night. Crazy, I'm in a different world. Black is white, up is down, left is right, hostess is whore.

I felt uncomfirtable about taking advantage of and objectifying these women before. Now I REALLY feel like a predator. They're all poor and just trying to support their families! Now, by not picking one have I made it harder for them to feed little brother and sister back home up North? How could I reconcile that with my will to be faithful to my girlfriend? Good times!

So we sang songs, actually I got out of it. Got increasingly drunk, actually I didn't. Talked to one of the Swedish guys who was as uncomfirtable as I was. Actually, this is a kick, he had just gotten married three weeks ago. As he said "Quite a honeymoon, eh?".

Aside from the hostess factor it was just a bunch of people getting drunk with some extra touching and karaoke. Towards the end of the night the more senior of the Swedish businessmen imparted some wisdom about westerns and asian business. I want to record it here so I remember it. Even though he was drunk and they seem like fundamental obvservations, I think they're important to remember. You know that point in drunkeness when people say things REALLY fucking seriously, they're like "Hey, now I'm REALLY fucking serious man." ? Well it was said with that inflection. However, that doesn't make the points any less true.

1. You can't change Asia. You may think you have changed it, but you haven't. The sooner your realize that and go with the flow, the sooner you will be successful.
2. Don't be too honest to fast. It frightens people off. If you give it time, you will have business relationships where you can have honesty you could never have in America. But if you don't are too honest to quickly, you will frighten them off.

And the third more obvious one to me. And I think he was speaking from personal experience here as well:

3. If you date or marry an Asian: the family will be nice to you, you may get a long, but they will never accept you. Never.

I tend to agree with this last one as well. There's a concept culturally engrained of who a daughter should date.

The night ended as you would expect. Everyone wanted to go to sleep with a few holdouts who had to be coerced drunk to drunk style for a half-hour before they'd leave. We all finally left, some with hostesses in tow.

I failed to adapt at all, and I grade myself relatively lowly in terms of appropriate participation. If I had to do it over again, not sure what I would do differently. I toasted, clapped to the beat, all that. Ah well, I'll get it eventually.