"i knew all that eating would pay off someday!"

a suggestion from alert, long-time reader scott andrews led to an incident in the forbidden city the other day that enabled me to:
a)use my capitalism skills to earn some money here in a communist country
and
b)horrify my mother.
so it was kind of like killing two birds with one stone!

as you may have noticed if you know me, i am a bit on the chunky side, a fact which is not lost on, oh, say, *everybody* in asia. it started years ago with cute little japanese grandmothers coming up and hugging my buddha-esque belly and saying i was a good soul, and has evolved into fan club branches in thailand, nepal, malaysia, mongolia, and any other asian country where there are crowds of people who are more then willing to gawk, stare, and photograph a chunky brotha.

it's not so bad in big cities, where the local populace may have had previous exposure to super-sized americans, but at places that draw out the yokels (see the nadaam festival entry from a few weeks ago), the cameras end up a-clickin'.

people were taking pictures of me right and left at the forbidden city, which is one of china's biggest tourist draws. it was where generation after generation of emporers and concubines lived for thousands of years, inaccessible to the public until the 1920s. it has all sorts of halls and pavilions and carved figures and guilded roofs and stuff like that, but i was a bigger draw than any of that, and i decided that all these camera-bearing chinese shouldn't get away with pictures for free, so i started charging one yuan ($1 = 7.5 yuan) for a photo, three for two yuan.

at first it was a trickle. i was surprised and shocked when the first person actually understood what i was saying and took a one-yuan note from his pocket before posing next to me. the next one came a bit later, and then another, and then another, and then another. it got really intense in front of the hall of eternal enlightenment, or something like that, when people were actually thrusting money at me, and i was making change for larger bills, and one guy paid 10 yuan for 10 different poses with me (quite comical).

this went on and on for a good 15 minutes - i kid you not. my mom and annette just stood back and watched the semi-circle of people around me, shouting something about being next (i couldn't tell - my mandarin's still not that good)...my mom was cringing the whole time, though, especially when i yelled out "i knew all that eating would pay off someday!"

as quickly as the tempest had begun, however, it ended. the maelstromthe ebb and flow had come and gone, leaving me with a shirt pocked bulging with crumbled up yuan and a lone US dollar from a guy who really wanted a photo but didn't have any one yuan notes. including the dollar, i made approximately 52 yuan (about seven bucks) for my work, and all i had to sell was any sense of pride that i had left!

it was very hot and humid, as is normal in beijing in the summer, and my throat was parched from talking and laughing so much. fortnately, we soon came upon a section of the forbidden city that i referred to as "the palace of refreshments," where i purchased three bottles of ice water and a frozen yogurt (orange - delicious), happy that i had earned the money myself, right there in the middle of all the madness.