Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost

nightclubs and plethora of elegant restaurants, felt familiar—provided, of course, one ignored the loogies landing at your feet. But, of course, things in China are not always as they seem. One evening, while I was enjoying a delectable duck cooked in the Peking manner at a restaurant in the Embassy District, I asked the Australian businessman who had joined Dan and me for dinner what it was like to do business here.
    “China is a dictatorship, and if you cross the government, or someone connected to it, then your life is literally in danger. It’s all done very quietly. So you don’t cross the government.”
    “Really?”
    “Doing business in China is like doing business with the mafia,” he added. “You have to be careful. And you don’t cross the wrong person.”
    And then the conversation turned to factory workers on roller skates.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you just say factory workers on roller skates?”
    “Yes,” said the businessman. “They work faster on roller skates. It’s more efficient.”
    “But don’t people get hurt?”
    “Welcome to China,” he said. “It’s different here.”
    Interesting as this was, I had hopes of actually talking to a Chinese person about the changes in Beijing. And so one afternoon I asked Dan if he could help me find a translator, someone to wander around with as I explored the tumultuous capital.
    “Sure,” he said. “We can do that right now if you want.”
    Puzzled, I followed him inside the Oriental Plaza, a luxurious shopping arcade near Tiananmen Square. The Oriental Plaza is an emporium for the wealthy and the nearly wealthy, a glittering mall full of high-end Chinese boutiques, as well as more familiar stores such as Coach and Burberry. There was even a store selling what it claimed was the BMW Lifestyle, and on the lowest level, tucked into a corner, was the Coca-Cola shop, which seemed like a vestige of the eighties, when the Communist world got its first taste of the West.
    “This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting to see in China,” I noted as we walked past the Hugo Boss store. “I feel poor here. I shouldn’t feel poor in China, should I?”
    “There are about 300 million people in China who could be called middle class or even wealthy. But if you’d really like to feel poor, I’ll take you to the Ferrari dealership.”
    “The Ferrari dealership?”
    “There are eleven Ferrari dealerships in China now.”
    I wondered if the owners of these Ferraris drove them with the same manic gusto as Beijing’s cabdrivers. Would one have to be truly insane to drive a Ferrari on the streets of China? Would people here even know how to operate a Ferrari? From what I’d discerned on the streets of Beijing, the Chinese, while in possession of cars, didn’t actually know how to drive them.
    Having cut through the Oriental Plaza, we stopped in front of the entrance to the Grand Hyatt, one of the most luxurious hotels in Beijing, whereupon Dan approached two attractive young women who were loitering near the doorway. They wore makeup and tight, form-fitting clothes that suggested that they were either unusually curvaceous for Chinese women or dedicated customers of Stay Fit Health Powder.
    Dude. What are you doing?
    “She says she speaks English,” Dan said, gesturing to one of the women.
    “Yes, I speak English,” she confirmed.
    “My friend here would like to hire you for the afternoon,” Dan explained.
    Dude!
    Around us, shoppers turned to stare. There were children. Jesus.
    “As a translator,” I stammered.
    “What’s your name?” Dan inquired.
    “Meow Meow.”
    Meow Meow.
    “Meow Meow, meet Maarten.”
    Who was this Meow Meow? And why was this woman with the Bond-girl name lingering at the entrance of an upscale hotel?
    “You need translator,” she said. “I can be translator. How much money? Money very important in China.”
    Dan took charge of the negotiations. He had long ago absorbed the rules of China, and while I still