Play Time!

Early to bed, Early to rise makes a man -------- able to hang out with an awesome kid and do crazy things.

Maybe that’s not how the quote goes, but we’re gonna stick with it anyway. Today offered me the opportunity for my 4.5 hours of one-on-one tutoring to stretch from 8:30 AM to 1 PM rather than 1 PM to 5:30 PM. This left with the most interesting of phenomena—an afternoon to play with.

At lunch, Li Zi my 12 year old host brother won a battle with his mom for the rights to sole possession of me for the afternoon. Its not quite clear why this family sees me as a treasured commodity. I smile a lot, talk as well as I can every time I understand whats happening, and take everything in stride, but as far as I can tell other than good humored support of whatever seems to be the activity of the moment I don’t offer all that much.

But I digress.

I neglected to mention a few other things on the list of Li Zi’s MUST HAVES. The first is the silliest computer games. In possession of ME for more than 4 hours – we raced to the bus stop to race to the MASSIVE SHOPPING MALL where we raced to the 4th floor where we raced to the waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back end where there's this massive arcade. The arcade is much like an American one with one distinct difference. About 60% of the 100 games there are these crazy things where you put in a token and pick “an opponent”. Your opponent ranges from any number of a variety of fish, to any number of a variety of dodgeball players, to any number of a variety of planes. There is one singular button with a symbol of a hand on it. Each “opponent” has a number hanging over their head that indicates both the level of their difficulty and their reward. Defeat the puny “2 Fish” and you win 2 tokens (that you can reuse) Defeat the Massive “8” Fish and hear the ka-chink of 8 fresh coins for your enjoyment. Like gambling – your bound to lose. You smash the button for all your worth until your arm is ready to fall off – then you win. You excitedly drop more coins in the machine and your exhausted arm loses to the weakest of characters.

It’s a blast.

I’ve tried to explain Li Zi’s single minded focus and energy, but you really have no idea. Li Zi has single handedly invented a system to replace the “Stand on the Right, Walk on the left” policy. Its called the “RUN UP THE MIDDLE AND HAHAHAHAHA PEOPLE WILL GET OUT OF YOUR WAY” ... system . I mean – its really effective at getting you up (or down) the escalator in 2.1 seconds but if he wasn’t so cute (and I wasn’t so skinny) it’d probably be rude or something.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when our second stop was a mouse store. We walked in and he was greeted by all the shop workers – apparently his best friends. (Have I mentioned that he like cute little mice?).

I'd like to note, that I may use Li Zi as my lens for story telling – but these are my experiences too. Through him I’m getting an entirely unique (and entirely hysterical) tour of Beijing. I plan on making it to the Great Wall, and hopefully a few other greats, but I’m also kind of in heaven racing around to play in the cold and laugh at cute mice.

I left the coolest thing ever for last.

We find this patch of ice. Its probably 45 feet by 25 feet. Its ugly and pockmarked and dirty, and it has 4 teeeeeeeeny-weeeeeny cars on it.

Unfortunately, Li Zi has spent ALL of his money being addicted to the gambling games at the arcade. He pouts at the insurmountable $1.30 charge to do whatever this tiny-car-on-ice-with-sticks thing is. I can’t help but think that its worth a little more than a buck to let him have his fun, and after all I want to be a cool big brother. I toss him the money and get a huge smile in return, he runs to buy the ticket and I laugh as he sits in the tiny car poking the sticks into the ice trying mostly in vain to push his tiny car quickly across the ice.

After something like 10 minutes of laughter I cave in and splurge another $1.30 on my own tiny car and sticks. American amusement parks have nothing on the tiny-car-with-sticks-on-ice “ride”. The nice lady standing out in the freezing cold with nothing to do stretched our 10 minutes to over an hour as we slipped, pushed, bumped, and slid across the ice with no purpose, aim, or care in the world.

I’m studying and learning and stuff to, but play time was really fun.