A Day worthy of a BLOG!

For months now, my friend Chris has been encouraging me to start my own Blog, citing the many Bloggable events I seem to experience.  Yesterday was more than a Bloggable event.  It was a Bloggable day.  So here it goes:

I left my hotel yesterday morning, with the intention of going to church, having a relaxing afternoon back at the hotel and then meeting some friends for dinner.  Church was to be with the German speaking protestant congregation which meets at the German Embassy in Beijing.  After convincing the taxi driver that the Australian Embassy was indeed not the place to drop me off, I did reach my destination with minutes to spare.  I was wearing my typical church attire: casual pants and a button-down shirt.  When I entered the Embassy compound I was surprised to be surrounded by a considerably larger, more festively dressed congregation than I had expected.  It turned out that six young people were going to be confirmed, a right of passage whose importance for German Lutherans is second only to getting married.

I scanned the make-shift sanctuary for anyone not wearing a suit or a dress and found him in the third row – with an empty seat next to him!  I approached my new-found fashion peer and asked in polite German whether the seat was available.  He answered with a pronounced North American accent, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak German.”  “Poor guy,” I thought, “this is going to be a long service for you.”  We started chatting in the appropriate pre-church stage whisper:  His name was David, he was an anthropologist from Toronto and the godfather of one of the confirmands.  Within minutes he had outed himself as an occasional attendee of the Metropolitan Community Church (a predominantly GLBT [Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender] denomination) and I returned the favor, telling him of my friend in Toronto who is a leader in the GLBT movement of the North American Lutheran Church.

As the service progressed, I fed David enough whispered information for him to follow the overall flow.  During the champagne reception following the service, David introduced me to some of his godchild Adrian von der Borch’s family, and then bid his farewell to join the family for the luncheon and afternoon festivities, but not before the two of use made tentative plans for David to join me and my friends for dinner.  I remained in the embassy, chatting with the pastor, who hails from Leipzig and is definitely worth his own blog entry. 

When I emerged from the embassy some time later, David and his German aristocratic friends were still hanging out on the sidewalk, determining the logistics for the transfer to the restaurant.  I chatted a bit more with David until Adrian’s father came up to us, told David that his taxi was here and in a surprising act of spontaneity invited me, a complete stranger just two hours earlier, to join them.  Before I knew what had happened, I had said yes and found myself in a taxi heading to the coming-of-age celebration of a young man I had yet to be introduced to.

That changed quickly once we got to the restaurant, as I met and chatted with just about all the friends and family who were gathered there.  I was especially delighted to meet Adrian’s mother, David’s long time friend, who was born in China, went to grad school in the US, where she met her German husband, whom she followed to a German town to start a family.  (In case you missed the subtle similarity:  my mother was born in China, went to grad school in the US, where she met her German husband, whom she followed to a German town to start a family.)  I was also fascinated by the flute-playing great uncle of Adrian, by the China editor of a major German business magazine, by the German vice consul for science and technology, to name a few.  Adrian is a big fan of Thailand, having spent last Christmas in Bangkok, and I have now become the new local buddy for their planned annual visit to my current chosen home.

After we had our obligatory post-meal walk around a nearby lake, David got himself excused for the remainder of the day and the two of us headed off to meet Jet and Denny.  Jet has become my closest friend in Beijing and the link to its vibrant but largely invisible gay community.  Of the 5,000+ IBMers in China, Jet is the only one who has had the courage to put his name in IBMs internal GLBT database.  This has opened many doors for Jet, and he has kept them open for others, like me.  Denny is his ever-smiling boyfriend who says “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English” so beautifully that you don’t want to believe him.  We were joined by another friend, who recently returned from a three year assignment to New York.  Unfortunately his native New York boy friend was not part of the repatriation package.  So after three years of bliss, they are starting what could be a lengthy and heart wrenching, but definitely worthwhile, long-distance era in their relationship.

We played an Israeli version of the card game Uno, with some additional twists.  One of Jets good friends is dating a guy who words for El Al, thus the card game.  We got so carried away by the game that dinner time had come and gone, and when we finally left for the restaurant, we were all quite famished.  The combination of jet lag and hunger had its toll on David, who turned grey and had a bit of a fainting spell which, adding to the fact that David and I were the only Caucasians in the restaurant, made us quite the attraction.  After resting a bit and nourishing himself on some broth and chicken, David felt better and I accompanied him back to the apartment that Adrian’s parents are renting for his three week stay in Beijing.

I returned to my hotel room some thirteen hours after I had left, having experienced a day that I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams.