This journey, which it turned out was to the northern neighboring province of Hebei (Beijing's province), took about four hours during which I had the pleasure of being seated in the back of a sedan between two largish Chinese men who had clearly enjoyed several Chinese hot dogs for breakfast, and must have somehow surreptitiously continued to enjoy them throughout trip as accounted by the persistently fresh nature of the odor. The man who sat to the left of me was the heavier of the two and was clearly somewhat well-off as he owned a GPS unit that was occasionally consulted unsuccessfully. I know this, because the man had the unwavering belief that if the unit was in some way failing his expectations, he would shake it vigorously as if it were an Etch-a-sketch, which was often.
Arriving at Hebei, I inadvertently learned that the purpose of our trip was to sell herbicides and other chemicals to local farmers at a meeting the next morning using our hotel's large dining room. After being told this, I was let free to wander the city of Handan, which I quite enjoyed up until I made the (obvious in retrospect) mistake of filming some blowing sand. Currently my camera is still being cleaned out, and hope is maintained that it will be fixed before I leave on my trip. That night, though, meaning ten o'clock as everyone prepared for bed, I was told that I was to give a speech the next morning. I was then shown two pages of speech written entirely in Chinese. When I told them that I could not actually read Chinese fluently, they were briefly concerned, but then I was told not to worry because nobody in the audience (and they themselves, in reality) could understand any English. The plan developed that I was to give a speech in English, and one of the fellows I had ridden up there with would 'translate' what I was saying by reading the company-provided speech. This was fine with me, and became even more so after a short attempt to discover the actual nature of the Chinese speech (I was apparently a farmer from America, and I loved their herbicides very much, also my mother used them) and decided to give a speech that solely entertained myself. After all, if the audience wasn't going to understand what I was saying, they were going to be paying attention to how I was saying it, and so I had better be saying it with passion. With conviction! Luckily for the herbicidal company, and especially luckily for the audience of farmers that day, I have always had a fondness for (and a tendency towards) inflammatory religious rhetoric. What follows is the rough text of the speech I delivered that day to around a hundred and fifty southern Hebei farmers:
'Good morning, friends and colleagues.
As many of you know, my name is Phil Orlandini, and I am extremely pleased to be with you here today representing the proud American consumer.
[Chinese name of company and product, pronounced very slowly and loudly with exaggerated tones] is a product without equal. Famous both in China and all the world, the Fast State Nine Number Six is an incredible technological breakthrough, surpassing all previous accomplishments in the field of herbicide.
Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you today as one who has seen the Light of Fast State Nine Number Six, yea even as to a messenger unto thee. Be no longer plagued with the foul locust, weevil, or caterpillar! I tell you now that they shall be culled by divine wrath embodied as the Fast State Nine Number Six! Trust in me, and the foul hordes of thine enemies shall be hurled back into the oblivion from whence they came!
But I sense that some of my brothers and sisters remain in the shadow of doubt. Caution has served you well in the past, but the promised day has come, my brothers and sisters! Your vengeance is nigh, and the weapon of the divine is in your hands! Smite the creeping vermin of the earth! Purge the unholy and many-legged from your verdant fields!
As a humble messenger, I leave you now. There are many flocks that have yet to receive this awesome, nay, olympian gift. But as my departure from you is but a new beginning for me, I adjure you heed this summons to action today and begin your own journeys. Vaya con Dios.'
I managed to more or less stick to this because once I got going halfway through I stood up and stopped paying attention to the Chinese speech being read into the microphone next to me. Aside from the heavy drinking that occurs with the majority of male interaction in China, that pretty much capped off the weekend for me. Everyone came by and told me how impressed they were with my volume, shouting across the entire room like that, and my hosts seemed pleased that I had made an effort. After double checking to make sure that nobody had understood a word that I had said, I relaxed and enjoyed the Hebei lunch, which was much better than what I was used to in Xuchang.
Sometimes an adventure can sneak up on you, even when you've resolved yourself to boredom in your final days.
