This day marked two mile-stones in my life; one for eventfulness and the other for stark lack of accomplishment.
It all started when Deanne asked me if I wanted to go with her and Butter to Wang Fu Jing to get her camera fixed. The prospect of spending my day with said people in said pursuit didn't exactly thrill me, but sinse I didn't really have anything better to do I decided to go.
It seemed simple enough; we take Deanne's camera to the Canon store then come home. Little did I know, however, that neither of my companions had the slightest inkling of an idea as to where this store might be once we reached Wang Fu Jing.
Wouldn't it just figure that on the one day we needed someone who spoke english, we weren't approached by a single "art student."
Anyhow, in an unusual turn of events, we ended up at a camera store. After much ado the people who worked there finally managed to convey to us that they couldn't fix the camera and sent us on, what would become, the most unproductive wild-goose chase that I have ever had the priveledge to be involved in. Every time we would show up at a store just to have the people there direct us to another store located in a different mall an obscure distance away. It reminded of the quote from "Alice in Wonderland" when the girl is told that she needs to run as fast as she can just to stay where she is. Other than that the only experience comparable to what I endured today might be purgatory.
After hours of toiling in vain we gave up and stopped somewhere to eat. Once this was accomplished we tried to find a cab home, but found all our efforts to be of no avail. Thus, we ended up walking around yet another mall for about an hour.
When we finally left the mall, Deanne noticed a rather sizable crowd gathering around a stage built into the side of the building. She dragged us over to see what was going on. A man in a brown jacket (whom I can only assume was some sort of manager) was asking people if they would be interested in dancing on the stage. In an act of cold betrayal, both, Deanne and Butter pointed to me. I told the man that I would only do it if one of them would do it with me. He asked me if I was sure and, assuming that he had understood what i just told him, I said yes.
The stage came alive with a barrage of light, sound, and smoke. The Chinese equivalent of Carson Dailey (or something like that) appeared and started talking to the audience and the next thing I know the man in the brown jacket grabs my arm and starts pulling me toward the stage. Everyone in the audience had turned and was staring at me so I reluctantly accepted the call to duty.
Once on stage, Carson asked me if I could speak Chinese. I told him, "yi diar," then he pushed the microphone up to my face and told me to repeat what I had just said. I repeated, "yi diar," and the crowd went nuts. I decided that if I ever had the mic again I was going to say, "Ai wo Zhongguo," but the opportunity never arose.
More events transpired and, to make a long story short, I ended up having to do a solo dance for a large crowd of Zhonggouren in front of a popular mall located on a major street in Beijing. All the while the treacherous cowards, Deanne and Butter, laughed at me from the relative shelter of their annonymity in teh crowd.
For lack of any better ideas I ended up doing the YMCA, but sinse no one in the audience (save Deanne and Butter) knew the YMCA they all assumed that I was trying to say, "I love you."
Throughout most of this experience I really didn't have any idea of what was really going on. All I knew was that the man with the microphone said, "tiao wu," and I danced. Furthermore, I believe that the Chinese may have been mocking me. No one ever dared to feed me a direct insult to my face, but something about the way that Carson complimented my dancing and handed me a tube of womens' panties (in two sizes) made me suspicious.
Shortly there-after my associates and I found a cab and went home. | 
