Day 2: What was I to them....?

Dave and Shirley invite me out with them to the Shanghai 24th China International Furniture Expo. One of their businesses is selling furniture to US stores made in China and sent over to the US like pretty much every single thing you can buy now.

This place is MASSIVE.  It resembles the NYS fair where they cover an insane square footage and everything is housed inside buildings millions of square feet each.  I've been through 8-9 before the day is out and I saw maybe 20% of the actual show since it was the last day everyone was closing down but Dave and Shirley had been unable to cover as much as they've wanted to the three previous days and wanted to get one last chance to meet vendors.

The furniture I saw was so beautiful and stylish. Unlike anything I'm used to seeing here.  Don't get me wrong they had a LOT of stuff you see at Pier 1 and places like that but much of the show is about "what's hot" now and new, fresh..

EVERYONE in China uses WeChat. You CANNOT interact with society without it.  It's what Facebook is now and has been trying to be ever since its creation. Sorry Mark...most of China can't access Facebook so your platform will never take off in the largest market in the world.  It's contacts, it's contact, it's payment for EVERY FUCKING THING sold in China. It's just a QR-Code scan away from payment.

We stay until they are literally tearing down the booths.  We get back on the High Speed Rail in Shanghai City, after a couple of stops we exit and take a taxi back to the hotel.  We decide to shower and meet up in the lobby for dinner.

After my much needed shower I met up with Dave and Shirley in the lobby and we go out to eat at a place not too far.  The food's decent, we have some laughs and head back to the hotel.  Dave asks me if I want to join him for drinks outside the hotel.

He's with his 18 year old son who he's teaching the business and since being done with high school decided he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps. Dave being Muslim, it's against his religion to drink but he openly admits he's not perfect.  But, on the other hand he's so devoted to the Koran that his goal is to learn every single word.  Something that's also a mark of pride to accomplish amongst Muslims.

He's not that lunatic terrorist Muslim far too many Americans are afraid of just as I'm not a member of that Baptist church that actually are.  Most Muslims are as peaceful as the Koran teaches (that I've learned over my experience).

Now, I'm not a drinker, never really have been.  I'd often get sick and after a couple of drinks I'm looking for the door to go home and go to bed.  That's been my mantra since...ever.  Knowing I'm going to China and I'm going to interact with people that have the expectations that Americans are monstrous, invincible party animals that have millions of dollars I knew I had to "study hard."

It actually was a lot harder than you'd think.  I had already started to drink alcohol again to add to my regimine of "ability to fall asleep." That already included Melatonin (stopped working after maybe 3 weeks) and Unisom (which never really worked but only made me twitchy). 

It didn't take much since I had zero tolerance and I'm already on a blood thinner and daily aspirin since my heart attack just a simple shot, maybe two would knock me out. This started when I realized I lost the ability to help my daughter.  This practice continued when the cramping begun to materialize.  My hands, back, thighs...fuck really everywhere would cramp up like I was suddenly switching bodies with Michael J Fox on a nightly basis.

Getting drunk enough to pass out HARD was just about the only way I've managed to sleep in the last year or so.  I don't sleep long but I sleep enough to function. We go down and outside the hotel.  The hotel is also apart of a smaller strip mall of goods that stretcha good 100 yards to both sides of the entrance to the hotel and on the right it goes around the corner another 200-250 yards of built-in strip mall stores.

Right next to the hotel entrance is a store that's basically a bodega that has alcohol.  American and Chinese brands of liquor. Budweiser right inside almost every single cooler in every single store in China.  We grab 6 larger size Bud's. No idea what % of alcohol or the oz's inside.  But after my 3 Dave seems almost pissed that I'm not on the floor.

We've spent a good hour or so chatting during these beers and as always with alcohol it becomes a truth serum and Dave starts to open up to me and get personal, emotional.  Something I don't think happens in the Arabic community.

He tells me of the shit he's dealt with in the US.  He is after all an actual US citizen and regardless of what's happened to him, his business and his life he still proudly says he's an American countless times in our drunken' heart-to-hearts.

He tells me of his struggle most significant being to regain custody/visitation with his children.  His wife at the time was keeping him from the children for whatever reason.  He starts to get more personal.  "I've failed my family, I'm a failure" as he begins to sob.  The only thing I can feel is complete compassion for him because I acknowledged that I was that man sitting there.  That was me.

He decides we need something stronger.  We go back to the bodega and grab a bottle of Regal Chivas and 4 more Bud's.  We guzzle down the first of our beers and then Dave adds the Chivas to it.  At this point I couldn't have told you how it tasted but after our first flavored beers are done I'm really feeling it.

Dave comes back around to his normal self and shows me a video of him climbing the actual mountains shot in Avatar.  This move was fucking insane.  The mountain is so mysterious, and oddly shaped I can't believe he did it.  But he climbed to the top and back down again and lived to tell the tale.  I had no doubt at this point this guy has some major balls of steel.

We pickup our bottles set them to the side of one of the closed stores and go to sleep.  Tomorrow Dave says he's taking me to Yiwu, the vastly unknown "mecca" of business for the entire planet.