THE GATES OF BEIJING (11)
In which Jim and Kirk leave the familiar precincts of the hutong to try their luck at east-side Beijing's most fashionable underground club only to get turned away at the door.
*RED VELVET ROPE
Twilight is descending upon the tower. Looking down from our lofty perch, feet shifting restlessly upon the railing of the makeshift beer garden, Kirk and I converse at a comfortable remove from the gnarly knot of rush hour traffic on Second Ring Road. Feeling giddily above it all in direct proportion to just how woefully out of it we really were, we stare off into the distance, reviewing the sorry state of China and the world.
“Man, things just aren’t what they used to be, are they?”
“Dude. What does that even mean?”
Our bull session started out well enough, what with Kirk offering a rough translation of some sex-inflected Yuan Dynasty doggerel, but it quickly went downhill from there. We sipped our foamy mugs of Yanjing indifferently, lacking the energy to argue with any acuity about anything, instead looking for meaning where it didn’t exist, such as in the broken rainbow of celestial light as high-flying clouds caught the last sun of the day.
“Wow. See that cloud? It …