BEIJING UNBOUND (3)

In which Jim and Kirk mount the Gate of Moral Triumph to enjoy a beer looking over the rooftops of Beijing only to discover there's nothing moral or triumphant about their intoxicating evening.

*GATE OF MORAL TRIUMPH

In that oddly lax period in the early 1990s, a time out of time, a time shadowed by the mournful memory of an unspeakable tragedy, I was learning that many, if not most, rules were made to be broken. What was legal and what wasn’t was hard to say in this gray-toned world where nothing was black and and nothing was white.

Another week of classes gone by, just like that. I hadn’t been back long, but already my life was bound up by academic routine. I needed to let loose, to throw caution to the wind for a change. I didn’t have high expectations for my meeting with Kirk, after all, he had stiffed me for drinks, but it was enough to get me out of the dorm and off-campus.

As I hiked to the monument known as the Gate of Moral Triumph, I had to wonder whether or not there was really a bar secreted away on the top. That guy Kirk said there was, he called it the “high dive” or something irreverent like that, but he was pretty drunk at the time. The massive gate, composed of…