Romeo

"I'm Chinese," he said, "i understand the Chinese. The Chinese are a war-loving people. If China was as strong as America you would have been finished long ago."

An attention-grabbing comment in these times.

"If 9-11 had happened to China, the Chinese would have massacred a whole country."

Yes indeed, you could probably even get the attention of a Songyuan Oilfield High School classroom full of oil-honcho little-emperors with comments like that...

Romeo was the first person i heard criticise the Communist Party in Chinese. He also became my best friend south of the Yangtze. I met him at the 30RMB all-u-can-drink night (now equal to $6 but it was about $4.70 with the exchange rate at the time) - one of the very last, perhaps even THE last of those golden opportunities to experience the worst hangover in Shanghai. Everyone in the room was loose, obviously, but Romeo was even looser with his talk.

It must be hard, mentally, to be so negative of the Chinese, yet at the same time be Chinese. I mean, Americans are often very critical of America and the American people, but they criticise themselves from the comfortable position of assured superiority to everyone else. Perhaps it's the same with Romeo - he often says what a good country Shanghai would be.... are Shanghai people are the Americans of Planet China?

Well, Romeo does swear he will never go to north China - get this - because he's afraid: "Chinese people aren't united. They'll treat a foreigner better than someone from another part of the country."

I asked him where he got all his hyper-critical views from, and he simply replied, "Many of my friends have been thinking this way since we were in high school." Well i only met the friends he was talking about once, at a big feast, and politics wasn't on the menu. But he had two neighbours whom we would hang out, smoke and "liao" a lot with, and who didn't exactly agree with his views. One, an older fellow, was a perfect model of moderation, while the other, maybe 50-55, was always nostalgic about the Chairman Mao days. (When i asked the other two why the latter liked Mao despite having witness his destructiveness, they replied, "Well, he's a relatively lazy person. He had an easy job [i.e. a tenured easy job] until Deng Xiaoping.")

These three would sit together day after day, and i was struck by the great respect they seemed to have for each other's views. They never tried to convince the other of the rightness of their position, they just each stated things as they saw them, whether that contradicted the other or not.

All of this would take place in Romeo's somewhat filthy restaurant in a superb location right near People's Square. His Sichuan cook would do an amazing "Oyster Oil Beef" with green chillies, and aside from the lunchtime rush-hour, Romeo just sits, chats and watches TV all day - like 99% of all other small Chinese shopkeepers. He certainly isn't building a business empire. Which is half the reason he's 31 and can't seem to find a wife.

China's gender imbalance problems are well documented, but Romeo faces what's possibly a uniquely Shanghai problem: he's too good for a country girl - his parents would never accept one - but not good enough for the Shanghai girls, who are all either more successful than him (many are so this instantly rules out a great many possibilities) or dreaming of roping in a big boss or a foreigner.

Worse, even though women are in short supply, in Shanghai there would still appear to be a Sex-and-the-city-style class of spinsters (i would find out for sure if i were a journalist). For example, another Shanghai friend of mine, my language exchange partner actually, is a single lady over 30. As a talented graphic designer with her own business, the marry-up requirement limits her potential partners to a very small pool of hard-to-score high-flyers - and they of course can afford a different 19-year-old every night. Even if she eventually ropes in one of these rare beasts, she must then somehow mitigate the threat her successful career might pose to its self-esteem - probably by giving up graphic design.

Romeo would probably say only Chinese men are averse to successful women, that Westerners are more "advanced" and "understanding", but even where that is the case it's only because the idea of mooching off a woman has a simple rational appeal - but only outside the Chinese social system. Fair enough though, his impression of the west and westerners (nandao China and the Chinese also??) is deduced, according to his own estimation, entirely from Hollywood movies, which he watches at an alarming rate. (He has quite a few thousand DVDs, most of which were given to him by a friend who had quit selling them roadside.)

Similarly, like most westerners, Romeo spends all the money he earns - remember i met him at a discount mega all-u-can-drink night. And it was he who introduced me to the wonders of all-u-can-eat "Baxi BBQ" (Baxi pronounced "Bashie" and meaning "Brazil"... i'll take any excuse to say it out loud it's so much fun). But though Romeo may be westernised in most of his consumer behaviour, he certainly is not in his culinary preferences. On my last night in Shanghai i went round to his place and he grabbed us some takeaway: frogs' legs, jellyish pig tendons and pig kidneys.