Jun Jun– One Night in Beijing

NAME: Jun Jun
AGE: 17-20
OCCUPATION: Migrant
IMPRESSED BY STRENGTH OF: Michael Horn

The first time I met a Chinese migrant was almost 4 years ago, on my first night ever in China. After my flight landed in Beijing, a representative from the teaching program I was with whisked me away to a cheap hotel in the outskirts of the city. The arrangements were to stay there one night before taking a train the next evening to the school I was assigned to teach at in Yueqing, Zhejiang.

Hidden beneath the hotel, accessible through an underground stairwell, was a dimly lit nightclub blasting music loud enough to be heard five stories up in our rooms. When I finally settled in, I felt dazed and tired from the long flight, but I had waited too long to finally be in China to just go to sleep. Me and a few other volunteers decided to investigate the underground nightclub with the loud music.

The bartender was a middle-aged man with flowing, long hair— done in a perm and dyed brown. His leopard print shirt was exceptionally tight. The place was mostly empty, so we sat down in front of him and ordered drinks. I started to talk with him, but my fledgling Chinese was too weak and the music too loud. He shot me a smile and walked to the other side of the bar.

Around the time my ears felt like they may have sustained permanent ear damage, I noticed that there were many private rooms around the nightclub. If me and my friends were to sit in one of those quieter, more brightly lit rooms, not only could we have a better chance of hearing each other, but we could also read my Lonely Planet and make plans for the next day. I approached the bartender and pointed to a private room: “Room, how much?”

My beginning Chinese textbook didn’t prepare me well enough for his response, but I did catch that he wanted 100 RMB (at the time about 12.50 USD). The price seemed high, but me and the other volunteers decided to split the cost of the room. Our program had told us about ‘special prices’ in China for clueless foreigners who don’t know any better, but we were either too tired or dazed to fight it that night.

A few minutes after we sat down in the private room, a skinny Chinese boy probably in his late teens walked in. His button-down shirt was fastened only in one place, revealing a low-cut, red muscle shirt. The confusion of him suddenly joining us quickly intensified. The boy took a seat next to my friend and fellow volunteer Michael Horn, draping him in his arms. He looked at Michael and spoke in English, with a thick, sultry Chinese accent: “You are so strong.”

It took almost ten more minutes of increasingly awkward conversation to tentatively determine that what we had paid for was not a room.

It was around this time that the boy caught on that we were not interested in his services. He was also unsure of whether he should stay or leave—after all, we did pay for him. We invited him to stay. I went to the bar and bought him a beer, and we chatted for a few hours.

His name was Jun Jun. He was kind, polite and had the patience to speak with a foreigner with only basic grasp of the Chinese language. He told me that he wasn’t from Beijing but from the countryside of one of the provinces surrounding Beijing municipality—just like all the other boys there. When I told him that we were thinking about sightseeing in Beijing the following day, he helped us plan a schedule. When he found out that it was my first ever night in China, he welcomed me and warned me of some things I may encounter and not be used to.

He was the best ambassador China could have provided me on my first night there.

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When I woke up the next morning, I thought about what had happened since the last time I woke up in a bed. In 30 hours, I parted with my friends and family, flown across the Atlantic, gone to China for my first time, and purchased and befriended a male Chinese prostitute.

I decided to go back down the underground stairwell to get another glimpse of the nightclub before I left. With the lights turned on, things began to make more sense. The dirty brick walls were covered with posters of half-naked men, and the stench of all sorts of carnal acts emanated out of the private rooms. I noticed that Jun Jun and many of the other employees I recognized from the previous night— young men aged about 15-20 years— were waking up in the private rooms. There weren’t any customers around; the nightclub was also Jun Jun and the rest of the staff’s home.

The middle-aged bartender was sitting behind the bar, still wearing the same skin-tight, leopard print shirt from the previous night. Beside him, sitting on the far side of the bar on his right side, was a big tub of lubricant that I had failed to notice the night before. For a moment, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of disgust. He was probably the boss of this bar, and the money he made to upkeep his flowing, brown curls almost definitely came through some sort of exploitative means. But I tried not to pass judgment— not on my first day in a foreign country.

As I walked out of the bar, I waved goodbye to Jun Jun.

Later, as I was checking out of the hotel, a group emerged from the underground stairwell. At the head of the pack was the bartender— behind him, a small bevy of his teenage employees.

They reached the street outside and it became obvious how different they were. Their colorful, skin-tight clothing and flamboyant body language blatantly stuck out from the rest of the backdrop. They were outsiders in two different ways. While the kind of person they liked made them homosexuals, the kind of place where they were born made them migrants. (With few exceptions, those born outside of Beijing can only register as Beijing urban residents— and enjoy the resulting social and economic benefits— if they purchase an apartment in Beijing: something far out of the reach of most rural Chinese.)

Just as I was about to lose sight of them, I noticed an elderly man had taken offense at the bartender and his boys. He confrontationally glared at some of the boys in the back of the pack— an explicit expression of disapproval.

The bartender caught sight and immediately sprung to action. He put his arm around the boy and stared right back into the eyes of the elderly man. He stared until the old man relented and walked away.