It was midnight and chattering cold on deck despite the season being mid-summer. We couldn’t sleep, my best friend and I. The crew of the ship had asked all passengers to go below decks to be locked in the ferry’s main passenger hold ‘for our own safety’ during the night crossing of the Bohai gulf. Apparently, it had happened that some passengers fell off the deck into the dark crashing waves some evening before, and the company’s solution was to lock everyone in once the sun set over the horizon.
My best friend is an Australian born and bred, Vegemite touting, walkabout loving Australian, despite being half American. I was born and raised in ocean communities from California to Hawai’i, and both of us were sure about one thing that night. We were not going to locked in a passenger ferry 8 hours out into the middle of the sea.
We had been on the road for the more than a week now, just one week into our planned two-month long trek across China from North to South and then North again. In these days outside of the major cities like Beijing and Shanghai you still couldn’t find many western goods, and after months living in the barren landscape of China industrial Northeastern wasteland known as ‘Dongbei’ we had managed to procure some meager comforts to start our trip. Fresh baked eastern European style bread from the Russian quarter of Dalian, or Port Arthur depending on what century you come from. Some imported British cheddar cheese from the local ‘Friendship store’, and a very big bottle of Korean Chamisul classic soju given by a friend in the city of Shenyang’s historical Korean district ‘Xi Ta’.
Alcohol and cigarettes were still a kind of informal social currency at this time in China, and both of us always carried a pack of Pagoda or Double Happiness cigarettes to barter for favors wherever we went. This evening we knew we needed to be on deck rather than locked away below, and so we put together as many cigarettes as we though we could spare and approached one of the deck hands. A few smiles, some requisite banter about our feelings towards China and Chinese people, and he gathered a few friends to join us at the stern of the ship right behind the engine block.
The sound was a constant drumming, like being trapped next to a diesel generator powering a heavy metal concert stage a few meters away but from the back. They poured out some empty ‘Gong Fu’ teacups the crew used during their break, and we started telling stories as we drank round after round of the soju with them deep into the night.
I glanced over at my friend, I thought I saw a gleam in his eye as he was silhouetted against the reflection of the moonlight against the churning ocean water crashing over the horizon behind him. I knew we were having the same thought. ‘Thank God we’re up here drinking with the crew, rather than waiting locked downstairs with the other passengers while the crew is up here drinking themselves into a stupor.’
Eventually someone started singing songs, we shared a few sea shanty’s that my friend had picked up somewhere wandering around Australia, and our new sailor friends sang a few hit Chinese pop-songs at the time. Next stop, Yan Tai on the Shandong Peninsula, or Che Foo as the missionaries had called it. We were on our way to Oktoberfest in July….