Just after 10pm tonight, Mike and I headed down to our favorite street noodle vendor. We've been visiting the same guy on a regular basis for our entire three months here. We affectionately refer to him as "noodle man" and continue to patronize his noodle stand even though there are about a dozen similar stands lining the corners of the same intersection.
We get noodles from noodle man quite often. Three nights a week, probably. He seems like such a nice guy. I would guess that he is about our age, clean cut, and always really jovial and upbeat. He tries to speak English with us, and Mike can communicate the basics with him in Chinese.
Noodle man has a variety of noodles (chow mien noodles, thinner more spaghetti-like noodles, thick flat noodles, and rice) that he fries up in a propane-powered wok with all kinds of mysterious oils and powders. Noodles costs four yuan (like sixty cents), and its easily enough food to fill you up. Lately Mike has been visiting drunk and tipping noodle man ridiculous amounts of money. The most egregious was the fifteen dollar tip - on a sixy cent meal - a few weeks ago. This may or may not have something to do with what happened tonight, but it is certainly part of the reason noodle man is always so happy to see us.
The intersection where noodle man works is in the middle of the red light district near our apartment. Keep that in mind.
By chance, I brought my camera with me because I'm leaving the country next week, and wanted a picture of noodle man before I left.
Tonight, he wasn't there.
This was bizarre because he's occupied the same spot on the same intersection every night (except Saturdays) since we arrived. The other vendors were all in their normal spots, but no sign of noodle man. Though we were confused by his absence, I took a picture anyway, and ordered 10 meat sticks (skewers with various types of meat - ten cents each!) from the guy on the far right.Notice also that the street is completely deserted.
After snapping that picture, I walked back up to the meat stick vendor where my food was cooking. As I arrived, a van screamed into the intersection from the south and screeched to a halt. Inside were about six men dressed in military uniforms. Before I could even tell Mike to "look!" every one of the food vendors had spun their carts around and were running with them down the street away from the van. Each of the carts is mounted on large bicycle wheels. Apparently this is why.
So within five seconds of complete calm, Mike and I are standing alone in an intersection, fifteen feet from a van gushing uniformed men. Suddenly, police cars with lights on and sirens blaring came from the north, south, and east, trying to contain the scattering vendors. Luckily, the vendors we were dealing with fled west. The policemen seemed to consider chasing them but decided not to. When it was clear that they weren't being pursued, my vendor stopped running, boxed up my still-cooking food, and jogged the container back to me, where I still stood, quite stunned, in the intersection.
After the police cars arrived, so did a large truck. It looked like a blue dump truck. This got parked right in the middle of the intersection, and another load of policemen dismounted from its large open bed.
By this time, a crowd had formed on the other side of that dump truck. People in their pajamas were still pouring into the street. We crossed the intersection and worked our way into the forming crowd to witness the commotion. What we saw were six or seven policemen wrestling with a Chinese man. The man was struggling against the officers' attempts to wrangle him, and as they tried, he was repeatedly thrown into the side of the dump truck. When they spun him around, we couldn't believe what we saw.
It was noodle man!
I have no idea where he had come from, because his cart - like I mentioned - wasn't in its usual place. But there he was, in the middle of the fracas. While he was being wrestled by the military dudes, another group of people were systematically dismantling his noodle cart. First one policeman disconnected the propane tank and disappeared with it around the other side of the truck. Next they removed the wok and food from the top of the cart. Then a number of officers hoisted the cart up into the bed of the dump truck and started securing it.
Mike and I were the only two white people in the crowd (about one hundred big now). I'm not sure exactly what our presence meant, but we were definitely drawing attention. A few Chinese people began talking to us, in a manner that seemed (to both of us) to suggest that they felt an injustice was being committed, and wanted us to help somehow. Unfortunately, we didn't understand a word of whatever they kept repeating. An officer noticed the conversations, and quickly ushered the Chinese people away, an obvious warning against talking to us.
I pulled out my camera again and took about 3 minutes of video from my hip. Unfortunately, I didn't capture anything of terrible interest. Oddly, one of the military guys was filming the whole thing (with a video camera that had to have been made in 1988), so maybe if I can find out his youtube username we can all get some insight as to what the hell went down. Harhar.
The good news is that after the cart was in the truck, it took off along with most of the police cars and noodle man was released. He was still very flustered, and immediately got on his cell phone to start figuring things out.
If I find out anything about why the fuck fifty policemen decided noodle man (and only noodle man) shouldn't be in business anymore, I'll be sure to post an update. Though I don't imagine I'll ever know why ransacking a noodle cart is a higher priority than cracking down on the hundreds of brothels within the same city block.
Eerie also that today is the 19th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square craziness. Happy Anniversary, noodle man!
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