For a few precious years, I had a number of jobs which gave me occasional opportunities for foreign travel. On one such one visit, I was working in Beijing. Along with a colleague, I was attending a series of education fairs and expos, recruiting students for the university that I was working for at the time. On the last day, having packed away our stand in the conference centre in the shadow of the Olympic ’Bird’s Nest’ stadium, I headed back to my hotel. My colleague had already left for another event in Shanghai, and so I was alone that evening.
I had an early start the next morning, with a flight to catch during what most sane people regard as ‘the middle of the night’ (in reality around 6am). I’m not a good sleeper and hadn’t had much fresh air that day (not that there’s much of that to be had in Beijing!) and so I decided to go for a walk before bedtime, to get myself tired enough at least to grab four or five hours’ sleep.
As a seasoned traveller and a dedicated geocacher, I’m always on the look out for opportunities to find a cache, particularly when in a different part of the world. I’d already earned the virtual souvenir for finding a cache in China, having achieved that on a previous visit. There was no chance of me solving a local puzzle cache and it was unlikely I’d get a FTF in such a busy city. There were no events nearby that evening either. However, when I opened up the C:geo app on my phone, I spotted a cache that had been hidden just a mile from my hotel which could become my ‘furthest east find’ by a matter of a kilometre or so, according to Project-GC. This was GC5D9V9 ‘Love is Not Blind’ That would do nicely, I thought, and so I set off, following the direction of this geocache, strolling between endless skyscrapers and office blocks while largely focusing on my phone.
I arrived at a busy road junction, with hundreds of people, mostly men, milling around excitedly. With them all minding their own business, I thought, it should be easy to spot and find the geocache, retrieve it, sign the log sheet, and then replace it without anyone noticing. I knew from the hint that it was tiny, magnetic and probably hidden on a metal fence. At the edges of many roads in Chinese cities are these low, white metal fences, designed to deter jaywalkers; I’d previously found a nano on one of these. It must be here somewhere, I thought, but I couldn’t work out exactly where.
Without wanting to draw attention to myself, I edged around the side of the path, peering from all angles at this fence. Above, around, behind- nothing. Looking around me once more, and satisfied that no one was watching the only tall, smartly dressed westerner in the vicinity, I lowered myself to my knees to look underneath the fence rails, as near as I could to the coordinates. Still nothing. With one last furtive glance over my shoulder, I lowered my head to the floor for a really good look.
‘What you looking for sir?’ said a voice behind me. ‘I help you find whatever you want!’ With a start, I shot up and rose to my feet to see a small man in a puffa jacket and extravagant sunglasses beaming at me. ‘Whatever you want, I can get, sir. You come to my club?’, and he gestured across the street. There in the window, and I believe the word to use here is ‘gyrating’, were several young women in various states of undress. I looked around me and noticed other such establishments. Now no longer focussing on my phone screen, or seeking the whereabouts of a tiny magnetic container, I realised that I was, in fact, clearly in a red-light district! Everywhere there were strip clubs, bars, ‘massage parlours’ and tacky-looking nightclubs!
The man continued, ‘What you want? What you need? I get you anything. You want girls? You want boys? Come to my club!’ With the colour draining from my face and hoping that this would never get back to my employers, I stammered, ‘No, er, no! That’s not what I’m looking for at all!’ The man looked confused. I started to explain, not for the first time, but certainly for the first time under these circumstances, all about geocaching. ‘I’m playing a game. I’m searching for a hidden container. It’s just a fun game!’ Hoping that he wouldn’t think that this was also some sort of code to describe my preferences in his terms, I showed him the app on my phone, and some photos of me with friends, finding Tupperware and other boxes, vials, and tubes.
Eventually, he decided that I was clearly an idiot, but that maybe he could still get me to come into his club, even if only for a hideously overpriced bottle of Bud. ‘I’ll get help!’ he announced. And then with the loudest whistle it’s possible to summon up just using two fingers and a deep breath, he drew the attention of a woman over the road, who was leaning against a wall, wearing a cheap fur coat, a very short skirt and vertiginous heels. At his signal, she tottered over the road. ‘She’s my girl!’ he announced proudly. Clearly thinking she had a customer, the woman’s fake smile changed to a look of confusion as he explained the task to her in Mandarin.
And so it was that on the evening of 24th October, 2016 I found my farthest east geocache, the ironically named ‘Love is Not Blind’ with the help of a hooker and her pimp, on our hands and knees in the red light district of Beijing. It was the girl who found the cache and she was utterly delighted. I tipped her, declined the offer of, among other things, a drink, flagged down a rickshaw and got the hell out of there and back to my hotel.
Andy Wright 27/8/24
This story was featured in The Treehouse (Episode 461) with Danny Baker on 4/9/2024
Murray
Love this hilarious.