Beijing Oddities: The Nirvana Man

As Beijing’s reputation grows, there are certain things about the city that have become famous around the world – the culture, the architecture, the exploding economic development – but I think there’s one thing Beijing should get more credit for, because it’s an area in which the city is absolutely world-class: the lunatics.

By lunatics, I don’t mean just your humdrum, day-to-day loonies, like the taxi driver who spits into his passenger seat, or the attention-craving sajiao girl who jumps out of her boyfriend’s car to sit and pout on the highway. I mean the people who have an entire, well-developed persona of craziness, the kind of lunatic that can make a subway ride or an otherwise boring night out truly special.

One such lunatic is the Nirvana Man. The Nirvana Man dwells in Wudaokou, where he wanders along the sidewalk outside Pyro’s Pizza and Propaganda, conversing with random young foreigners. He’s a skinny, oily-looking guy, with a greasy quaff that stands about four inches high and teeth that look like little shards of porcelain.

I was standing outside Pyro’s, taking a break from the noise, when I met the Nirvana Man for the first time. He had just come out of the 7-Eleven, and was carrying an unopened bottle of Absolut Vodka, a can of milk tea, and a little plastic box of berries. (He, however, denied that they were berries.)

He came right up to me and asked where I was from. When I told him the US, he exclaimed, “America! I love America! I love rock and roll, like Nirvana! I love Lithium!” Then, in his raspy voice, he started singing “Lithium” by Nirvana:

“I love you, I’m not gonna cry / I miss you, I’m not gonna cry / I kill you I’m not gonna cry-y-y-y-y-y-y-y…”

Fascinated, I ran downstairs to get one of my friends, who I thought should meet him. But when I brought her up, he was gone. A few minutes later he turned up again, but his vodka had disappeared. I asked him what had happened to it.

“I don’t know. Maybe this is God’s way of telling me not to drink,” he said philosophically. He didn’t seem at all bothered about it.

I noticed that the back of his jacket was emblazoned with the word “France.” I asked him – reasonably, I thought – if he liked France.

“No!” he shouted angrily. “France is a [several expletives] country! All France has is grape wine… and lechers!”

I asked him what he meant by “lecher.”

“Lecher is someone,” he said, a smile returning to his face, “who likes-ah sex too much!” As he said this, his big shark-toothed grin let out a gentle spray of saliva. I was feeling rather amused by all this, but when I turned to check my friend’s reaction, I realized she had disappeared back into Pyro’s. This happened a few times. Girls would not stay for very long around the Nirvana Man.

I really, really wanted to bring him into Pyro’s, but he refused. I tried with Propaganda too, but he just told me, “This kind of place is very bad taste.” I couldn’t argue with that. Then he sang me “In The Pines.”

The next morning, I sent a text about the whole encounter to a friend of mine who used to live in Beijing. “Oh, the Chinese Nirvana guy?” he texted back. “Yeah, I know him. He’s one of the regulars.” In my book, any city where a person who approaches random passersby to sing them Nirvana songs, who has strong opinions on every country on Earth and shares them with strangers from those countries, who hates France but has it printed on the back of his coat, and who despite all this has the good sense not to go into Propaganda or Pyro’s Pizza – any city where someone like that is “one of the regulars” is the greatest city in the world. That’s what Beijing should be famous for.