ENTERTAINMENT / Hot Pot Column
Great wanderer makes us all wonder where the real men are
By Ben Davey (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-28 14:39
Well done, Mr Chad Swanson, well played sir. It's not every morning that
you reach for your copy of the China Daily, thumb through to the Hot Pot
column and are faced with prose of such power, poise, dignity and just
plain Manliness that all of your back hairs stand as one.
Yesterday, Chad wrote about his experience of climbing the Great Wall and
how it transformed him from his previous status of mere "Man" to his
current status of "Manly Man". Brave Chad wrote: "As I stood there on the
mountain top, hair blowing in the wind, I could finally call myself a
man."
Try and stop yourself from getting misty over sentiments such as those.
It's nigh impossible, I know, and I admit that Man tears cascaded down my
leathered cheeks as I grasped the audacity and scale of Chad's
accomplishment.
Because real men cry too, you know. They cry and hold each other tenderly
on corporate-funded wilderness trips where they strip naked, smother each
other in Ox blood and howl at the moon while listening to Garth Brooks's
No Fences. That's because Garth Brooks understands how painful it can be
sometimes to be a Man, just like Chad found out while climbing the Great
Wall in his quest for Greatness.
Sometimes being a Man means choosing to scale the wild quarters of the
Wall, such as Jiankou, not the sissy paved parts like Badaling. After
all, there's no blood on Badaling's fresh bricks.
When it comes to bloodsports, real men don't hunt with weapons unless
it's a blunt knife. That's because only the real-est of Real Men
comprehend that opening the throat of another creature is something that
must be done while holding your prey as you arrange the meeting with its
maker.
I think there's a Native American tribe that advocated this particular
style of killing as the Manliest way to slay; to be honest, the guy who
told me this wasn't actually a Native American at all, he was a drunk
Australian expat that I met at Bar Blu in Sanlitun. But by the way that
this particularly inebriated Man recounted this knowledge, I could tell
he was among the Real-est of Real Men. He even divulged other snippets of
wisdom, such as: "If you want a chick, just take her mate".
I'm sure the villain from Three Amigos - I think his name was El Guapo -
said something similar to that one time. El Guapo was one of the Real-est
Manly Men ever, even if he was a fictional character.
Gazing out onto the sprawling wilderness below him, Chad must have been
the envy of the known Masculine world standing atop the Great Wall as
curious onlookers gazed upon his statuesque robustness. I only hope those
lucky enough to witness his achievement wore sunglasses to prevent
temporary blindness from the sheer brilliance of this foreigner's aura.
I wonder though, if my mother or sister climb the Great Wall, does that
also make them Great Men?
(China Daily 06/27/2007 page20)
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