Wo bu mingbai...

Wo bu mingbai. It's a useful phrase meaning "I don't understand" in Mandarin.

For me, I figured it would be especially useful in my first long-distance cab ride. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure plenty of tourists have used similar phrases in numerous languages with New York cabbies, but I'm just not going to be any help trying to navigate in Beijing.
I was heading to the opening of Club Bud, a Budweiser-sponsored nightclub that'll be open every other night during the Olympics. Unfortunately, it was toward the other side of Beijing, so that meant about a 25 to 30-minute cab ride, depending on traffic. Being that I was going solo, at night, in strange city, I was a bit apprehensive...

After walking out of the hotel, I headed to the taxi stand on a nearby corner. In my hand was the invite with directions in Chinese. I walked up to the row of four taxis, greet the first driver and hand him the sheet. He looks at it for a couple seconds, then hands it to the next driver, who studies it intently before yelling to a third driver who's standing in the street. That guy just stands there for a bit before shaking his head no. Guy No. 2 then starts talking with the fourth driver, who walks to his cab at the front of the line and starts putting things in the trunk. He then takes out a ledger and starts leafing through it. I continue to just stand on the curb thinking NY cabbies would probably be fighting each other to the death with tire irons to get the fare.

Finally, cabbie No. 2 points to the very first guy I gave the sheet to. Somehow, he was the loser by default, I assume. There were seemingly some pretty extensive directions on the sheet, so I figured I'd probably be okay. After a 25-minute ride, the driver makes a left across a busy intersection, stops in front of a big gated Chinese temple with spotlights and points to it. I pay him, hop out and walk through the front gates where I see hanging from the front of the building... a Heineken banner. Yes, it was the wrong place. Turns out it was some kind of a Dutch Olympic shindig. I took a quick walk through the building, took a brief look at some of the stuff -- history, apparel, etc -- and went right back out.

I figured the driver couldn't be THAT far off, but who knows. So I picked a direction and started walking. Turns out I was right, so the place was only about a block down the street. When I got there, the PR guy I'd dealt with said he'd been getting calls from a whole bunch of people because of issues with directions. So who knows, maybe the cabbie was right after all.

I'd planned to go to the party to talk to some members of the U.S. taekwondo team for a feature I was working on. Three siblings from the same family were on the team -- Steven, Mark and Diana Lopez -- and their oldest brother is the coach. Their parents were there too, so I wanted to talk with them. Really a pretty cool story. The parents came to the U.S. from Nicaragua in 1972 and the father had a passion for the martial arts, though he never had the opportunity to do it when he was younger. But every weekend, the kids joined him as he'd watch Kung Fu Theater and movies with Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, and they got sucked into the sport. Flash forward to today and they're the first sibling trio to represent the U.S. in the same Olympics in 104 years. To hear the pride in Julio Lopez's voice when he talked about his kids was really special; he said he came to the U.S. 36 years ago in hopes of living the American dream, but never could have imagined a scenario in which all of his children would be in China representing the U.S. in the Olympics. I actually reached out to the publicist for Chuck Norris in hopes of getting a comment for the story and he asked me to pass along the family's cell phone number so Chuck could wish them luck or congratulations. They'd never crossed paths before, so I'm hoping I do my part to help Julio realize another dream and talk to Chuck Norris himself!

After leaving the party, I realized I didn't have directions back, but found a cabbie who at least understood "Bird's Nest" -- the Olympic Stadium. So it was actually a pretty quick and painless ride back. And below is the cab ride through the city to my next destination... Tiananmen Square. Finally getting out a bit to see some of what Beijing has to offer...