Ask A Grizzled Guard

Google maps says so!  I’ve got a meeting near the U.S. embassy.  I still haven’t figured out the smart way around this issue.  The Beigao highway entrance has been closed for months and the alternative entrance, further upstream is a nightmare.  I’m rolling up 20 minutes late.  But I notice something on my map that suggests there is a Manchurian dumpling house right next door.  This places itself inside my mind. 

I mention it to my colleague as we’re descending the elevator on our way out of the meeting.  It has now entered his mind as well.  We head to the building and ask a grizzled guard who was characteristically suspicious at first and then became loquacious.  “It used to be right there.  Right there."  We look up and take in a dilapidated building.  “And it’s gone then, is it?”  This has me rather upset as I've imagined it for hours and indeed sold someone else on the alluring and apparently dated point of note, on the map.  Off across the parking is a large, bland tower.  “They have roast duck.”

Neither of us are in the mood for the Beijing duck ritual. “Ahh, there’s this Korean place too, right here.  Right here. “  Neither of us want bimbimbop either.  “Hey thank you.”  Most people are suddenly out of their offices and filing into the lunchtime scramble.  My friend insists that anything will do but I know we’re going to pass on most places along the strip we are walking.  I look in on an empty booth by a window and notice the word 'Belagio.'  I do not think of Las Vegas, but rather of Taiwanese cuisine.  I double check when I head in and it's that Belagio and this will do just fine. 

Later we’ve ubered it out to Shangdi.  I’m in the front and after making a polite effort I quickly head off to nod, springing straight up periodically when a flash of the conversation or a question cuts into my dreamscape.  I was up rather early and all the blood is down there digesting the Taiwanese delicacies.  I consider it an investment on a longer evening ahead and greedily return to whatever it was I'd been imagining.