Demon Abbott and Fool-stello

(These rechargeable bikes are cool, and you see people riding them with their legs crossed. Quite a shrill brake sound however)






(They love their naps here, which I admire, and often you will enter a business or restaurant and find the entire staff with their heads down on the desk)









(My 24 cent bar of Chinese soap looked like Colby cheddar cheese left out on the table all day.)










Mid-Autumn Day


On Mid-Autumn Day, the day of October’s full moon, a student told me the legend that the mooncakes are meant to memorialize: there were once 9 suns, and it was very hot, so a man shot an arrow at 8 of them, killing them off, leaving just one, and the king of the sky was so happy with him that he gave the man a special medicine that could make him fly; the man's wife, however, didn’t want to turn into an old lady, so she took the medicine instead, and she involuntarily flew to the moon, where she lives now, lovely and lonely—you can see her there when you look at the moon, or at a mooncake.

We had a week off, but the university had scheduled make-up classes on the Saturday before and the Sunday after, which made it significantly less than a week. An older teacher advised we tell the kids not to come to those classes, and not mention it to the department. Kerri was mad because, instead of telling them it was canceled, she'd asked the kids if they wanted to reschedule the class meeting to "some other time" (that would never come), and her devoted, confused students had said, “No.” She came home cursing, and found me on vacation already, relaxed after winning respect on the basketball courts. It's tough to believe in democracy and be burned by it, while despots play basketball. Make it easy for them, I'd told her, and just say class was canceled--no explanation. Students wouldn't want to insult her by seeming happy to miss her class, nor to appear to be lazy students, so don't put them in that position. In the States, it's expected for kids to cheer about snow days, but here, slackers are not admired--they are considered poor marriage material, the students tell me. The undergrads liked American music, but it was the Backstreet Boys for them, and the Carpenters and John Denver for the professors; I didn't meet many Chinese people who liked the more rebellious or "gangster" streams of American music. All the movies take a dim view of this sort of thing, usually ending in the wise emperor or police officer regretting that he must kill the poor lost soul who thought it wise to challenge authority.



I tried to lure Kerri to go out, but she said she needed a night in. I lost track of time studying Chinese characters on my couch and got a text message from her saying SHE’d gone out and would be back soon. I was good at meeting people and she was good at following up with them, so we knew a lot of folks from Europe and Latin America, and she was now deeper into the social scene than I was. I had her by a mile on the Chinese characters though. Then again, she’d given me the book. We bonded over our competitiveness. I asked her to stop by my room when she got back, since I was up typing this blog. Kerri cursed me in advance for making her look bad, and I promised her rebuttal space. She knocked at 2AM, and plopped down on the bed, wincing to once again find it was about as soft as an ironing board. I told her she was weak to get talked into going out, but strong to come home lucid.
Kerri: Actually I had 3 or 4 gin and tonics, and two tequila shooters.
Me: Oh. 6 drinks.
Kerri: But with this lifestyle, my tolerance is up. That would really affect me at home.
Me: A tolerance makes it more expensive to go out. You know where my concerns lie.
Kerri: Come have Japanese food with us tomorrow. Warakuta.
Me: Why do I have to wear a kuta?
Kerri: That’s the name of the place.
Me: What is?
Kerri: Warakuta.
Me: I will not wear one.
Kerri: Right. You’ll like it. The saké is cheap there.
Me (typing): Is there a space in “nevermind”?
Kerri: I think it’s two words.
Me: I gotta look it up. Hold on. (I paused) What am I looking up again?
Kerri: “Nevermind.”
Me: No, I still want to look it up.
Kerri: What?
Me: “Nevermind.”
Kerri: What are you talking about?
Me: “Nevermind.”
Kerri: Well, don’t just dismiss me.
Me: Good one, Doll.
Kerri: With six drinks in me.
Demon Abbott and Fool-stello.

When I went to bowl with some Dutch guys I'd just met, there was a huge Japanese group there, so I couldn’t get a lane, and the Dutch never showed up. I knew I never trusted tall people. Two exceptions.

Greg, the guy next door who always had students in his room singing Christian folk songs, was away in sinful Shanghai, so I could play my music however loud. On day one, I’d asked the head of the foreign language department what was taboo to talk about in class, and she said politics and religion. I hoped this was why they paid Greg less than they paid us. I invoked Jesus’ name myself in the kitchen, but in a profane way, trying to open a jar of lychee fruit.

(Here's missionary Greg, trying to get some of us other teachers to play board games)

I wore sunblock so regularly now that I broke out on my forehead if I didn’t put it on after a shower. So, even though it was 11PM, I lathered a bit on, opened the microwave to see if my pork and celery dumplings had defrosted, and got a little dumpling juice on my hand. I didn’t own cologne, so what the hell. I lathered it on as well, as Offenbach’s haunting Barcarolle began to play. Barcarolle always made me think of my stepfather, since he’d taught me the tune as a boy. I missed my family, and felt like sitting on their couch, making snarky comments and eating banana bread. Thank God mom was so bad at keeping things fresh and also so opposed to throwing things out—bananas never got eaten while they were yellow, and then she had no choice but to make banana bread. I don’t know why she didn’t start making plum, peach, and pear bread out of all the other fruit that rotted in the fridge. She regularly took medications that had expired 7 years before, though I occasionally tossed some out, as I did with her Colby cheddar that had turned into bleu cheese, because I knew she couldn’t. Diagnosers don’t like to be diagnosed, and good sons don’t point out their mom’s foibles. They just throw out moldy cheese.


(Mom!)

Teaching

Teaching is easy and fun here. I’ve got 5 classes of about 38 students each, teaching Oral English and Writing. Four of my classes are for English majors, women for the most part who want to be interpreters. The students are funny, and the most challenging comment I’ve gotten so far was a request that I talk about American cosmetics more. Then again, these are college kids, not 12-year-old New Yorkers.

I made the whole class hold their breath for 30 seconds today, when the topic of SCUBA diving came up. I’m not sure what my teaching objective was at that moment, but it was fun, and I think I’m doing a good job, evidenced by the fact that more and more students are showing up to my classes. I have them repeat phrases after me many times, and then I slip in a sneeze, to test whether they can temporarily adopt the Western “bless you” custom. I fake-sneezed loudly when there were only two people left holding their breath and then called the two of them “rude” when they didn’t say “bless you.” Easy to make the class laugh here. My students in East Harlem would have rolled their eyes and called me corny.
Yesterday, students acted out a commercial they’d written, in which a husband is cheating on his wife, until she buys a whitening cream to make her look younger, and then the husband stops taking the other woman’s calls. It’s not easy to explain why you can’t just say, “Suffered pressure from her family from many years, she left.” Participles are harder than having everyone hold their breath, but I tackled it. One kid, Fay, complained when I grew back my beard, just as my students in New York had when I shaved off a goatee. Students don’t like change.



Monday in my writing class, I had them warm up by journal-writing about their weekend, and a student named Jeff wrote that because I had talked about the fear surrounding Friday the 13th, (to share some American culture with them), he had stayed in his dorm room all day Friday, which was the 13th. I felt bad about scaring him until I read another student named Charlotte’s in the same row, who wrote that a man had come to her apartment building on Friday with a bottle of gas, to burn it down, and when a family on the 1st floor tried to stop him, he killed three of them. When she finished reading hers to the class, I raised my eyebrows, and said, “Told you.”

Today I made two students, who were being lazy and speaking Chinese in class, get up and sing a song in front of everybody, a mild but effective deterrent.

My hands were covered in chalk from writing scenarios on the board explaining why “I got stolen” and “Could you borrow me some money” are not correct. I had them stand and practice the expression, “Would you mind...” Lanny, with his spiky hair and flashy cream sport coat--since the weather had gotten cooler-- thankfully volunteered. He asked his friend with the delicate voice and red flannel shirt, “Jackie Su, would you mind asking Sarah to dance?” The class laughed, loving embarrassment. Sarah stood. Jackie Su said to Lanny, “I need music. Would you mind singing?” The class laughed.
Lanny called his bluff, and began clapping a simple beat. Jackie walked over to the tall, poised, and smiling Sarah, who said she would be willing to dance but, “I haven’t prepared anything.”
Jackie Su, the flannelled gentleman, said, “Perhaps I should give you some time to prepare?” Lanny shook his head in disappointment. Had Mr. Du enabled some matchmaking today? Jackie was one of three obviously gay boys in that class, though the boys joked about gay people like they had no idea they were surrounded; I told them I didn't allow that joking because I had gay family members, which works much better than lamely saying it's wrong. It's part of the theater of teaching. For instance, my mom points out it's classist to make fun of mullets, but I'm going to continue to do so, unless I know I'm offending someone in the room at that moment. Anyway in his almost-dance with Sarah, Jackie Su may have just been an innocent proxy for rich-kid Lanny, late to class every day, with his white Puma sneakers and green Adidas shoulder bag. “Perpetrating” is what NYC students called that mixing of name brands back in 2001, when I last knew such things.



(That's the way you hide a trash can)

My cab driver had no front teeth and drove against oncoming traffic half the time to get me there quickly, which I appreciated. Tango lessons tonight with Erika, my Argentinian lawyer gal who would be leaving in a month. I am better when I am dating, though I still felt close to my ex. Would I ever feel comfortable dating someone who didn't have an expiration date?

After a big dinner of fantastic little mushrooms and pork, Erika told me that taking a doggie bag from a restaurant in Argentina is impolite. I got defensive cause she’d pushed my “cheap” button, and told her the Chinese believed it was offensive to waste food, and I felt the same. I told her it was like saying “I’m so rich, I can throw this fresh delicious food away.” Culture could be annoying. People are different enough from each other, without introducing different languages and beliefs.
I wouldn’t shed a tear if we all spoke the same language across this little neighborhood of a planet. I don’t meant to sound German, but all this variety is not quaint; it’s inefficient. And it makes you feel cheap. Still, I was considerably more pro- the idea of culture later, when Erika and I got the free tango lesson from her Argentinian singer friend. It would be unfortunate if we were stuck with just the waltz or techno to dance to. Who comes to China to learn tango?

That night, I dreamt I had eaten a leather wallet and gloves, and asked my friends Jeff and Jonathan if that were bad for me. They said no. I woke up without my mouthguard in, that protects me from grinding my teeth into chewy pulp, and which Erika said made me look like a "Boxeador". It did make me talk like Rocky. I threw in the towel on the idea of dating her for her last month in China, but pledged to remain her dance partner. I just didn't want to, and it felt good to tell her, nicely.

(May I always eat the parsley garnish, wherever life takes me)

On my way back from a lively class in which yes, I talked about American cosmetics, the doorman gave me a care package from a good old friend at home--a glorious box filled with Triscuits and Cheez-its. My parents told me another was on the way. Having Swedish fish in my cabinet made me feel whole. My saliva achieved that sublime consistency that only 40 Cheez-its can achieve, after a good full day of public speaking, and a night of telling the truth.

Shanghai, mooncakes, and cockiness

9-15-06 We ate teppanyaki all-you-can-eat Japanese food in Shanghai. Good lord. They set the beef on fire and our faces burned. Oktoberfest tomorrow. French, German, Chinese, Italian, American, Japanese at the table, gorging ourselves on buttery greens, peppery filet, and coconut-covered fried banana. I ate an entire plate of bok choy by myself-- the Germans said the butter, oil and salt negated the health benefits, but one whispered to me I'd live 5 seconds longer because I'd eaten it. I aimed to enjoy that 5 seconds.

Shanghai apartment buildings were massive. It felt like New York, winding through them on an elevated highway at night in the rain, their tops all lit in blue or yellow lines.



Outside one club, there were Chinese guys punching and pounding and kicking each other in the face, our first violence. We walked up the block to not be hit. That stuff fascinates me, then upsets me for 2 hours. The girls were giddy and ready for the next club. We went to Zapata's, an outdoor club with a million foreigners. A man bumped me rudely, and I tried to bump him back when he walked by again, but I missed. At the Mint Club, I went acrobatic in my dancing. A Chinese girl tripped on the ministage and nearly spun into the corner of our table. I caught her late, and her friend laughed at her. You don't do that to a friend. It made me attracted to the girl who fell, since she kept someone close to her who didn't give a damn about her.

My legs swung so fast as I was dancing that it felt like I didn't have any, like I was just a floating torso. A woman named Geeni came over to dance with the legless man, but I felt constrained then. I adjusted my movements to a smaller sphere, as friends watched and thought I was hooking up. Eventually she sat down, and I went back to jumping around. My back hurt the next morning though.



Kerri and our pal Diana wanted to pay Western prices for Western food, though we were making a Chinese salary, so I was unamused when my linguine with pesto came 20 minutes after Diana's tortellini. I further sulked because the girls went on about how they liked cocky guys. Last night, I'd enjoyed talking to Michael, the good man they rejected as "a little boy" because he was a bit shy and couldn't dance. It was my first sulk in 2 months: I was upset both by the sight of the men beating each other's heads in, and my two female friends here putting down nice men. There was so much cruelty, and their attitude felt like more of it. I felt like avenging all the men who didn't have what these two women wanted by flirting with and then abandoning some girl I met tonight. Wow, I thought, giving myself over to what was clearly a real sulk. When Diana asked whether the woman that tried to dance with me last night was not my type because she was "too big'"or "too old," I was tempted to say "yes," to push their buttons back, but I didn't. I just hadn't wanted to spend all night dancing with someone.



I sat on the toilet, and nothing! I asked the girls if they'd put a cork in my ass last night while I slept, and they said they hadn't, but I suspected. I was impotent from my ass! "This never happens to me," I said to them, ashamed. We walked by a family on the street with something cat-sized moving inside of a tied-up black plastic bag. Kerri stared, aghast. Oliver said "This is horrible." I felt like getting punched so I reassured them that it takes a "few minutes to kill a baby," but it would end soon. Diana punched me.

Kerri and Diana wanted to spend the day eating and spending money, while I wanted to walk around, so we separated. The mango smoothie with sweet tapioca nodules was excellent. In Shanghai, might makes right of way; couples step in front of a car, but not in front of a truck.
A man next to me on the street did a demonstration hitting a tennis ball with a string attached 15 feet and then it would pop back to him to be hit again.A huge sign claimed that the new building showed "Pulchritude."

At the Renaissance Hotel, we went to the Oktoberfest celebration, and I said to Kerri, "I didn't like the way you two were talking about men." There, I expressed it, between standing and clinking glass steins together, as the man in lederhosen urged everybody on under the huge tent. The sulk retreated, and I ate weisse wurst with kraut. Oli spotted his idol from the Bayern Munich soccer team, Carsten Yanker, who now played for Shanghai, and was too scared to approach him. To me he was just a bald good-looking guy, so I pushed Ollie to do it. His two fat managers joked by putting their hands in front of my camera, as Oliver sat there under the guy's arm, turning red. Afterward, Ollie said, "I tried to start a conversation, but I think he was not that much interested in this!"


A sweating German guy with a moustache brought out a long horn, maybe 13 feet long, rested it on the ground and began to blow into it. A drunk Chinese guy sat on it, pretending the end of it was his penis. A Chinese man in lederhosen that were too big for him lifted the drunk guy off the horn, cursing at him, and the guy got up with a smile. The German guy looked enraged however, and took the long pipe and made it crash up into the face and teeth of the Chinese guy, who held his face, and raised his hand in apology. I still could not crap. I pictured Metamucil--was this the week I turned the corner and got older? During the big raffle, Diana confessed in her German accent that she wanted to win a "voucher for the booty saloon." I smiled and said I needed a haircut too.

Kerri left me dancing on the bar at the big outdoor bar Zapata's. I stepped outside to look for someone I'd been talking to, and two gals with a lot of makeup said "hi," and grabbed my crotch. "Excuse me," I said, and walked briskly back inside. Shanghai was different! Still, I liked the feel of it. "The feel of the city, I mean," I said to myself. I had no one to joke with.

I talked to a nice Chinese woman for a couple hours, and I unzipped her purse, suggestively. When she zipped it up, I looked down at it, unzipped it again, and looked away. But I was just happy to talk with someone, and it turned sweet. We took a half-nap on each other's shoulders at a table in the club. I got her email and put her in a cab, then I headed to the hotel to crash. Kerri came home at 7:30AM, after getting splashed with champagne at the swank Bar Rouge when one hooker hit another in the face with a bottle, making her colleague bleed everywhere.

I could see the vague sparkle of sunblock on my arm, as we walked to a French bakery, our first sunny day in a week. They don't let them off first on the trains, so there's bumping at every stop. The West is right on that one. I like the curved green plastic guards they have up on the highway to block the lights of oncoming traffic at night, however. Score one for the East.




In the middle of us debating whether she'd paid me back all the kuai I'd loaned her, Kerri learned her favorite aunt, the woman who raised her father, had died. She couldn't call her Dad now, so I got the call, and was ashamed to take it, in the middle of a stupid argument about money.


Back in Hangzhou after a 2-hour crowded train ride, French guys dragged me to an empty bar they knew, the dice came out, and suddenly a Chinese girl was sitting next to each one of us. I talked to the one next to me for a while, who was having a terrible day, and said she felt sick. When I looked up, all the French guys were kissing their girls. Mr. Bean-looking Samuel looked at me, and said "Kiss her." The Olympic boxer next to me was making out with his girl, and nobody was playing dice anymore. I felt like I was letting Samuel down. He looked at me like he had vouched for me with these guys that I was cool and here I was being the kind of pathetic, nice guy that Kerri and Diana mocked. I felt like I was the last one in the swimming pool. The girl looked like she really hoped I wasn't going to try anything. "She wants you to," Samuel said, and went back to kissing. I had spent a good section of my life trying to kiss any woman who would kiss me, but... I didn't like this at all. I didn't want kissing based on economic domination. I liked the French guys, but when Sam left with his girl, I took a taxi home and SKYPED my ex at home, needing to talk to someone who liked my sweet side.



At our university, I had such a wonderful experience talking for hours in English with students, about attitudes toward love. They were wise, and made me have such respect for them. Then the man at the Mongolian beef stall let me bargain him down to 1 kuai each, and then the fruit lady did too, when I suggested it. Then the cabbie taught me how to say "pretty." His breath was metal-melting, but we bonded, talking about girls in Chinese. At least I think that's what we were talking about. You always sit up front with the cabbie here if it's just you. There was a maggot in my apple, which crawled out onto my hand, and I threw the core into the street. He reached into the glove compartment and gave me a napkin. I felt so good. Decency is the antidote to witnessing cruelty. Resiliency--sometimes a maggot will crawl onto your hand, but your mood survives.

In discussions, students told me Chinese women say "no" when they mean "yes," and that they threaten to move back in with their parents, and their white husbands take that literally and take out the suitcase, when what the wives meant was "I need an apology" and "be nice to me."

Kerri came up to my room to extract me from my letter to the Editor of the Times about hypocritical US attitudes toward Iran and nukes. On our way out the door, she reported that whitebread Greg from California was playing Christian songs on guitar with a bunch of students next door again, with his door open.
"Got everything?" She said.
"What do I need?" I said.
"Condoms," she said, too loud, then laughed. I didn't want to turn my head and see if the prayer circle were looking up.
"You're going straight to hell," I said.
At a new little restaurant, Kerri offered my phone number to a slightly annoying older Canadian woman, desperate to meet other foreigners. I got revenge by telling Kerri our mystery meat was her dog Abby from home. Kerri was upset that her family had waited a week to tell her that her favorite aunt had died, and when they did, it was with an email.

The man next to us used his chopsticks to turn over the fish with the dumb expression on its face. Chinese Fishermen never do this, apparently, because it means your boat will turn over. Additionally, never give your lover shoes or an umbrella, since they imply a breakup. And never, ever, give someone a clock as a gift, unless you want them dead.




Kerri's old pal Dee visited us, and she had news: Bomi's husband wanted to come back, since the bargirl he'd left her for wanted to go abroad to Italy. Bomi had started her new job and liked it. Dee and Kerri both agreed she shouldn't blow that and take the husband back. We hung with sophisticated local Chinese guys, and small-village girls Dee and her sister didn't know how to play the dice game everybody played here, repeatedly getting corrected for not raising the bid.
Kerri had told me Dee's sister always went for bad boys, and told her at the bar she should find a "good man," hypocritically I thought, after her speech of the day before. I told Dee's sister her father was a good man and that she should therefore find as good a man as him.
Dee looked confused and said, "You know her father?"
I did know Dee's father and I thought they were one and the same. I decided all along that Dee had been calling her "sister" the way you call a family friend "Uncle." "I made a mistake," I said and lied about what I'd meant.
The sister looked pained anyway. Dee explained that she really was her sister, but they'd been poor and had given her up to someone else to raise. I was embarrassed to make assumptions like that, considering my 4 parents have 10 marriages between them.
It was wonderful to see Dee in Hangzhou. She'd taken care of us when we first arrived in China, and now we could reciprocate. We introduced her around at parties and bars. She and Kerri talked about promiscuity.
Dee: Kiss-to-kiss keeps you young forever.
Kerri: Yes, I think you have to keep kissing people to stay young.
Jeremy: But hookers age badly.
Kerri: But hookers never kiss.
Somebody had seen "Pretty Woman." A worker emerged from a manhole in front of us like he'd escaped from New York. Operation let-em-know-I'm-not-interested continued that night, as Erika the cool and stylish Argentinian lawyer cooked for us. She looked like a more average-shaped Penelope Cruz.

I really admired the way she'd deftly rejected the drunken French guy when he'd made a play for her in front of four of us as we left a party; I trusted and liked her. Oli said Erika never liked anyone. When I left the Latin dance club, tired and feeling anti-social, her friends all tried to grab me and keep me there, so it was obvious everyone wanted us to get together. I didn't want to, and felt apologetic about it, even considering dating her just because I felt flattered.
It was difficult to speak Argentinian Spanish all day. It was easier with photo-gal Viola because I didn't speak a word of German, so it was English all the time. However, Viola's first words were always, "You didn't call me for so long," so I knew this wouldn't work.

Oliver let a girl take his attention and lean in too close. I told Kerri how pained Kim looked to witness this-- the nice Dutch girl with an obvious crush on Oli, and Kerri took him aside to let him know he was misbehaving.
Later, Oliver came and whispered to me, "Big trouble in little China," and then laughed so much his eyes closed. (see below)



I went to the courts and ended up playing tennis with two students and a teacher. My serve was terrible. Then in the second set, it was suddenly dominating, and I was embarrassed, and started hitting it softly. My aunt Carol was supposedly in town, though I'd never known her to make a plane on time. Then, the dreaded invitation came: Had dinner at Peppino's in Shangri-la (say Shanger-li-la to the cab drivers) with Aunt Carol, who has lymphoma but no health insurance. She was waiting until she could get Medicare. Even the Tory British girl from Marlboroughshireham, or some such place, said the US welfare system was off. This came after a rant about how immigrants were ruining council neighborhoods. When racists think our country is too conservative, you know something is wrong. When I ate a mooncake on a causeway on the lake with Carol, it was delicious except for the dried salty yokes in the middle.

Kerri and I went for massages by blind people. Not bad. At the end, the woman, who I suspected could see just fine, did the sudden head-twist on me that I've seen kill people in movies, but it merely made a chiropractic crack and I saw a few colors. I seemed to be able to still communicate with my toes.

It'd taken me all of 3 weeks to recreate my life in NY here: trying to keep up with too many people, hoping people would cancel on plans. Kerri said she needed to get a boyfriend to keep her out of trouble, and I felt the same. "Like a baby being born, I'm heading out," I said to a couple friends, trying to coin a term. It didn't stick.

I went to play tennis and this skinny, friendly student had asked me to play doubles with his friends. He would one day be a big boss, over-praising my serve but also delivering devastating backhands. He'd insisted on exchanging numbers. Later, he texted me that his mom had sent him a bunch of mooncakes for the national holidays, and would I join him and his friends for a picnic? Ex-pat friends here had warned me about these fish- and meat-filled frequent regifts. The fruitcakes of China. I said no.

At a party, Kerri and I met a really cool Chinese guy named Kevin who had gone to the college where we teach, ZUCC, and I'd gotten his number. I looked up Kevin ZUCC on my phone and text-messaged him. We made plans to get a drink Thursday. Kerri found him attractive, and she dressed like it that night. When we arrived at the bar, instead of the tall, muscular and funny guy, the person who showed up was twerpy Kevin, who I'd met on the tennis courts, the one who'd been trying to pawn off on me some of the mooncakes his mom had sent him. .I'd forgotten that Kevin was his name, too! Kerri glared at me. "Sorry," I mouthed. We had unwittingly agreed to a night out with some undergrads. Thank god they weren't our students. I didn't tell Kevin that I'd thought he was someone else. We played the dice game, drank one beer, and said we had to leave. The taxi was on me. At the Maya Bar, there was a Mexican contingency of 15 people there, which felt like home for me. I introduced myself to every one of them, and then they started buying tequila and singing songs, because Mexican Independence Day was in 5 days. Chopsticks were jammed into the lock on the bathroom.



The next day, Kerri was pissed at herself for getting too drunk and instant-messaging her ex-boyfriend, and could not find a log of what she might have said to him.
K: I need a strong man who can keep me in check. He was good at that. He once told me, "You and your American ego, stop it."
J: Why don't you call him and tell him you want to follow through on your engagement of last night?
She kvetched about the washing machine ruining her clothes. I continued to worry about reports of formaldehyde in local beer, and told her she was upset because she'd been embalmed. She had this great habit of admitting when she'd done something dumb--like have big emotional talks while drunk and a continent away. She cursed her lack of common sense, and told me her father had always said if she were sitting on the sink, she'd ask for a glass of water.

Refugees, Germans, and contraband

Diana and her brother had said we were the 1st Americans they'd liked, which was nice, and said that they'd gotten tired of answering Minnesotans about whether they had TV's in Germany, had mosquitos, and whether there were 24 hours in the day. Her stylish younger brother Daniel, also ethnically Vietnamese, generously said, "In all countries, people away from the cities I think are like this." I didn't mention that Minnesota had cities. Later they mentioned wanting to have a Halloween party here, and I wanted to ask whether they celebrated that holiday in Germany, but didn't want to sound Minnesotan. The younger brother read my look and said in a cool German accent, "It is imported from your country."

At the restaurant, a placard on our table read, "Life goes on, soul is empty." Was this poetry or a suicide note?
I decided I would never make friends if I did the drinking lifestyle so popular here-I'd just keep meeting people and stay lonely. I got fresh-squeezed OJ, sour but good.
Our German pal Oli was excited to be eating at the only place in town with wienerschnitzel, and when Kerri's lasagna arrived, it was cheese wrapped in a tortilla.
"You got yourself a quesadilla," I said.
"I got a case of something," she said, and did the Kerri laugh.
Cool Berlin boy Karsten with the tattooed leg told us they were building an Eiffel Tower outside of town here.
Masses of older people in the square outside at night danced a slow, simple synchronized dance as little kids rollerblade-raced, and got yelled at by coaches. I loved it.

(Chinese and Europeans alike agree French Samuel on the left looks like Mr. Bean)


We hung with a gay descendant of Napoleon at Samuel's party. I didn't drink, and had enjoyable conversations. Our little lecherous host wanted to go to a club, and clapped the party closed. Nobody left. Then Mr. Bean danced too close with a Chinese girl we had just had a nice conversation with, and who now looked trapped. Normally I would rescue a gal in this situation, but he was our host. When the girl escaped, he clapped again, to tell everyone it was time to leave.
At home, we watched a movie of 18th century Venice.
Kerri put on her Chinese slippers. Since I knew she couldn't see well, I said, "Those are mine."
"I don't think you could fit into these," she said.
"What are you trying to say about my feet?" I said.
"Peace out, yo," she said.
"Do you wish me to leave?" I said. "Are you giving me the Samuel clap?"
"I will never give you the clap," she said, and did the triumphant Kerri laugh.

We got a 10 kuai discount every month for accepting a phone number with a "4" in it. Roger said as long as "4" is not next to "5", we're probably okay, but the characters for "4"+"5" together mean "death."

1.6 billion people and for each and everyone that gets to the supermarket checkout, the cashier has to get a price check. Not incredibly efficient, but I liked it here--the food, the bikes, the focus on family and achievement.

I'd made Kerri wait until 2PM to have lunch because I was sneakily lesson-planning again. Kerri called, to rush me.
"Do I have to wait for you all day?" I said.
"Why don't you come over here and bite my ass?" she said.
"It's not on the way."
"I'm kinda sick of going to dinner with smokers who are not even good conversationalists," she said.
"You never get sick of me though," I said. "I'm endlessly thrilling."
"The same could be said for myself," she said.
"If the one saying it were thyself."
Out we went to try a new restaurant.
"Another bare-bottomed baby," she said, pointing. It kind of made sense to not have babies carry their poop around with them. No baby strollers here, though. Score one for each. We ordered the usual spinach, green beans and noodles, and the eight people sitting at the back tables watching soap operas smiled, and then got up to cook it. The greens were dry and Kerri felt the garlic was not properly infused. The bottom of the mound, soaking in broth, was much better. I turned it over.
"Like Ecclesiastes," I said. "What was on bottom shall soon be on top. The first shall be the last."
"Do you have to always bring up sex when we're eating?" Kerri said.
It was delicious. Kerri had taken off her blue old-lady beads, allowing my needling to get to her, and turned them into a bracelet. She looked more like a person and less like an artifact.
"You look good," I said, which she rightly took as criticism.
"I decided to go casual," she said.
"It looks better," I said.
"You're not supposed to say that."
"I'm just saying I like that look," I said.
"You like the sporty look."
"Everyone does," I said.
Kerri scowled.


(I tackle delicious hotpot)

The TV on the city bus showed two singers singing "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. I didn't want to be disrespectful but really wanted to sing along. Kerri's trick knee was causing her pain, and she griped that in France someone would have offered her a seat. I thought if she'd been showing pain, maybe, but it was a bit much to expect people to offer a seat to a healthy unpregnant woman of the same age, with no bags. I got her to stand on her toes and sway. It felt to us like violent crime wasn't even a consideration here, apart from Oktoberfests, and we only had to worry about pickpockets on buses. She grimaced as the bus suddenly stopped, and I made a ninja move in catching myself on the bar before worsening her day with an elbow to the cranium.

Kerri craved Starbucks, and I supported her first visit there in months.The smell of coffee was nice. I scouted out the best seat in the house, but on the table was a tray with 3 empty cups and one half empty. I wanted to be sure we could rightfully claim these soft seats, so in this case, seeing the cup as half empty was optimistic. I looked around, saw no one, and started to takethe tray to the trash. An employee in a green apron intercepted, took it, but then put it back on the table, as though it belonged to someone who was still there. Nobody came to finish the cup, as the aromatic minutes passed. Kerri looked sad to have lost the place, and the Starbuck's guy was clearly wrong. I picked up the cup again and rested it all near the trash. We sat and Kerri breathed in her frappucino, calling it "nectar." Another employee brought the tray I'd moved, and a beautiful Chinese woman in a white tanktop followed and took a seat with it over to the side. I stood and apologized, gesturing for her to take the seat. She waved me off. I said sorry, sat and felt bad. The employees looked confused as to why we were sitting there. Had we bullied someone? I should have insisted she indeed take the seat, but now it would be weird to. As I stewed over this incident, I realized Kerri had been talking.
"What?" I said.
"Not listening as usual?" she said.
"Nonsense. I just need clarification," I said.
"You know how you sit on the toilet seat and pick your nose hairs?" she said, continuing some story. As she spoke, she mimed plucking between her eyebrows.
"You call those nose hairs?" I said, still with no idea what we were talking about.
Kerri frowned. "I like Seattle's best better than Starbucks."
"You tell me the same tired effing stories over and over again, but you've been saving an interesting nugget like that?" I said.
"Wow," said Kerri.
I waved goodbye to the lady we'd accidentally bullied, as she left.


A car zipped out of a parking space like it was going to kill us, and I stopped to let it go as always. Kerri kept walking.
"You're gonna let me go, bitch," she said to the quickly stopping car. "You're in a car with AC."
A white woman walked by and looked aghast.
"She was amused," Kerri said.
"She was something," I said. "I don't know if it was amused."
I didn't do the nod or acknowledge the Western guy coming my way. I don't trust men.
Kerri said, "Chinese guys must be horrified when they see me coming, with my 38Ds."
"Well, they're like the round spongey breads they make," I said.


At the downtown eye place as I waited for the optometrist to measure Kerri's eyes, a woman brought me tea, assuming I was the patient husband. I'd be sad for Kerri's vision to return, as it was fun to lie to her about what and where stuff was. I heard her in the other room trying to apologize sweetly in China that her Chinese was bad, and they graciously denied it, since what she actually said was "China is bad." The tea-lady and I smiled at each other when we heard this, and she went back to arranging high-end glasses. The whole country needed driver's ed, but the people could be wonderful and understanding.


I recommitted to meeting them halfway, unlike our stylish ex-pat friends. I'd seen the Germans curse at the supermarket checkout as the woman in front of us in line had to leave the line for a price, returning with a label she'd ripped off another bottle, which turned out to be the wrong one. They were nice Bavarians but made clear they thought they could run the country better.

Kerri felt so good about the fact they changed the paper after measuring her eyes, their patience with her English, the fair price and being treated well. I did too. We floated out of the store, feeling valued. It didn't last though, cause a bike rider ran the light and almost hit me. I yelled. My adrenaline was still coursing as we watched a taxi driver in the intersection inspecting the front of his just-smashed green car. I wanted Kerri to stay positive though, so I kept my anger to myself. We were sweating but it was getting cooler, which made me hopeful.

At the Esprit store where shirts cost 50 bucks like at home, I sat in the patient husband chair again. To celebrate the good mood, I spent money on a teal striped button-down and Kerri put back her $100 black soft wool wrap as too expensive. Both of us acted like not us. We debated whether or not it was cashmere, the cilantro thing all over again. Kerri said, "It's cool. All women know cashmere." I kept my mouth shut.

We sat at West Lake as the light approached that quality of just before raining. If I were an animal, I'd be scurrying about. Couples strolled by the water, and it was calming to be away from maniac bikes and traffic. Kerri went through 20-30 high-pitched ring tones, trying to pick one. A man looked over at me.
"Doll," I said, "you might be the annoying person at the lake."
"Sorry. I don't want to be that person," she said.
She played two more, and debated aloud between the cashmere wrap and our planned trip to Hong Kong, since she could only afford one.
"I already have a reputation here," she said. "Now I'm the ho of Hangzhou. The h-o of h-z."
It was true. On two occasions , she'd kissed a guy in the bar in front of everyone, and though the rest of the night had been innocent on both occasions, it was all people needed to see.

Kerri got a new Chinese name from a handsome old guy with shriveled legs, who liked NPR over his computer. We waited for a water display to start at the lake, then lost patience. Though we were completely lost, it looked like a young couple took their cue from us that it was time to leave, sort of the way when Kerri goes to look at a shirt at the mall, a few teens go look at it afterwards. I can see why nerdy Westerners come here. There's an active myth that we're not nerdy.


(Oli with the Dutch girls, all gorgeous, fun, and taller than me)




We went for pizza, to make it an all-Western afternoon. The ice water tasted like they'd dripped a little lemon Pledge into it, which I appreciated. I'd listened to Jill Scott this morning singing about how a man with "back straight, shoulders never round" turned her on, while I slouched like a Roman and walked like a hunchback. Oh well. It wouldn't do to have many women attracted to me. Kerri sent her warm mango juice back and asked for ice, politely, figuring she was letting them know what Westerners expected.
"I don't want juice that tastes like it's been in somebody's car all day," she said.
"Or somebody's bladder all day," I said.
Our waitress laughed too much at everything, and it made me like her. Did she understand what we were saying?
Kerri told her she was cute in her blue and yellow Pizza Haven jacket, not meaning to sexually harass. When the gal had left, Kerri said her thin-crust tasted like frozen pizza. Good day, our first daylight downtown in weeks. I told Kerri I saw no cabs in my future. Walking, and buses and no Europeans for a day. Got my cellphone, so socializing would be harder to avoid soon. I was in the mode of lonely yet wanting to only talk to friends, which was only one person on the continent. Why hadn't I just moved to Maine instead?




I couldn't sleep again. It was turning into an experiment to see how little I needed. I hadn't had any tea that day, so it must have been the hard beds. Me and my thoughts, up late again. My kvetchy journal-writing was like flypaper to me. It implied that there were no more bad things left uncaptured, but also showed me how many there had been. What does anyone look for in a partner? Sexiness, sophistication, and kindness.

Kerri didn't want to walk past the perfume store ladies again, after she'd been ready to buy a bottle for 168kuai but it turned out they meant 1068.
"You don't have to be embarassed to not want to pay 130 bucks for a bottle of perfume. Rub a mango on your chest and call it a day," I said. We walked by stinky tofu outside, a blue cheese version of beancurd that smelled like the putrid feet of my old friend Chris.

In the cab:
Kerri: Do I smell like a French brothel?
Me: Do you want to?
Kerri: No.
Me: That's a trick question.
Kerri: Well, do I?
Me: You smell like a brothel sprout. Is my hair a disaster?
Kerri: It's in need of tousling. Hang your head out the window.

She was already mad because Dee had called her from Jinhua at 1AM last night to see if she were sleeping. The water man kicked the big jug of water so it rolled down the hall. I composed a letter to the Times for a couple hours, as Kerri bought chickpeas for her first dinner party here. and yelled at young men for stealing a cab from a pregnant woman, and Kerri had ended up yelling at a cop, who'd come to intervene. She was in a rage when I walked in, with grating techno music playing. Kerri limped around the kitchen frying too fast. I plied her with ibuprofen, showed her I was very good at peeling stickers from newly bought plates, and promised heroic dishwashing again.

Kerri: I hope this is enough food for 5 people. If it isn't, they can suck my ass.
Me: Yeah, good sustenance there.
Kerri: What does that mean?
Me: Nothing. You are an advocate for the knocked-up women of the world, getting them cabs.
Kerri: I cannot tolerate rudeness. Common courtesy! Try this sauce.
Me: Needs more parmesan to overpower the tomato.
Kerri: You like my party music.
Me: Yes. Lots of chilled-out house music? I like that stuff, when I'm feeling gay.
Kerri: Yes, well we have to keep the Europeans happy.

They all came. Kerri's brand new lime-green suede couch got its first use, so much softer than our beds. Diana said to Kerri's dismay that German men demand a Brazilian wax. Then, in true Kerri fashion, she spilled red wine all over her own new couch. Oliver suggested putting salt on it. Guillaume the insisting-he's-straight Swissman rubbed it with a wet rag as Kerri said not to worry about it. Everybody was too scared to try the salt.
My wooden chair also broke under me.
"Everything is cheap here," said Guillaume.
Later, after I'd put the pegs back in place, Kerri sat on it.
"Don't tempt fate, Doll," I said.
"Are you saying I have the biggest ass here?" she said.
"I'm saying you have a history with wooden chairs.
It's true. She broke two in Vermont once, and was very embarrassed.
The Europeans left our little campus surrounded by factories, and Diana crashed in Kerri's room.

Kerri called me on my computer the next morning.
I heard Diana's excited voice in the background.
J: Is Diana naked?
Kerri: She is, actually.
J: I know the sound of my voice echoing off a bared bosom.
Kerri: The eagle is bald today.
J: Excuse me?
Kerri: I had a long session in the shower today. Didn't want to be out of style.
J: Congrats.
Kerri: I'm Brazilian now.
J: You don't have to tell me any more about it.

We went for Muslim food, since Oliver was sleeping late on our go-see-pandas plan, plus it was finally raining. Our waiter was 11 years old, and wore the little hat Northwestern Muslims wore. We watched the guy shave noodles off what looked like a brick of mozzarella into a big boiling pot. Strips of mutton and greens came, heavy with cumin. Then spicy potatoes and beef.



We hung with Dutchmen, and explained that we are not like the religious rednecks in our country, which pleased them. Nick with the faux-hawk told us the story of his friend who was poor so he grew marijuana in his attic, as many do. Apparently, you can have 5 plants, and no more. It doesn't snow much in Holland but there was a bad storm, and all the roofs were covered in snow, except his, a dead give-away of heat lamps in the attic, should a helicopter fly overhead. So he climbed up to his roof and threw salt on all his neighbors' rooves. Tall, curly-haired Jan had a habit of coming over and hitting on any woman I was dancing or talking with. He said he loved smoking weed but hadn't done so until he was 20, which I imagined was last spring. Old Dutch people, he told me, have a saying, "You do your thing, I'll do mine." I wished he would remember that when I was flirting with a woman.

I went and hung with a new Hutu friend who'd fled Rwanda for France during genocide, and I was now using Swahili words in China.

A teacher named Hong Yi Ming took me to his favorite DVD shop. We'd had an exchange, me giving him "LA Confidential" and "The Usual Suspects" and him giving me "Hero" and "The Story of Qiu Ju", both of which showed the burden of leadership and folly of challenging it. The DVD shop, run by beautiful sisters in cleavage shirts and boots, who wouldn't budge a centimeter on price, showed the cases but hid the DVD's in case of shoplifting or police raid, but it was totally out in the open on the 3rd floor of this mall. Nobody, apparently even the police, knew where the two gals went to fetch the DVD's when it was time to buy, so what could they be arrested for--cardboard?
They loved "Prison Break" and the old show 'Sex and the City' here.



I picked up German Viola for our photo shoot around Hangzhou. Viola went back inside her apartment 4 times, remembering something. My flirtee perhaps had diarrhea? Viola wiped her face and said, "My nose is getting on my nerves." "Good sentence," I said, since I'd taught her the "getting on my nerves" bit. It must have come up when I was complaining about something. I was so pleased to be getting ornery, close to crotchety, at 35. She said if she stayed 6 months and we kept talking, her English would improve. If tall Jan were not around to interrupt, I thought, we might have a nice conversation. I did the talking when we bought bananas and steamed dumplings for 20 cent total. I offered her the choice of the two bananas, saying, "Long or curved?" She took the extremely long one, which made me uncomfortable as a potential lover.

She told me barbershops with two girls sitting on a couch are not barbershops. Sure enough, the "pink houses", as Dee referred to places to go misbehave with prostitutes, in Hangzhou had twirling barbershop tubes out front, and not even a suggestion of haircutting inside. We took this photo (below and to the right) over my shoulder of a customer in a yellow polo walking in, and the three men outside took an interest in us, the first time I'd felt unsafe at all here.

















I had to pee and I thought one of those guys was following us, so I stopped to let him pass. I asked a woman in a tiny restaurant if I could use her bathroom, but didn't know the word for it and didn't want to act out peeing, so I acted out washing my hands. The woman kindly took me to a sink. I washed and left, unsatisfied. A few blocks later I tried again, and again a nice woman led me back through the kitchen to a big sink. My hands were getting really clean. Viola laughed at me when I emerged again, thanking them politely but clearly still having to go to the bathroom.

Apparently, German films are all dubbed-you can't watch it in the original language. Surprised me. I thought the Germans were supposed to do everything better. Dubbing sounded like the kind of thing they would make fun of us for.



When we went back to her place to look at our pictures, Viola got off the elevator first and ran to unlock her front door before the elevator door closed and she lost its light in the dark hallway.



Dominique, my new Rwandan friend, took me to a place named Kana's, where he knew the bartender and we drank beer for free. He told me how his mother had taken him to the open-air markets as a toddler, and always haggled for half an hour over a vegetable. It had sunk in, and it made me respect him. Hanging with Kerri and Swiss Guillaume, I was getting the impression that people viewed spending as a race.

I stopped by Kerri's after our first night of socializing separately. I missed her a bit, as we hadn't actually hung out, just the two of us, in a while. She was listening to music.
J: Here's that David Gray song every woman likes--"lightning running through my veins, every time I look at you."
K: I don't like it as much as his other ones.
J: Translation: "I don't want to be like other women."
K: Hey, I gotta be me and if that's not enough for people...
J: I like the refuge you take in platitudes.
K: It's a cheesy song.
After some miscommunication with her flirtee, Kerri was annoyed at men and the way they did or didn't call. I made her week by giving her "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" DVD, where a man gets eaten in revenge.

Work and Roger

When it's over 40 degrees Celsius, there's a rule that nobody has to work, so the news never reports it that high. Yesterday was the hottest this summer, at 38.5 Celsius. It felt a good deal hotter, and my face was shiny for the ID photo I'll be carrying around all year. I cleaned my mirror so it would show me as I really am, and I shaved my beard.

We met the head of our department, a nice, stooped woman in a dingy t-shirt, with bad teeth. Her mother had just died and she wore a black swatch of fabric pinned to her shirt, as is the custom, for 7 weeks. When I pushed to teach one fewer course, because I'd gotten assigned the most in the department, she made clear with her face her disdain for Roger, who was in charge of creating the schedule. I tried to present a balance of unhappy but friendly, looking down in disappointment at her answers, as I'd learned from Dee.
We left her apartment, having achieved a lowering of both our courseloads. Off we went, with visions of curriculum in our head, work finally arriving, but expats tonight.

(This framed poster hangs in the building where I teach, along with similar ones for great thinkers like "Conrad Hilton".)


















Kerri and I discussed the lights-out-at-11 rule from the college kids here.
“I would have hated it but it would have been good for me in college,” I said. “Too much freedom and I experiment, to my detriment.”
“I didn't do anything in college,” she said. “When I went and studied in France, I got all A's. I was doing something that interested me.”
“Fucking a Frenchman?” I said.
She nodded. “I was taking a lot of classes.”
“But did you have a lot of class?”
“Sometimes,” she said, and did her lascivious tucking of the hair behind the ear. She cracked me up.






Roger, our small colleague in glasses who had the task of orienting us for the college, worried aloud about the pressure from the administration to publish. I liked him though he had yet to get our Internet connections fixed, and had twice led us on long errands in the blinding sun, only to find the place was closed. He loved telling us sensational crime stories from the news, even though crime was rare in Hangzhou. Not so in Guangdong Province, he said, where most of my Chinese-American friends' parents were from. He also felt that Northwestern Muslims did a lot of the crime. I joked with him, saying "So, the Muslims are thieves?" and he backtracked, saying that was only "part of the story." I remembered what my friend Shanna says when someone makes a racist comment around her: "Really?"

Many of Roger's disaster stories from the news seemed to have a point, about how much we should push the kids to study, and not just do fun and games, as he suspected other less experienced foreign teachers did. Today's news story was a girl who killed a rival for revenge, with the help of four friends, and chopped her up and put her in bags. I questioned why the friends would help. Two of the teens got the death penalty and the other got life, and one got 15 years. "They were drop-outs," Roger said, looking at us.


Because the police station turned out to be closed for an hour, extending this annoying bureaucracy to get our papers, Roger brought us to the home of his retired uncle, who had studied and grown green tea for a living. As we sat there eating watermelon and drinking the too-hot tea, they had a power failure. The fan died, and just as my tea had cooled enough for me to sip it without scalding my tongue, the aunt came and refilled my glass with boiling water. I thanked her. The uncle said the tea was not very good quality, and we knew to say how good it was. Roger insisted that drinking hot tea made you feel cooler in the heat. Kerri indulged him, agreeing, as we both started to sweat through our shirts. "Did you see the news about the Russian airplane that crashed?" Roger said, excited. Through the window, I admired the passion with which the old people in the courtyard played cards, gesturing and laughing.

Later, Roger came and rescued us when the ATM card kept Kerri's card, and the bank officers wouldn't let us leave with it, after we'd gotten it back from them. We didn't have our passports, because the police had them to prcess our paperwork, and there was no way Kerri was going to be in a foreign country with no ID, and no way to get money. I tried to yell and seem angry enough that they would back down, and I demanded to see the manager, which I never even do in the States. It was 4PM and neither of us had eaten all day, and were about ready to walk out and be arrested by the two guards in green uniforms. With some dumplings in us an hour later, I explained to Roger that we were usually nice. He told a story of him reaming a flower shop owner for selling him a bonzai that died; his wife told him to wait outside, and he got his money back. It did make me feel better. "Sometimes if you are always a good man..." he said, searching for the words. "People take advantage of you," I said.


8-24-06 Two weeks until we teach. We ate lunch, ordering the same spicy tofu, noodles, and greens we'd had nearly every meal on our own. A tiny kid in the alley shot a basketball onto a set of stairs. Yao Ming's being able to compete with American players had changed this country. A group of little kids shouted “Wai guo ren” as we walked by. Unlike the adults who also called us “foreigners” when we pass them on the street, this was 90 percent cute, and we shot them mock-angry looks, and smiled. But then they wouldn't stop, saying it, giggling, and running.

Lights out at 11 for the college kids here. I wished they'd had that for me in college, though I would have foamed at the mouth in anger at the rule; I might have a few PhD's by now. My soft spot for fascism irks my mom.

I'd been ignoring Kerri's complaints for days about how her old contact lenses were irritating her eyes, and now she was wearing none. She'd just gotten irritated at me in the little restaurant when I told her to just ask for water, not cold water, since it flustered them each time, and came lukewarm anyway. This time they buzzed about for a while, debating what to do, then brought lukewarm water.
“It's worth asking,” Kerri said. We agreed to not interrupt each other when talking with locals. Then at the grocery store, which confused us by not having rice, we differed about whether some greens on display were cilantro. Kerri had lost 12 lbs already, and I requested some credit for it. “It's China,” she said. In the elevator going home, I pressed the button for her floor, since she'd yelled at me for only pressing the button for mine the day before, which I'd attempted to argue was me not being a control freak.
“Did you press my floor?” she said.
“No,” I lied.
“I can see you did,” she said. “I can't read but I can see numbers.”
I shook off the little sense this made to me. “Maybe that was cilantro at the market and you just couldn't see,” I said.
“It wasn't cilantro.”
“Maybe instead of the big carrot you bought an orange dildo,” I said.
“I wish,” she said.
I carried in her groceries and sat down. I was proud of her for having turned off the AC while we were gone.
“You want some cold water?” she said. “You don't care about that. You want lukewarm water.”
“You're a funny one.” I gulped it down with relief. “Every now and then you stumble upon a good idea.”
She went in a lay down, face down as always. I sat and sipped, as Sarah McLachlan came on her computer. After five minutes, she called out, “What are you doing?”
“I'm playing Asteroids on my phone, in case you fell asleep,” I said.
“No, I'm just chillin here,” she said.
“No, I think you fell asleep.”
“No,: she said. “I'm just hanging with Sarah.”
“I think you're asleep now.”
She came in.
“You have your leg on my kitchen table, Doll,” she said.
“Do you not like that?”
“We watching a movie?” she said.
I stalled and shot asteroids. “Which one you wanna watch?” I said.
I passed to the next level as she said something. I looked up and in front of me was the DVD of “My Fair Lady.” You try and save the world from death by asteroids and you lose out on the movie choice. Kerri cursed from the other room. This meant her computer had died, after 3 days in a row of not doing so, during which she'd defended it, and I'd attacked it more to make her defend it and stop complaining about it.
“Piece of shit,” she said.
It particularly enraged her when I told her to stop being rough with this “precision instrument.”
“Where's your loyalty?” I said. I plopped down on her bed, where she'd been propped up before she went to yell at her machine.
“You don't have to give me both pillows,” I said. “You can have one.”
“You're a peach.” She sighed loudly, and said, “Here we go again” as her computer went dead. I didn't get why she wouldn't call and demand a new one, but I felt certain my opinion repeated once more would furrow her brow, so I continued to rest on her comfy pillows.
She got it playing and lay facedown on the bed a few feet over.
“How come I don't have a pillow?” came her muffled voice.
I tossed one onto her head, and picked a Ridley Scott movie to watch instead, ashamed I was kicking a girl while she's down.
“I keep falling asleep,” she said.
“It's good you admit it this time,” I said.



Kerri brought out some crackers, which didn't crack when you bit them. The sophomores in their gray camouflage in square regiments outside doing their required military training shouted in unison, “Yi, ar, san, suh” over and over.
“They can only count to four,” said K.
The training only amounted to marching with their swinging arms in sync, as far as I could see. The nice sergeants let them practice in the shade, but there were only a few nice ones. My mom would like that I wouldn't have wanted to do this in college.

“I have the munchies,” said Kerri. She drank a strawberry yogurt. “I think I should make us a grilled cheese sandwich to split.”
“You could do that,” I said, “or we could wait until dinner. It would taste better then.”
“You telling me what to do again?” Kerri said.
“I'm telling you what I think. You are free to reject it, and you often do.”
“I can't hear you,” she said. “You're mumbling and you have crackers in your mouth.”
“You're feeling the need for pleasure because your computer died on you,” I said.
She nodded, sadly. “I'm feeling rejected,” she said.
I agreed to watch “Sense and Sensibility” instead, which actually worked on her computer, though there were English subtitles even though it was in English, which Kerri felt was “retardo,” and I further felt was “Retardo Montalban.”
As the movie ended, I discovered Kerri's secret clothes under her pillows. “They're my pajamas,” she protested, but I continued to cry “Secret clothes!”
As the fates would have it, two movies in a row made me weep. I liked the way they talk in Jane Austen world. We need to talk more like that. My soft spot for Anglophilic class irks my stepfather.

Kerri immediately began playing Tracy Chapman's “Fast car.”
“Would you have me empty my wrists of their life-bearing blood?” I cried. “I can't bear it!” I did feel that Emma Thompson walked out of the room one too many times, in order to convey her choked sadness, but confessed I felt the movie at the end. Ang Lee is from Taiwan, so it's no surprise he should make a movie about love vs. money, though it is an achievement that he has become a big potato through doing so. I'm still amazed how much they love Titanic here, since it's an antidote to the achievement-and-money attitude.
I said in the way Mr. Edward Farris would, “Before you start cooking, I must send two birthday emails that I will be sad to not have sent, but I will feel altogether too guilty doing so while you cook, so why don't you join me?”
Off we went to the 30 cents-an-hour Internet Cafe just outside the university's gates. I left my sunglasses and hat because it was well-nigh upon 6 o'clock. Kerri flicked a thread off my shirt out the window.
“Litter, why don't you,” I said.
“The thread took its leave of you. Soon I will. I must away,” she said, getting into the spirit.
Kerri pointed out that when the women get dressed up here, they look very 1950's, with their dresses and bows. I feared the chants of “foreigner” from the toddlers, and raced to devise a strategy.
A roach crawled over my sandaled foot at the Internet Cafe. If my mother diagnosed me with a roach phobia, I would grudgingly agree.

Roger got his friend with the long pinky and thumb nails to negotiate for me some speakers for 10 bucks in the digital market. Why do many men here have this-for the use of it, or to show they don’t have to do manual labor?
Roger told us of a news story about a baby girl killed by a sand truck backing up, as people shouted for it to stop. Sand trucks were the most feared vehicles here, he said. I looked for them as I crossed the street, and I saw a big yellow one which seemed to have a bad disposition.

Getting Settled In

(my apartment building at Zhejiang University City College in the background)

“No wonder I can't see,” said Kerri. “I've got my sunglasses on. Why didn't you tell me?”
“I assumed you knew," I said.
“I slept like shit. I'm leaving the AC on,” she said. “What am I, gonna come back and sweat?”

We managed to get food we wanted at a little family restaurant outside the university gates. Kerri was shouting over the TV, the way my father does on an airplane because he thinks I can't hear him, and then people glare at ME.
"Lower your voice," I said.
"You don't own me," Kerri said.
"If I owned you, I'd bring you back for a refund," I said.
She called me the word for "dumpling" which was a slight sound away from the word for "bitch."
We finally knew the price to pay for DVD's, and didn't have to haggle nor get screwed. It was a nice transaction. I made Kerri's week by getting her “The Sound of Music” which I admitted liking, but I thought it would have been better without the singing. I granted that “Edelweiss” was a sweet groove. Kerri downloaded 80's music, spurred on by the giddy piracy of our 70 cent DVD’s. I offered that Patti LaBelle was great because she had the nerve to be weird in R&B. Kerri sang from an 80's classic. “Baby, come to me, let you put your arms around me.”
“You got about two words right out of eight,” I said.
“Fuck off,” she said.
“Stick a cactus in yourself,” I said, as we started watching the movie, "Frida." Selma Hayek graciously bared her bosom.

Kerri asked for a bathroom break, shouting out from in there, “Seat up, please!” I'd fixed her constantly filling toilet and this was the thanks I got.
“This is OUR apartment, and we've got to start sharing stuff.”
“It's my apartment,” she said. “I don't ask much...”
“I love Mexico,” I said, watching the lovely scenes.
“You've said that.”
“Good point. I don't know what I'm doing here in China.”
“I don't know what I'm doing here either,” she said.
“I should try and get people to move to Mexico. Forget Seattle. Then again, I wouldn't be a foreigner in Seattle. I'd always be playing catchup in Mexico.”
“You do what's going to make you happy.”
“What makes you think I have any idea what that is?”
“I know you don't,” she said. “Can you hit the light?”
I leaned and tapped her touch-lamp, literally hitting the light. Our 1st night not getting dragged around. I needed a night like this, a day. Creative. I wrote a song today. Music, and one vague line.

There was a new chord in my life, one that never had relevance before. D6. It had always sounded cheesey, like circus music, but here when I played it on my green guitar, it allowed me to think about the possibility of the gal I’d had an ongoing entanglement with really being my girlfriend. Music had to start with a minor chord, and then resolve to happiness, or else it could never uplift. If it started only happy, the listener thinks, “My life is not like that.” Acknowledge that the world's messed up. Acknowledge that there's still hope.
Some music stays in a minor key, which means the world is fundamentally sad. It can be sad but beautiful, sad but fun (like klezmer or Celia Cruz), sad but erotic. The brain knows whether a song is in a sad or happy key. I craved a D6 chord. Happy.



We stood there sweating in the shade. Had to be 43 degrees Celsius. At the supermarket, babies rode naked in the shopping carts, except for a red apron, their butts open to the world. I took my purchases out of that part of my cart. No diapers here. Locals say they know when the kid is going to go, so there is no need. Everyone inspected my cart to see what I'd bought: frozen dumplings, cheap white shirts, 3 cent plastic cups, yogurt, a better tennis racquet than the crap I'd bought before.

Our new friend Oliver with the shaved chest always said two things: “Come on” and “What the hell?” with a German accent, and laughed a lot. He told us how he’d gotten stuck with a 1000 yuan bill when some girls talked him into going to karaoke, and bouncers had not let him leave until he paid for it all. “What the hell?” he said. Oli was one of the few people I’d bonded with here, a guy who seemed to like everybody he met. He was a really cool guy, but was into Formula 1 racing.


Another German guy said that nobody in Germany had to live on the streets. I said what about crazy people? When he saw someone begging for money in Germany, he never gave, because he knew they could just go down to the department, fill out the paperwork, get an apartment and not have to work. They could be drunk and high all day. I said I didn’t like how in our country everyone was on their own. We’ve taken the self-reliance thing way too far.

Our friend Kim did a bump and grind with him on the dance floor, as a way of approving of the German social system, I supposed. Italians and Argentinians and Spaniards danced together warmly, and I felt left out this time, though I knew most of them. I left. I hadn’t had a sip of water in 8 hours, the likely culprit for my mood.


We met a Swiss guy named Guillaume, immaculately dressed and wearing a real watch. Kerri conferred with him for an hour, while I caught him staring at me twice. I toasted him, then after a bit, leaned in to Kerri and said, “Don't get your hopes up. You're barking up the wrong tree.”
“I know that,” said Kerri. “But he's looking to recruit teachers for a new school. I'm gonna give him our information.”
“La tienne.” (give him yours)
I then felt horrible, realizing I'd used our language for speaking privately in China in front of an actual French speaker.
“Pretty dumb, doll,” Kerri said.
I nodded, looking to see if he'd heard. I needed to be as well-groomed as he was. Immaculate. I needed to do an internship with him.

In the bathroom I met two Chinese guys who invited me up to drink with their friends in a private room. I ate fries and bottoms-up'd with them, and they wouldn't let me pay for a thing. They were a great bunch of guys, all soccer referees at the big stadium next door. Kerri had American Joe looking for me, worried. I steadied myself, walked downstairs, and put my arm around everybody. I'm not much of a drinker at home, but here you have to be wily to avoid it. I salsa danced with Germans to the Filipinas’ tacky pop singing on stage. We started playing the ubiquitous dice game in which you shake the dice in a cup and predict how many 4's there will be, total, or 5’s, etc. Whoever's wrong, drinks. Obviously gay Guillaume claimed to have learned it from his former Chinese girlfriend. Kerri kicked me under the table, and started laughing in her tactless way. When he looked at me to ask why she was laughing, I said, “This song is so funny.”
Ryan the nerdy guy from Hingham, Mass, with the Chinese wife, went on about his collection of military movies. When Donna Summer came on, I shouted to our Hingham buddy that she was from Roxbury, MA. I was the only one in the whole place clapping on the downbeat.
Later, Guillaume told me his watch only cost 10 dollars, and I started to like him.



At the Irish bar owned by the Chinese guy with the half-Irish girlfriend, I got a big head as Kerri explained to Oliver that we'd never meet anyone without my introducing us, so I went over to some drunken Britons playing pool with easy British rules-put the ball anywhere you want after a scratch. Simon said his surname was Hall and his girlfriend's was Arena, a much bigger “hall,” so she would be trading down if they got married. It was too bad he wasn’t single, because I saw Kerri melting under his pool directions. He told her sweetly to “spread her legs more” for balance, which I repeated many times loudly. He was good-looking and cool, bestubbled and casual, hair swept forward, and had met his girlfriend over the internet. Simon said his girlfriend was sick and possibly dying; he had flown here to support Stewart, who’d been his buddy since they were age two. Stewart had just broken up, was heartbroken, and to me and Kerri, was also obviously gay. Kerri pointed out that Europeans are sometimes confusing on that question, however.

Sheridan, a nice English guy in his 40's with his v-neck white t-shirt revealing lots of chest hair, told us that even after 12 years here people on the train ask him the same questions: where is he from, how much money does he make, and how big is his penis, since they “heard white guys are all huge.” They asked his Chinese girlfriend Jing Jing all the time. They published the invaluable “More” magazine, which told us ex-pats what was going on in town.



Another night at the Max Club, local place where we were the only Westerners, everyone drinking iced green tea and Chivas Regal, with a plate of watermelon as the music beat into you. Depressing if you're not in the mood to aggressively flirt. The night ended with the cab driver pretending he didn't owe us one kuai: 12 cents. We waited until he gave it to us. The 3rd person today trying to screw us out of a little money.