Dee's house

I was hypnotized by the Chinese characters and started to see ancient sculpture in them. I decided to study and learn at least a few hundred of them. The second one on the left on this bottle of soy sauce is meant to be a man with his arms held out wide, which means "big", and then the horizontal line over his head is the sky. Conceptually, what is above "big"? The new character means "heaven."

Kerri liked 4-star hotels, while I liked $15 hovels. A free nice hotel was a good compromise. This is why we travel well together. She gets me to spend a little and I get her to spend a little less.

In addition to being a high school art teacher, Dee’s husband painted and drew wonderful faces, but with Dee’s pressure and aid, ShuShu had put aside his art this summer and opened a business. She said he was happy because he was so busy now with the new business, manufacturing cardboard boxes. Dee got a wealthy man she used to date to provide certain things for ShuShu, and thankfully ShuShu didn't know they used to date. She and this man were just friends now and she was proud that they didn’t "go to hotels" together, but she did tell us with an innocent laugh that she would still “help him” sometimes, and didn’t elaborate. She set up luncheons with ShuShu with business experts, introducing everyone with jokes and compliments, and ShuShu did his best to make conversation. I thought Dee was wonderful, but it was kind of painful to watch her remake her husband. I suggested that perhaps she should be the businessperson, since it suited her, but she said she liked her job as a schoolteacher. We moved in with them and slept on the floor in the room that used to be ShuShu’s art studio, while he went off to try and boss around four tanned guys without shirts lifting stacks of cardboard, in a warehouse provided by hard-drinking Mr. Fan.





My new brother ShuShu gave me his last name, “Se” and added for my first name words that meant I loved his city, so he introduced me at gatherings as “Se Ai Hua,” always leading to laughter and appreciative nods. People would call me that, and I wouldn’t know they were talking to me, so I went back to using what my Chinese teacher in high school had called me: Du Jie Ming. Kerri finally gave up correcting people’s pronunciation of her name after what I felt were a couple enjoyable lectures from me, and let them call her “Ky-lee.” I remember for years going with a group of friends over to my friend Helen's house, and her Chinese mom would be like, "Hi Kevin, hi Frank, hi Carolyn," and then just nod at me. Finally I said, "Does your mom not like me?" Helen said, "She does--she just can't pronounce your name." Now I am tight with the mom, because I eat all her food, even the brown soup called "hong" that she used to make Helen drink as punishment.

Kerri and were left to fend for ourselves for lunch, and we needed the practice. We never got to sit with the rest of the people when we ate with the big groups, always walking through crowded restaurants down a hall into a private room, but now we were back to being regular folks. I asked the waiters for water. They had no idea what I meant. While I fumbled, Kerri looked up the word, “shuay.” I said it in every tone I could. No luck. “Not eat; drink,” I said. They offered beer, then coffee. “Water. Bot-tle of water,” I said, like a fool.
“I don't understand,” he said in Chinese.
I laughed cause I didn't know what else to do.
“Water,” I said. “Fresh, clean, pure water.” Kerri laughed at how ridiculous I had gotten.
“Ah, pure water,” he said, and left to get it.

The taxi driver sat in a personal cage made of clear plastic. I assumed it was meant to protect him from us punching him, but it also made for a tiny climate zone where he horded all the air conditioning. We sweat on the bamboo beads strung together over the cushions in the back seat. The hairy white guy on the streetcorner made me mad, stealing our thunder as the foreigners in town. We drove by a person on the ground, crumpled over a bent bike. The accidental poetry of mistranslations was everywhere: a huge poster advertisement with a woman in a languorous bed pose, saying "weave your life." The theme song from“Titanic” came on again, though it had been so many years since the movie. I wondered if that movie were so popular among young Chinese people because the idea of rebelling against parental pressure to marry the mean rich guy—and marrying for love instead—really resonated here.


At the #1 department store with Dee, Kerri didn't appreciate how the woman kept pushing her to buy anti-wrinkle cream. Women are obsessed with not getting the tans of farmers and streetsweepers, and therefore carry umbrellas for the sun and cover every inch of their bodies as they drive their rechargeable mopeds and bicycles. Dee agreed that Kerri was right to give an angry look to the woman in the new and well air-conditioned Walmart that tried to cut her in line, and not to let her do so. Kerri was racked with guilt for going there, since her cousin was in the process of suing this big corporation for doing something very wrong. They had open piles of dried shrimp in there, with the familiar yellow smiley face underneath. Scores of people sat on the stairs down into the Walmart, creating a nice welcoming community, just to get some AC. I loved the park in the middle of the small city where familes hung out, kids rollerbladed, and people sat on their bikes and watched free outdoor movies. That's how you run a city.



I took the 3 of us to lunch for $2.50 total. That's what I like, and the green beans and garlic were better than anything at the big places. These two talked about sex constantly, which I found funny, with Dee saying in her sweet voice how she was inexperienced, but Kerri had a Master's degree in this subject. Kerri told me she'd shared with Dee certain dimensions of her former lovers, and Dee had said the local men weren't even close. The metric system could be to blame though. My aunt who visited China was startled to be asked how many kilos she weighed, but me, I simply had no idea how many I weighed.

Later that night, after a visit to an incense-filled temple, I lost at ping pong again, but I was better. Either their English numbers aren't that good, or they cheat, because the one game I did beat Dee, I was up 7-3 and she was like, “6-5” and then Mr. Fan's son did the same thing when I played him. I deferred each time to their memory of it, but made sure I won the games, cause I didn't want that taste in my mouth. Maybe winning is everything here, or maybe not being a sucker is everything. Dee said I should tell the boy he had to study, cause he failed the test to get into Dee's school, and the dad had to pay 60,000 yuan to get him in.



I came in and Kerri was meditating, or was at least in a lotus-like pose. I went on fantasy baseball to read my own trashtalk. Kerri’s computer kept shutting down for no reason. She cursed, awoke from her trance, and moved it around angrily, restarting it and putting on a song to relax herself again. The music seemed familiar.
“Is this the Twin Peaks soundtrack?” I said.
“Yeah. It's the "Pure Moods" album,” she said.
“That's the one that has "The Exorcist" theme song on it.” It's true, it did. I started laughing. “What mood do they want us to be in?" I went on. "Imagine at the temple today if while people were praying you heard Linda Blair's voice saying, ‘Fuck your mother!’ How relaxing is that?”
“There's something wrong with you,” said Kerri.
“With me?!”