Journeys to small villages

(Bamboo forest)

Crystal Light is a beer here, and not a tangy drink with vitamins.

We drove an hour to the small village where ShuShu had grown up. The house had 4 floors and was filled with people of every age. ShuShu’s father had homebrew grain alcohol in a jar, and shared it with me as an honor. It could indeed make paint bubble off of the hood of your car. There was no corkscrew for the red wine we brought, so his mom pushed the cork down with a chopstick. ShuShu’s dad cheered when I accepted a third glass. Kerri said she'd hold my hair back if I threw up, which I hadn't done for any reason since '92.


(With the two fathers-in-law)




I told Shushu I was worried we had kept him up last night but he said no, he “slept like a pig.”

It was a great night in the vlillage, as we ate a huge feast, and then walked around the village, where everyone was outside dancing and talking because of the heat. I spun Dee repeatedly, doing a slight salsa in front of her husband’s whole village as he looked on and laughed.





Go to work, liver, and get this antifreeze out of my body, I thought as we drove back to Jinhua. The AC was on with the windows open, and nobody cared. The warm night air passed my cheek like liquid, and Dee had hers open too. We went to the ping pong hall, where all the men had their shirts off. Two black men from the Sudan were there playing, the first I’d seen in China. I said hello, and ended up playing them after Dee killed me. She slammed the ball past me repeatedly, and then gave a sweet laugh. She took it easy on ShuShu, I noticed.

The following day, we went to Dee’s small village in the mountains of Longyou, surrounded by bamboo forests and rice paddies. The men all wore golf shirts there, and we hiked up between terraced fields. 3 little boys made a sort of jigsaw puzzle out of little rocks. Dee asked us to pick long green peppers, orange cucumbers and unripe cherries to bring back to Jinhua. Kerri sat in the old shady house and fanned herself while we picked. When we left, she thought she'd stepped in something, and bent down to wipe it off with her big American behind towards the gathered village people just behind. “Doll,” I said. “You're mooning Dee's whole family.” She straightened up.
I worried about tics and poison ivy. A very tan man in tight purple underwear carried water to a field.

In the town, Dee shoved 100 yuan note into the armpit of a baby in her aunt's arms. The woman made a show of giving it back, but Dee shoved it back in. Kerri and I gave the mom 200 yuan of 'lucky money' at Dee's suggestion, in a red envelope. City folk have more cash. Dee was taking out a huge loan so her mom could buy a 2nd place in Longyou.


Her mom made us almond cookies that I kept eating. Good heavens they were good.





(Rice paddies)






(Old bachelor who knew Dee since infancy)




We ate on the street, as the sun set. A woman brought over her baby to meet Kerri and the little infant with the Mohawk started screaming.

“I made a baby cry today,” Kerri moaned, on the car ride home.
“You're a little scary,” I confirmed.
“Am I?” she said.
“No, not usually,” I said. “I'm not scared of you. Except that time you ran at me naked trying to puke when I was on the toilet.”
“Do you have to remind me?” she said.
“How the mighty have fallen.”
“I know,” she said. “How hard the mighty fall.”


Back in Jinhua, Dee's father and I watched TV in Chinese together. When we stopped trying to talk and understand each other, we enjoyed each other's company. Neither spoke the other's language, but we liked each other clearly. I sat on the couch in front of the fan, and he refilled my green tea every ten minutes. I got maybe 5 percent of what was said on TV, but I enjoyed the feeling of serious study of this language. I got Bomi to agree to teach me more characters tomorrow. For all the talk of Chinese censorship, there are some things they show that we don't. A man had jumped to his death from his apartment, a suicide, and the TV news showed many views of his skinny body face down, then his bloody face when they turned him over and carried him away, then close-ups of the bloody splotch on the sidewalk.

As in the Dominican Republic, the toilets in Jinhua couldn't handle toilet paper, so you had to toss it in the trash. Kerri would wrap hers in a cloak of toilet paper, and we consequently ran out. You have to fill a bucket of water and pour it to flush the toilet, but then again, they did have Head and Shoulders. Dee had athlete's foot, easy to diagnose, which I told Kerri, to make her as uncomfortable in the shower as I was. It wasn’t necessary. Kerri was bothered by someone's stained, streakmarked undies hanging in the shower.
“The bathroom skeeves me out, said Kerri. “Plus I'm sweating like a pig.”
“You're wearing two shirts,” I said. “It's just me. We’re not going out. Take off the outer shirt.”
“You're supposed to be supportive,” she said.
“You can't complain about the heat, while wearing two shirts. That's my limit.”
“You layer because it's cooler,” she said.
"I have never heard you say a stupider thing. That is blatantly wrong.”
“I was just trying to justify it so you would shut up,” she said. “I'm going to the other room to change.”
“Changing is easy. One arm then the other.”
She left and returned.
“Comfortable now?” I said. “You look it.”
“I might be.”
“Your winter wear properly put away?” I said.
“It was a linen shirt. Over a tanktop.”
“That was not a tanktop,” I said.
She laughed. “Okay, it came to here.” Halfway down her arm.
“The shit you try to pull with me,” I said. She laughed, admitting it. “I know what a tanktop is," I said.
“I'm still hot,” she said.
“You have a sheet on your legs!” I said. “Heat escapes if you let it. Are you aware of that physical law?”
“It's comfortable,” she said.
“The threadcount, you mean? Put one corner on the side of your leg so you can experience the feeling, but do not cover your legs.”
“I'm gonna brush and floss in here,” she said. “Is that gonna gross you out?”
“It's fine. You'll have to spit though,” I said.
“I'll spit into the trash,” she said.
“What? You're gonna have to rinse though.”
“I'm not going to rinse,” she said.
“What?” I said. “You have to stop being afraid of the bathroom.”
“I am though!”
She spat in the trash. I groaned and she burst out laughing. Then, she simply put her toothbrush away.
“A little chalky,” she said. “It's a little chalky, I'm not gonna lie. It's kind of like when you have sand between your teeth.”