Tag: china

Socks

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I met my wife in September 2008, at Wuhan University of Science and Engineering, now Wuhan Textile University, not to be confused with Wuhan University or anything close to prestige.

Our relationship took time to develop. She had never dated anyone before; she’d never even kissed a boy.

That may seem odd to see in a twenty-seven year old woman. It certainly struck me as odd, and the first time I kissed her, she didn’t know how to react. The product of a sexually sheltered upbringing. As another teacher put it, people in their twenties going on twelve.

So our relationship progressed slowly, and after a city-wide foreign teachers’ banquet, we were official: she put the check in the box labeled Yes and had a friend pass the note back to me in class. We’ve been going steady ever since.

We had different ideas about showing one’s love, and early on actions did not strike me the way they strike me now, six years on, when I’ve moved from an easygoing lifestyle in an “exotic” place to the classic American model: job, car, house. Debt. Everything that makes the American Dream the most numbing sleep.

She showed her love for me in her own way; she checked under my fingernails for nicotine stains to make sure I wasn’t smoking. Any ailment called for a solid dose of warm water, and if that failed, then you graduated to the emergency treatment: IV. I needed the IV treatment the morning after a long night, in which I’d tested out a brilliant idea: mixing baijiu with Sprite to mute the nasty taste. Unfortunately, my idea worked.

But it’s socks that stand out to me now, typing this at a broken table, years removed from who I was and what I knew, the memories no less fresh.

I came to China with the same socks I’d been wearing for at least a year, and during one of our South Lake walks I mentioned that I had a hole in my socks; my big toe could fit right through.

She’d didn’t acknowledge this, far as I can remember, but the next day when we met up for dinner, she had something for me.

A package of socks.

She told me she hoped it was the right size.

Two Little Red King Sample Chapters

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Two sample chapters from the novel Little Red King are now available. The first deals with John’s introduction to expat nightlife. It’s found here.

The second is LRK’s first real chapter, following The Seven Year Laowai 1. It’s found here.

Set in 2008 Wuhan, Little Red King is more or less about the doomed romance between a new foreign teacher and a Chinese graduate student. The never-sent query is here (or the post right below this one), and the structure of the book goes 7YL1, Ch 1, 7YL2, Ch 2…and so on, with the 7YL departing midway through while the main story takes over and returning at the end to help tie everything together.

More sample chapters are coming. The next one will be about a bad baijiu hangover, based on a true story of a certain former expat who had the bright idea of mixing Sprite with ricewine, to mute the taste. Unfortunately, it worked.

I said it in a Facebook message and I’ll say it here and I’ll say it again and again: I want Little Red King to be a fucking gut punch. So, while things will start out innocent enough, keep in mind this is a doomed romance. I want the sense of doom to set in, and I want it to set in quickly. I want this story to linger in people’s heads for years.

I want a lot of things. Right now, what I want most is for people to read the damn thing.

So feel free to have a look, and yes, I am open to feedback. Some four to five years on, the book remains a work in progress, though less of a work in progress than last time. So what do we call that?

Progress?

Tribute to the Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place

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I’m no Tom Carter, I haven’t even traveled half of China, let alone the whole place, but I won’t let that stop me from saying the following:

I know where the best Muslim noodles were in China.

Wuhan.

WUSE’s backstreet, specifically, and I use ‘were’ because it’s not there anymore. You IMAG1141understand. Things change. WUSE went from a xueyuan to a daxue, and WUSE’s backstreet went from home to the best Muslim noodles in China to rubble, to make way for highrise apartments. Good. If there’s one thing China lacks, it’s overpriced real estate.

Part of my introduction to China was a trip to the Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place. Did the restaurant have an actual name, I hear someone in the peanut gallery asking…why yes, I’m sure it did, but none of us knew it. They were Muslim. They made noodles. The noodles kicked ass.

Hence the name. It’s descriptive, if nothing else.

But what exactly do I mean by Muslim noodles? Muslim noodles, or Uyghur noodles, were made outside, twisted and swung with an occasional hard slap on the table, just to keep you on your toes. Then they took the noodles to the back, to cook, add spices.

Add drugs.

That’s what my wife said: they put drugs in the food. At first, I dismissed this — stereotypes die hard in China — but after a while, I wasn’t sure.

And I didn’t care.

Drugs? Okay. Who cares? Boil it in liquid crack, just keep em coming. Breakfast lunch dinner and second breakfast second lunch midnight snack…

I introduced new foreign teachers to the place. For initiates, the food there had a peculiar side-effect that physicians refer to as Immediate Bowel Release, which provided another sort of introduction to China.

The Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place.

Gateway to the good life in the Middle Kingdom.

A backstreet three years ago, rubble today, highrises any day now. Well, Kick-Ass Muslim Noodle Place, it’s a pity I wasn’t around to say goodbye.

Next time I come to China, I hope the highrises are finished. I hope they’re populated.

I plan on lighting some firecrackers in your memory.

The Welcome back to China but not for good post

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I didn’t resist the idea of doing an “I’m back” post so much as I resisted making a big deal of it. Just as it doesn’t matter that so-and-so is leaving China, it’s not too important that so-and-so is coming back. If you think about it, that’s what we do. We come, we leave. We come back.

And we write about it.

Sometimes we produce interesting, original content while other times we produce irelevant bullshit for our 500-post a day RSS fuckfeeds. What we have in common is an interest in China, and a desire to share our interest with others.

Returned expat can’t shut up about China? Well, what of it? The big problem with readjusting to life in America is that not many people understand you. You can talk about the wonderful things you saw, the great experiences you had, you can try to make them understand, but without a common base, more often than not the people you’re talking to aren’t listening. They’re doing what most people do.

Waiting for their turn to talk.

Other though, others have questions. Wait, you actually lived over there? Get ready to be considered an expert. Yes, I can speak some Chinese. No, I am not fluent. Yes, you can eat dog and cat but you have to go to special places to do it, and no, everyone doesn’t do it all the time.

My students asked me, “Why do you come to China?”

My coworkers asked me, “Why did you go to China?”

And people now ask me, “Why did you come back?”

I’ll try to answer: my wife’s parents run a store in a small town. Her father gets up early to join the others in the farmer’s market, selling vegetables and meat. Her mother runs the store until he gets back, around lunchtime. Her mother will do manual labor; working all day, for maybe, 100 RMB.

Now, a couple weeks ago I tried to buy coffee. No real coffee here, it’s back to that gourmet Nescafe in a can. We went up to the cashier and I had my 100 RMB bill out, ready to pay.

My mother-in-law came over and handed the cashier a smaller bill. She said, “Take mine. You don’t have to give back so much change.”

Not a good answer. I wasn’t good at any of those questions, and not much has changed. Let’s leave it at this: I came back.

And I wrote about it.

An “I’m back post then? No. More like an attempt to summarize in a few hundred words what would take thousands. So let’s stick with seven:

It feels fucking great to be back.