I felt like my head was full of wool instead of brains, but we went slow and it was a fine lesson. Also AL gave me some Chinese decongestant. There are no American made decongestants here, according to AL. The only American one they have is Tylenol. (Advil was a totally unknown to her, let alone Aleve.) I didn't take it until after the lesson because I thought it might make me sleepy.
Originally I intended to take a taxi home, but I was so hungry, and the man outside the North Gate was selling sweet potatoes that looked so delicious… I had to buy one and eat it right away. It was exactly what I felt like eating. I have learned how to pick out the very best and sweetest ones now. This one almost tasted like roses. Don't ask me how a sweet potato can taste like roses, but it did. As I ate it, I had to walk somewhere, so I walked over to the bus stop. On the pedestrian sky-bridge there was another sweet potato seller. Next to him was a seller of DVDs. The corners of the DVDs were weighted down by raw sweet potatoes. Somehow I thought that was glorious.
In a relaxed way, I took the bus home. The decongestant was making me powerfully sleeping and I went to sleep not very many minutes after coming in the door. I slept the afternoon away, interspersed with a few bits of work.
At 5, I was to meet HJ and go to the long-awaiting combined birthday party. HJ had had some bad news the day before, and unfortunately I was the messenger of it. The GRE scores were available by phone, but it such a slurred and mechanical recorded voice that she couldn't understand what it said. So I called for her and got the scores for sure. Possibly she couldn't understand what they said because she didn't want to. They weren't so good. She was gravely disappointed, and I was very sad for her.
In any case, she had to send one of her friends, Rabbit, to meet me. The wind was still blowing very fierce and we stood on opposite sides of the southwest gate for some time, not recognizing each other under all the hoods and hats and gloves and things. Then we waited a short while for Rabbit's boyfriend, who showed up with a bag of very special-looking small oranges. We went and collected HJ, who was in the process of sending out her application via DHL--but without any hope at all, she said.
We walked to the restaurant. HJ linked arms with me and I put my gloved hand over her tiny cold hand. Girls walk hand and hand, arm in arm here without it meaning they are gay. I find it rather grand. But HJ was all full of sadness. I tried suggesting that standardized scores don't mean as much as they used to--a lot of departments don't really believe in them. But I am not very good at cheering people up even in English.
Dinner for 14. I was pleased to discover that the restaurant we were going to was right next door to the building where I live! We had a private room. A lot of restaurants here have those. Professor ZM, my Song dynasty literature teacher, was there already. I was a "surprise guest." He was surprised all right! ZM had only told him that she was bringing one of his fen-se (the unique Chinese adaptation of the English word "fan" or "fans").
I'm not sure he was exactly happy to see me, but he was pleasant. I did my best to win him over by being one of the four or five at the table who were willing to drink baijiu, some kind of hard alcohol. ZM is a great drinker. They brought in a big live fish in a plastic box (no water) for ZM to inspect. I was upset. It flopped around and had a big mouth and long whiskers. Later it appeared in a clay pot, "swimming" in red broth. It tasted deliciously fresh. I decided I consider it more sad and immoral to eat fish than to eat cows. Other things I ate:
--a kind of weird pickled root that had a strong, strange taste. ZM watched me very closely while I ate it and looked skeptical when I said it was good. Actually, it really wasn't too bad. Just weird.
--millet tofu. It was, as far as I could tell, millet that was ground up and prepared like tofu. It was yellow and interesting.
--the head of a goose. Well, half the head of a goose. This includes its brain, its jaw muscle, the chewy gristle around its eyeball (but no eyeball), and the skin around its beak and cheeks. If I didn't think too much about what I was eating, it tasted--well, not awful. Brain tastes a little like liver. The only think I really didn't like was the skin. Not much meat on a goose head, and it was something of a puzzle to me why people want to eat them. Conclusion: adolescent gross-out appeal.
--birthday noodles, for the first time. I had read in novels about Chinese eating birthday noodles (because they're long, which corresponds to long life) but I'd never eaten any myself. They were bland.
And many other things of course. Only one downside as far as banquets are concerned, I have discovered. For the second time this week, I was mocked for my poor chopstick use. I guess that at banquets everyone has upper-class style leisure while eating, but not the upper-class manners to go with it!! I.e., they're bored enough to notice and comment on other people's lack of coordination. Well, I'd use them better if I could darn it. At least these guys were politer than the ones at the conference banquet on my birthday. The conference gals really made me feel very offended. Though maybe it's because I was in a worse mood then.
Shades of Andrew H.'s fifth birthday party. I, also in kindergarten, had heard a rumor: at the party there would be a chopstick using contest, something about picking up peanuts or peas or something. Andrew H. was half-Japanese and the only other non-white kid in my whole class (I mean, aside from me). I remember with what paroxysms of anxiety and fascination I awaited that party. But in the end I don't think that after all there was a chopstick contest. I really can't remember. I only remember my parents laughing about it. Oh parents, why didn't you even teach me to use chopsticks correctly!?
...Anyway, back to this party. There were games of a particularly amusing kind. I participated too, even I, though very ashamed of my lack of language skills. I did my best. The games were mostly the kind where describing them would ruin it for you and you can only ever play once, so I'll refrain. But there was lots of laughing.
Except from HJ, who got sadder and sadder and finally disappeared very abruptly. One of her roommates, Ducky, went after her and came back some time later, reporting that she had seen her home. Poor HJ. And poor me. I fended for myself as best I could in my first-ever game of Mafia, and conducted in Chinese no less!
If you've never played Mafia, this won't make a lot of sense to you unless I go through the rules (as far as I understand them, having it only explained to me in Chinese.) Basically, everyone receives a secret identity: two police, two killers, one judge, and everyone else ordinary people. Each round is divided into day and night. During the night, everyone closes their eyes except the judge. The killers are allowed to open their eyes and decide on one person to kill, which decision is indicated to the judge. Then they close their eyes and the policemen allowed to decide on one person to accuse. (Naturally the goal of the policemen is to accuse the killers and the goal of the killers is to kill the policemen.) Then it is day. Everyone opens their eyes and the judge says who is dead and whether the accusation was correct. Everyone then debates vociferously and votes on a second accusation. Whoever is "voted out" also dies. As long as there is at least one killer and at least one policeman remaining, it becomes night again and there is another round.
Here's the thing: I drew the lot of killer. The other killer and one of the policemen were eliminated in the first round.
Now you'd think that it sounds like just a silly game, but it was actually a terrifically tense feeling being the secret killer and trying to pretend you're innocent. The debate was quite heated, full of all different kinds of arguments and reasonings and not shy in the slightest. If only they'd use that kind of spirit in actual seminar classes, they'd get a lot better education. I don't get it at all. But anyway, there I was the odd man out because I had no way of joining such fluent debate, and also a secret murderer as well! At first, it was the perfect crime because no one would be so gauche as to accuse the sole foreigner in their midst. But later, as the number of people shrank, it got very much harder. I couldn't make convincing arguments against other people, and I couldn't analyze the debate well enough to guess who the other policeman might be. Although, interestingly, I did point the finger at the actual policemen during the voting one time. But that's only because I thought I might be able to get other people to think she was the killer, not because I actually thought she was the policeman… and I missed my chance to kill her. So I lost, executed by a jury of my peers, after being ordered to defend myself and not being able to do it convincingly! But it was close. And I had the policeman totally fooled. It was only in debate that I couldn't hold my own.
What a game! I was so incredibly tense! It didn't help that they all addressed me throughout not by name (they find my name weird) but as "the international person."
Afterwards, I apologized as gracefully as I could for killing so many Chinese people. They thought that was funny but it didn't wholly dissolve the peculiar ethnic tension. I also redeemed myself by being the only person to have a camera. I put it up for grabs, which was appreciated. Below are some pictures, most of which were not taken by me.
The birthday cake, beautiful but not tasty. It was a combined birthday party for six people with birthdays around the same time, myself included.
Birthday people (with pink crowns) plus a few. I'm the enormous one. Sometimes I get tired of being huge. In the States I am maybe a little plump, but about average. Here I'm...well, by comparison...
Group shot.
Me with cake smeared on my face because that was the fate of all the birthday people.
Me with ZM.
Boyfriend and girlfriend sharing a chocolate stick.
Ah sigh... less than two weeks before my own boyfriend gets here and then he and I can be enormous together. People will stop and stare at us on the streets. But at least we'll be together again!
When we went out of the restaurant, it was bitter cold and the wind was intense. I was tipsy from all the baijiu but not very tipsy. Just enough to feel full of feelings. Worry about HJ, regret for the year of her life that will be "lost" if she fails to get into grad school because of GRE scores. Pleasure at the party and the interesting experiences and good food. Chagrin at making word mistakes and at the feeling of being an outsider. Loneliness because I wasn't going back to a jolly dorm. Relief because I was going back to my peaceful studio. Thoughts about the fish and the goose and all the animals that died for us tonight. Thoughts about the coldness of the big bright moon.
This party did not make me sad the way expat parties do. I was by no means wasting my time. I was living the dream--getting the real goods--hanging out with people who were way above me as far as cultural level is concerned. In this culture anyway. But it made me sad because I still have a long way to go before I would really fit in, in this kind of setting. If I ever could.
We saw ZM into his taxi and the rest of us walked back. I'm not sure how the bill had been divided up, but I didn't get to pay any of it. What could I do? I resolved to make prints of the photos as a small return for their generosity. That would be good, right?
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