Remembering February: A final encounter

I met a young man on the bus back to Guilin from Yangshuo. I found myself looking in his direction and smiling. He smiled back and I worried that he had taken my accidental smile the wrong way and perhaps thought I was another loose foreign woman. But I was wrong. The baby in the seat behind me started crying and he smiled at him too. In fact, he used this excuse as a nice way to move into the open aisle seat next to me and in front of the crying child. We started talking after it seemed that nothing could satisfy the little one.

He was from Yangshuo, grew up there, and graduated from elementary school--no more no less. His parents were poor farmers. He was just about my age. He was going into Guilin to have fun for a night and then look for a job the next day. He asked my plans--I told him I was leaving for Beijing in the morning, but tonight, I had no plans. He told me he could take me around to see things in Guilin. I figured, why not? As long as we walked and were near many people (which it was almost impossible not to do in China) I could always find my way back to the hostel.

He wondered at my independence and fearlessness in a strange place. He asked me, what would I do if I lost the way? I told him I would ask someone. He asked, aren't you afraid? I said no. He told me there were many bad people in these places, in the city. I told him I knew. (Meanwhile the baby behind us had quieted.)

So it was decided. He walked me to the hostel (although he seemed afraid to actually go inside--he waited for me at the bottom of the stairs) and I dropped of my stuff. And we started out up the street I had walked along by myself a number of days earlier.

Guilin is a much bigger city than I expected when hearing about the place. Foreigners hear all about the mountains surrounding the city, but when you get there, to the center of the city all you can see is the tips of the surrounding hills and the buildings and shopping centers and street vendors. It's a big city. At night, the touristy spots are lit up with bright almost christmas like lights (This is a common phenomenon in China at toursit sites...apparently it is in Korea too, cause I saw it there also.) The lights will outline the river edge, the trees, the fence, the bridges, the famous pagodas. There will be spotlights meanwhile lighting up the trees and various parts of the scenery. I suppose it is meant to be romantic, but it seems a little overdone to jadded American eyes. It's just a little too Disney.

We stopped at one spot and he asked if I wanted to take a picture of the lit-up pagodas, which represented the sun and moon in the middle of a small pond. I told him I had lost my camera. He exclaimed how horrible that was, being in all these beautiful sites. (Although I had been having my friends take pictures for me for all those days I was visiting with a Chinese friend in Nanning and with Beth in Yangshuo.) So I said, sort of joking, but I can draw them. I have my notebook. So he encouraged me. Sit and draw. Don't forget. So I sat there and tried to draw the pagodas with pen. Meanwhile a bunch of young Chinese tourists came up to me and started talking about me in Chinese. I replied to them when they asked each other what I was doing. They were surprised at my Mandarin and started asking me more questions. Soon I was nervous and couldn't get any drawing done with them continually watching me draw. So I asked my new friend if he was ready to go. They all exclaimed, "Can you speak the Guilin dialect too?" I said "no." He was from Yangshuo anyway, which probably had a different accent. And I had just spoken Mandarin to him.
So my new friend brought me to a quieter place but made me finish drawing the temples. He told me it would be a pity if I started and didn't finish. So I did. But I just finished one of the temples, before I got impatient and swore I would bring a camera in the future so I wouldn't have to prove I could use other, more tedious methods of recording places next time.

I asked the young man where he would stay the night. He said he would stay at an internet bar. It was cheaper that way, he explained. Plus he could play on the computer if he wanted or sleep if he wanted. (He said he couldn't write, but he could type with pinyin.)

We walked around a park I had been walking around for a while. I told him I had come to this park by myself on Valentines day. He asked if I had someone (I believe that was literally what he asked if there was a ren--a person). I told him no, a boyfriend of a long time and I had just recently broken up. I explained that the problem was distance. He said that he too had just recently broken up with a girl he had been with for a long time. I asked him why and he said, because his family was poor, he had no job and no money, and he was fat, so she and her family disapproved. I told him the fat part was not true (because it sure didn't seem to be--he was slender...although he still insisted on not eating dinner that night because he said he was on a diet), but I couldn't say anything about the other things. My reasons for ending a relationship were thousands of miles away from his reasons--in culture, in logic and in freedom. There was nothing I knew how to say to comfort. Sometimes things just are in China. 没办法。(there's no way) and as an ordinary Chinese, you just have to accept them. 将就，将就。

He left me at the hostel with his QQ number and his e-mail address and told me if I came back to Yangshuo and let him know. He would give me a real tour of the countryside. I wondered why I hadn't met him at the beginning of my time in Guilin and Yangshuo. But he left the hostel so quickly after leaving the numbers, I couldn't even think to wish him good luck. He seemed really out of place in that hostel of hip Chinese and foreigners.