by Our Man Undercover

Sanlitun. A freak show of pimps, players and hustlers. A sad, mad press of flower girls and mendicants. A carnival of carnality. Night after night I trudge home along Beijing's infamous Bar Street, weaving my way through the besotted, the benighted, and the gaudily bedizened, soaking in the noise and confusion of that human zoo, trying to preserve some semblance of sanity.
Sanlitun. A visual and sensual feast, if you keep your sense of irony. A late spring afternoon, in front of Public Space: Cappuccino-sipping model, dressed to the nines sits in a plastic patio chair, cell phone pressed to her ear, trying to talk her friend into eyelid surgery. Behind her, a corpulent European woman flips through a stack of pirated CDs, deaf to the plaintive imploring of the rag-clad beggar who stands before her. Some rockers I know drinking Yanjing draughts, bullshitting with a screenwriter and a couple of Scandinavian girls. Three close-cropped guys in shirtsleeves smoking 555's play cards with a heavily painted Cantonese woman with five-inch platform shoes -- mine-clearing shoes, I call them. Across the street, shoppers from five dozen nations saunter past clothing stalls, hunting for bargains on name-brand knock-offs, dodging the desperate VCD peddlars and rows of fruit carts. A rare homeostasis, not likely to last. A slow-moving line of cabs clogs the narrow street, honking pointlessly. It's hot out, and tempers boil over quickly. 
And this is where I live. Right smack in the middle of the goddamn Sanlitun Bar Street. Living behind bars. 
I've lived here for months now, but still I wake up every morning in a state of semi-schizophrenic confusion. My bedroom overlooks the chaotic, decadent strip, while my living room faces a middle school playground. Day after day I'm surrounded by the noises of honking taxis on one side, and the giddy laughter and screeches of school children playing on the other. So much for zoning laws. Night time brings the raucous din of local bar cover bands playing their torturous renditions of that freakin' Titanic song. For the love of God, please make it stop! 
And more honking. 
At times it seems a bit much -- wading through the "lady bar" xiaojies beckoning you to some sleazy nightclub-cum-brothel, packs of prepubescent flower girls way, way past their bedtime, and various drunken louts who eye me belligerently. Making my way home through all this every night can get old fast. But living in the middle of Sanlitun has its advantages: Chiefly, being able to waltz upstairs after a night of hard drinking and to roll out of bed for that life-restoring cup of coffee the next morning. 
But ultimately what's most interesting is the never-ending stream of drama -- comedy, tragedy, and farce -- that comes with living in Beijing's nuttiest neighborhood. Sure there's the usual offerings of drunken revelry, projectile vomiting, bar brawls, and primitive courtship ritual that one usually associates with such environments. But it's those "special moments"-- the ones so utterly surreal, they defy all logic -- that really make the difference between frequenting the bar street and actually living here. 
Like the bizarre scene to which I was witness last Friday night... 

Sanlitun Diaries: Part 2
Battle for the Bottom Rung 

Friday night, late: It must have been just after 1:30 and I was already done drinking for the night. There had been a show at the Live House 17, a stifling, shoebox-sized sweat lodge on the Sanlitun South Bar Street. The Anarchy Jerks spewed their brand of punkish angst for an appreciative crowd of body-pierced miscreants. I saw only two other people in the crowd with black hair; we were even outnumbered by the green haired contingent. 
I met up with some friends at The Loft for a bit, but I didn't feel like dancing and bailed after a couple of beers. I didn't feel like going home yet, so I walked past my place, and found myself wandering down to the 24 Hour Store at the north end of the Bar Street for a fix of Bud's Ice Cream. 
As I passed one of the many darkened hutongs on the way to the store, I heard a sudden flurry of scampering feet followed by a series of loud grunts, squeals, and cursing. Peering down into the far end of the alley, silhouetted against a bare bulb in a doorway I saw a mass of scampering shadows coming towards me. As the mob moved closer, I saw a group of flower girls being chased down and beaten by three very angry panhandlers. Like a violent movie scene, this shocking spectacle was as disturbing as it was surreal. Some innate sense of morbid curiosity kept me there rooted to the spot. I stood and stared transfixed as this mini-drama unfolded before my eyes. It was all happening so fast, I could barely process what was happening in my mind, let alone move. 
"WAP!" The sound of fist on flesh reverberated clearly in the night as one of the beggars caught hold of a girl that couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen. "WAP! WAP!" The blows rained down with all the strength the beggar could muster. The terrified girl responded with a string of obscenities as she squirmed about trying to escape the enraged beggar's clutches. An equally wizened old woman hovered nearby menacingly waving a cane in the air as she screamed at the child in a shrill banshee voice. Meanwhile the rest of the flower girls were dancing around the dueling duo intermittently taking swings at the old beggar and his partner, and desperately trying to pull the little girl out of harm's way. The frenzied melee careened from one side of the hutong to the other until the combatants suddenly realized they had drawn quite an audience - several sportin' girls, a handful of cab drivers, and me. While the violently disposed beggars were distracted, the flower girls managed to free their companion and scattered into the shadows, leaving the old and less fleet-footed codger and his wife screaming a trail of abuse after them. 
On witnessing this freakish scene, I felt a mix of fascinated horror and shameful amusement, and I wondered whether life here had already stripped me of some of my compassion, numbed me somehow to the plight of the marginalized, the dispossessed. That old couple couldn't have been younger than 70 and those flower-sellers were still years shy of adolescence. I tried to imagine what could have caused the ruckus. Had the girls stolen money from the beggars? Was this the opening salvo of some kind of turf war? Was there really so little room to share on the bottom rung of the Beijing ladder? 
The sportin' girls who work that section returned to their posts at curbside and stood around chatting with the cabbies. Some lanky International School kids in baggy pants were hanging out by the tables outside the 24 Hour Store. I bought my ice cream and trudged back home past the surly cab drivers, xiaojies, and half-conscious businessmen re-playing the scene in my head. The beggars and flower girls were nowhere in sight. 
"Hallo! Lady bar?" 
My thoughts were suddenly distracted by the familiar sound of those ever-present "xiaojie hustlers" trying to attract customers. Clutching my bag of melting ice cream, I shot the bored looking xiaojie an annoyed glare as I rounded the corner to my house. 
Another night in Sanlitun. Business as usual. 

Sanlitun Diaries: Part 3
The Rules of Engagement

Etiquette. Ritual. Accepted practice. You absorb it quickly in Beijing, learn to apply it to everyday transactions. Someone lights your cigarette and you tap his hand gently twice to let him know it's lit, to thank him. At the toll booth on the Airport Expressway, you hold your 15 kuai between the index and middle fingers so you can take the receipt the attendant hands you between thumb and forefinger: beautiful efficiency, no need to come to a complete stop. Someone pours you tea and you thank him by rapping the table lightly with a finger or two -- a Southern thing that's made its way north. Drinking a toast, you clink glasses with the rim of yours lower than your better's to show respect. I have these down cold. Etiquette, ritual, accepted practice. 
Here on Sanlitun, all manner of transactions -- legal and otherwise -- are regularly conducted, and a protocol for each of them has spontaneously evolved. How to bargain for fake Levi's. How to accost a working girl. How to decline when accosted. How to buy pirated disks. 
Take this last one. For this one, I do know the drill. You buy a drink at the establishment playing host to the vendor. The vendor rotates five-inch stacks of disks among his browsing customers, keeping careful track of who's seen what piles, so that they all get flipped through. The customers separate them into wheat and chaff piles that the vendor never mixes up. You keep it all low-key and inconspicuous. You don't stare at the other people buying pirated disks -- a tacit agreement like that among men browsing Times Square porn shops. 
The pirate disk market functions with incredible efficiency. One rarely encounters price differences between rival vendors. They seem able to keep mental track of what titles are moving, and the market responds to consumer preference very quickly. Expat demand for good video entertainment sustains this microeconomy, after all. So some great classic titles end up in regular Sanlitun circulation: You'll always be able to find "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now," "Midnight Cowboy." The suppliers to these vendors evidently have good Hollywood intelligence. "American Beauty" wins all these Oscars and suddenly all these Kevin Spacey movies I've never even heard of show up in the stacks. Kubrick dies and "Barry Lyndon" is available on pirated DVD the following week. 
On this particular Thursday afternoon, the bony Henanese guy I always buy from wandered past my table in Public Space, caught my glance, shook his head in apology: "Nothing new yet. Next week." I'd flipped through his stacks over the weekend. A couple of weeks earlier, I had asked him if he could get hold of "Gladiator" with Russel Crowe. I described it to him: Roman slaves fighting to the death. Next week he had "Spartacus" for me, which I obligingly purchased. It's a good movie, anyway. 
I rubbed my bleary eyes, sipped at my tepid espresso, stared blankly at the screen of my notebook. I typed a few uninspired lines, backspaced over them, opened a new window and started a letter to my sister. Dear J___, I believe I am cursed. I see the tragi-comic end in every beautifully romantic beginning. Witness The D____ Debacle, from which I'm not likely to recover. Will I never find The One? You see, I keep running into this insanely good-looking woman, but I'm worried she might be a... 
And then, pausing to choose the word, I hear her voice: 
"Ei! Wo kanyikan ni de DVD ba." Hey! I'll take a look at your DVDs. This she says to my bony Henanese friend. 
I recognize it at once. Haughty, tough, urbane, thoroughly intimidating: that Beijing bad-ass babe voice I so love. Her voice. I had hoped she'd show up here, and that's why I showed up here. I hadn't seen her come in. I glanced up: It was her all right, sitting two tables away, by herself, a three-quarter view of that gorgeous face. I immediately lost my composure -- racing pulse, dry mouth, churning stomach -- and all I could do was pretend not to see her and keep typing. Etiquette. Ritual. Accepted practice. 
So begins another tragi-comedy. Might as well get it over with. 

Sanlitun Diaries: Part 4
Classifications

Whenever the weather's warm, Sanlitun fills up with beautiful women. Afternoons they browse the clothing stalls across the street. Evenings they lounge about at the tables that line the sidewalk, playing cards or liar's dice, smoking skinny menthol cigarettes and appraising passersby. Would-be actresses, trophy wives and xiao mi's -- mistresses of fat-cats -- mix with other women who are more direct about the commercial nature of their dealings with men. 
Bar Street is also home to warring factions of ye mo -- literally "wild models." When they aren't working, which means doing model shows at discos and nightclubs around town, these Ronin models spend their days and nights haunting the bar street, trawling for a deep-pocketed da kuan or a gullible laowai. They size one another up, shooting catty glares at their rivals. Their above-average looks, towering stature and material ambitions put them a few rungs above the sportin' girls down the street, but like gold diggers everywhere their affections come at a cost. The two main ye mo factions hail from Sichuan Province and Dongbei, China's Northeast, and each group guards its Sanlitun territory jealously. The part of the street that stretches roughly from the Boys and Girls Club to Day Off belongs to the Sichuan contingent, while the Dongbei girls claim the northern section as their turf. Every once in a while tempers flare, and catty glares turn to heated words and thence, on occasion, to the clawed swipe; a new spring offensive in the ongoing Sanlitun Model Wars. 
Something told me she was different. I kept her in peripheral vision as she slowly flipped through a stack of DVDs. 
I typed: who is this with the long hair pinned up loosely cliche fantasy pulls out that pin and shakes out tresses but pinned up it accentuates that long graceful neck that dancer's neck that flawless back that tapers to waist that silk-smooth skin amply exposed by sun dress and who cares if she has no tits just look at her ankles how firm that calf and perfect the angle of approach to ankle and those wisps of hair in her armpit and that milky back of arm just plump enough and those classic north chinese features that narrow nose those full lips ruddy? no not ruddy those brownish eyes any make up no make up or very little and applied with great skill and shit now she's looking at me. 
My notebook's low battery warning beeped and I came momentarily out of reverie. Classification? This one wasn't easy to pigeon-hole. Too elegant and well-bred to be any common trollop. Besides, I had seen her trading friendly greetings with a gang of very brainy women I know -- an editor for a women's website, a record company rep, an independent film director, and a novelist who are always seen together. I suppose I could make discreet inquiries. Prada bag, possibly fake, but who can tell? Was she a model? I put her at 5'8", maybe 5'9", low end of model range. She evidently didn't have a day job. 
Lately, I had run into her with alarming frequency. 
I'd seen her in six restaurants over the last two weeks alone: At Adria, the Italian place across from the Kempinski Hotel, where my gawking gave grave offense to my dinner date. At Berena's Bistro, sitting outside. At Phrik Thai, though she left when her party couldn't be seated. At Kebab Kafe, so close I could smell her perfume even over the pungent Emmenteller cheese. At Jazz-ya, drinking sake. And the Golden Cat Dumpling Restaurant. 
She was usually with girlfriends. A big group of them were at the dumpling place. I'd seen her the last two weekends at the Jam House, once at a table of French people, carrying on in what sounded to my untrained ear like decent French, and the other time with some close-cropped Beijing guys who a friend told me were infamous performance artists. And I'd seen her afternoons, too, here on the Bar Street-- at Public Space, or sometimes up the street at Bella. She was usually by herself sipping coffee and staring blankly at the street, or speaking listlessly into a preposterously small mobile phone. 
I shut down my machine and watched her thumb through the stacks. Something caught her eye and she pulled it out and turned it over to read the blurb on the back. I read the cover - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." 
This one, I thought, is no ye mo. I began my internal incantations to summon up courage: You can do this. You're a stud. Gonna be smooth, cool, nonchalant, assured. Totally invulnerable. 
She put the DVD down, and was staring directly at me. I froze. Her eyebrows arched with a slightly bemused expression. "You again. Are you following me for personal or political reasons?" She twinkled at me playfully; the effect was devastating. 
"I... Well... heh heh... Weren't you following me?" God, that was lame! "Er, that's a good movie, that one I mean" -- I pointed clumsily -- "but the book's much better." My voice came out small, pinched, my normally solid Mandarin betraying an American accent. I fought the urge to flee. Nice going, chump. 
"I know. I've read it many times." Her eyes, steady through the pause that followed, issued challenge, but this wasn't entirely off-putting. I struggled to regain composure. 
"You wouldn't mind if I looked through those, would you?" 
"Yeah, sure, whatever," she shrugged. I gathered my things and sat down across from her. Feigning interest, I leafed through her discard pile, passing over one crappy title after another, periodically glancing up at her face. She reached again for "Unbearable Lightness." 
"I think I'll buy it anyway. I like Daniel Day Lewis and Juliette Binoche." 
She was actually engaging me in conversation. My mind was racing trying to think of something witty or charming to say next. 
"So, we seem to eat in all the same restaurants." I smiled at her, trying to figure out how to seque into a dinner invitation. "My name's S____." I gave her my hand, first wiping my sweating palm on my jeans. She shook it limply. 
"You live around here, don't you?" 
This caught me a bit off guard. "Um, well, yeah I do. How did you know?" I felt inexplicably guilty; my heart was suddenly racing. 
She lit a cigarette while I fumbled in my pocket for a lighter. "Well, considering you're here just about every time I am, I figured you either work or live around here, and you don't look like the type that 'works'. What are you writing?" 
"Just an article for a website. I'm a freelance writer." 
"Oooohhhh. A writer, are you?" Perfect command over her facial expressions: Now she wore deliberate ambiguity, neither mocking nor completely sincere. 
"What about you? Do you work?" 
She answered with a sharp, staccato laugh; I didn't press the question. 
The sky had taken on a warmer glow and the after-work crowd began to trickle in. The tranquility of the afternoon crescendoed into a dull roar as Public Space filled up. Synthetic Euro-house beats boomed from the stereo. We both watched the scene out the windows. The stylishly attired owner, Henry, worked the room, glad-handing customers. The crowd swelled quickly, and the dull roar had become a cacaphonous din. Reflexive habit of mind-- I again took up taxonomical analysis of the species showcased here at the Sanlitun Human Zoo, wondered what kingdom phylum class order family genus species she was, wondered where I mapped in her scheme. I was about to share my musings with my new friend. 
"I have to go," she suddenly announced. She laid a 50 kuai note on the table and called the harried waiter over for the bill. 
"Uh... let me get it," I managed to blurt out, hoping to stall her a bit longer. 
"Whatever you say," she replied, and shoved the note back into her handbag. 
The waiter took my money and maneuvered his way back to the cash register. 
"So," she said, grinding her half smoked cigarette into the ashtray and holding up her newly purchased disk, "You got a DVD player at your place?" 

Sanlitun Diaries: Part 5
The Unbearable Lightness of Beijing

We got up together to leave and my head was swimming. 
I haven't made my bed. My sink's full of dirty dishes. There're no clean towels. I'll turn the light on and roaches will scatter. There's like a quarter roll of toilet paper. There's a half-eaten, day-old sandwich on my coffee table and a half-bottle of Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon that's gone to vinegar by now -- didn't have far to go when I opened it last night. Another bottle of Jacob's Creek, I think... hell, I don't have decent wine glasses anyway. Couldn't we do this after my ayicomes tomorrow? My apartment's stifling hot and my AC's been on the fritz. 
And had she told me her name? At several points during our conversation, I simply couldn't hear over the deafening thump of my own pulse. Her lips had moved, I had nodded, thinking only of the lips. Panic seized me as I realized she might have said her name during one of those auditory lapses. 
I picked up my laptop and shoved it clumsily into my shoulder bag. She was at the door, talking to Henry. Two guys I know casually, Americans, had just stepped in and greeted me. "Hey S_____, what're you up to?" 
"Fine, thanks." This did not compute; their faces registered momentary confusion. What the hell was her name? 
"You takin' off? Hang out, man. I'll buy you a beer. You're not goin' anywhere important, right?" This was Paul, a guy I knew from from Beida a couple years back. He came from Bloomington, Indiana and played wretched blues harmonica whenever the opportunity presented itself. I never really hung out with him, less still with the other American, who was an English teacher at some Aeronautics Institute. Paul worked for a PR company now; the only recent conversation I could recall having had with him (and with the other guy, who was with him then too) was at The Den one very late night. If I remember correctly, I began it by roundly condemning the PR business (in spite of my having precious little notion what a PR firm actually does) and ended up heatedly debating the legitimacy of Alberto Fujimori's regime in Peru. 
"Naw, no, just... well, heading home. Doing some writing. I have a deadline tomorrow, you know how it is. Promised my editor I'd have it for him by tomorrow morning. Gotta charge my battery." 
"Sit and have a beer. Night's young, dude. We could get in all sorts of trouble. Hey -- have you heard about the stripper bar? I know this bar over that way that has this totally hot chick who actually does lap dances. Lap dances, man!" Guys like this always make me feel rigidly sanctimonious. That night after PR and Peru and odd stops in between, they had ended up at Maggie's -- the infamous "Mongolian Embassy" -- and I had gone home, still feeling rigidly sanctimonious, to quarrel with D_____ for what turned out to be the last time. 
"I'll have to take a rain check." "Ei! S_____!" She called my name from the doorway, pronouncing it without a trace of an accent. "Zou bu zou?" 
"Yeah, I'm coming. Just one second." I nodded bye to Paul and Alex (that's the other guy's name, now what the hell did she say hers was?). They grinned loutish, idiot grins at me. Paul: "Better make your deadline. Charge that battery." Alex: "Duuude!" 
The Sanlitun night shift was in full effect as we walked out onto the sidewalk and into the steamy evening. We worked our way past tables full of people eating, drinking and chatting away. The flower peddlars, the beggars, the portrait artists, the beer promoter girls in their immodest Tiger or Budweiser or Heineken or Corona or San Miguel wear. 
"I could stop over there" -- I gestured toward Jenny Lou's Market across the street and down a ways-- "and pick up some smokes or wine or beer or some coke or something." 
"Forget it. Let's just go. How far is your place?" 
"Just up ahead on the right. By Jazz-ya." 
Inside of a minute we had reached the hutong that leads to my flat. "Well, here we are," I said, hesitatingly. 
"Walk in ahead of me and I'll follow you a few steps behind," she ordered. 
I obligingly walked into my compound, past shirtless men on benches fanning themselves with wicker fans. The smell of stir-frying onions made me realize I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I had strong premonitions of doom, the unmistakable feeling I was walking into a trap. We trudged up three flights of stairs without saying a word. I fished out my keys and opened the door. 
"You know," I suddenly confessed, "I don't even know your name." She walked in, shutting the door behind her. 
She laughed musically. "I knew you didn't know it. Silly boy, why don't you listen when people tell you things? Maybe I won't tell you now." 
"I'll make one up. Do you want a drink? I only have water and ... beer" I offered, glancing nervously around the walls of my less-than-impressive digs. I found the remote for the air conditioner, stood in front of it and let it dry the sweat off my face while I gathered courage. 
"No, thanks," she said. She set her bag down on the chair by the door. "I just need to use your bathroom." 
She was in there for what seemed like an hour. I neatened up where I could, sniffed the air for any unpleasant smells, quickly made my bed, thought about putting on music and then opted against it. How does that porn video soundtrack go? I turned on the TV and DVD player, picked up a magazine, lit a cigarette (something I only rarely do), tried to look nonchalant. 
"Really, if you want, I can go down the street to Jenny Lou's and get a bottle of wine. They have this decent Spanish red for only 70 kuai a bottle," I called out from the living room. "Are you hungry? I could order something. You like pizza? Or I could pick something up." 
There was no reply. 
I walked back toward the bathroom just as she was emerging. Her hair was down now; I smelled the intoxicating perfume. She smiled mischievously and held out a hand: "Are you going to show me around?" I took her hand. 
"Not much to this place. That room -- I use it as kind of a study, but right now it's a mess. That's the kitchen -- no, no, don't go in there, it's dangerous. And this -- this is my bedroom. I get good light in the morning, and there's this liitle balcony, but the kids on the schoolyard are pretty loud, you know, and..." 
She sat down on my unmade bed and crossed her legs. 
"Uh... do you still want to watch the movie?" I stammered. 
She looked up at me and started to say something. And then her phone rang inside her purse: The Nokia snake-charmer ring. It went through its whole melody, twenty seconds, before she suddenly broke eye contact and rose quickly to answer it, brushing past me. Standing by the door, she looked down at the display, frowned, answered it in a bored-sounding voice. "Wei. Nnnn. Okay. Hao." She looked at me. "At a friend's house. No, no, right away. Bye." 
Still looking at me, she put her phone back in her purse. "I'm really sorry. I have to go now." She stood for a moment as if thinking, then held her hand out. I took it without thinking. She pulled me toward her and kissed me on the cheek, a two-second, a full-lipped, honest, and not merely dismissive kiss. "Gotta go." She opened the door, stepped outside, turned around and looked once more at me, then hurried down the stairs. 
I stood in the doorway for a minute or two, hoping to hear her coming back up. Then I closed the door, leaned against, shook my head. Sitting in the chair where her purse had been was a DVD: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." Guess I knew what I'd be doing this evening. 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 6:
South Street Serenade

The opening credits of "Unbearable Lightness" hadn't even finished when the power in my apartment went off. I watched the TV screen darken gradually, and sat still for another minute hoping that electricity would be restored. No such luck. I reached into my pocket for a lighter, fumbled around in drawers for candles. Already I could feel the summer heat reclaiming the air my AC had struggled so laboriously to cool. In the hall outside, I could hear neighbors' doors opening: "Ting dian le. Electricity's out. Yours too? I guess it's the whole building. They have power over there, see?" 
My phone rang and I reached for it. The boyish eagerness of my "Wei?" surprised me: somehow I thought it might be her, but then again how could she have my number? 
"'Sup homes? You alone?" Mike Wang, my occasional partner in crime. An ABC (American Born Chinese, like myself), a notorious womanizer, incorrigibly charming, maddeningly voluble, perpetually drunk. 
"Yep. You wanna get a drink or something? My goddamn power's out so I'm not staying home anyway. Where you at?" 
"Headin' to South Street. You really alone?" He knew something. 
"Yeah, I'm alone. Why?" 
"My sources inform me" -- his investigative news voice -- "that you left Public Space in the company of an exceptionally attractive woman just over an hour ago." 
"Is that what you heard?" 
"Geez, man, that was quick. Skipped foreplay? Women need that, you know. What're you trying to set a record?" He laughed. "So, is she really hot? She a pro? Nevermind. You can tell me all about it later. I want sordid details, man. I want to feel the vicarious thrill. So I'll meet you at Rainbow's Time? Say twenty minutes?" 
"See you there." I hung up, splashed some water on my face, blew out the candles, and set off. 
I sauntered down to the corner, crossed Worker's Stadium North Street and hung a right toward the little alleyway they call South Bar Street. Dongdaqiao Xie Jie, as it's properly termed, has a half-dozen or so watering holes of note, and tends to draw more of the expat crowd than the Bar Street proper where I live. Mike and I always started off at Rainbow's Time, a tiny little coffee shop where Tsingtao beer is only four kuai a bottle and a double espresso is only ten. 
An hour later I watched him from the stoop in front of Rainbow's Time as he careened back and forth from the far end of South Street. He stopped for a moment by the patio of Sushi-Ya and chatted up a group of acquaintances sitting at a table outside. A chorus of 'Oh-my-Gods!' and 'how-you-beens' erupted from the Americans as he leaned over the rail to exchange salutary hugs and faux French air-kisses with the two women at the table. Funny how Americans pick up that custom here. I always feel like an idiot doing it. Never know which side to start on, whether it's two or three kisses. 
After a few minutes of inane banter, Mike staggered towards the Taiwanese milk tea stand on the other side. 
"Hey dumbass! I'm over here!" He glanced up, grinning and waving as he trudged slowly towards me. 
"How long have 'ya been nursing that?" he slurred, grabbing for the half-empty bottle of Qingdao in my hand. His eyes were completely glazed over. He drained it, made a face. "What're you warming it with your hands? Jesus fuck that's nasty." He made an exaggerated spitting sound. 
"Man, I've had three of these since I got here." With Mike, I was always on the verge of aggravation. But for all his frivolity, his flakiness and his philandering, he was a great guy. Mike worked for an American news magazine as a researcher. His job was very gray-area: He occasionally had to lay low and stay out of the office. Sober or drunk he was surprisingly perceptive and invariably articulate. And he always seemed to know the skinny on street-life Beijing. 
Lanky Mike plopped down beside me and lit a smoke. He had picked up smoking like so many other Americans since arriving in Beijing. He still didn't quite have it down: He pulled the whole top off soft packs, and recently confessed amazement when I showed him that the foil flap on a hard pack pulls away easily. He smoked like a girl. "So, Romeo, you gonna tell me what happened or not?" 
A thick plume of charcoal smoke from a lamb kebab grill began wafting towards us and my eyes began to water. A group of Libyans had gathered around the yang rou chuan'r vendor and were ordering stick after stick of meat, gesturing and shouting at him in heavily accented English. The vendor threw a stick of squid onto the burner and the bewildered Libyans threw their hands in their air as they angrily complained to each other in loud Arabic. 
"Yeah, I'll spill my guts, but let's get out of here," I replied to my inebriated friend. We made our way up the street toward the Durty Nellie's patio where a trio of boorish Australian installation managers were ogling a scantily clad Carlsberg beer promoter girl. "Nee HOW!!!" one of them hollered at the flustered girl as his red-eyed companions obnoxiously guffawed. The muffled sounds of "Sweet Home Alabama" erupted from inside the pub as the cover band started its set. "Let's go to the Jam House roof," I said, wanting to get as far away from that scene as possible. 
There was live music at the Jam House -- Jessica Meider, a singer/guitarist from Pennsylvania, playing originals with a bassist and a drummer. We stopped by the stairs to listen for a minute, and she sang 
Put up your sails
Get on your knees
Pray you don't drown
From loving me
Mike Wang is an uncanny empath. "Hey." He punched me lightly on the shoulder, and studied my face with concern. "C'mon. Let's get you upstairs and get a coupla drinks in you." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 7:
Gonna be Trouble

Up on the roofdeck of the Jam House we claimed the one free table and plopped down into the molded plastic chairs. Mike ordered two double scotches neat and a bag of popcorn and surveyed the scene with a practiced eye. Lethargic from the oppressive heat and humidity, I zoned out into the treetops that lined the opposite side of the alleyway. 
A shrill, nasal voice interrupted my mental meanderings. "Heeeeey guys! Hao jiu mei jian!!" 
It was Laura Woltz -- "Long Island Laura," chain-smoking market researcher for the Chinese portal site e-myhoo.com. Recently their bus ads and billboards were all over the city, and were rumored to be listing on NASDAQ soon. "Hi Laura. Yeah, long time no see." And I like it that way. A few years ago, Laura landed a bit part in some locally produced TV soap opera and since then had appeared in a number of other productions, usually playing the same role -- "home-wrecking Caucasian vixen." She was one of those familiar faces around town who would occasionally say "ni hao" if there was no one else she knew in the vicinity and would completely ignore you a few days later at some other social function. Aside from her chain smoking, inexhaustible wardrobe of Yunnan minority outfits, and near-legendary promiscuity, she was best known for her habit of liberally peppering her speech with Chinese phrases like "mafan" [hassle] and "wuliao" [boring], which she pronounced in her distinctive nasal intonation. The last time I had seen her, she was outside of Club Vogue screaming Chinese vulgarities into her cell phone, obliterated by drink. 
"Laura, daahling, what EVER have you been up to? Kiss-kiss," mocked my ever gregarious companion. She grabbed one of Mike's cigarettes and promptly sat in his lap. 
"Oh my Gawwd! I've had this like totally cao dan [fucked-up] China day where everything just goes wrong! I'm like trying to get this report out and my ayi calls saying that the cat ran out and like can't find her, just zhao bu dao la. Whatever! I like told her a million times, don't leave the door open too long, but does she listen? Then my siji [driver] side-swipes this Xiali [hatchback cab] and they start arguing like 'wo cao ni ma! Ni ya sha bi!' in the middle of the street! And there's all these people gathering around to check out the renao [commotion], and I'm like this is SO mei yisi [boring, meaningless]. I mean, like wa cao! [fuck'n a!]" She griped emphatically, waving her cigarette in the air for emphasis. 
Her Chinglish melodrama continued for another ten minutes. Mike nodded in feigned sympathy at her litany of complaints and stared with genuine interest at her ample bosom, bobbing mere inches from his face. Her monologue continued for a few more minutes until she suddenly looked towards the stairway and sprang up. 
"Oh! Gotta go! Call me sometime, sweetie!" she called out over her shoulder, as she made her way towards her lawyer boyfriend and his entourage. Mike sneered. I continued staring blankly into space. 
"Hey, Rob Zombie -- so what the hell happened with this chick?" 
I reached for a Zhongnanhai Light (only 4 kuai a pack!) and sipped my scotch. "Not much really," I said half heartedly, "she just came, got a phone call, and left. Peck on the cheek." 
"You called me out here just to tell me that?" said my friend as he arched his eyebrows in mock disappointment. "Come on man, I was expecting some full on Penthouse Letter action! You meet a beautiful stranger, take her home, and you're telling me that nothing happened?!?" 
"Nada. Zip. Anyway, you've seen her before -- that time at Kebab, the chick with the great perfume. Remember? Tall one?" 
Squeals and coarse laughter erupted from the table in the corner as Laura and her friends told political jokes about Politburo members they knew nothing about. Three of Laura's Chinese co-workers sat smiling in embarrassed silence and sipped their drinks. 
"It's just weird how I keep on running into her. Maybe it's like that fate thing, you know" -- mocking Long Island Laura -- "yuan fen." He rolled his eyes. I began explaining to my friend as his gaze wandered over toward the still wildly gesticulating Laura and her wildly gesticulating breasts. 
"Oh, yeah," he said distractedly, "you know how small this town can be. Especially with you living right up the street there. You can't walk ten feet in this town without seeing someone you know. Anyway, I'm gonna go milk the lizard. Be right back." He disappeared down the stairs. 
Jessica and her band were starting their second set. I smoked and listened with my eyes shut until Mike came back three or four songs later. 
"I guess she had been checking me out too," I continued as he sat down. "I may sound ridiculous, but I kind of believe in that love at first sight thing. Er, at least sixth sighting." 
"Yeah, you're right. You do sound ridiculous." He faced me; his expression and his tone were uncharacteristically serious. "Look dude, you hardly know her, you just met her in some café and she goes home with you. She's probably just bored and looking for a little action on the side to take her mind off her schmuck-of-a dakuan boyfriend or something. Don't take it so seriously." 
"I know, I know, I'm a dork. But I guess it's some kind of pheromone thing. I can't believe how much I think about her." 
"Did'ya get her number?" 
"Nope." 
"D'you even know her name?" 
"Yeah, of course." 
He grinned at me. "No you don't. You want me to find it out for you?" He placed the tips of his fingers on his temples, closed his eyes, and tightened his face in mock concentration. "Ommmmmmm... Ommmmmmmm... It's coming to me... She goes by... Xiao Lin." He grinned again. 
I snorted. "No, seriously," he replied. "That's her name. "Betchya 20 bucks." 
A strange jealous sensation came over me: How could he know her name? "Whatever her name is, I'm pretty into her. I think I'll persist." 
"Man, if you're that hard up, just go to a hair salon or something!" he dismissively replied. "Chicks like that only spell one thing: T-R-U-B-B-L-E." He started singing a snatch from The Music Man. For Mike, the answers to all life's mysteries were to be found in Broadway musicals: "There's gonna be trouble, right here in River City, Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with G that stands for Girl." 
"I kinda feel like some trouble tonight." 
"Well, you don't have far to go to find it," said Mike. "She's right downstairs." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 8:
Remembering to Forget

I felt a familiar, unwelcome sickness in the pit of my stomach -- my nervous system awash in adrenaline and alcohol. Powerful stuff: unbalancing, dangerous, apt to lead to behaviors we come to regret. An episode came to mind, one brought on by that same potent admixture. Years and years ago, while I was a grad student, I ran into an ex-girlfriend at a restaurant back home just a few weeks after we split up. She was on a date with some older guy -- I found out later that they moved to New York together -- laughing it up and drinking red wine by candlelight in the Italian restaurant near campus. Our Italian restaurant -- the one in the old Billy Joel song. Fortunately, I have no recollection whatsoever of the ear-burning indignation, the humiliation, the helpless idiocy I surely must have felt as I stormed out staring defiantly straight ahead, in plain view of their table. I ended up spending the rest of that night alone in my shitty apartment, crying like a putz into a bottle of cheap whiskey and fighting off the urge to drive to her house and pound on the door. 
Luckily, we forget. Coming to Beijing sped that process right along. There was a string of women -- about many of whom I'm deeply ashamed -- when I first got here. There were the "exotic collectors" I met at the Language Institute -- the European and white American women who came to China knowing in the back of their minds they'd sleep with a Chinese guy, but who (having only recently arrived) weren't quite ready yet to go completely local, and for whom I looked to be a good stepping stone, the shallow end of a deep-ass pool: He looks Chinese, but he speaks perfect English and reasonably good Mandarin, he can order in restaurants well but doesn't eat dog or sea cucumber or too much garlic, and he doesn't dress funny. He's... why, he's Managed Localization! 
After I left the Language Institute I wrote for an expat paper called Beijing This Weekend. Actually I was the Listings Editor, a largely thankless job that sucked except that it got me out a lot. BTW was a decent publication and it's a shame that it no longer exists. Their online edition got bought recently by ChinaNow.com -- bought for stock, for whatever that's worth. Writing for BTW I was always at the restaurant openings, the gallery openings, the bar openings. The raves, the rock concerts. And I met not a few exceptional women: brainy, savvy, edgy Beijing women who went to decent schools and worked in foreign companies or hip Chinese enterprises. They were associate editors at magazines or news assistants at Western papers. They were graphic artists or photographers, they were stage designers and classical musicians. 
I dated, found myself in every known permutation of a love-polygon you can imagine, thought for a while I had even fallen in love. But ultimately -- even in that case, the case of the one Beijing girl I had actually felt like I loved -- I never managed to completely overcome culture and language barriers. I'd meet her parents, get any kind of a glimpse of the world she grew up in, and I would realize the shallowness of my understanding of Chinese -- the language, customs, the whole kielbasa. Part of me suspected that her folks -- maybe her, even -- weren't smart enough to know I only appeared a bit stupid, slow-witted, unnecessarily frank and hopelessly naive only because I just couldn't express myself all that fluently in Mandarin. I resolved that I'd get my language skills in better shape before embarking on any more serious romantic ventures with Beijing girls. 
I have an aunt here in Beijing -- a schoolmate of my mom's, who also went to Taiwan in '49 and thence to the States. She came back to Beijing a couple of years ago, and it's something of a ritual of mine to cross town every other weekend or so to have dinner at her house-which-smelled-like-my-old-house. She used to entice me there with promises of rare Western treats I couldn't otherwise find in Beijing. "I baked Rice Krispies Treats," she'd say in her accent-that-was-just-like-my-mother's. Then, when at last I mastered my Pavlovian weakness and begged out one too many times, she enticed me with women. Friends of her daughter's. 
Her daughter had spent quite a number of years in Beijing, mostly before I got here, and my family and hers would see each other occasionally when we were kids. She was a year older than me-- 17 months, actually -- and for some reason that just ruled her out growing up. But she was decidedly cool, and not having a little brother herself, adopted me as hers pretty early on. Her name was Anna. 
Anna had made friends with just about everyone in Beijing, and everybody loved her, and everyone who knew her invariably asked me on seeing me out when Anna was coming back to Beijing. She was big-hearted tomboy with a generous face and a ready smile, and she wore big clunky army boots and overalls and smoked and told great dirty jokes and as it turns out always spoke very highly of me before I came out to China almost three years ago. She spoke highly of me with her numerous single friends here, and apparently talked often about setting me up with various girlfriends. 
Last summer Anna was back in Beijing doing research for her dissertation. One Saturday afternoon in June her mom called me up and insisted that I come over, since I had to meet these two friends of Anna's. (Anna shouted in the background, "Ma, you're going to ruin the surprise!"). When I arrived, there were indeed two women there, about both of whom I'd heard a fair bit. One was Chinese-Canadian, the other Chinese-American, and Anna had kidded me for months that she didn't know which of them to set me up with. She had e-mailed me both their phone numbers and e-mail addresses and comically candid psychological profiles of each of them, and said I had to call one or the other and report my choice to her for research purposes. There was Karen from Toronto and D_____ from Sunnyvale, CA. I replied to Anna that, forced to choose, I would choose D_____. No offense to Canada. For some reason, though, I never did try calling her. 
During dinner, Anna's mom -- acting in loco parentis -- told the requisite embarrassing stories of me as a boy, and pulled out pictures of me and my sister and Anna and her brother in a tub together as toddlers. 
Later that night, we all set off for Sanlitun. At Havana drinking Mojitos, D______ and Karen and I all joked about Anna's matchmaking machinations. But D_____ she was much prettier than I had imagined, and as smart and funny as Anna had described her. And she was sexy. We sat close together and talked and I felt like I was in good form, and at the end of the night, with the sky already getting light, I kissed her before she got into her cab. 
We met for lunch a few days later. She was interning at a law firm as a research assistant doing intellectual property rights. D____ was without a doubt the smartest woman I've ever been with and there were times when her intellect made me feel downright insecure. Her humor was dark and subversive, irreverent and cynical, but she pulled it all off without ever seeming mean. We spent that meal dissecting the foibles and delights of the Beijing expat experience and I was hopelessly hooked. The following weeks were a blur of long phone calls, dinners, and -- eventually -- intense sex. Months of utter bliss flew by, and for that brief period, life in Beijing was absolutely, indescribably beautiful. 
Now, looking back on the whole D_____ experience, I still don't know whether to thank Anna or to demand an apology for her ultimately disastrous misadventure as a matchmaker. 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 9:
Entanglements

Mike was watching me, evidently amused by my long trance. He shook his head smiling as I returned to the present and my eyes regained focus. "Welcome back, astral traveler. Pleasant little stroll down memory lane?" He handed me a scotch that I hadn't remembered him ordering. "Liquid courage. Down the hatch, brah. So what's your move?" 
"What's she doin'? Is she with people?" 
He took a deep drag on his cigarette, exhaled, then leaned in toward me with brow furrowed, speaking fast, and with supernatural clarity and intensity. It was something I've seen him do on a few occasions, one of his favorite parlor tricks: a casual glance around a room and he was able to describe accurately the position, the attire, the general demeanor of everyone in it. "Xiao Lin, in a lavender-blue backless sundress, is seated on the sofa downstairs in the recess next to the stairwell near the front of the bar. She's on the far south end of the sofa, looking somewhat distracted, nursing a Corona. Immediately next to her is a large, loutish-looking bruiser with a crew cut, a synthetic shirt, a nasty scar on his head behind his left ear and, I regret to inform you, some proprietary interest in your Xiao Lin. He has two friends with him, one a loud skinny guy in shirtsleeves, quite drunk. Listen carefully and you'll hear his shrill and annoying laugh.... Hear it?" I heard it. "Next to him on the seats facing the couch is skinny guy's girlfriend, with the warpaint, cheap cloying perfume, miniskirt and ludicrous platforms standard for her ilk. The third guy's a heavy-set, swarthy, sullen-ass motherfucker with whom I'd not want to dance. They have a bottle of Jack Daniels on their table, now almost gone." He paused to smoke. "You going downstairs? Should I radio for backup? I got your back, homey." 
"I'll be okay. Not like I'm gonna start shit." I stood up, feeling heroic, strangely excited at the prospect of violence. I downed my drink and started down the stairs. 
I walked casually toward the book stand by the front door and grabbed a random magazine. I glanced to my right and saw the scene Mike had described. There she sat, squinched against the corner of the couch, listlessly flipping through a magazine and smoking a skinny cigarette. The others were playing cards. As though sensing my gaze, she looked up suddenly and made eye contact. She smiled demurely. 
I suddenly felt very hot. 
I smiled back, pointed toward the bathroom and mouthed "wo fangbian yi xia" -- I'm gonna go relieve myself -- and floated towards the stairwell. Rounding the corner, I shot her another quick glance, and she smiled back again before furtively looking away. She looked younger, far less composed, vulnerable. A hackneyed male fantasy: Damsel in distress. 
I pushed open the bathroom door, waited as one of the bartenders washed his hands. He smiled, greeted me by name, slid past me on his way out; I entered, closed the door behind me, stood straddling the ceramic trough, and started doing my business. 
The bathroom door opened and someone entered and stood in the small bathroom behind me, no apology. Somehow I knew it was the loutish bruiser Mike had described. I faced straight forward, listening to his loud breathing. Then he started to chuckle. I turned to see what was so funny. 
He was thick and stocky, but fairly tall -- about my height. Despite the heat oustide, he was wearing a longsleeve Armani knockoff shirt with silver slacks that gave off a slight sheen. A cell phone was clipped to his very shiny polished leather belt. He looked to be about 40. A noxious-smelling cigarillo dangled from one corner of his mouth, and beads of sweat were glistening in his closely-cropped hair. A pair of bloodshot eyes lay buried in two puffy sockets and his swollen face betrayed years of hard drinking. 
He was looking at a graffitus scratched into the wall: The lone character cao, the word for "fuck." He evidently found it very amusing. Seeing me turn, he pointed to the word with a thick finger. "Cao," he said, as though teaching schoolchildren. I faced forward again, focusing on the task at hand, eager to finish and be out of his loathsome presence. 
"Cao!" he bellowed. He laughed loudly, and rocked back and forth in the doorway like a bowling pin off balance. "Wo cao ni daye!!!" He shouted and burst into a throaty crescendo of obnoxious laughter as he turned his inebriated gaze towards me. The man was wasted to the point of beligerence. I finished quickly with a perfunctory shake and hurriedly turned to leave. Mr. Armani lurched towards the john, forcing me to turn sideways and squeeze past him toward the door. 
A sudden yanking sensation took me by surprise. The antenna of the cell phone hanging at his waist was caught in my belt loop. Like a pair of clumsy dancers we teetered back and forth for a brief moment, shoulder to shoulder. The smell of smoke and whiskey on his breath was overpowering. 
"Ni gan ma?? Ni ya peng wo de shou ji??" [What do you think you're doing? You touching my phone??] 
We stood face to face under the bare bulb in the bathroom. He stared at me, jaw clenched, face taut, enraged by alcohol and his own machismo. 
"NI YA PENG WO DE SHOU JI??" he repeated, bellowing now and blasting his rancid breath in my face. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. The last thing I needed was to end up on the sopping wet floor of a bar restroom in a drunken scuffle. 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 10:
Bottleneck

"Wo mei gu yi de. It was an accident." My voice remained surprisingly steady. I backed up a step toward the door, still facing him. His chest swelled; the veins on his neck stood out. Fight vanquished flight and I braced for a lunge, a swing, a kick. None came. 
He swore at me through clenched teeth and I spat back a choice expletive. But it was over; the moment had passed and I was free to go. I pushed the door open, still glowering, fists and jaw clenched, heart racing. Behind me, he hacked up phlegm and spat into the latrine. I marched deliberately up the stairs. 
"S______." Her voice reached me as I opened the door to the roofdeck; she called my name again and I turned to see her coming up behind me. "What happened just now?" I held the door open for her. 
She followed me to the tables where I had been sitting and we joined Mike, displacing two young Dutch women who had been seated at a neighboring table before I went downstairs. "We are going to Vogue for dancing," they told him as they stood up. "You will also go there?" Dismissively assuring them that he'd catch up, he studied first my face, then Xiao Lin's. 
I turned to her: "This is my friend Mike, Wang Zhongxiang." 
"We've met," she replied. I checked for his reaction; perfect equanimity. 
"Nice to see you again, Xiao Lin." Mike busied himself beckoning for a waiter. 
She was sitting beside me, left knee touching my right with casual intimacy. "So what happened?" she repeated. 
"Nothing. I think he's had too much to drink, that's all." I briefly explained to Mike and Xiao Lin what had happened in the bathroom, then paused to deliver my next question as evenly as possible. "So is that guy your boyfriend?" 
"Wu Zhaowei?" She smiled uncomfortably and reached for the nearly depleted pack of Zhongnanhais on the table. "Oh, he's my da ge -- my 'Big Brother.' He... He helped me to go to France five years ago." She stared at the lit cigarette between her fingers for a long moment, then looked up at me quite suddenly, smiling gently. "Did you watch the movie?" 
I explained to her that the electricity had gone off just as it was starting and I came out to the South Bar Street to meet Mike. I asked her when she was in France, where she had stayed, where she had gone to school. We talked about Paris and the South of France and the cities she'd traveled. She had studied dance in Paris, came back to Beijing late last year when her father died, wanted to go back to France this fall. I struggled to come up with observations less banal than "The French really know how to enjoy life" and "I really love the Louvre." She asked me about myself -- brothers and sisters, what I was writing, where I'd gone to college, whether I'd grown up speaking Mandarin. Mike skillfully tossed me conversational assists and I managed to dunk a few. I had just succeeded in making her laugh again with some dumb anecdote about my mom; my close encounter with the belligerent fucker in the bathroom had faded from memory and I was just thinking how much less threatening Xiao Lin had become when he showed up in the doorway at the top of the stairs. 
"Xiao Lin!" he barked. "Zou le. Let's go." 
"Dai hui'r ba. Hang on a bit. I'll be down in a few minutes." 
He started to say something, then his eyes narrowed and I could feel his focus come to rest on me. He walked toward our table looking at her in disbelief, pointing at me. "You know this punk?" Conversation on the roofdeck had all but ceased and people watched intently as the thick-waisted thug lumbered toward me. 
"You know him? This little bastard tried to steal my mobile phone." He stared at me murderously. "Get the fuck out of my sight or I'll thrash you." He took a beer mug off the table beside him and emptied it on the tile floor. Everyone on the roof could hear it splash and fizz. Under the table, Mike handed me a beer bottle, and I remembered what a veteran street-fighter friend of mine had once told me in this same bar: When you fight with a bottle, don't hold it by the neck and break it or you'll end up with only a useless little stump. Hold it by the body and break off the neck. Then try to gouge out eyes: It scares the shit out of your opponent. 
Somehow, he no longer looked drunk. He looked fucking scary. Xiao Lin grabbed him by the arm: "Okay, let's go, let's just go, this isn't necessary, look, there are cops everywhere, it's not worth it, let's just go." He shook her off and took another step toward me. I stood up. 
He swung his beer mug. It came fast, but I managed to pull my head back just enough that it missed. I smashed the neck of the beer bottle against the cement half-wall at the edge of the roofdeck and crouched down, looking straight at his right eye, which I intended at that point to scoop out neatly into my empty bottle. If his eye offend thee, gouge it out. 
Screams erupted: Xiao Lin nearly tackled him, tables fell over and bottles and mugs shattered on the ground. Mike put a hand firmly on my shoulder to hold me back and people around us scrambled as if for cover. Xiao Lin wailed and implored and forced him backward toward the door. I stood there heaving. 
"It's okay man, it's okay now bro," Mike chanted as he massaged my shoulders like a boxing coach. "It's over. He's gone. He's outta here. It's cool. Stay cool." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 11:
Afterglow

I can't possibly count the nights that 3 A.M. has found me at a Yonghe Doujiang place in quest of nourishment and sobriety. Dead shift Beijing - it's really something. It feels dangerous, especially when you've very nearly cut up some unsavory character with a broken bottle and there are still unsafe levels of adrenaline coursing through your veins. 
I slurped at a salty doujiang and munched on youtiao at the place across from Club Vogue while Mike and Long Island Laura - how she ended up there with us I'm not entirely sure - gave what counsel they could. "Men don't bite dogs," she reminded me, invoking the same Chinese idiom Dad always used whenever I'd come home from school feeling violently indignant about a racial slur some kid had flung at me on the playground. 
Everyone in the place looked sinister to me, and I sized up each potential threat, casting about suspiciously, on edge. Laura tousled my hair and mocked me: "Such a toughie you are! Who would have thought?" She sipped cold soybean milk through a straw. Laura had already established that this whole thing was somehow about the woman I was sitting with, and pressed for details. "So you actually slept with that guy's girlfriend, or were you just hitting on her? Bu cuo! I guess she's kinda piaoliang." 
I finished my doujiang. "I'm fading, guys. I'm gonna call it." It felt like the longest day of my life; it felt like days and not mere hours ago that I was sitting in Public Space watching her flip through DVDs. 
I picked my way along the Bar Street, still lined with cabs. Boys and Girls Club was starting to empty out, and people milled around outside of Lan Kwai Fong and Swing and some of the other bars. I turned the corner and walked through the gate of my compound, the noise of the Bar Street fading behind me. 
As I fished my apartment keys out, I heard light footsteps climbing the stairs behind me. I turned and saw Xiao Lin standing in the dimly lit stairwell. Neither of us said anything for a few seconds. She looked sad. I opened my door and asked her in. 
"You're not going to get a phone call and leave again, are you?" 
"I turned my phone off." 
"Were you waiting for me?" 
"No, I just got here." And then in English, "Good timing." 
It was only when she came in and I turned on the lights that I noticed the left side of her face was red and swollen. "Did he… Are you okay?" 
"Oh." She touched her cheek. "It's nothing. It doesn't hurt." She put her purse down on the chair by my door. 
"Maybe you should put something cold on it for the swelling. Here, let me get you something." I should have cut the fucking bastard. 
"No, don't bother. Really, it's nothing." I went to the freezer and dug out a bag of frozen dumplings, brushed off the frost, and gingerly held it up against her cheek. She took it in her left hand, and I was acutely conscious of her hand touching mine, the icy cold of the bag. 
We stood there for a bit in my entryway, looking at each other. Knowing how silly she must have looked with a bag of frozen jiaozi pressed to her face, she started laughing. We both started laughing. Then she stopped laughing and her expression was suddenly very serious and she reached around with her free hand to the back of my neck and she pulled me toward her and kissed me and the makeshift icepack fall to the floor and then her arms were both around me and her body was pressed against me and I was inhaling deeply and her scent even commingled with the freezer burn smell was intoxicating. And then we were on my bed. 
The whole thing had a biological urgency to it that had me thinking about recombinant DNA, about mitosis and meiosis, about gametes and zygotes and blastulae. It felt suspiciously like love. 
Afterward, she stood in front of the dusty full-length mirror on my bedroom door. I stood behind her, and she drew my arms around her, talking to my reflection languidly about what a nice couple we made and what handsome children we could have. I touched her face. The swelling had gone down. It had been a slap, not a punch, and looking closely I could see the red marks of his thick fingers. The skin on her cheek was hot. 
I put on an old Tracy Chapman CD that I hadn't heard in a decade and we lay back down on the bed. "Fast Car" came on and I stared at her lying beside me and thought about escape, flight, rescue. After a while she leaned on her elbow, tracing the contours of my face with her fingers while I drifted in and out of sleep, and the last thing I remember her saying was "The sun's about to come up." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 12:
...And the Living is Easy

Some days etch their every detail into memory. That Thursday in early July was just that sort of a day. But ask me about the Thursday afterward, or any of the Thursdays in the five weeks that followed, and even broad outlines are hard to recall. On those sweltering summer mornings I wrote my articles over coffee at Cafe Bella while Xiao Lin slept in, or read, or struggled to feminize and transform my spartan bachelor apartment. 
In those weeks the Sanlitun Bar Street was dug up and fitted out with submerged, Plexiglas-covered light boxes, like a row of imbedded sidewalk dioramas, destined to house yet more dot-com advertising. In astonished disbelief I witnessed the erection of some truly awful public art along Worker's Stadium North Street: A giant fiberglass mushroom tree right off the set of the Smurfs, a five meter tall foaming beer mug at the south end of the Bar Street, a gargantuan leaf further west along the street, a rough-hewn metal globe with a fossilized dinosaur stretched across one hemisphere. Up the street by the City Hotel, more "art" -- another globe perched atop a helix of orange metal shards, for which they knocked down a great 24-hour Shanxi noodle restaurant. 
Xiao Lin and I were rarely apart. She spent every night at my place. Her first day with me she bought a new SIM card for her cell phone and her violently disposed "big brother" never managed to find her. For the first couple of weeks I looked over my shoulder a lot, and avoided places like the Jam House where I thought I might run into him. I briefly considered buying a knife. 
But all that faded as we settled into a happy rhythm of food and wine, books and movies, seriously good sex and long conversations. And on many lazy afternoons, we did bicycle outings. We'd ride to the Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, or the Niujie Mosque, or the Baiyun Temple. Places I hadn't been since I visited China as a kid with my parents. Me on my trusty Fenghuang, Xiao Lin on her Yongjiu, tires pumped up, ready to hit the not-so-open road. Our favorite destination was Houhai: We'd load up on roast lamb at Kaorouji and stroll the lake, wandering the hutongs, smiling at the fishermen and the bird guys and the chess players, biking back to Sanlitun around sunset for a shower, dinner, a glass of wine. One weekend in late July we took a train to Beidaihe, played around on the beach and ate seafood. 
We never had "the talk" even though she stayed with me every night, and held my hand when we went out, and referred to me to friends of hers we occasionally ran into as "my boyfriend." Something irked me about that: It was somehow presumptuous, though its presumption -- that I wanted this to be a monogamous thing -- was essentially correct. There were other matters that troubled me. She almost never spoke about the past, except her childhood in Beijing in the 70s and 80s -- the Tangshan Earthquake, storing cabbage for the winter. We seemed to have arrived at a tacit agreement not to talk about the more recent past. We'd run into male acquaintances of hers, cool guys, handsome guys who she'd term "friends" without additional explanation. I had strong inklings of some history. 
Once or twice, Xiao Lin made off-hand mention of various ex-boyfriends. She told me how when she was 19 and in college she broke up quite suddenly with her first boyfriend after someone told her that he was an epileptic -- something for which she still felt guilty. She alluded to having been involved pretty seriously with a guy in Paris. She never mentioned Mike or how she knew him, but oddly he hadn't been calling me much, and seemed distracted on those few occasions when we'd hang out. 
Somehow, Xiao Lin had money. She claimed it came from having sold a house she had bought years back. She mentioned once that she had opened a bar in Dongsi with a couple of friends some years ago, but sold that too. One afternoon she came back to my house and said, "I'm putting this money in this shoebox right here in your closet. Just use whatever you need." Later, I looked inside it, and there was over 30,000 RMB in it. But she was clearly uncomfortable any time she sensed I was probing. 
When I wasn't probing, or idly speculating about her doubtlessly checkered past, things were easy. She was insatiable in bed, and her breath smelled like a baby's -- sweet like fresh milk, even when she had just woken up in the morning. She would whisper to me in bed in that delicious Beijing accent; you don't know how good Mandarin sounds until you've heard the wanton whisperings of a beautiful Beijing girl. She had a strange intelligence: She read pretty voraciously and could recite the plots of books in impressive detail, but when she watched movies she was rarely able to follow the storyline without asking me constantly, "Now who's that guy? Is that the bad guy? Have we seen this guy before?" And she talked to characters in movies -- "No! You idiot! Don't go up the stairs!! The killer's up there!" 
A week or so after we got together I saw her place for the first time -- a little studio in Hepingli she said belonged to her older brother. It was like a little girl's room: stuffed animals, ballet posters, prints of Matisse and Van Gough, dried flowers, European bric-a-brac and tacky souvenirs, stacks of Vogue and Elle magazines. Glamorous shots of her and a girlfriend in berets and sunglasses, their lips pursed, standing before the Eifel Tower. Old black-and-white photos of her parents in Mao suits, her grandfather in a scholar's gown, her brother and herself as children. Wicker furniture. A closet stuffed to overflowing with clothes. Chinese and French novels crammed haphazardly into a small and rickety bookshelf. She grabbed some clothes, a couple of books and various toiletries, stuffed them into an overnight bag and we left. 
Just as nothing was said about the past, so too no mention was made of the future. Six weeks in and she was still a near-total stranger to me. Six weeks in and I had doubts that it would last beyond the summer. 
Then one morning in early August the phone rang. Xiao Lin was in the shower, singing a Cranberries song. 
"Wei, ni hao." 
"S______? Hi! It's me." It was D_____. First time I'd heard her voice in two months. 
"Whoa! Where are you? You're back in Beijing?" She was. "So... so how was traveling? How was Yunnan and all?" 
"It was great. Really great. I'll have to tell you all about it. But listen, you know I'm going back to the States soon, and... and I thought maybe we could have lunch or something. We need to do a prisoner exchange. All those CDs and books and stuff. Are you free for lunch?" 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 13:
Resurgence

I met D_____ for lunch at Serve the People, a newish Thai restaurant just off Sanlitun. She was already there and when I arrived she stood up. We exchanged smiles, hugged stiffly, sat down. 
"Jesus, you look -- you look great. You're so tanned! So healthy." 
"Yeah, I'm... Well, the sun's not obscured behind thick blankets of smog down in Yunnan. It's good to see you. Your hair's getting longer. Doesn't look bad." 
We sat with hands folded, both of us conscious of the awkwardness. "I brought your stuff," I said to her, and produced a cloth sack from Jenny Lou's Market containing the things that she had left with me. Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, a couple of Joseph Conrads. Her Mazzy Star and her Marvin Gaye, her Tori Amos and her Ani DeFranco. Hand lotion, toner, Shiseido Body Soap and a tube of lipstick. These I traded for two Cormack McCarthy novels, a book on the Balkan war, The Onion's Our Dumb Century and a Lonely Planet guide to Southwest China, now much worse for the wear. And a stack of CDs: Soundgarden, Dinosaur Jr., Veruca Salt. Neither of us opened the bags. 
"Look, I should probably just come right out with it," she said. "I've been back for a couple of days. I ran into Mike and some other friends, and after some prodding they told me that you're seeing someone now, a Beijing girl. It's okay, really, it's okay. That's what happens when you break up." 
"Is that what you wanted to tell me?" 
"No, wait. I'm getting to it." She turned to the waiter who had approached our table silently, and ordered two mineral waters, a spring roll appetizer and a beef salad. "The point is, as you know I'm leaving China, going back to California and then to New York. And I think you should consider going with me." 
Long pause while I took this in. 
"In what capacity?" 
She looked at me puzzled for a moment, but recovered quickly. "I'm saying that I'd like to give it -- give us-- another try. I missed you while I was gone. Really missed you. Everywhere I went, everything I saw, it was like I couldn't experience anything without thinking about how you would have seen it. Your quirky take on things. Your fucked-up humor." 
I thought of our first trip together, to Shanghai, and how we agreed to skip the statuary section of the Shanghai Museum after discovering our shared distaste for "the Buddha thing," and how I cracked her up when I said it was like going to Gothic cathedrals in Europe and saying "I really like the architecture, but I just can't get into the whole Jesus thing." 
I cracked a smile, and she read me: "You're thinking about the Buddha thing in Shanghai, right? Me too." Laughing, she reached for my hand; I kept it pressed stiffly atop the other one. She gripped it for a moment and then let go. 
Her face darkened. "I know it's been months now, and you were probably pretty pissed off over the whole thing, but... but you weren't supposed to just acquiesce when we -- when I -- brought up ending it. You were supposed to fight for it, fight to keep me. You were supposed to want it more than I did. I didn't think you'd just let it go like that." 
I shrugged. "You had made up your mind about law school. You were dead-set on New York. I thought we were making the 'grown-up decision' -- isn't that what you called it? No trying in vain to do the long distance thing. And wasn't it you who said you didn't want to make it harder by staying together through the summer?" 
"Look, I know what I said then. But that's not what I'm talking about now. I'm talking about you coming with me back to the States and being together again. You know we had a good thing. A really good thing." 
"I like it here in Beijing." And I'm seeing someone pretty intensely, but why does that feel so irrelevant now? 
"I know you do. I like it here too. But think about it: Beijing's not good for you, S_____. It's not. The bar's too low here. Don't you realize that it's just too easy here? Mediocrity gets you by, and you go soft. You don't get a sense of your real worth. There's no challenge in it. And you fool yourself with your thinking that this is where it's all happening, that this is the epicenter. But you know, surely you know, it's nothing like New York. Or San Francisco even. Beijing's a black hole for smart slackers. It's not healthy to be away from your own country for this long." 
As we ate we continued the conversation. During Tom Yum Gai I argued things I didn't quite believe, about how as Chinese Americans our future lay here, and how we oughtn't miss these critical years. She countered with bookstores, delis, newspapers, bagels and a real music scene over green curry chicken. Distractingly tasty Pad Thai crippled the force of my rebuttal, but I made a case for the general quality of our Beijing expat friends -- savvy journalists, the IT crowd -- as we sipped Thai iced coffee. As the check came she confessed a dread of the New York dating scene, took my hand and told me plainly that she still cared about me very much (never the "L" word with her) and needed to be with me. I felt myself breaking. 
"Can we go somewhere?" My eyes must have registered unease. "Oh -- She's at your place? You guys are living... oh, look, never mind." Her eyes were misty, her voice warbled. "You're welcome to come over to where I'm staying. No pressure. We can just hang out, catch up." She choked a bit, sniffled, and a tear landed on the check. "You can see my pictures from Yunnan and Sichuan." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 14:
Ex-ternal Forces

"Sorry about that scene just now. Didn't mean to guilt you into keeping me company this afternoon." 
"No worries." 
D_____ snorted. "What's this 'no worries' shit? When did you start picking up Australianisms? See, I told you you've been here too long. I hate how Americans here start using Brit and Australian English. If I hear you say 'shite' I'm going to have the Embassy Marines transport you back to American soil under armed guard." 
We approached the gate of the Sanlitun Diplomatic Compound, where D____ was house-sitting for a couple who were vacationing in the Philippines -- a journalist for an American paper and his wife Sarah, a friend of D_____'s who worked with her at the law firm. "Speak in English so we don't get stopped at the gate." Like we'd be speaking Chinese otherwise? Funny, I thought. We used to make a point of speaking Chinese passing the gate of my compound. We rode the elevator up and she unlocked the door. 
"Wow, nice digs!" 
They had a big three bedroom flat -- er, apartment -- done up in textbook expat-in-Asia style: antique Chinese furniture, a Tibetan mandala, a Khmer Buddha head or two, some Javanese shadow puppets, a couple of frightening Indonesian demon masks. Paintings by modern Chinese artists who have the the expat market cynically sussed: Mao kitsch and calligraphy collages, dissident art in angry reds -- tanks, blindfolded faces, silenced screams. Enormous book cases with China titles by Orville Schell and Perry Link, Geremie Barme and Linda Jaivin, books about the Dalai Lama and Wei Jingshen next to works by Edgar Snow and Han Su-yin. The house smelled like linseed oil and Indian spices, with a slight undertone of cat shit. 
While I perused the shelves, D_____ went to the kitchen and opened a can of Whiskas. She made little psss psss psss noises until a mangy looking calico finally trotted out and meowed loudly while she scooped the can's contents into a shallow bowl. She made a face at me. "I fucking hate cats," she announced, "and this one is probably the worst specimen I've ever encountered. How Sarah puts up with this thing I'll never know." She washed her hands and joined me on the couch, where I was flipping through a coffee table book on New Guinea. 
"Should we open a bottle of wine? They said I was welcome to anything less than six years old." 
"It's like 2 in the afternoon." 
"Yes, but I don't know how long I have you for. How long do I have you for?" I didn't answer. "Anyway, I'm opening a bottle. Should I pour you a glass?" 
"Yeah, sure." 
She wrestled with a bottle for a while before handing it and the corskscrew to me in despair. We spent some time picking flecks of cork out of a very nice Australian shiraz. "Cheers." Clink. 
"So tell me about your trip." And she did. She told me about teahouses in Chengdu and rock bars in Kunming, the annoying stoner backpackers who stalked her through the Stone Forest, about the commercial ruin of the Water-Splashing Festival in Xishuanbanna, about abject poverty amidst breathtaking natural beauty on the Myanmar border, about a Dali and Lijiang overrun with tourists. She sang the praises of Western Sichuan, rattling off lists of mountains, passes, rivers and towns I'd never heard of and can't remember. She trekked on horseback to Songpan, slept in Lamaseries and ancient stone fortresses, climbed craggy peaks perched high above seas of roiling mist. Her photographic accompaniment was nothing short of dazzling. She looked radiant, passionate: D_____ at her most beautiful, all poetry and fire and eloquence. 
And then, abruptly: "So tell me about this woman you're seeing." 
"Really?" 
"Yeah, really. I have to know what I'm up against. I mean, besides the allure of this glittering metropolis." 
"Well.... Her name's Xiao Lin. 28, Year of the Rat. Spent like four years in France. She used to dance, belonged to some Nationalities Dance Ensemble or something. Five-eight, thin, long hair, no plastic surgery." 
"What does she do now?" 
"I don't know, just sort of... hangs out, I guess. But it's not like she's totally frivolous. She reads, takes care of her mom. Her dad just died in April or something." 
"How long have you been seeing her?" 
"Not quite a month," I lied. 
"And where's it going with her?" 
"I don't know. Haven't really thought about it." She poured another glass. 
"Are you guys monogamous?" 
"By default." 
"Is she pretty?" 
"Yeah, I guess." 
"Good in the sack?" 
"I draw the line there." 
"Fair enough. So... How'd you meet her? Wait -- let me guess. In a club. Club Vogue?" 
"Nope. Not a club. You really want to hear this?" She nodded, and poured us both a glass of wine. 
"Gotta steady my nerves." She took a long sip, swallowed, set her glass down. "Begin." 
I told her the story in a nutshell, from the time I started noticing her in restaurants to that Thursday afternoon in Public Space when she went home with me and left abruptly, and how I ran into her again at Jam House and almost got in a fight with her evil dakuan "big brother" and how she ended up at my place that night. 
D_____ looked more disappointed than jealous or angry. "So she was basically a kept woman." 
"I didn't say that." 
"Oh, come on. If she really had any talent or brains she could have gotten a scholarship to study in France, right? But no: She has Mr. Dakuan pay her way, and what, she pays him back in blowjobs? Really original fantasy there, dude -- the 'hooker with the heart of gold.' And you to the rescue." 
She studied my face for a reaction. I should have felt far more indignant than I actually did; I sat there with a blank expression. D____ assumed she had offended me. 
"Look, I'm sorry. That was probably excessive use of force." 
"No worr-- no problem. No offense taken." There was a long silence as we each took a sip of wine. 
"So what have you told Anna about her?" she asked. 
"I mentioned her in an e-mail, but nothing specific. Have you talked to Anna recently?" She nodded. "And what'd she have to say?" 
"She told me I'm an idiot. That I should have faith in her matchmaking instincts. That I'd regret breaking up as soon as you hooked up with someone else. That I have to stop obsessing about being a grown-up and just enjoy my youth while I still have it. She said she envied me still being in Beijing. And that as soon as the opportunity presented itself I should throw myself at you recklessly and beg forgiveness." 
I cocked an eyebrow and she grinned. 
"Would you object?" 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 15:
Exit Strategies

The frustrating thing is that I really hadn't done anything. Even after all that wine, all that rekindled desire, all D_____'s assurances that there'd be no strings attached, I managed -- for the most part -- to resist. I retreated with incoherent explanations: My mind's a mess. I have too much to sort out. I need to settle things and make rational decisions. I made my way out of the diplomatic compound half drunk, only having kissed her and not deeply, held her for a while in the doorway. 
I wanted to sleep with her badly. I missed it, remembered vividly what every part of her felt like, thought about it all the time. And I would have slept with her, except that I knew it would have completely fucked me up. I don't handle guilt well. Plus I doubt I'd have gotten away with it: Xiao Lin -- intuitive, observant, experienced in these things -- would have seen right through it. I certainly didn't want to hurt her; from what I little I knew of her past, she'd had plenty of that already. But I wasn't going to stay with her out of pity alone. One afternoon's conversation with D_____ was packed with more meaning, more substance than six weeks with Xiao Lin. Part of that's just language. Most of it isn't. 
What does she do, D_____ had asked. Nothing. What does she do? She hangs out with me, sleeps, grooms, cooks on occasion, reads a bit and lets me screw her whenever I feel like it. Why have I been unable to ask her about ambition, career, the future, security? Because I knew what that felt like. D_____ always asked me about mine, and my answers were never satisfactory. You want to be a writer? Then get some serious training! Get a real job! You think you're going to write for fucking expat magazines and websites forever? Christ, S_____, you're 30 years old! Maybe she's right: Beijing is a black hole for smart slackers. 
But D_____'s attained escape velocity, she's pulling away from the gravity well and there's no stopping her. Xiao Lin's right here. And she's not going anywhere. There's always been something hard in D_____ -- something rigid, selfish, part of her that lacks in compassion. Always something to prove. That same something that let her say to me that she was going to travel, alone, for two months. That she was going to go to law school and that it was pointless to try to stay together. The part of her that paired kind words with cruel ones: "You know, you're a very talented writer! It's such a pity you never make good use of it." The part of her that insisted on euphemisms for love even after a year: I'm crazy about you, I adore you, I care about you so much. And me, stupidly: I love you, D_____. 
I picked my way along the Bar Street. In front of Lan Kuai Fong I ran into some of Xiao Lin's friends -- Yuan Yuan, Sophie, Sun Jialan. "Hey, S______!" called out Sophie, looking up from an Ikea catalog. "Xiao Lin was down here looking for you. Did she find you?" 
"No, I'm going home right now though. What did she want?" 
"Nothing in particular," replied Sun Jialan. "She just thought you might be here. She had groceries. I think she wanted to make dinner. Ni zhen xingfu! You're one lucky guy." 
"How long ago was that?" 
"About an hour," answered Yuan Yuan. "Ni shouji mei kai? Didn't have your cell phone on?" 
"Wo meiyou shouji. I don't have a cell phone." 
She looked incredulous: "You don't have a cell phone?" 
"Really, I don't have a cell phone." 
"You should buy one," she said gravely. 
"They're really cheap now!" chimed in Yuan Yuan. 
"Right. Right. Well, better go home now!" 
I felt someone tap me on the back and I turned around. It was a flower girl, eight or nine years old. "Xiansheng, mai hua'r." 
It suddenly seemed like a good idea. I fished out a fifty and gave it to her in exchange for a half-dozen half-wilted roses. Xiao Lin's friends all laughed and kidded me. "He's buying her roses! He must have done something bad," Sophie teased. I retreated, laughing nervously, no doubt confirming their suspicions. 
When I got back to the apartment Xiao Lin was cooking dinner and the air was filled with the rich aroma of stewed beef. Emerging from the kitchen, she was sweaty, and her hair was tied back. She was wearing a stained white T-shirt, a baggy pair of my shorts, and my hideous green flip-flops. 
"You're finally back! Where have you been?" she asked over the noise of the hood vent. 
"I had lunch with my ex-girlfriend. I had to give her back some of her things, and get some books and CDs back because she's leaving China. See?" I steadied my voice, which sounded strained to my ear, and held up the bag she'd given me. "Oh! These are for you." I handed her the roses; she pointed toward the little hall table with the spatula in her hand and scowled. 
I am without sin. I've done nothing wrong. Why the fuck do I feel so guilt-ridden? Why does it feel like I've already betrayed you, abandoned you? 
"Baobei'r, I'm dying of heat. I'm going to take a shower," I told her as I made my way back toward the bedroom, pulling my shirt over my head. She followed me in, her anger and suspicion palpable. 
"Smells really good, Linzi." She came toward me, eyes focused, mean. Instinctively I stepped back away from her. 
"You've been drinking. And look at your pants!" She pointed. "They're covered in cat fur. Where did you go after lunch?" she demanded. "It's after 6:00." I could feel her eyes searching me for telltale marks; I was extremely self-conscious. 
"It was nothing. I just went to the place where she's staying, and the people she's staying with have a cat. We had some wine and looked at pictures of her trip to Yunnan and Sichuan. Just talked. Nothing else." 
"Just you and her?" 
"Well, yeah. But nothing happened. Really! What's the matter? You don't believe me?" 
She looked me hard in the eye. I was sure I couldn't pass a polygraph; somehow I was having trouble beliving my own story. "Take a shower," she spat disgustedly. "I'll put the noodles on the table and you can eat." 
I was in there for only ten minutes tops. I had just turned off the water when I heard the apartment door close hard. I hurriedly towled off and stepped out of the bathroom, looked around the apartment, called her name. 
My shitty roses were strewn on the ground. A bowl of beef noodles sat steaming on the table. 
And Xiao Lin was gone. 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 16:
Reach Out and Touch Someone

Goddammit, answer the fucking phone. For Chrissakes, Xiao Lin, pick up! 
Her friends are still down on the bar street. They probably saw her. She's probably hanging out with them, and they'll talk her out of anything rash. I should just... No, I'd look like an idiot. 
Fucking answer the phone! 
Ten rings. I hung up, hunted for the characters chong bo -- redial -- pressed the phone to my ear: C'mon, c'mon, c'mon.... "Duibuqi, nin hujiao de yonghu meiyou kai ji. Sorry, the subscriber is power off." 
Fuck! 
Curious physiological effects when your lover walks out. That heavy heart, nausea, ears burning from a vague and hypothetical sexual jealousy. Shame, embarrassment, vexation, wounded pride bordering on self-loathing, that frustrated feeling of being shut out, pinpricks of guilt. Mostly shame. Impotence. The blues. 
So what did she take with her? The shoebox of money, of course. Verified: The lid was on the floor of the closet, the shoebox empty. She's really leaving. Gotta applaud the spine. At least three pairs of shoes gone, and the only clothes left all outfits she never wore. A duffel bag missing, and her purse. All the makeup that wasn't in the bathroom. Her birth control pills. Impressively fast packing job. 
I tried her again, hung up, lit a smoke and took stock. Why should it bother me that she's out of my life, when she's that suspicious, that volatile? An hour earlier I'd been scheming on how to get free of her. How pathetic that it should upset me just because she's the one who walked. But I'd grown attached to her. Her skin -- its feel, its smell. That pheromone zone along her neck, between ear and shoulder. I found myself on the bed, nose buried in her pillow, inhaling deeply, aroused. The strained heavy breathing sounds she made. How she cracked up when, damp with sweat, we'd make those accidental chest farts, and how she'd try to repeat the feat, giggling like a little girl. I was going to miss having her around. I lay there playing trailers from our simmering six-week summer romance. 
I could try her at her mother's later. I'm sure I could explain everything. But what is there to explain? 
After a few minutes I dressed, pulled on clean socks, put on shoes with a vague mind to go out somewhere, nowhere in particular. I should find her. She's not wrong to be angry. It all must have looked pretty bad from her perspective. 
But she is justifiably angry. And she'd be even more pissed if she knew what I'd done, what I'd been thinking about the whole thing. How I'd actually planned out how I might manage a tryst with D_____ in the week or two before she left Beijing, and still have Xiao Lin around after. D_____ would be just as disgusted with me. It occurred to me that I'd likely end up with neither of them, and I'd be fucked. 
I dug around in my wallet and found the taxi receipt on which I'd recently written down a phone number: D_____ at Sarah's, 6532-5555. I punched all but the last digit, hung there deliberating, put down the receiver. I lit another cigarette and called her. 
"Hello?" D____ sounded sleepy. 
"Hey. It's me. Did I wake you up?" 
"Hey! That was quick. No, no, just sorta nodded off reading. So, what, you changed your mind already?" 
"Ummm... Not exactly. Remember how I've never been too good of a liar?" 
"Yeah?" 
"Well, my skills haven't improved. Technically I didn't even lie -- just thought impure thoughts." 
"So what happened?" 
"So I come home, and she's cooking dinner. I behave somewhat suspiciously, and her hackles go up. I retreat into the shower, and before I even finish Xiao Lin takes off." 
"And you take such fast showers. Wow, how dramatic!" She yawned. "'Scuse me! All that wine. So... is she gone gone or just off in a huff?" 
"She took a fair amount of stuff. I doubt she'll be back tonight." 
"Cat fur on your clothing, right? Dead giveaway. And no, it wasn't deliberate sabotage. I'm not that devious." 
"So should I go after her?" 
"You're asking me?" 
"No really, whuddya think I should do?" 
"Forget her, sailor," she said in her best sultry tart voice, "I'm five minutes away, all alone in this big apartment, and still terribly feverish." 
I laughed. "Be right there, baby. You gonna banish my pain with your skillful ministrations?" 
"Ooo! No, seriously, though, you should probably chill for a while, get your head on straight and try to figure out what you want. It's still possible she'll be back in an hour or two. Call me if you need to, but it's probably not a good idea to see each other just now. Give Mike a ring. He says you guys haven't been hanging out much." 
"Yeah, I'll probably do that." 
"Unless she's already called him, and..." 
A sick feeling briefly seized me. He wouldn't... she wouldn't... My ears burned again. 
"You still there?" 
"Yeah. Yeah. Look, I'm gonna go. I'll just... I'll talk to you later, 'kay?" 
"Okay. Don't do anything stupid, you hear me?" 
"I'll talk to you later." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 17:
Welcoming Committee

I rang Mike on his cell phone. 
"'Sup Mike?" 
"Hey! Dude, I just got back! I'm in a cab on the way back from the airport." 
"Where were you?" 
"Down in Shanghai. My family's in China and I flew down from Beijing to hang out with 'em for a couple of days. My sister came up to Beijing with me since my folks are doing the Suzhou and Hangzhou thing and, well, fuck that. Gardens are the worst." 
I heard female laughter in the background. 
"Cool. How long is your sister gonna be in town?" 
"I dunno, like a week? Right? Yeah, a week." 
"She's younger, right?" 
"Younger by three years." That put her at about 27. Mike had talked about her before, but I couldn't remember much of what he'd told me. Her name was Michelle, she'd never been to China before, and she was working in some advertising firm in St. Louis where Mike was from. She married some guy and got divorced after only a year. I'd seen some pictures Mike had from her wedding three years ago, but she was pretty heavily made up and I couldn't really tell what she looked like. Her husband was a complete dork. 
"Well tell her welcome to Beijing. So you guys maybe up for getting a drink or something?" 
"Hang on, I'll ask." Muffled sounds. "Yeah, sure. We're gonna drop our shit off at my place and clean up a bit, then we can meet you somewhere." 
"Sounds good. Just call me when you guys are ready. Where do you think we should take her?" 
"Bar Street, I guess. Let her check out the place. She won't believe it." 
"Didn't you take her to Maoming Lu in Shanghai?" 
"Dude, our hotel was in butt-fuck Egypt way out in Pudong. Plus we were only in Shanghai for a couple of days and we had to do the relatives thing, so she didn't see much of the vaunted Shanghai nightlife scene." 
"That sucks. Well, we'll make up for lost time. So I'll see you guys in like an hour or so?" 
"Yeah, about an hour. What time is it?" I could hear Michelle tell him it was almost 7:30. "Hey, have you eaten yet?" 
I was famished, my appetite heightened by the smell of Xiao Lin's cooking, which still permeated the apartment. I stared at the beef noodles still sitting on the table going cold. "No, I haven't. You guys wanna grab a bite?" 
"Yeah. I think Michelle's up for anything western. You're Mr. Restaurant Guide, so you pick a good place. Nothing too fancy." 
"Like I can afford fancy!" 
"We'll stand treat tonight. Just not The Courtyard." 
"Well in that case…. Let's see…. How about Mediterraneo? That cool?" 
"Perfect. You wanna call and make reservations? Indoor. It's fucking hot here." 
"Sure. What time should I say?" 
"Nine? No, make it a quarter 'til." 
"Does that give you enough time?" 
"Yeah, we'll be there. Cool, then I'll see you in a bit. You and Xiao Lin?" 
"Nope. Just me." 
"Bring her along! Michelle can sorta speak Chinese." 
"I would, but…. Well, I'll tell you about it when I see you. We're not really hanging out any more." As of about an hour ago. 
"No shit, brah? You okay? Anyway, I could have told you that it - oh, forget it." 
"No, what? What were you gonna say?" 
"Nothing, nothing. Oh, which reminds me - I ran into your ex a couple of days ago. Have you talked to her?" 
"Saw her today. I'll tell you about that when I see you too." 
"Okay, homes. So quarter to nine at Mediterraneo. See ya." 
An hour later I got dressed and stepped out into the sticky night. As I walked up the street the street toward Mediterraneo, I half expected to run into Xiao Lin. The working girls that used to line the street in front of the 24 Hour Store were gone, and a few young policemen were patrolling the area. 
I sat down at the table and waited for five minutes or so before Mike and Michelle showed up. Michelle was petite and athletic-looking, smartly dressed and with an expensive hair cut -- short, brown streaked hair that framed her face. Big eyes, neatly plucked brows, a somewhat wide nose, and a smile perfected by suburban American orthodontia. She looked and talked like a sorority girl, and any attraction I might have initially felt was soon quelled by her inanity. 
"Sooo nice to meet you! Michael has told me so much about you!" 
She was as garrulous as Mike but had none of his wit, and if she possessed any of his intelligence it was buried pretty deeply. She asked me what I do here ("A writer? Wow, how interesting!"), how long I've been living in China ("Oh my God! Don't you miss America?"), where I went to school in the States ("Oh! My good friend went there! Do you know Ronny Tanaka? Veronica? She was in Kappa Delta Phi") and what I had studied ("Oh, I always hated history! I majored in marketing and finance.") Apparently Mike hadn't told her much about me at all. 
"So how do you like China so far?" I asked. 
"Oh, it's great!" she declared with saccharine sincerity. "I mean it's really poor and dirty and of course no one's really free here and everyone stares at you, but I like get this sense that people are discovering like free enterprise and stuff and it's just so great! Like just now down the street here there were these adooorable little girls selling flowers, and it completely broke my heart and I just had to buy some." 
"Yeah, I bought some today too." 
She smiled at me. "That's sooo sweet! Anyway, I can sort of see why you guys like it here. I think it's like really important for people to discover their roots. I have this black friend, and she went back to Africa, and it just made her realize how much culture and heritage has been lost by black people in America." 
"Uh, yeah." Mike kept his eyes down and focused on his food. 
"Hey, do you like know a good gym here in Beijing?" She said "Beijing" with a soft "j" sound, the way American newscasters do -- Beizhing. "I need to like work out every day, or I just feel like completely fat." 
"Uh, yeah, there's gyms at all the big hotels. Your brother lives kind of close to the Kerry Center, and they have a nice gym I've heard." 
"I like tried to go running in Shanghai, but it was like so polluted! I was all coughing and gasping." 
"Oh, you'll just love Beijing then," her brother assured her. 
"Really? The air's much cleaner here?" Mike and I looked at each other. 
"Well, I like haven't seen much of it, but it seems like Beizhing is pretty different from Shanghai, that's for sure. Oh, like it was so gross, when we were in the cab on the way over here the cab driver was like hocking up phlegm and spitting! It was like so nasty!" 
By this point I must have been unable to disguise my contempt. Mike put his hand on my shoulder and said "S____ here isn't feeling so great today. He just broke up with this Beijing girl he was seeing." 
She did her best to look sympathetic, but her look was pure condescension. "Ohmygod, I'm sooo sorry to hear that! But y'know, you're probably better off without her. She was like probably after your passport anyway. I heard that that happens all the time. Besides, a cutie like you could get lots of girls, anyway!" She winked, and I fought the urge to fling gnocchi at her. 
When she got up to use the bathroom, I looked at Mike with an eyebrow raised and he replied with an embarrassed shrug. "That's our Michelle. Pride of the Wang Clan. Glad to see she's still the same. Oh, not to change the subject, but you were going to tell me what happened to you and Xiao Lin…" 
I recounted the story quickly, and filled him in about D_____ wanting to get back together and asking me to go back to the States to be with her. 
"Whoa. That's serious. What the fuck would you do in New York?" 
"I don't know. Get a job, I guess." 
"You're not seriously considering going, are you?" 
"Actually, yeah, I guess I am considering it. Haven't ruled it out, anyway." 
He wiped his mouth and grinned at me. "You're not going anywhere and you know it. Beijing has you in its grip and will for all time." 
We finished our meal and Mike got the check as his sister came back from to the table. 
"So where are you guys taking me now? I'm like totally ready to PARTY!! Are there cool clubs here? Oh my God, I just love clubbing. There's like the coolest clubs in St. Louis." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 18:
In Vogue

I end up at the Sanlitun-area dance clubs just about every weekend, but I have no idea why. I hate the soulless, plastic beat of techno or "House" or what have you; I still can't differentiate them. I hate having to shout over the thumping digital racket, and the way I wind up hoarse from trying to converse with friends. I hate pushing, shoving, and waiting forever just to get an overpriced drink. And I basically hate dancing -- or, more precisely, I hate watching other guys dance. It embarrasses me to watch them jerk and hop about arhythmically, sweating and leering and pretending to enjoy themselves in that silly mating ritual. 
Mike was always dragging me out to do the weekend club rounds: Vogue, The Den, The Loft, sometimes Havana or Vic's or Orange. My preference was always for some live music and then drinks at a relatively quiet bar - the roof of the Jam House, or the Hidden Tree, or at the Houhai bars, Blue Lotus and Bai Feng's. But Mike's sister Michelle was in town, ready to party (God, I hate the word when it's used as a verb!) and we felt obliged to indulge her. She was dead set on dancing. 
We stopped in at a bar or two along the Bar Street. She only ordered drinks with names like "Screaming Orgasm" or "Sex on the Beach" or "Blow Job," and by the time we arrived at our first stop -- The Loft -- she was red faced and talking in high-pitched squeaks. Mike charmed our way in and we avoided the 30 kuai cover charge for the "guest DJ from Hong Kong" -- some no-name who could barely match up the beats of his shitty music selection. 
This whole DJ thing puzzles me. I've seen DJs in the States who genuinely impressed me with the way they could work turntables, frantically juggling beats, dropping in cool samples from classic soul or funk or R&B albums and scratching with insane precision. That takes some talent. But in Beijing, it seems like every weekend there's some hack playing generic techno records and twiddling effects knobs. These guys stick a "DJ" in front of their name to justify the cover charge. Mediocre abilities get you pretty far in Beijing, as D_____ would be quick to remind me. 
The Loft was pretty dead that night. Clubs tend to have a pretty short run of popularity in this fickle scene, and it looked like the sun might be setting on The Loft's day. A dozen people or so were dancing, and I said hello to a few acquaintances at the bar and a table of old friends from the magazine while Michelle admired the décor. After two drinks Mike was looking antsy and suggested we make a move. As we left, Paul the PR guy from Indiana and his henchman Alex were just arriving. Alex was wearing one of those T-shirts with the blurry writing that read "I'm not as think as you drunk I am" or something similarly inane. 
"Hey duuuuude! Mike! Whassup! You guys are leaving already? Is it beat in there? Where you headed? Vogue? Sweet. We'll tag along if it's cool," Paul said, eyeing Michelle. "So who's your friend here?" 
"This is Michelle, my sister. Michelle, this is Paul." 
"Nice to meet you!" squeaked Michelle. 
"And nice to meet YOU! So... How long you in town for?" They exchanged small talk while we walked up the alley to catch a cab. 
When we arrived at Vogue there were twenty or thirty people milling around on the sidewalk out front - foreign students, Beijing hipsters, hair-dyed punks, and a woman I thought for an instant was Xiao Lin. Beggars and flower girls worked the crowd, and a long line of taxis had already formed. We made our way in, but Mike's charm failed us and we coughed up the 50 kuai cover charge for yet another DJ. 
It was a typical weekend night crowd at the club, with four hundred people or more jamming the place. Michelle was impressed. "I never imagined Beijing was such a party town!" she shouted into my ear. 
There were a dozen women who looked like Xiao Lin from behind, and I felt the sick, heart-sinking panicked feeling each time I saw another tall, slender woman with long hair. I watched them on the dance floor for a while, clustered together in twos and threes, their heads rocking back and forth, arms raised, hips swaying. A lot of exposed flesh. Cell phones on little leashes around their necks. Sunglasses, for whatever reason. 
We looked around in vain for an available table then headed upstairs, where we found a spot by the bathroom in the corner. Mike and I greeted the owner, Henry, and his wife Sally, as they busily made the rounds. "Henry's secret," Mike announced as we sat down, "is that he remembers everyone's name and makes all these people" -- he motioned around him --"feel like fucking VIPs. Of course, some of them are." Mike put his hand on Michelle's shoulder and pointed to a woman at one of the tables. "Know who that is? That's Faye Wong. Wang Fei. You know?" She looked at him blankly and shook her head. "Anyway, she's a hugely famous singer. Hangs out here when she's in Beijing. And that chick over there, Qu Yin, she's a famous model. And so's that guy, Hu Bin -- famous male model." 
Michelle didn't seem too interested in her brother's Who's Who of Vogue. Meanwhile, Paul zoomed in on her shamelessly, and she appeared to enjoy his attention and laughed at his every pathetic effort at humor. Mike was evidently peeved, but didn't interfere. 
"So you're in advertising? Cooool! Yeah, I'm in PR, you know -- related industry," Paul blathered. "Ever thought about coming out to China to work? Land of opportunity, you know, especially for someone like you who has such a good accent! St. Louis? Yeah, I've been there lots of times. My brother went to George Washington University there. Great town. So how do you like Beijing so far?" Blah blah blah. "What can I get you to drink?" 
"I think I'd like a Screaming Orgasm." She tittered. 
"Well," said Paul, quite pleased with himself, "I'd be happy to help you out with that!" 
Jesus Christ. What a schmuck. 
Mike offered me a smoke and lit one for himself. "Man, I thought everything was pretty good." He tried to console me, reminding me of all the lovely available women in Beijing and pointing out five or six of them, but it just put me in a deeper funk. 
I crushed out my cigarette. "Mike, let me borrow your phone for a sec. I gotta make a call," I said after a bit. 
"You're not calling her, are you?" 
"Naw, I told D____ I'd call her later." 
"Okay then. Here ya go. You have to dial 010 first." 
"Yeah, I know. Thanks. Be right back." I made my way down the crowded stairs and fought my way through the packed dance floor toward the door, whipped by hair and swinging arms. Outside, the night air was warm and humid. I dialed D____'s number. I let it ring ten times but no one answered. And then I found myself punching the familiar pattern of Xiao Lin's cell number. 
It rang, to my surprise. And then she picked up. 
"Michael! Ni haaaooo! Do you miss me?" 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 19:
Fragmentation

I have a certain talent for mimicry. It's been of great value in learning languages, of course: my Beijing accent is good enough to pass for a native Beijinger with cab drivers so long as I keep my utterances short and to a minimum of grammatical complexity. I can get my tones dead-on most of the time, which is something many non-native Chinese speakers stumble on. Even those who can manage their tones end up overdoing the "r" sounds when they try to do Beijing hua, inserting them where they don't belong and exaggerating the slur. I can also do passable foreign and regional accents in English -- decent Southern accents, Brooklyn, Long Island, Indian, Bengali, Scottish, French, German, Japanese and what have you. And I can even imitate a handful of celebrities. 
As it happens, I can also do Mike Wang -- well enough, at least, to fool Xiao Lin over the phone. Mike's voice is just a bit higher than mine in register, and with my throat constricted from nervousness as it was, I must have sounded pretty much just like him when I called her that night from his phone outside Vogue. I did those flat, Midwestern vowels that he uses even in his Mandarin. 
She had asked me - asked Mike, really -- whether he missed her, and I told her that of course I did. I asked her what was up between her and S_____. 
"Ta? Wo gen ta bai-bai le." -- Him? I broke up with him. 
"Zhende? Wo yiwei nimen lia ting hao de!" -- Really? I thought you two were doing fine! 
"Hai! Fanzheng ta jin'r xiawu hai gen bie ren shou." -- Yeah right! Well he did someone else this afternoon. 
"Wo bu xiangxing. Ta ting laoshi, yizhi dui ni hen hao." -- I don't believe that. He's a good guy, he was always good to you." 
"Fanzheng wo wusuowei, wo zhongyu ziyou la!!" -- Anyway, I don't care, I'm free at last. " She laughed musically, in a way that made me feel oddly liberated myself. Then asked me where I was - "Ni zai na'r ne?" 
I paused for a moment before replying. "Wo zai Bashi ba Hao" -- I'm at Number 88, how Vogue's Chinese patrons referred to the place. 
"Na, wo dai hui'r guoqu zhao ni ba. Zanmen keyi haohao liao yi liao." -- I'll go there and find you in a bit. We can talk about it. 
"Hao ba. Dai hui'r jian." -- Cool. See you in a while. 
I hung up. A couple of musicians I know -- a bassist named Haokun'r and a keyboard player called Zhang Jian - were smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk and I bummed one. I didn't need it to calm myself; I felt surprisingly relaxed, almost numb. We chatted about nothing, then I crushed out the smoke and got up. I was about to open the door when Mike's cell phone rang. I looked at the screen; it was Xiao Lin calling. 
"Wei?" 
"Michael, what's-his-name isn't over there, is he?" 
"No. No, he's... he's at home, I think." 
"Then I'm coming over, okay?" 
"Okay." And it was okay, insofar as I was able to surpress, with relative ease, the urge to kill her, kill him, kill myself. 
The place was still packed. I picked my way toward the stairs in the back, pausing only to take in the pathetic spectacle of Paul's spasmic courtship boogie; Michelle, for whose benefit Paul was now earnestly shakin' it, looked as though she was leading an aerobics class and let out an occasional, shrill "Wooo hooo!" From the top of the stairs, I surveyed the scene: You never have a fragmentation grenade when you need one. 
I found Mike at the bar upstairs, caught up in a conversation with Vogue's owner Henry, who was going on at length about a trip to Tibet and his devout Tantric faith. I handed Mike his phone and told him that Xiao Lin would be coming by. 
"You called her?" 
"Actually, you called her. Or so she believes. Anyway, she seems eager to talk to you, and she's probably already on her way over. I'm callin' it. I've had a long, long day." 
Mike pushed his way through the crowd and caught up with me just as I reached the entryway. "Look, man, it's not what you think. I haven't -- I mean, that shit was a long, long time ago. Like a year ago. I haven't even seen her. It's not like we -- you know, it's not like it was any big deal." 
"No man, it's cool. Whatever. It's not your fault. I just -- I'm going to go home and chill. We're cool. Don't sweat it." 
I crossed through the alley that connects Xindong Lu, where Vogue is, with the Sanlitun Bar Street. By day, the hutong is jam-packed with shoppers haggling for cargo pants and North Face jackets. But late night -- invariably on my way home from another evening frittered away in the hormone bath of Beijing's clubs -- my walk through the dimly lit hutong is my time for introspection. The night had cooled off, and the oppressive humidity of the last weeks had given way to a crispness that almost hinted of fall. I had a lot to think about. 
The right thing to have done in this situation would have been to just go to bed. I opted instead to make another phone call. 
"Hello?" Her voice was sleepy. 
"D_____? Hi, it's me. Listen, I'm sorry to wake you up. Are you... can you talk?" 
"Yeah, sure," she yawned. "What time is it?" 
"It's only like 1:30." 
"Well, I guess you could... well, why don't you just come over here?" 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 20:
Summer's End 

I stayed with D_____ for the rest of that weekend. Being with her offered at once the excitement of newness and the comfort of familiarity. We didn't lose a minute in making up for lost time. D____'s pending departure hung pretty heavily over our little reunion, but we avoided talking about it for the most part and she made no direct appeal to me to go with her to New York. I finally ventured back to my apartment on Monday morning, my clothes stale and three days of stubble on my face. 
Xiao Lin had been there again. The rest of her things were gone, and she had even cleaned up the place: The bed was made, the dishes done, the ashtrays emptied. There was a note for me on the table, written in deliberately neat Chinese characters; she knew that I couldn't read Chinese well enough to decipher most handwriting. 
S____, 
I tried to call you on Saturday but you were not home so I came to get the rest of my things. I waited for you until late but you did not come. 
I didn't want to explain everything. It's easier this way for both of us. I just wanted to see you and tell you that you were very good to me and I will always remember our time together. When you see me next time I hope that you won't pretend not to know me. 
I found out that it was you who called using Michael's phone on Friday night. Remember that he is your friend. He was very angry with me, and tried to find you that night, but does not know where you are. You should call him. He was in a fight with another American and had to go to the police station but he is okay. 
Don't worry about me. I will be fine. I will miss you! 
Xiao Lin 
I read it over again character by character, trying to figure out whether there was finality in its language, whether its tone of civility was sincere and warm or merely formal. I imagined her here on that Saturday afternoon, writing out the note, cleaning up. I didn't see the look on her face when she walked out, couldn't guess the look on it when she came back. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't called D____ and gone there. I was quite sure, in any case, that I hadn't seen the last of her. But I resisted the temptation to call her; it was probably too early, and her phone wouldn't be on. 
Instead I called up Mike to find out what had happened between him and -- I assumed -- Paul. 
"Yeah, that fucking slimeball Asian fetishist was all pawing at my sister after she was passed out. That was clearly unconscionable. It was my solemn duty as a brother to fuck him up," Mike intoned. 
Paul, I should point out, is taller than Mike Wang by a good three inches and outweighs him by at least 30 pounds. But I had seen Mike get in fights before, and he seems to know what he's doing. He's pretty fast and basically fearless. And he's one of those guys who actually enjoys fighting. "So I assume you got the better of him?" 
"Fucked up my hand a bit, but it's okay now. I can still type." I heard the click of a computer keyboard. "Hear that? Anyway, I doubt that motherfucker can eat solid food." 
"Where'd this all happen? In Vogue?" 
"The main event was just outside of Vogue. Like an hour or so after you left. Xiao Lin showed up, as you know. Jeez, you're a dick for pulling that phone stunt. I mean, what the fuck?" 
I mumbled an apology. 
"Anyway, I was talking to Xiao Lin -- talking about you, mind you -- and next thing I look over and see this asshole with his fucking hand on Michelle's tit. First he was all apologizing, but I was pretty steamed and then he starts in with all this shit about me being a racist and only objecting cause he's white. And so I popped him -- caught him about at his left brow. Broke skin and there was quite a bit of blood. You shoulda seen it -- all the girls were screaming, and Henry and Sally were freaking out and finally Henry made us take it outside, which I was all too happy to do. Big crowd! Should've been there, homes. At least he stood up and fought. You know, put-up-your-dukes American style fight, all fair and everything. But he didn't land shit on me. I stopped short of sending the motherfucker to the hospital but by the end of it he was pretty bloody. I tapped him in the nose like twice, probably loosened most of his teeth too. Made him say uncle, literally. Then the cops came and we both got hauled into the paichusuo." 
"And so how did that go? With the police?" 
"Piece of cake. Told 'em that the guy was molesting my sister. Guy asked me if I wanted to press charges. I told him no, that I thought I'd already punished him. Cops gave me a ride home and treated me like a hero for defending the fair flower of Chinese maidenhood and shit." He laughed. "So how about you? How're you holding up? Where you been hiding?" 
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Got a note from Xiao Lin saying you had been looking for me and telling me about your little altercation. Thanks, man. Sorry I missed that spectacle. Anyway, I've been at the place where D_____'s house sitting." 
"Yeah, I kinda figured. When's she leaving?" 
"Her flight's next Wednesday. Nine days." 
Nine days. D____'s friend Sarah came back to Beijing that Wednesday. We said good-bye to the ugly cat and the capacious apartment, packed up her things and moved back to my place on Sanlitun Bar Street. D_____ noticed every minor improvement that Xiao Lin had made on the place: shelf paper, self-adhesive hooks in the kitchen, tablecloth, houseplants, potpourri on the toilet tank. She found pictures of Xiao Lin, which she examined closely without comment. She read the dozen or so pieces I had written over the summer -- a profile of a young Beijing filmmaker, two book reviews, a piece on newly opened sections of the Great Wall and some interview translations for a planned series on "How Beijing Works" with pig slop haulers and hairdressers and Uighur lamb skewer vendors. I even showed her the opening chapters of my first pathetic efforts at a political thriller. 
"This is good stuff. Honestly. You're really finding a distinct voice and I think you have a future as a writer." 
D_____ busied herself getting furniture shipped to New York, having a couple of suits tailored, reading some law books and having coffee with various friends and acquaintances. Thursday I called up everyone I could think of and got together a big farewell thing for her at the Hidden Tree on Saturday night. She stuck close to me throughout the party and was openly affectionate, to the surprise of many of our friends who knew we'd split up months earlier. 
When we finally stumbled home together at 3 in the morning she kissed me as we stood just inside my doorway, her breath warm with liquor. For some time she buried her face in my shoulder and clutched me to her, sobbing quietly. After a while she led me to the bed, and we undressed and somehow it was sad and profound, and she seemed almost scared. Lying there breathing hard afterward, I watched her looking off into the middle distance. And then she said, in a weak voice, "I love you." 
I didn't respond -- just lay there looking at her, puzzled, half dreading what she might say next. 
She sat up and pulled the sheet over her body and turned to me: "We need to make a decision very soon." 

Sanlitun Diaries Part 21:
Decisions, decisions 

I hate making decisions. When faced with some weighty choice in life, I've typically agonized for weeks and weeks - only, in the end, to go mindlessly charging off a cliff. This time, wisely recognizing the futility of obsessive cogitation, I simply chose not to think about it. For more than a week, from the day that Xiao Lin split until the night of D_____'s going away party, I steered assiduously clear of the big question. And D____ was mostly complicit in my escapism. Ordinarily full of resolve, responsible, willing to face hard realities and make tough choices, D_____ seemed just as eager as I was to avoid The Talk. 
We distracted one another by all the usual means. We kept a busy social schedule, with friends present at most meals to keep conversations off taboo topics. We watched an unhealthy number of DVDs. We played many games of Scrabble, and we avoided any talk of the future even when the words "split," "tempt," "renege" and "quit" were all played in the course of one game. We trudged around to the various museums, temples, and antique markets she'd managed to miss in her two years in Beijing. We drank more than either of us normally did, and though after a bottle of wine one of us would sometimes let slip an utterance like "I sure am going to miss you" it never went far beyond that. We exhausted one another with unusually vigorous sex. And at day's end, we managed to drift off to sleep without having broached the subject of what was going to happen after she left. 
But with only two full days left, I suppose it was unavoidable. Still, I managed to put it off until morning; I'm wiped out, I said, and couldn't think straight, and this is too important to talk about in such a state: I didn't want to be too clouded by emotion when we had The Talk. And so we slept on it - or she did, anyway. I lay there unable to sleep, listening to the horns and the commotion out on the Bar Street and thought about what Beijing was going to be like without her. By the time I finally drifted off - it must have been two hours later - I was no closer to knowing what the fuck I wanted to do. 
In the morning I woke up to the sound of the coffee mill. D____ was making French toast. "I can't believe you still have this," she said to me as I trudged over toward the kitchen doorway, still half asleep. "Think fast!" - she tossed a bottle of maple syrup at me, something my parents had sent me nearly a year ago. I caught it against my bare torso and squawked from the shock of the cold. "Good morning," she said, and kissed me on the cheek. "Can you open that for me and help me set the table? Breakfast is almost ready." 
She had steeled herself for this conversation, had organized her thoughts neatly, and as we ate our breakfast she laid it all out pretty plainly. It was clear enough to her, she told me, that I wasn't making any preparations to leave Beijing, and she wasn't going to try to talk me into it again. She spoke of it as a possibility for the future: "If you ever decide that you've had enough of Beijing, I think you'd really love New York, but it's not really fair of me to expect you to pull up stakes and try and start a life there right now." She reached across the table and we laced our fingers together. 
"That leaves us with a pretty simple choice, really: We either try the long distance against all better judgment, across twelve time zones, or we end it when I get on that plane, no promises. I don't think either of us would go for that open relationship, see-other-people nonsense. Right?" 
I grunted agreement and sipped at my coffee. 
"So that's it. Those are our choices." She studied my face for a reaction. "So what's it going to be?" 
It was at that precise moment that my out-of-body experience began. As I slipped away and everything became at once hyper-self-conscious and completely remote, my last thought was something like, "Oh, shit. I'm about to go mindlessly charging off a cliff." 
And so at a distance I heard myself ask, "But what do you want? I mean, if I were to say we should try to keep things together you'd… you would be okay with that?" 
"I guess that's what I meant when I told you last night that I ….you know, what I said to you last night." 
"You couldn't be talked into an eleventh hour deferral? Couldn't you just do law school by correspondence course? It's perfectly respectable." A pro forma injection of levity before the inevitable cliff-charge. 
She laughed and shook her head. "It's a little late for that. I'm going. But…" - she could see that she this was going her way - "if you can endure Beijing's many nubile temptations, I can resist the blandishments of the boys at NYU." 
I tried to imagine what she'd look like to some fellow first year law student. 5'6" -- quite tall for a Chinese-American girl. Not exactly voluptuous, but healthy and athletic looking - "robust" is the word I've always used. Thick, lustrous hair with reddish streaks from all that sun. Perfect skin in spite of it. Big eyes, full lips, bright post-orthodontic smile, a cute nose, a musical voice. Always smells incredibly good, a little like baked goods, all butter and vanilla and brown sugar. Dresses really well. The kind of woman all Chinese-American parents hope their sons will marry. The kind of woman I want to marry. 
"I can resist. And we'll see each other for Christmas and next summer, and at least there's an end in sight." 
"So we're decided then?" 
"Yes." 
She smiled and squeezed my hand and her eyes were wet and she said it again, and I said it too, and then she got up from the table, leaned over and kissed me, and told me to wait. She came back a moment later and handed me a wrapped box, about the size of a shoebox. She smiled cryptically, walked over to the phone, picked it up and punched some numbers. Ten seconds later, the shoebox rang. "Open it." 
I tore it open while it continued ringing, and found inside it a very nice Nokia. A 6150 in dark blue. "Hello?" 
"Now I can keep tabs on you from New York," I heard through both ears, with a slight delay in one. 
The next two days were excruciatingly slow, oddly enough. I found myself actually anxious for her to leave, though I'm sure I showed no sign of it. It suddenly seemed hard to fill the time, and I felt obliged to make every moment meaningful. I managed not to bring up our decision again: No further clarification, no elaboration, nothing in writing. She said a few last good-byes to our friends and her old colleagues, reconfirmed her flight, and on Monday night I took her out to one last Peking Duck dinner at Tuanjiehu. We both slept soundly, pressed together tightly, and then the alarm went off and I made some eggs and I hauled her suitcases down my stairs and out onto the street and the cab came and we rode to the airport, D_____ trying to suppress her excitement about going home, and me trying to appear more upset than I was. 
I watched her hand in her airport tax receipt and take her place in line with her passport in hand. She turned around a few times to look at me. Then she was gone, and I walked back down to arrivals and out to the curb for a cab. 
It was fall now: The change had been sudden, as seasonal change always is in Beijing. The sky was startlingly blue and even the cab driver, who had waited in line for five hours at the airport, was in high spirits. And so we chatted all the way back, about the weather and the Sydney Olympics and Ang Lee's martial arts movie and gas prices and how his getting married in Tianjin was a wise choice because the banquets are affordable there.