Yuen Fun

The Moment had arrived. Finally. After more than a week of flirting I had finally been given a sign that maybe I could have a temporary Chinese girlfriend for my time in Tianjin. The Face and Trey, sitting in a tree....

L.D. was chatting me up about topics deeper than her language allowed. The topic kept turning back to girls, partly because Dru had jokingly made effort to set up something between Gollum and I. Gollum was a co-worker of L.D.'s. L.D. desperately wanted to find me a Chinese wife.

"Yuen Fun is the Chinese word for when two people see each other, they love instantly," I was informed. It was also a word that generally meant fate... that people meet for a reason. It reminded me a little of a karass because Vonnegut’s Cat's Cradle was still floating around my head.

"Random. I think all life is random." I pretended to throw dice on the table to make my point. "Random things happen to us. The people we meet are random. We must make the best of them." It was the most simplified way of explaining the concept of free will as I cold. I like the idea of some sort of fatalism concerning the people we meet, but I don't believe it. Again, Vonnegut has a way of clouding all your deeper thoughts after reading him.

The Face stepped in thinking I was having difficulty with the word. She had been listening to our conversation. I had been paying attention the other clique of attractive girls sitting next to The Face's clique of coworkers (the coworkers from the various schools would stay together in the same rooms and eat together) playing The Game as best I knew how.

That's when The Moment happened. The Face, object of my attention that week, pointed to herself and then to me. "You and me. Yuen Fun," she said.

SWEEEEEEEEEET!

I was hoping she dug bearded Americans with hemp sandals, but damn... this was fate now.

I pointed at her and then to myself. "Fate? Yuen Fun? You and me?"

"No," she said.

My heart dropped.

The Face pointed to herself, Stash, and then me and said "Yuen Fun" again.

Stash... Stash was a 50-something year old colleague of Too Tall and The Face. She had an enthusiasm and a great spirit of adventure... and the unfortunate luck to also have a mustache. She was up for every adventure I invited The Face out to. Horseback riding, The Wall, getting dinner when we got back to Tianjin. There is a particular term in American slang that describes this sort of person well, but I will spare my diverse readership of the coarse language describing such blocking.

So Stash, The Face and I were meant to be. Friends. I would find out later from a male Chinese teacher that she was engaged to one of his good friends. This happened to the other American teachers too... hanging out a bit with a girl, and then finding out offhand from someone else that they were married or engaged. In all our talks, she never once mentioned anything about any other boy. So it goes.

We had a blast that night anyway. Dru and I had gone into the village and brought back enough quality beer back to supply The Leader's of Hexi District education coming, the male Chinese teachers, and ourselves for the night. No more Leelo... that stuff was horrible. The obviously re-used bottles with the "choicest ingredients" statement stolen from Budweiser together with the stories of fake Chinese beer that was half formaldehyde came to mind whenever it touched our lips. No, no more Leelo.

The night it started with an outdoor kabob BBQ and I sat with the Maneater, Gollum, L.D. clique and suffered much flirting. At one point L.D. said she would get a divorce so she can be put in a contest amongst the three women to see which would be my Chinese wife. I had to define the word "blushing."

The night progressed into karaoke and games. One of the games involved my boss being blindfolded and crawling on the ground looking for a marker in a room designed to hold 45+ people. Another was a Chinese variant of musical chairs. At one point in the night I plugged my iPod into the karaoke machine and sung "Garden Grove." I can't take the MIDI songs anymore...

The night closed off with everybody dancing to horrible techno. Then Dru killed it by plugging in his iPod and playing some Snoop. Seriously... the dance-floor cleared down to just Americans in less than three minutes.

In the morning more officials arrived and filmed 30-second fake lectures and fake one-to-ones. We had a closing ceremony where officials came and told the people who had been there how great a time they had. We joked that we could go back to our rooms and film us fake sleeping and fake brushing our teeth for five seconds if they wanted the whole thing. We had lunch, posed for a group shot, and said our goodbyes.

The Face and Stash were waiting outside the bus. They were waiting till we got onboard so they could sit next to us. They didn't realize we were taking a small van back to our part of Tianjin.

We exchanged our final glance-smiles. Smiles that kept my thoughts warm for a week, smiles that woke me up during my own boring lectures. I looked away and up at the majestic blue skies and the green mountains I knew would be mere dreams in a few hours. I closed my eyes and boarded the van.


Tags: Treyopia China Stories Life Students Jixian