There was a loud CRACK! as my head slammed into the steel luggage rack, and the passengers in the poky train cabin turned to glare at me with amazed concern, as if I had just been crushed by a falling tree. I sat down on the folding window seat, rubbing my skull, which throbbed in chrysanthemum-shaped waves, and my phone bleated with a message. I pulled the phone from my pocket and focused on the little screen.
“Where are you?” her message read.
I was waiting to depart from Xiàmén, an island city in southern China. I began typing on the phone’s plastic buttons. “I’m in Xiamen. Where are you?”
Her reply came in problematic English. “I’m in Xiamen too. What do you want to do here?” she wrote.
“I came here to travel,” I wrote, being slightly evasive.
The phone lit up and buzzed and jingled, and I picked up. Without saying hello, Meimei (pronounced like the fifth month, twice) asked in a flat, managerial tone, “Did you come here to see a girl?”
“No, I came to see the city,” I replied—not a lie.
“When did you get here?” she asked in Chinese.
“Two days ago,” I replied in beginner’s Chinese.
“You’ve already been here for two days? What have you been doing for two days?”
“I did some shopping and sightseeing.”
“You were with a girl.”
“No, I was by myself the whole time,” I answered—a lie indeed.
“Don’t go back to Sānmíng,” she commanded, with more self-assurance than I had when ordering cream in my coffee. “Stay with me tonight.”
I paused, for a very brief moment, to think. I had taken Meimei on a few dates, but I had no idea whether she was really interested in me, or just using me to practice English. After about a month of casual but fruitless dating, I had given up on the idea of having a real relationship with her, and had taken this trip to Xiàmén to get my mind off her. Now, just when I was beginning to imagine that I wouldn’t see or hear from her again, she had appeared in a city I had never before visited—at the same time as I, when I hadn’t told anyone where I was.
We were nothing alike: She dressed like a Barbie doll—wide shiny belt, impractical skirt, high heels, and wavy hair with a reddish-dyed tint. I never used a comb, and my wardrobe consisted solely of jeans and untucked shirts. She was an ambitious Chinese socialite who wanted to make money and get out of China. I was an English teacher a few years out of college living paycheck to paycheck. We were travelers—walking, talking stereotypes—equally set on our totally opposite destinations.
I told her that I would call her back, hung up, and stared out the window for a minute.
Really, I didn’t have to think much: I was 26 and had been celibate for eight months, which was making me wild and crazy, like a cat stuffed into a pillowcase. Before I had really evaluated the situation, I grabbed my bag and hopped off the train, explaining to the steward that I had changed my mind and wasn’t going home.
As I walked away, I told myself: You can only be young and virile and invited to spend the night with a pretty girl in a hotel so many times. Also, I hadn’t been in China long—about six months. I knew little about China, and even less about Chinese women. So I had no idea how much trouble I was setting myself up for.
I arrived at the ticket counter and got a refund before the train departed, and hailed a cab to the address that Meimei had sent to my phone. I settled into the taxi’s front seat and rolled down the window, letting the warm spring air hit me in the face and suppressing a laugh at how crazy I was feeling. What was wrong with me? Was it the fact that I was miles and miles from anyone who knew me, and two continents and an ocean away from anyone who really knew me? Or was it that life in China sometimes felt like a game, where even decisions that you suspected were wrong could seem unassailably right?
It was pointless to worry. I had made my choice. I popped a stick of gum into my mouth, swiped on some deodorant (it had been a couple of days since I had showered, and I was viscerally smelly), and prepared to be as charming as possible under the terrible conditions I had created for myself.