I sleep in until about 10:15 and when I wake up I already have a text from Nancy. We were supposed to meet in front of the school at 10:30, but she is already there so I quickly throw some clothes on and scooter over there as quickly as I can.
Nancy is waiting for me outside.
"My husband is driving around the block, he should be back soon."
"Okay."
A small white Volvo pulls up out front with a tall, thin, dark skinned incredibly attractive man driving.
"This is my husband, Mr. Wu."
"Oh hello!"
"He doesn't speak any English"
"Oh okay. What's his first name?"
"You can just call him Mr. Wu."
"Okay."
I hop in the back seat while Nancy hops in the front.
"Have you been to Old Gaochun Street," asks Nancy.
"Oh, yes. Peter took me when I first got here."
"Oh, okay," says Nancy, very disappointed.
"We could go again. I liked it."
"Oh good!" This cheers Nancy back up right away.
We walk down the same street I've visited a few times. It's still a cool street. I'm not saying wow or cool as much though, which I think might be bumming Nancy out slightly. We watch a man making little sculptures out of sugar for some children running by.
"Do you want one?"
"Oh no, thank you."
I think Nancy really wanted to buy me one. They were cool to look at, but I sort of don't understand artistic food. Once the point of making the sugar into a sculpture if it's just going to be eaten. And it's just melted sugar, it can't taste very good, right? I mention to Nancy that I usually see guys selling stuff made out or wires or leaves, but Nancy tells me it's much harder to make out of sugar then with these other materials. At least I could put a robot made of leaves on my desk or something, a robot made out of sugar is a cool looking bad tasting treat this disappears in 15 minutes. I don't say any of this to her but I think it in my head while I smile politely.
"Do you like stinky tofu?"
"What?"
Nancy points to some blackened tofu on being sold by a street vendor. She is right, it is very stinky. I also realize I have already eaten this twice, once when I thought I was ordering sushi on the Purple Mountain in Nanjing and once with Peter at the mall.
"Oh yes, I do like stinky tofu. Do you?"
"I don't. It's too spicy. But Mr. Wu loves it."
Mr. Wu is already standing near the stand and salivating. Even though he speaks no English, Mr. Wu reminds me of my best friend Alex Ho in a few ways. 1. He is Chinese. 2. He is Tall. 3. He is very handsome. And 4. He very much likes food. (I don't know if Alex Ho likes stinky tofu, but I've seen him salivate at many a street cart.)
Nancy buys some stinky tofu for me and Mr. Wu to share. I eat it very slowly so I don't eat more than Mr. Wu and he does the same thing. Alex Ho would never do a thing like this, he would eat all the stinky tofu for sure. Nancy, at one point, eats a stinky tofu and then says ew and spits it out. I don't understand people who eat food they know they don't like. You don't see my constantly trying hard boiled eggs and canned tuna (I did eat that tea hard boiled egg but that was different because I thought it might taste different. I can also eat a bit of hard boiled egg in like a cobb salad or a sandwich I just don't want to eat a whole hard boiled egg.)
We get back in the car and Mr. Wu drives us over to Nancy's mom's house which is just outside the city next to a private lake. On the ride over, Nancy's radio plays the song "Need You Know" by Lady Antebellum. I'm not sure if Nancy is a big Lady Antebellum fan, or if she just picked a radio station she thought I would like because the songs were in English. I don't really like Lady Antebellum, but there is something nice about hearing a song in English I have heard before and didn't put on myself. Meanwhile, Nancy tries to convince me to stay in Gaochun. Her heart is in the right place, even if her argument isn't very sound.
"In the city, everyone is too busy. No one cares about you."
I feel like being to busy would help me be less bored. And no one seems to care about me in Gaochun, except for maybe Nancy. And even then, this is like a pity hang, right? I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. The radio then plays "Let Her Go" by Passenger. This must be some sort of English soft rock station. It's also a stupid song, but it feels nice that they are trying. It also makes me think of Mitchell. She probably hates that song to, but it's about breaking up with someone so, you know, I miss her again I guess. It's fine, I'm sure it will stop soon.
We drive past the big lake, up past some small houses and come up to a cozy little duplex with about five old men and women sitting out front. Nancy introduces me to one of them as her mother.
"Do we look the same?" Nancy asks.
"Oh uhh, hmmmm. No. Yes. You have similar eyes. You are both very beautiful."
It only now occurs to me that Nancy is very beautiful. I never noticed before. I think maybe finding out her husband was such a hunk made me look at her in a different light.
Nancy sat me down at a table alone with a glass of tea while she helped her mother cook lunch. I sat alone in silence and diddled with my phone until the food came out.
I don't know what anything I ate was, but it was all fucking delicious. There were some small fish in a spicy sauce that I was going nuts over. I think I ate more of it then I was supposed to but I couldn't help myself, these fish were so good. Nancy kept telling me to only eat the belly because there were less bones there but I kept eating the whole thing. Nancy also had me suck on one of the fish's heads but told me not to bite on it. I did gladly and it was delicious. There were also shrimp which were incredibly embarrassing to eat. I could never get the whole little shell off or head off and was constantly pulling bits of shrimp from my mouth after eating. No one seemed to care though. We all left the shrimp carcasses on the table next to the plate, there was no separate carcass plate which is what I'm use too, but I'm also used to shrimp without heads or arms. There was also some green vegetable (Bok choi?) and some pickled radish (maybe?) and some other sprout vegetable (who knows?) It was all incredibly delicious and instantly became my best meal in China (maybe those truffle soup dumplings but this meal at least had company.) Mr. Wu also took out a bottle of wine to share with me, which excited him greatly. Nancy said we could only have one glass because she didn't want us to get too drunk. I think this disappointed Mr. Wu, I know it disappointed me. The wine was a sweet rice wine that was very delicious and I think was pretty strong, but when Nancy said glass she meant shot glass and we just took little slips so I didn't even get a buzz. I had read in China, it's rude to drink more than your host, so I was constantly looking at Mr.Wu's glass level to see if I could drink more.
One of Nancy's mom's neighbors joined us for the meal, but she did not eat anything the whole time. She just sort of stared at me and grinned. My mere presence seems to delight so many out here. I don't really take it as a compliment.
After lunch, Mr. Wu got out his tackle box and a few fishing poles and we walked down to the private lake that I guess Nancy's family owns. Nancy's mom's neighbor followed us out to fish and another neighbor soon joined after. Nancy's family's lake is not huge, but it has crabs and fish which they catch for food. It's a man mad lake and I think they farm the crabs and the fish naturally come to try to eat the crabs. It was hard to understand everything, Nancy's English is not great. They also have a small farm where they grow a lot of the vegetable we ate during lunch and a beautiful giant Golden Retriever that Nancy is scarred of. This dog did bark loudly, but also had what look like a cow udder dangling from her belly and was very sweet when you pet her.
Nancy is not related to her neighbors, but she calls them her Aunt and her Uncle. She says everyone does this in her little town. She said they also all share their food and belongings with each other. It does seem like a peaceful pleasant lifestyle, it must be cool to have every one of your neighbors be not only a friend, but almost a relative. Their block parties have to be insane. I don't think she understands fully that I don't have this community here at all, and that people in a city would be less scared of talking to me then people here.
Then we fished. Nancy left to grab some iced teas, so for a while I was alone with Mr. Wu. We sat and said nothing as we looked at our fishing poles, occasionally pulling them in. Mr. Wu had some bait he would mix with water and mud and throw into the pond, but I kept wasting bait by not casting well enough or reeling in to early so he soon went and grabbed some worms for me. I'm pretty sure this is my first time ever fishing.
I both get and totally don't get the appeal of fishing. There is something sort of relaxing about it, you do sort of zen out while you sit there and just stare at the lake, but it's also very boring. At first, I really had no idea what I was even really looking for or trying to feel. I kept having fish eat bait off the hook without even attempting to reel them in. I eventually got the feel for it a little more, but I still couldn't catch anything. I wasn't super bored. I wasn't super lonely. I was at peace. So I guess this was the best I had felt in a little while. But I didn't want fishing to be my thing. I don't want to be a fisherman. It's not enough. It might be more fun maybe if everyone their spoke English and I wasn't in the midst of a existential crisis. Maybe if I could have had a bit more of that wine. It was fine though.
Nancy's mom's neighbor caught a fish. Then Nancy caught a fish. Then Nancy caught another fish. Then Nancy's mom's other neighbor caught a fish. Then Mr. Wu caught a fish. Then Nancy caught another fish. I was starting to feel stupid. It also had been a few hours and I was starting to feel a little antsy. I was about to say okay that's enough for me, when I felt what I thought was a little tug and quickly reeled my line in.
I had caught my first fish. Sure, Nancy made me throw him back because he was too small. And sure, the hook went through his body, not his mouth, so he hadn't even eaten the bait. But still, I had caught something. It counted for me. It was enough to make me not give up and start trying to fish again. Nancy caught another fish. Then Mr. Wu caught another fish. Then Nancy caught another fish. Nancy was killing it, I think Mr. Wu was a little embarrassed that his wife was kicking her butt. I tried to catch and lost a few other fish, but I kept failing. I did catch the fish hook on the side of my thumb twice while casting poorly, but other then that nothing was biting. Until something did! That's right, I caught a fish!
Sure it was smaller than any other fish anyone had caught that day, but Nancy didn't make me throw it back. I tossed it in the bucket and kept fishing, although I was pretty over it at this point. I had already caught a fish, I was a big success, what's the point of trying to catch another one. It ain't gonna happen. And it didn't, but that was fine, we headed back to Nancy's mom's house soon after.
On the walk back, Nancy again told me about the horrors of the city. Nancy had lived in the city with her first husband, who was a very bad man who her mother never liked. Nancy and him used to argue and fight all the time. After the divorce, Nancy met Mr. Wu who her mother likes very much. "She likes him more then she likes me," Nancy said a few times. I couldn't blame Nancy's mom, Mr. Wu was hot. Mr. Wu was more than happy to leave the city and move out to Gaochun and Nancy has never been happier. It is so weird to think of Nancy being young and having a whole other life before this. It's like when I found out my dad had a first wife. Or if my kids ever find out I lived in China and, god forbid, try to read this blog. (Kids, if you do read this, skip that Esther chapter or I will kill myself.)
For dinner, we eat lunch left overs and the fish we caught in the lake. It's still fucking delicious, although I probably like the small spicy fish more then the big ones we caught. Those small spicy fish were so good. The big ones were great too though.
Afterwards, Nancy had to talk to her mother a bit so I played on my phone for about twenty minutes and gave a clementine Nancy gave me as I waited. Afterwards, Mr. Wu and Nancy drove me home.
In the car, the radio played Starry Starry Night by Don Miclean. I actually kind of love this song and haven't heard it in a while. It's very nice.
"Do you want to go to the mall?"
"Umm"
"You could go shopping for some clothes and me and Mr. Wu could help you out."
"Okay.
Then the radio plays Bad Day by Jason something? (It's not Mraz I think its like Blum. Blunt! James Blunt!) I hate that song.
We go to the mall and try on some clothes. First we find me some affordable waterproof hiking boots that I am pretty happy with. When we walk past one pair of bright yellow sneakers, I ask Nancy if I should try them on.
"No, if you wear yellow shoes you will look like a black."
Great, finally someone is nice to me and they end up being racist. I hate racism, but I guess I appreciate kindness and hate my loneliness more because I don't say anything.
Then we start trying on coats, but they are all expensive and not my style. Nancy keeps wanting me to try on sweaters but I keep telling her I have plenty. Then we go to another store to try out some pants, which I need pretty desperately. I am given a pair and go into the dressing room to try them on. The crotch is way to tight. You can see my whole dick through these things. I take them off, put back on my normal jeans and tell Nancy and Mr. Wu.
"They are a little too tight."
"Try these other ones."
"Okay."
I try on another pair. They are still tight in the crotch area, but they aren't as tight as the last pair. Maybe it's not so bad. Maybe its just how people where they wear their pants. I decide to head out of the dressing room and show Nancy and Mr. Wu.
"Are these okay?"
Nancy screams. Mr. Wu covers her eyes with one hand and his own with the other. The woman who was helping us drops the clothes she was holding and dives into the nearest clothing rack.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll put my other pants back on."
On the drive home from the mall, we are all completely silent. The radio is shut off. Mr. Wu parks in front of the school and drops me off.
"Thanks for having me over today Nancy, it was really sweet and I had a really nice time. Your mom is a great cook."
"Maybe if you look online you can find some pants that fit you."
"Okay."
Mr. Wu and Nancy drive away. I hop on my scooter and head home.
I was a part of a little family today. Sure, still I really didn't talk to anyone all day and sure, it was a pity invite and sure, Nancy turned out to be a little racist, but still. I was part of a family today. I felt love and I missed that. Love is really nice.