I really want to be on the new highway leading to Tonglu, John’s hometown in the Chinese countryside. The smooth concrete is perfect, unblemished by potholes or cracks. Each side of the highway has a new guardrail, with newly transplanted trees beside it, propped up by four wooden supports and rope tied around the trunk. And on the highway, a bus cannot stop to pick up new passengers — it must go nonstop to its destination, so the passengers know when it will arrive. It is China’s future, right next to me.
I, however, am currently in the present on this Sunday in early September, 2002
The present is a rickety minibus on road etched with cracks and potholes — as the minibus hits them, the feeling becomes amplified through the floor and seats like a cacophonous sound in an auditorium. Everything on the bus, from the exterior to the furniture, is stained by a brown veneer, like the patina of a dirty teacup.
The bus rambles along this road next to the highway — stopping every now and then to pick up a passenger, or drop someone off — and with each passing moment, my patience rambles along towards anger. Continue reading “Chapter 14: The China Road of Misunderstanding”
Chinese poets once praised the Xin’an River in Zhejiang Province as a mirror, so clean and clear you could see the bottom. But the Xin’an River is no more. It was dammed in 1958 to create 1,000 Island Lake, where John takes me in August 2002 to visit the country of his ancestors.
“Do you realize how you hurt Frank?” Xiao Yu, one of my coworkers and friends from the Internet company, confronted me one afternoon, nearly a week after 
There it was, a tiny blue duffel bag on the floor of the guest room. I found it Tuesday evening, after returning home from work.
“Everyone in this entire teahouse is staring at you,” giggled my Chinese tutor Mandy, as she clutched my arm on the way to the restroom.
The West Lake, framed by a glittering night sky and the willow tendrils hanging over our bench, could probably turn any young couple into lovers on such an evening. Especially this Western woman and Chinese man sitting beside its taciturn waters, watching the bats dip and sway to catch mosquitoes to the tune of the humming cicadas in the trees and bushes.
It’s not every day I walk out of work with three heaping bouquets — two of roses, and one of carnations. But this day, where I feel as if on the brink of living out a girlhood princess dream, is not not any day. It is Friday, July 26, 2002 — my birthday, and the day after John’s last day of work.
There stood John, my Chinese coworker, in front of our office building, just as he promised moments ago. “I’ll be watching you in the bus.”
Frank, my ex-Chinese boyfriend