John and I had barely been together for a month, and here we were, arguing about food.
I had offered to cook John, my Chinese boyfriend, dinner, and decided to make my famous “Italian-style eggplant,” an East-West fusion of the standard fish-fragrant eggplant recipe, with tomatoes added to give it that Italian feel. I’d made this dish hundreds of times, for many other Chinese friends. Everyone loved the recipe. Everyone, that is, except for John.
He’s going to love it, I thought, as I sat across from him, watching him choose a few morsels of eggplant with his chopsticks, and eating them with a small helping of rice. I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say — until he said it. Continue reading “Chapter 13: Different Eggplant, Different Cultural Expectations”
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
Our “green-skinned” train to Yiwu had no air conditioning on this sultry evening of July 13, 2002. My two translator friends, Caroline and John, were with me on the hard-seat section of this train. The three of us sat on the same seat — with upholstery in the same dark green color as the train — across from two soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army. I borrowed Caroline’s plastic fan from time to time, and sometimes caught a breeze through the open window. But mostly, the humidity loitered painfully around us, and we hoped, in vain, that it would go away.