—-

I was waiting at Immigration in the line for foreigners, one of the few Asians there.  I had my nose buried in a book I had just brought back with me from Hong Kong when a white guy carrying a full load of suitcases stooped down to grab a bag I almost bumped into without seeing.  ”Oops, sorry,” I said by reflex.

He grinned.  ”Must be a hell of a good book, you’ve been reading it this whole time on the ferry from Hong Kong,” he said.

I smiled.  ”Well, you know, it’s a hell of a boring trip, too.”  He laughed and walked forward in line.

We came up to the immigration windows side by side and kept up our conversation.  He was in Shenzhen for a trade show, just in from a month of travel around the world, and was due to go home to Atlanta soon.  I told him I was finishing a year of English teaching here.  The eyes of the Chinese immigration officers darted from me to him, and back again.  We were cleared, and parted amiably at the baggage inspection station.

At the exit of the ferry terminal there was the usual crowd of men holding signs for just-arrived people and others lounging around who perk up seeing you come.  I noticed that the man I was just talking to was accosted by one of the perky latter, who summarily took his suitcase for him and began leading him and his wife towards the parking lot.  They looked confused but game and followed, seemingly more to chase after their suitcase than anything else.

Something clicked in my head and I gave chase too.  ”Hey, did you say you were going to Futian?” I called out.  The couple stopped and turned in their tracks.  ”Uh, no, we’re going to Shenzhen,” they replied.  Confused, certainly – Futian is a district of Shenzhen.  I felt, weirdly, like a local, just for a brief moment.  ”We’re supposed to go to the Marriot?” the man added.  By now we were beside the Chinese man’s car, a bright red sedan with the trunk already popped open, the driver in the middle of stuffing the accosted suitcase into it.  He too was looking at me quizzically.  ”Well, I’d recommend going by one of the official taxis,” I said, and pointed over to the line.  ”He’s a black cab driver,” I added when the man pointed at the driver.  ”Oh, well, thanks a lot, then we’ll get a taxi then,” said the man.

But I was already moving away fast and barely acknowledged the thanks.  I wanted to get out of the Chinese driver’s gaze as soon as I could, having plucked his day’s wage from him – for a foreigner!

—–

The Starbucks experience in Hong Kong is much different from that in Shenzhen.  In Hong Kong, the inside of a Starbucks feels much the same as the outside of one.  It’s all the same, everywhere, there – clean surfaces and modernist tendencies.  But in a Shenzhen Xing Ba Ke, the difference is like a pressure gradient, catching you up in a sweeping gust towards an interior space that feels like an oasis of Western cleanliness, predictability, and manners.  I spend a lot of time in them.  By now the baristas at the Coastal City location recognize my face, and at SeaWorld they greet me by name.  Not my proudest accomplishment in traveling the world, but it makes things feel a little more like home.

As I was settling into a chair and wiring up my electronics for a session of writing, the decibel level of the place suddenly ratcheted up, like it had become a Chinese bus at rush hour.  But the brash, grating yelling was in English.  I was confused and looked around.  A gaggle of adolescent boys had stormed in, speaking loud obscenities with the arrogant confidence of those who assume nobody else in the room can understand them.

“Fuck you!  Let’s go hang out at Matthew’s place.”

“No, you pussy.  What, you actually got something?  You don’t need to get something at Starbucks to hang in one.  What?  A muffin?  God, you’re such a nerd.”

“Screw you!”

They must have been expat kids from the nearby international schools.  The civilized Chinese patrons of Starbucks glanced over and visibly tried to ignore them.  The staff awkwardly buffed tables around the little gang of ingrates.  I tried to also, but the snatches of conversation insisted on hurling themselves into my ears, especially when one boy called out both mine and my brother’s name.  ”Andrew, Matthew, come on, let’s go.”

“Fuck you!  We’ll stay right here for now, this is cool.”

“He’s an AMERICAN, so he for sure knows!”

“Well, YOU did it with a BLACK GIRL!”

The noise quiets for a moment as if the group is mutually weighing the severity of this accusation.  On the other side of the room I am mentally slapping my forehead in disgust.  Separating the world into racial lines has been, I have found, a characteristically Chinese habit, borne out of centuries of willful cultural isolation.  But I shouldn’t have forgotten that Westerners, especially bratty kids, have already perfected the art.

The group briefly digressed with a show of hands as to what exactly constituted second base.

Punks.

—–

I had returned to the tailor for a third time, to get fitted for two suits: a gray one with a hatched pattern, and a navy blue set with thin dark pinstripes.  Luohu Commercial City, where the Chinese woman named Stephanie Lark operates her shop, has been painted to me before in terms essentially amounting to a “wretched hive of scum and villainy,” but some of the best tailors and deals can be found there all the same, and Stephanie with her excellent English and trained eye has made it into the tourist recommendation books even in sartorial Hong Kong.

“I think I’d also like to get a suit made with a Mandarin collar, and a topcoat as well,” I mentioned to her in passing.  I was standing in the hallway with half a suit on, and two of Stephanie’s assistants poking and pinching it.  ”这样合适吗?” one asked me.  ”这样不错.可不可以把裤子弄断一点?” I responded slowly.  In a manner more professional than I’m used to here, they didn’t bat an eye at my Chinese.  ”可以,” they affirmed.

Stephanie passed by.  ”Sure, we can talk about another suit,” she breezed.  She noticed the assistants talking between themselves about my fitting.  ”你听得懂他们说什么吗?” she said, asking if I understand anything they said.  I laughed and replied in Mandarin that I got a little of it, but maybe it would be better if she parsed over things again with me one more time.  She smiled and I took the suit off behind a jury-rigged curtain in their tiny office, and jumped back into my casuals.

Together we looked over my options.  ”What kind of material would you like for the topcoat?” she asked me.  She pointed to three fabric samples pinned to the wall.  ”This one is very heavy, but the herringbone pattern is very nice.  Will you be in a warm or a cold place?”  After some discussion we settled on a medium weave.  ”Send me a picture of the design you want,” she told me, switching to Mandarin, and then we started in on the Mandarin-collared suit my mother and grandmother recommended that I try.

“Of course we can do a Mandarin-collared suit,” Stephanie had said when I asked her about it a week ago.  ”This is the traditional Chinese clothing!”   Now she was taking my shoulder measurements for it.  ”Do you want satin buttons?  If you want a very traditional look, we can do that for you.”  I hemmed.  ”No, that is okay, I am fine with regular buttons.”  ”Ok, what about the pockets?  Do you want two or four?”  I thought of the four-pocketed military jackets that Mao was always seen in photographs wearing and hemmed again.  ”Two is going to be okay, thanks.”   She looked at me and laughed.  ”Oh, so you want to be both East and West with this, right?”  ”I have to be,” I said a little sheepishly.

After the measurements were done, she wrote everything down on a sheet of paper and then paused to look in the air for a bit.  ”Hmm…”  She scribbled down a number, and then handed it to me.  ”I will give you a discount on the topcoat, but please do not tell anybody else I sold it to you for this little, otherwise I will get in a lot of trouble!”  I voiced my thanks.  ”Oh of course – you may have an American passport, but you are still one of us, you are still Chinese!”

—–

In the end, I guess it’s not absolutely necessary that I figure out what exactly is down these tunnels.  It’s been a privilege that I had the chance in life to just uncover their presence at all, maybe.

You can’t conquer every mystery and paradox you see.

Skeletal connotations aside (unless we’re talking about the recent update schedule of this blog…sorry), today and tomorrow will be interstitial time. Yesterday I returned from about six days spent in Hong Kong with family, and on Sunday I’ll be navigating Chinese domestic airspace to visit my grandmother and extended family in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. Today I’m sitting in a Starbucks again, attempting to get some writing output done with Enrico (another CTLC teacher based in Luohu District). We’re back in the COCO Park Starbucks and we’ve found a corner and we’re (supposed to be) taking no prisoners. But mostly we’re just chatting and not getting done what we intended to (fiction for me, political commentary for him).

I’ve been reluctant to write about my time or observations in Hong Kong here, mostly to preserve my family’s privacy there. Otherwise they would become recurring characters here for how often I venture over, and I don’t know how they would like that. So instead of writing those experiences into this blog, I’ve been saving them for my fiction, working them over in my head until I can get some kind of anonymous honesty balanced out. Hopefully you’ll see the results in a few months’ time, outlined in a first draft!