It has been about three weeks since this all has happened so I'll probably have to abbreviate things. Sawwy :( But the moral would be the same as it would have been right after it happened. Or...huh. Maybe not. Well anyway:
So the dad seemed normal and nice and dadish but I could definitely see how he could be controlling and intense, like Luke says. Really the only problem the two of us encountered was that he was not able to adapt his speaking style to my listening needs. I sort of count on Chinese speakers to understand my limited vocabulary comprehension, and total non-comprehension at anything faster than a snail's pace, and adjust how they speak to me. Students and people who have studied language usually get this, but sometimes you get a cab driver or manicurist who understands, too, which leads to satisfying basic conversations. But for whatever reason, Mr. Li totally did not get it and I had to rely on Luke to translate nearly everything. And Luke was not too happy about that, either. But I figured the dad doesn't expect a 23-year-old girlfriend to be too vocal or participatory, anyway, so I just tried to sit pretty and be polite, you know. Not that I like feeling like a wet mop with nothing to say, of course, but it's surprising how much of someone's personality shows even without the ability to blabber.
The goal of the weekend was seeing this Beijing opera performance, which I was so excited about. It wasn't a big production in a theater or anything - just a group of late middle-aged folks who get together every Saturday at this elementary school classroom to sing. It was great, though. There was a hired band, with all kind of interesting instruments, and hot tea for the audience members, and occasional dancing and hollering. So we just sat on the side waiting for Mr. Li's turn to sing, and I took some videos with my camera, and Luke explained some basics about the genre. I don't know if you've heard Beijing opera, but it is really strange and I totally love it. Especially in that little room, with sound bouncing off every wall, it's this huge racket. There are always these funny breaks for loud gong banging, and the vocal style is often screechy and nasally, and all these instrumentalists playing with what seems to me like total abandon. It's, like, raucous. Even after sitting there for hours, I can't wrap my brain around the rhythm or melody or structure or anything about it. I just can't find the patterns or organization. Luke says Chinese people feel that way, too. I'd like to study it and see if I could make sense of it. But anyway, maybe because I couldn't make sense of it, I had no way of analyzing anything so I just freakin enjoyed every second. It sounded satisfying to me.
So that was fun. When it was time to leave, it was monsooning outside so we had to do all these crazy things to get to our next destination. Actually the weather was gross in Shenzhen for most of the weekend and we spent a lot of time huddled under umbrellas, lugging suitcases through mud, walking to bus stops, trying and failing to hail cabs, etc. It made me feel good to know that Chinese people have to do that frustrating getting around shit, too.
Sunday morning Mr. Li took us to the hospital where he works and suggested I have a check-up full body x-ray, for free. C*)%!!L+^^>X??? I had to fight pretty hard to get out of that one. He has a room on the grounds of the hospital - like employee housing - and since he's a doctor and all, I expected it would be at least decent. But it was like the grossest most pathetic excuse for a room I've seen. I expect workers living in Tangjia to have rooms like that. But a 67-year-old doctor in Shenzhen? Whatever. I dunno. Chinese people like to suffer.
So, the weekend was full of lots of free meals, only slight awkwardness between Mr. Li and I, and a lot of time spent observing interactions between Luke and his dad and straining to understand what was being said. I did get some shrimp guts on a white shirt at one meal, but...could have been worse. Luke held my hand a lot in front of his dad, which surprised me, and Mr. Li booked one hotel room for Luke and I, which really surprised me. During one conversation I did manage to have with him, he asked me a lot about graduate programs in the US, and getting visas to go to the US, and how Luke and I were going to keep in contact, and then said that he was worried about us. I was like...??? You're worried about us? What? This was before I was really thinking of us staying together after I left. Like I was so confused about why Luke's dad would be worried about us. Even Luke's dad had this idea of Luke and I being together before I had formulated the idea! I don't know if Luke had been talking to him about it or if he just assumed that we'd try to stay together. When we left, Mr. Li kissed me on the forehead and looked genuinely sad to see us go. Poor old guy in Shenzhen, ickiest stickiest place ever, with no family in town and only child going abroad for a year.
Afterward I kept prying for information out of Luke, who wouldn't give me anything more than, "Relax. He likes you and thinks you're cute." "Cute" seems to carry a lot more importance in China/Chinese than it does by our standards, so I guess that's all I can ask for.
Then it was back to Zhuhai to pack and prepare for our trip to Lanzhou. By this point it sucked to be in Zhuhai with Luke because we felt like we were having to sneak around and avoid walking places together, especially when we were both carrying luggage. I was so paranoid that one of the adults in my apartment building, or one of the gossipy stuck-up Americans, was going to give us trouble. It made me feel bad, in my head, to think that people were talking about us, and the teacher-student thing, and the situation with C, but...I didn't actually feel bad. Actually I felt great and excited about my last - and most authentic! - adventure.
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