He owns a car, which might impress some women. Sun and Moon! Who am I fooling? A Mercedes? I’m very impressed. Mrs. Chang told me her son was doing well with his recycling business, but this is very well. But the last thing I’m interested in is money. I like the way he drives, though. Casual, with his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel. He doesn’t honk like a maniac or swerve in and out between cars to gain an extra few meters either.
The restaurant is large—and jam-packed. We’re led through a labyrinth of courtyards, banquet halls, waterfall grottoes, and gardens. We cross over a zigzag bridge and enter a small room built to resemble an ancient pavilion. We’re seated at a table that overlooks a weeping willow whose tendrils drift languidly above the surface of a pond filled with lotus in bloom. The waiter brings hot water for me to brew the tea. When I open the lacquer box, however, I’m assaulted by an odor of dirt and mildew.
“What’s wrong?” Jin asks.
“I don’t know how to say this . . .”
“You won’t hurt my feelings,” he coaxes.
“I’m afraid someone sold you a fake.”
His expression falls. I wouldn’t be surprised if this news ended our lunch before it began, but then he smiles. “Taken again! I thought those days were behind me.”
“There are a lot of fakes,” I console him. “Even connoisseurs buy fakes sometimes.”
“From now on, you’ll always choose our tea, and I’ll take care of other things—like ordering our meals.”
I spot a good-quality Pu’er on the menu, and he orders an intriguing assortment of dumplings. I expect him to talk only about himself, but he keeps the conversation going by asking me questions. Do I like Guangzhou? Do I know how to drive? Would I like him to teach me how to drive? Have I gone to Hong Kong? I end up enjoying myself much more than I thought I would. After our meal, we meander back through the courtyards, stopping to watch the water tumble over the rocks at the main waterfall. When the valet brings around the car, Jin holds my elbow as he directs me into the front seat.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” he asks once he’s behind the wheel. “Maybe visit the Orchid Garden? Or we could go to Shamian Island, sit outside, and have American coffee. Oh . . . Do you drink coffee?”
“I like coffee, but maybe another time.”
He must think I’m trying to get out of prolonging this day or seeing him again, because his expression collapses as quickly as it did when I told him he’d bought fake Pu’er.
“I mean that,” I say. “Another time. I’m free every Sunday—”
“Then next Sunday—”
“And I’m free every evening,” I add, which makes him smile.
He offers to drive me home, but I ask to be dropped off at the Martyrs’ Memorial Gardens. We shake hands. He drives off. Before going to my apartment, I sit on a bench and punch in Ci-teh’s cellphone number.
“I went on a date,” I tell her. “My first ever.”
She laughs in her distinctive way and asks to hear every detail.
* * *
Over the next months, Jin and I see each other twice a week after work and every Sunday. I don’t go to his apartment, and he doesn’t come to mine. He may have an expensive car, but I sense he’s modest in his aspirations, for he often wears the same clothes—clean, but the same nevertheless. (That, or he’s trying to show me that he doesn’t mind that my wardrobe is limited.) I teach him to drink tea properly, and he’s got a fine palate, easily distinguishing between raw and ripe Pu’ers by whether they taste grassy, floral, fruity, and sharp, or dark, of the forest floor, cavelike, and smooth. He takes me to restaurants all over the city, where I try clams, sea cucumber, and jellyfish. Every bite is strange, and a lot of things I don’t like . . . at all. “It’s true a crab looks like a spider,” he says. “If you don’t like it, then you never have to eat it again.” On those evenings when we don’t meet for dinner, a concert, or a movie, I go to the park and chat with Mrs. Chang. She’s a clever matchmaker, because the more I ask about him, the less she says, which means the only way to know more is to spend time with him.
Jin and I return again and again to Shamian Island to take in the crumbling beauty of the deserted English colonial mansions, Western banks, and consulate buildings. We always stop for tea or coffee at an outdoor café open for tourists who also like to visit these modern ruins. “Years ago, only foreigners could live here,” Jin explains one evening. From our table, we can see down the tree-lined cobblestone pathway, where a young mother chases after her one child. “Chinese could not step on the island without permission. At night, the iron gates on the bridges were locked and guarded. I wonder what it would take to restore one of these houses and bring back its garden.” The idea sounds wonderful but outlandish, so I just nod agreeably.
While Shamian Island is charming and peaceful—my favorite place in Guangzhou—we explore other parts of the city too. We take a boat excursion along the Pearl River to look at the high-rise apartment buildings that sprout from the banks, and he showers me with questions: “Do you like the water? Have you seen the ocean? Can you swim?” When I answer, I don’t know, no, and no, he comes back with “Ah, so many adventures lie ahead of us.” It seems like he’s made a decision about me, but so much remains unspoken.
On Sundays, he drives me into the countryside. We pass what are called villa parks, where rows of identical houses sit in neat lines. Between those enclaves are rice paddies and other fields, where farmers carry buckets of water hanging heavily from poles strung over their shoulders. We visit White Cloud Mountain. It’s more like a hill to me, but the views over the Pearl River delta are pretty. We go to the Seven Star Crags, which, Jin tells me, are like a miniature version of Guilin, with their mist-shrouded peaks and rivers. “One day I’ll take you to the real Guilin,” he says. “You’ll love it.”
Today, in what seems like the worst torpor and stickiness of the summer, we drive to Dinghushan, another popular mountain resort, to see the Tang and Ming dynasty temples. Although it feels like half of Guangzhou is also here, trying to escape the swelter of the city, we stroll along the trails, and Jin takes several photos of me.
“Would you rather live in a villa park surrounded by fields and drive to your shop every day or would you prefer to have an apartment in the city and visit nature on weekends?” he asks.
“As though I would ever get to live in a villa!” I manage to get out through my laughter. “Or own a car! Or have an entire weekend without work!”
“But what if you could live in the countryside, would you want that? A villa park is not far from the city . . .”
He’s so earnest, and this excursion reminds me how much I love the purity of clean air, birdsong, and the calming sounds of bubbling brooks and waterfalls. Driving back to the city, I feel refreshed and ready to start the new week, but I also feel homesick. How can I explain to him that while Dinghushan is lovely, the mountains are not as beautiful or as tall, isolated, or pristine as my childhood home?