Chad came back to Hefei in September after nearly half a year of absence. He had gone to Utah to finish his degree in math. In my
old neighborhood in Hu Po, Qi Sheng (my student and Chad’s old student before I began teaching him) and his family decided to let him
stay there for the few days that Chad would be in the city. They invited me to have dinner with them so I would have the chance to see
him again. Our friends Lucy and Bluestar also came, making seven people in total to have dinner in the slightly cramped apartment on
the third floor. With so many people in the cities, it’s not possible for every apartment to be a luxury palace, though there are some areas
that have quite spacious apartments, but not in Hu Po. Looking out the window, one could see the small parking lot below connecting to a
path that led straight away from the building with rows of apartments on either side. All that could be seen was apartments, small trees, and
concrete paths. Hu Po was the first place where Chad and I met, more than a year earlier, and now it was again the place for us to meet
after both of us had left the place.
      We all sat down at the table in the living room, and Bluestar noticed that Chad had gained some weight. “You look fatter than before.”
She said. In China, somehow it’s not impolite to call someone fat as I have heard it said many times without anyone getting even slightly
annoyed. Chad responded by saying, “It’s called POWER.” Since hardly anyone uses dairy products in their daily food consumption,
including cheese, it’s very easy to put on weight after returning home for a while. There are yogurt drinks available at most stores, and
some specialized stores sell cheese, but it’s definitely not popular. We ate our dinner, but it wasn’t the only plan we had on our agenda.
We also planned to go to a western style restaurant on the edge of Hu Po near the bus depot and the lake on a long stretch of road where
other friends would meet with us and drink tea, eat snacks, and play games together.
      Most of the people that were in the neighborhood that I knew since I had lived there were still around. The man who used to run the
restaurant with his son and daughter where Chad and I used to eat at every day before it closed was still riding around the streets on his
bicycle cart looking for spare materials and would notice me and stop to try to communicate with me every time. When he had nothing to
try to say, he would at least offer me a cigarette and stop to smoke for a minute before moving on back to his responsibilities. His son,
whom I came to know as Xiao Chen (Shao Chun) had gotten a job working at a restaurant that just opened up on the main road of Hu Po
that served red-shelled crawfish in metal bowls that seemed to be the main dish there because at every table, inside and outside of the
small restaurant, people would be eating that, and nothing else it seemed. Each bowl came with a very small dish of an oily liquid which
was a blend of oil and hot spices for dipping the crawfish. I was glad to see my old friend finally get a reliable source of income and would
say hello to him every time I came back to Hu Po to eat there. I hadn’t seen his sister for about a year after their old restaurant closed, but
she came to this restaurant one night. I said “Ahhhh! Hao jiu bu jian!”(how jew boo jin) which means “Long time no see”, but she said, “Bu
dong” “I don’t understand.” I just laughed at my own pronunciation and her confusion and enjoyed my food and the company of her and
her friends.
      The older couple who were the grandparents of Teddy, whom I had been teaching, were still running the small general store next to
the police station. Their son Teddy found a new teacher after I went to Hong Kong because they were not sure when I was coming back. I
saw Teddy and his mother Chen Wei in one of the stores on Hu Po when she told me the news. I was a little disappointed, but the most
important thing was that he still had an English teacher. She told her son Teddy to give me a hug, which he did, but that was the last time
I ever saw them. Mei Qing Ke and Gong Zha Feng were still operating their restaurant next to the small general store. They had renovated
the inside of the restaurant that can seat a maximum of about 15 people in a very cramped style. I still had no idea what they thought
about me. They weren’t exactly the kind of people who were up to speed with the modern times. It seemed like they were still living in the
‘60s or ‘70s, so to see a foreigner come to their restaurant every day would be something a bit different for them. But one thing’s for sure, I
never doubted their friendliness towards me. I remember the first time I went there back in August with Jackie and Summer the previous
year after I first joined my company Wongas. Gong Zha Feng was cooking while wearing a type of visor (that a lot of women wear when
they are on their electric bicycles and scooters) that is essentially a dark tinted piece of plastic that can cover the whole face which no
one can see through to the slightest. She was of course wearing it raised back so she could see what she was actually doing while cooking.
She commented to Jackie that I could use chopsticks well, but that was much different than how I started in the very beginning, always
dropping my food on the ground and having the waiting staff at other restaurants laugh at me non-offensively. The only one I wasn’t sure
about from the old neighborhood was the lovely Ting Ting, my friend Lucky’s old friend whom I had first met at the Best Beautiful Club.
She had stopped going there, and Lucky also quit working there and went to another place, a very big place that had just opened up that I
had heard about, though I hadn’t been there.
      Chad, Lucy, Bluestar, Qi Sheng, and I arrived at the western food style restaurant after walking through Hu Po. To enter, there is some
kind of sculpture- like figure that rises up from the ground to about waist level with a hole in it, and there is a button inside the hole to open
the sliding door mechanically. The waitresses then escort the customers to a table on the first or second level. The place was very artistic
looking with many decorations and paintings, and there was also a large artificial tree in the middle of the place. It wasn’t decorated
Chinese style maybes to make it a true western style restaurant. My friend Ursula had met me there several times and had talks with me
there before. My favorite dish to order was the club sandwich and soup. Ursula was quite different than anyone else I had met since I had
been in China. She was always reserved and somewhat thoughtful, but still had a solid grasp on reality. She said when she was in primary
school, her classmates accused her of being cold. She was also afraid of joining the world of work after she graduated because she didn’t
want her individual personality to be tainted by social expectations of proper etiquette. But I definitely trusted her more than anyone else I
had met since I had been there.
      In the restaurant, they had several private rooms, and we chose one and waited for the others that would join us. Later, Kingwater,
Julie, and several others that I had not seen before or didn’t know well because they never spoke English, arrived. We spent the evening
playing games like truth or dare and card games and just trying to have an enjoyable time. We stayed there until very late and then went
our separate ways.
      The next day, I received a call from Chad asking me if I knew what happened to his digital camera. He said he didn’t have it, and
must have lost it at the restaurant. I hadn’t seen it, and after he called the restaurant and the other people we knew, he found out that no
one else had seen it either, so they said anyways. Unfortunately, this was Chad’s second time to lose a digital camera. The first time was in
October 2005 when we went to visit Rae in Xi An and he put his camera in her purse before it was stolen at the Internet bar. No one we
were with that night said they had seen it, but SOMEONE must have known what happened to it. Someone called the police and had
them investigate into it. Sometime later, the restaurant workers’ apartments were raided, but no evidence was found. I received another
call a few days later from Qi Sheng asking about the girls who we went to the restaurant with, but I didn’t know some of them. He said that
the girls should apologize to the restaurant workers so they would not take action against the police for the raid, presumably because one
of the girls we were with was the one who called the police. I never heard the end result of it, but I know Chad didn’t get his camera back.
My friends Umesh and Minku told me a story about a young man who came to Hefei from Pakistan to study in the university. They said he
had only been in town for two weeks when one day he was walking down the street and saw a beautiful young Chinese woman on the
sidewalk. He started calling out to her and teasing her, basically trying to holler at her, when she turned around and walked up to him,
reached into her pocket, and pulled out some handcuffs and slapped them onto his wrists and called for reinforcement. He didn’t know he
was playing with an off-duty police officer. A police van showed up and took him down to see the rest of the boys downtown. After the
police held him and questioned him, they collected his passport, and then went to the hostel he was staying at and collected the passports
of every foreigner who was staying there. That was not the only warning I received not to mess with the police.
      One day I went downtown with Vincent to speak to the police once again about my passport to see if there had been any change. We
went to the main police building, a tower of a police station that stood virtually unchallenged by any other building in the area near the
Walking Street. We went up to about the 17th floor and spoke to a high ranking police officer, or rather Vincent did because he could not
speak English. The policeman’s name was Mr. Zhou (Joe). Mr. Zhou said to Vincent to translate to me “Don’t try to do anything to break the
law or try to leave the country. You are a foreigner, so it is very easy for us to pay attention to you. We are focusing on you now.” That
could have meant that someone was following me around all day and I didn’t even know it. I had always heard stories about people
disappearing suddenly, and I was wondering if it was going to happen to me.
      Somewhere in the city, there was a man running around the streets at night trying to catch young women who were alone and slit their
throats. He usually stayed near the Walking Street and had so far caught about seven victims. An undisclosed number of them did not
survive the attacks. In response to that, most women avoided traveling near the Walking Street late at night alone. They put pictures of a
composite sketch of the killer around the city hoping to catch him. His motive was the most obvious one. He had recently broken up with
his girlfriend and decided to use his rage against other people who had nothing to do with his situation. But China is a big place with a lot
of people. It would not be difficult for him to escape to another city and find refuge elsewhere.
      Rakesh from India turned out to be just the kind of person I suspected he was. Minku somehow found out that he and Albert were
involved in some kind of knife incident in Armenia, which is why they fled suddenly to China and came to Hefei. After that, Minku began to
disassociate himself from Rakesh, a wise move, but he wasn’t the only friend he had who was infused by trouble. Minku’s friend Mr. Lu
whom we had met at the Freedom Bar had some unusual connections. He told Minku that if he had any problems, that he had devices for
dealing with such people, and several times, Minku took off from school and disappeared with Mr. Lu to another city. Ashish, Umesh, and
Rakesh were very concerned about their old friend, as was I. We didn’t know what he was doing in this other city, or where it even was. I
suspected I knew what was going on, because one night Mr. Lu got Umesh, Minku, and I into a terrible situation that I didn’t know how to
get out of. After that, I pledged to stop drinking if such an activity could lead to that kind of situation again. Minku came back eventually
though, and seemed alive and well enough.
      Summer and I were still in contact with each other by use of the instant messaging service called QQ. I told her about what happened
regarding my passport, and she told me that perhaps her father could help me. I had no idea what her father could do that the others who
tried to help me couldn’t do, but I thought if there was a chance, then I would take it. Summer gave his phone number to me and also sent
him a message that I would call. Vincent called him one day and made arrangements to meet us a few days later. On the day we would
meet him, Vincent and I went to the PSB department across from Best Beautiful and near the Walking Street.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling
Reunions in Hefei