Though my relationship with Summer was now over, the emotional attachment and communication between us was still very strong.
We both tried many times to forget about and get away from, each other, but it just wasn’t possible. When one of us said goodbye, the
other would give a very convincing speech in written form about why we shouldn’t do that. Before I met her, it was very easy for me to let
go of someone who I felt betrayed by. She had strong opinions and a strong personality, but she was very easy to cry and turn soft when
things became difficult, making it hard for me to abandon her. Chad told me that Chinese girls, more than American girls, like to remain
friends with their ex after a break-up. So I continued to be stuck in a situation that always seemed to be incomprehensible to me and
broader than I could imagine.
     For several weekends, I taught English to Candy and Angel in their dorm at Summer’s old college, and also to their cousins who just
came from Korea to go to high school in Hefei. They were twin brothers. One was tall, about a head taller than me, and slimmer, and
the other was shorter and a little heavy.  Though they didn’t look very similar, they both spoke English in almost the same way, and they
sounded like people do when they pray out loud together at church with a monotonous tone. Both of them were shy and quiet just as
Candy and Angel were, but not to the same extent. They could laugh with me and joke around whenever our book lessons gave us the
opportunity unlike the girls because their comprehension of English was less than the twins. I taught both pairs of children for two hours
each, making four hours total every Saturday. I missed the days when Summer and I used to teach Candy and her sister together, but
nothing could happen to bring back those times. She had become my greatest reason to live in China, but now I had to find my own
reasons without her, as the original feeling of excitement about living in a new and big city that was completely different began to slip
away from me. My classes with the children didn’t last very long because after a while, I would call them to confirm that we had a class
that day, but they were always busy. So I just stopped coming and calling.
    I continued to teach Amy English at her parents’ house for a while, but she seemed rather indifferent to my presence there, so I also
stopped going there to have lessons. Summer told me that she is somewhat of an outcast in their family. Their father wanted a son from
the beginning, like many parents in China, but their first child was a girl, Summer. Summer had to prove herself to her parents many
times before they finally accepted her. Amy lived in isolation from her parents from the moment she was born. Since it is a rule in China
that only one child can be born into a family, Amy had to live with her grandparents until they could all deal with the situation
financially and otherwise. She    didn’t give the same effort that Summer gave to be accepted by her parents, so they never became
very close. Summer was the only one Amy had in her whole family, and she put all of her trust into her. Amy always doubted my
sincerity, and often accused me of only caring about her because she was Summer’s sister. She met Chad once, and didn’t seem to
have the same level of suspicion about him, so I never knew exactly what her problem with me was. On my last night studying with Amy,
her mom was watching a nature program on T.V. about snakes as we studied at a table in the living room near her. She had a terrible
look on her face as though she thought the snakes could somehow harm her from inside the T.V., and she was petrified and unable to
move. I started laughing and joking to Amy about it, and Amy said, “Don’t laugh at my mother. You know she doesn’t understand what
you are saying.” Then Amy joined her on the couch and started watching also, and like a contagious disease, Amy began to stare at the
T.V. with the same horrified look as her mother. Both of them sat on the couch like two stone statues of people who caught one last
horrifying look at Medusa as she crept up on them gazing into their eyes. I laughed very quietly at both of them to keep them from
noticing that I was being entertained by their fear of the snakes.
    My original circle of friends was fast disappearing. Summer was in Korea, Nathan was back in America, Franklin and Caro
disappeared, Willimas was out of contact in Anqing, Candy and Angel were occupied with their own family matters indefinitely, Rae was
in Xi An, and Amy just didn’t seem to care. Also, Jackie asked me if he could borrow some money so he could travel to another province
and search for a job. Jane was the only one who was left, but she was so busy all the time with her studies at Anhui University that she
never had time to make plans, and I never had much chance to speak to her at English corner. It seemed as though the people that
brought me to Hefei and helped me in the beginning had served their purpose and gradually phased out of my life. It might have been
depressing, if it wasn’t for the help of people like my new friend Frank from English corner. He knew much more about Hefei than I did,
and he introduced me to some experiences that helped me to think more about new opportunities than what I had lost.  
    One Friday night, Frank invited Chad and I to a benefit concert to help raise money for a student who had some kind of disease at a
university that was far away from the city center. Before we went to the concert, we met his “sister” to have dinner near his college,
Zhong Yi Xue Yuan, the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Frank’s sister was not actually his sister, but rather his cousin from
Shanghai. Many people in China call cousins the same as brother and sister. People from Shanghai have a reputation in most other
smaller cities as being too proud, like they exist at the top of a mountain peak, and everyone else is somewhere near the bottom since
Shanghai is essentially the trademark city of China. I didn’t have the chance to verify if that was true or not with Frank’s sister because
she didn’t speak much English to Chad and I, though she was dressed very elegantly and did sit a little higher than most people I saw in
Hefei. Actually, I was the only one at the table who couldn’t speak Mandarin, so it was sometimes convenient for them to carry on a
conversation without me. At least there was food on the table to keep me occupied during those times.
    We arrived at the benefit concert around 9:30, and there were hundreds of students and concerned citizens that came to support the
student who was suffering from the illness. Frank’s “brother” was one of the people who organized the event, so he brought the four of us
near the stage where he had some seats reserved for us. There were many singers and bands there that came on stage one at a time to
help keep people around long enough to make a monetary contribution. The audience would drop their money into some clear plastic
containers at the foot of the stage when the host signaled it was the appropriate time. Some wealthy people were very proud to make
large contributions, and held their 100 RMB dollars in the air and tugged on both ends, showing it to the audience before they dropped
it into the container.  In the middle of the performances, the host recognized that Chad and I were the only foreigners in the audience,
probably because Frank’s relative mentioned something about it. Suddenly, he was calling Chad to come up on stage to dance in front
of everyone. They played some dance music, and everyone was cheering for Chad. He took off his sweater, then he got a very serious
look on his face as he hit the floor and started doing the worm across the stage. With the force that he was putting forth, I thought he was
going to injure himself or break the stage floor. But he made it successfully without incident. Then they called me up on stage. I couldn’
t disappoint everyone, so I went up and got ready to do something. I could hear several students all at the same time yell, “How are
you?!” And I said back to them, “I’m fine, thank you!” Then they turned on the dance music. It was time to fly or crash, but there was no
time to think about it. I threw off my jacket, and some girls in the audience started cheering, and I did a dance that words couldn’t really
describe, except that I was spinning and twisting and moving my arms around. After I danced for a minute, I decided not to be a stage
hog, and finished and walked off the stage as everyone clapped for me. When I sat back down, Frank said, “Whoa! That was beyond my
imagination! Some people there asked Chad and I to sign our autographs on pieces of paper, and said they wanted to interview us
sometime about our lives in Hefei. Before we left the benefit concert, I quietly dropped 100 RMB into one of the money jars, and then
we all took a bus back to the center of the city, back to our normal lives.
    The weather got very cold in November. Since no buildings had central air and heating vents, it was very important to dress warmly.
In our apartment were two tiny wall-mounted air-conditioners in our rooms, but neither Chad nor I knew how to program them to blow hot
air. With no heat in the apartment, we had to wear sweaters and pants and curl up underneath as many warm blankets as we could find
when it was time to sleep. We could see our breath in any room in the place at all times. One time, Chad began to tell me a story in the
living room, but then he started coughing because he had a cold. He was coughing so hard that he couldn’t continue speaking, so he
began to move his arms as though he was explaining his story to me while he continued to cough. Chad definitely had a sense of humor.
    We weren’t the only ones who were suffering from the cold. At all of the schools, including the primary schools, there were no heating
systems, so the students had to keep their jackets on during class. The colder the weather got, the more layers of clothing the students
had to wear to counter the chilling effect. They must have been used to it because none of them appeared to be seriously bothered by
that kind of study environment. They kept studying as always.
    One night, I was on my way to an Internet bar that was in the same building as Nina’s school, Jordan’s Language School on
Changjiang Road, next to the Agriculture University, when I was stopped by a stranger. He told me his name was Leo, and that he had
seen me before at English corner. I barely recognized him but didn’t remember what we talked about. He said he wanted to make friends
with me, so he gave me his home phone number and told me to call him sometime. After calling him one day, he invited me to a park
not too far from the city center on the south side with one of his friends to see an exhibit about an ancient Chinese judge named Bao
Gong. He is very famous in China because many people believed he was the epitome of fairness and justice. We saw many colorful
hand-carved wooden pictures on the walls of the outdoor museum about his life and his trials. Life was so different in his day. Everyone
was dressed almost identically, and everyone looked like farmers, except for the law enforcement agents that maintained the order in
service of the emperor. Afterwards, he took us to a small outdoor shop where they rented out paddle boats for people to use on the lake.
The paddle boats were big and were covered by shelters with a colorful and childlike design of an animal or other such creature. The
lake was much longer than it was wide and had several docking ports and parks all along. We could see many trees surrounding the lake,
knowing that the crowded and noisy city was just on the other side, and there was at least one old pagoda that made it up to visibility
past the tree line. Leo was in his mid-thirties and was a company man, so he knew well how to accommodate other people. He also
invited me to his home one night where his wife prepared a dinner with fish as the main dish. Leo was so keen on fish, and was a
fisherman himself. There were also vegetable dishes, and a chicken dish, but the meat was scarce on the bones that were piled up
randomly in a bowl. There were no big chunks of meat. Besides me, he invited a young female friend of his named Ursula who he had
also met at English corner. Ursula was a student at the Agriculture University, or An Nong Da. She was quite friendly and took a big
interest in me from the beginning. She was beautiful with a natural hair color that looked slightly orangish-brown, and had big eyes, and
she knew about many things that were a little uncommon in China, like astrology. Ursula told me there are more than 50 races of
Chinese people, so there were many differences in appearance among the Chinese that no one who had never been there could
imagine. She looked much different than any Chinese person I had ever seen before in America. It was easy to tell she was unusual
because of her attitude and interests, but not unusual in the unfriendly sense. Leo’s wife worked so hard to prepare the meal for us, but
she barely had time to sit down and enjoy any of the food with us. When we finished eating, Leo told me Ursula lived in Hu Po, the same
area I lived in, so when it was time to leave, Leo walked us out onto the street near his apartment, and summoned a taxi for the two of us
to share.  
    One afternoon, as I was walking on the sidewalk in between some apartments in Hu Po, I saw one of the bicycle scavengers pull out
in front of me while he was calling out in Mandarin for whatever he was searching for. It was the man with the big smile who used to run
the restaurant down the street from the police station with his son and daughter. I couldn’t speak with him, but we both recognized each
other instantly and paused to nod at each other. It appeared that his restaurant went out of business, and had to become a collector of
spare materials to help keep his family alive. I couldn’t ask about his son or daughter, but I assumed they had something else to do to
keep them busy.
    The next Friday after the benefit concert, Frank took me to a bar after we met and spent some time in English corner. The bar was
called Revolutionary Bar, and it was located just south of San Xiao Kou on Jingzhai Road. The entrance was located in back of the
building down a driveway that curved down and around and met a small open area in between buildings. We walked through the doors
into the bar and could see the service area directly in front of us. The bar was a little dark and smoky, and had graffiti and other designs
all over the walls. There was also a pool table in the back corner from where we walked in. It looked like some kind of street bar, not
strictly for the elegant. There was a wide mixture of people in the place. Some of the Chinese people there dressed in what looked like a
hip hop style, though I’m sure they didn’t know anything about life on the streets. There were other company men who came together
with their friends to relax and enjoy some beers. Frank quickly introduced me to another foreigner named Herman from Canada. He was
a little tall and thin, and very outgoing. He had the personality of a game show host. He was always moving so quickly that the spotlight
had to be on him at all times, and he never stopped talking. He seemed friendly enough though, so I didn’t have too many worries about
him, though you never know on the international scene. People live with different rules wherever you go. We spent some time at the
Revolutionary Bar and had a few beers, and then Frank and Herman decided to go to another bar called 39 degrees. It doesn’t sound
like much, but in Celsius, that’s hot.
    39 Degrees was an all out dance club, and very popular in Hefei. When I first walked in, I could see that some people had been
partying too much. One young man was being carried out unconscious by a couple of his friends, and another young man passed out in
the men’s bathroom on the metal urination trough that was on the ground up against the wall. There was a circular bar area, and many
other tables close together in an area that wasn’t too large. The dance floor itself was very small, but everywhere there was a table,
people were standing up and dancing to the loud Chinese dance music with the lights flashing. There were more foreigners there. I didn’
t know how many foreigners there were in the city, but there was an estimate that there were about 200 out of 4 million people. It was
very rare to see them anywhere, but usually a welcome thing when it happened. Most of us foreigners were so glad to see each other
that we instantly became friends no matter what country anyone was from. This was a place to be careful, though. I once heard a rich
foreigner got a little too happy with his money there and started pulling out his cash unnecessarily. I was told that everyone else in the
bar that wasn’t a foreigner got up and wrecked him and took all of his money. It was easy to lose yourself in a place like 39 degrees.
More drinking and dancing takes your mind away from any thoughts you have, and just go with everyone else to the music. While we
were there, I asked Herman, “Do you have any cigarettes?” For some reason, I never wanted to smoke unless I was drinking, so I never
bought my own cigarettes, and also to keep myself from smoking too much. Herman said, “Sorry, I don’t have any, but that man over
there does.” He pointed to a very large German man named Bernd with blonde hair and glasses. His shoulders were some of the widest I
had ever seen on someone in person. Rudely enough, the first thing I asked him was, “Do you have any cigarettes?” without ever having
talked to him before. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and said, “Yeah. I have one. Here, since that is the
only reason you wanted to talk to me.” “Oh. What a poor introduction.” I thought to myself the next day when I regained consciousness in
my apartment to recall the past night’s events. But I did have something to be glad about. I knew that there were others like me that were
trying to make it in a foreign country.
    There was still a lot of mystery for me in the city. I jumped into the middle of the Chinese people’s lives without knowing anything
about their past. I didn’t know who was in the big buildings at night, or who I could expect to see down the street. Everything was brand
new to me, but I still knew the feeling couldn’t last forever.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling

Old friends out, new friends in