One week after Minku had his unforgettable drunken incident at Best Beautiful where Umesh and I had to drag him out to give the
cleanup crew less of a mess to clean up, Umesh, Minku, Ashish, and I decided to go back there again. Umesh said to me, “Do you
remember what that taxi driver we had before looked like?” I can’t remember his face.” I said back to him, “If you see a taxi driver get out
of his car suddenly and start yelling something you can’t understand for no reason, then that’s probably the guy.” We spent several hours
drinking and dancing at Best Beautiful, and trying to make sure Minku didn’t drink enough to let his demons out again, and then got into
a taxi that was waiting on ground level just outside of the entrance to the outdoor elevator. I sat in the front seat, and the others sat in
back. While we were driving up Changjiang Road to the corner where the main road of Hu Po meets with Changjiang Road to let me out
first so I could walk down into Hu Po where my apartment was, Umesh and the others started laughing for what seemed like no reason.
They were laughing so hard that they could not control themselves and were rolling around in their seats. I asked, “What?? What’s so
funny???” And Umesh said to me, “That is the same taxi driver from before!” Then I started laughing with them. Strange that it happened
on the exact same day that we were wondering about what happened to him exactly one week after the incident. Ashish knew a little
Mandarin, and he asked the driver if he was angry with us, but he shook his head no. He actually had a smile on his face and truly didn’t
seem to mind that Minku had covertly thrown up in the backseat of his taxi before, well, not really covertly since I could hear some
gagging and splashing from the front seat while hoping the driver didn’t hear anything.
      I spent a couple of weeks in my apartment alone after Dushan and Spela left the city. They had left behind many things that they
could not bring with them, clothes, furniture, and other accessories, and leaving a trace of their presence still in the apartment. That was
one mistake that many foreigners made since prices of goods were so low, buying much more than they needed, but I kept some
awareness from the beginning about what I would be able to hold onto. The lease was up for the apartment that my boss David had paid
for, and without a new job, it was up to me to find a place to stay, and there was only one place I could think of…. The old hotel I stayed
in when I first came to the city that Jackie and Summer took me to.
      One day, I took my luggage out to the street and summoned a taxi and went out there, an area far from the center of the city that
wasn’t quite as crowded. The feeling was a little empty because of what I knew that was no longer there anymore. Summer would not
come to visit me and take me to Candy’s family’s dormitory in Summer’s old college and teach them in the evening on Saturday, and
Jackie would not come over to watch T.V. with me in my hotel room. And Rae was not in her apartment next door because she was still
studying in Xi An in Western China, though her grandmother was still walking the streets and communicating with the local residents. But
the people in the restaurant below the hotel and also some of the shop owners that were also below part of the hotel were still there, as
well as the husband and wife that ran the small hotel I stayed in. I had a meal at the restaurant one afternoon with my friend George from
the police college, and he communicated with one of the waitresses for me. I commented about how she cut her hair since last time
because she used to have a long and thick ponytail, and asked if she remembered me. She not only remembered me, but she also
remembered the kind of food I used to order from when I first stayed there, and that was nearly a year ago, probably about ten months
before. Either she was very good at her job, or I was one of, if not the only, foreigner to ever come there to eat, so it must have left a
deep impression on her.
      It seemed as though I had come full-circle, coming back to the place I started. I had learned much about Chinese culture that I had
no idea about before, and my mind developed in a different way than what I was used to before. The city was no longer such a mystery
to me, and much of the excitement had gone since my awareness of the place had been sharpened by my experiences, and many of
the people I considered to be dear friends had disappeared from my life, perhaps permanently. But one thing was still the same. I was
without a job just like the first time at nearly the same point in the year. I had less than a month to find something before my visa ran out
or I would have to return home.
      I went to Umesh and Minku’s apartment to visit one day, and I told them about my situation. They said, “What are you doing living in
a hotel?? Come here and stay with us!” I told them many times, “No. I can’t do that, guys. I’m alright. I like that hotel. It’s very cheap, only
20 yuan a night. Don’t worry.” But they wouldn’t let me have my way this time. So after only a couple days of staying in the hotel, I was
moving out again, but this time into an apartment with four roommates, Umesh, Minku, Ashish, and Rashes. Though I was from a different
country than all of them, we found living together to be very harmonious. None of us were trying to act like we were the boss of the
apartment, and we all knew how to respect each other and share what we had. In that apartment, it was everything belonged to
everyone, which sometimes included personal matters. Rashes was quite a mischief maker, and I gave him the nickname “The Trickster”.
He never bothered me, but he was on Minku 24-7 about Darcy, the Chinese girl he liked. He was always laughing like a child when he
was making fun of Minku. “She kicked you off the mountain!” Rashes said, because he believed Minku had an ego problem, but his
vulnerability was exposed when he got raged-up from drinking too much and getting confused about Darcy. Minku once told me, “Back
in India, I was a prince. These Chinese girls don’t understand what I was, so they treat me this way here in China”. I was confused about
that because I thought he was from Nepal like the others. He would also make calm and cool comments about Rashes’s behavior. “He’s
just a child. He always talks about boring things about me”.
      Umesh and his girlfriend Linda were having a lot of trouble with society there. Linda was a teacher at Umesh’s school, Zhong Yi Xue
Yuan, the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Umesh was once one of her students. Linda was from a small town in Anhui
called Bo Zhou (Bo Joe), not too far from Hefei. She was a little older than us and had a lot of maturity. She was also a very warm-
hearted person, but “high maintenance” as they say. Umesh had to take her shopping on The Walking Street all the time, and she had
some expensive tastes. She once bought a pair of shoes for Umesh worth 500 RMB. Even my big cowboy boots that I found by chance
on The Walking Street only cost 200 RMB, and they were probably one of the only pairs of boots in the whole city. Though they were a
rare item, I guess it makes sense not to overprice something that nobody wants anyways. Linda once joked and said, “Umesh, I want your
money, your credit cards… I want everything you have.”, at least I thought she was joking. Since Umesh was a student, he didn’t have a
stable source of income, only money from his family, so it was not easy on his wallet, or his parents’ wallets to be with her, but they
seemed very happy together. Sometimes I would leave the apartment and come back, and when Umesh wasn’t there, Minku or Rashes
would say, “Umesh is on duty,” which meant that Umesh was together with Linda somewhere else. The real problem Umesh and Linda
were having was that they didn’t want to reveal to others that they were in a relationship because they would be looked down upon by
others for it. People in their school started to suspect what was happening, and they started gossiping and showing disapproval to them.
Linda couldn’t take the pressure, and I tried to help them through their situation.
      Ashish’s girlfriend Joy would very often come to our apartment and spend time with Ashish. Ashish would cook curry for all of us at
night time when it was convenient, or we would walk up the street to one of the small restaurants near or on campus that seated a
maximum of about 15 people.  There was one restaurant that we would often go to together where we became friends with the man who
ran the place. We called him Lao Ban, which basically means boss in Mandarin. I always had to have some place of stability other than
my home, and since I lived too far away to go to Gong Zha Feng and Mei Qing Ke’s restaurant regularly now, this restaurant became that
place. There was also a restaurant on the street where a group of Muslims from northern China specialized in making noodles, and they
would pull, stretch, and separate the dough into spaghetti-sized noodles in front of customers on a counter and then throw them into a
big pot that was just outside the open entrance. They were easy to distinguish from other Chinese by the white caps they wore on the top
of their heads, and some of them had facial hair which was uncommon for most people. They also had a slightly outlandish appearance,
though they weren’t the only ones to appear that way.
      Usually Ashish and Minku shared a room together, but when Joy came, it was time for Minku to cramp into the room with Umesh,
Rashes, and I. Minku would say at those times, “Ashish and Joy force me to become a refugee today.” Ashish was a bit thinner than he
was when I first met him. Umesh made a comment about it one day. He said, “Yes, if you have a Chinese girlfriend, they will take
everything from you. Look at Ashish, Joy takes away his money, his time, and even his weight.” Joy was a very nice girl though. She had a
smile that was as bright as the sun that never seemed to leave her face, and she always sat loyally next to Ashish and kept quiet most of
the time. Rashes was the only one who didn’t care to have a girlfriend. He enjoyed teasing the others so much about them and their
girlfriends that he didn’t need to have one himself. He told me, “I don’t need a girlfriend. I can’t take care of myself, so what am I going to
do about a girl,” which was wise on some level. He was the youngest of them, only 19, but he had some very thoughtful ideas when the
Trickster in him wasn’t running wild. I had to try hard not to laugh when he was joking with Minku.
Usually every night, at least Minku and I would head across the street to the Internet bar they had there. There I could communicate with
many online friends I had made on the instant messaging program called QQ. I met many people in Hefei that asked for my QQ number,
at English corners and other places, but there were also people I didn’t know who searched and found my number, probably because my
information had the city I lived in. A lot of people who also lived in Hefei and nearby cities were the ones who added me to their lists of
friends, with positive and negative results. Minku and I always checked the news because we didn’t want to miss any important
international news. We became particularly interested in the situation with Iran because there were a lot of bold actions and speeches
being made, as well as the war between Hezbollah and Israel that summer.  Besides going to the Internet bar, all of us would gather
together in the living room in our apartment at night and watch Bollywood movies from India that were very interesting. They reminded
me of musicals, but a much different style than I was used to. These ones were more modern than I had seen in America, and usually
love stories with fights, romantic scenes, and twisting plots. The music was very energetic and the actors sang with such passion from
their hearts. I was just lucky that there were English subtitles. These movies helped me to understand a little about the culture that my
friends were raised in since India and Nepal had very similar cultures apart from what they had told me.
      A couple of times, we went back to Best Beautiful, but we all agreed that it wasn’t the same as it used to be. There were no longer
the big groups of foreigners dancing and lounging together, and Dushan’s music had gone back to Slovenia with him. They went back to
playing the same old music that all the other clubs played. The place had lost its magic. It was time to find a new place, and I thought I
had an idea. I remembered when I went on my long walk through the city on the last night that Dushan and Spela stayed in Hefei, I saw
some kind of bar that had the name Freedom. I told the others about it, and we made a plan to go there next time.
      Umesh, Minku, their friend Vincent, and I went to the Freedom Bar one night to check out the place. Ashish couldn’t come with us
when Joy was around because she sometimes demanded all his attention. Freedom was on a dark and quiet street just near an
intersection with a circular bridge hovering high over the street, one of about five or six spread throughout the near-downtown area. The
bar on the inside was very quiet too, at least there weren’t many people inside, but they had loud music playing that was slightly different
than what all the other clubs were playing. There was a pool table very close to the entrance and there was a second level to the place.
Behind the counter, there was a slightly plump and friendly-looking girl who said hello to us. She could speak a little English, and she
told us she went to school at Anhui University, and it was actually her first night to work there. She was as new to the place as we were.
Later, we played pool with some of the people who worked there. There was one girl with short hair that always liked to play pool with
me. When I would beat her, she would curse at me in English with a smile on her face, but I think she didn’t know how to say anything
else. That’s what made it funny. Someone once told me, “In China, even if the student is not good at English, they still know all the bad
English words.” But the bar manager of the place was unbeatable. She would smoke me and anyone else in pool so fast that I was still
wondering what happened to the balls after she knocked all of them into the pockets. We met a man there named Lu Xing Feng who
only could say a few words in English. He was happy that he had the chance to sit with people from other countries. He said, “You, from
Nepal, you from America, I from China.” And Umesh said, “Yes, but, we should respect all people. We should not think so much about
what country people come from. We’re all people.”
      The Freedom Bar became our new place to go and relax in our leisure time. We made a few friends there. Minku became good
buddies with Lu Xing Feng, who was a big businessman. The girl who first spoke to us there on the first night we went there told us that
she got the job after her trial period because the bar owner saw that she could speak English with us. One time, when we were all there
together, all of us, including Ashish and Rashes, I ordered a drink that seemed to be taking a long time to come, so I said to the others, “I
wonder what happened to my drink.” Minku must have been a little drunk because he stood up and yelled, “What??? I’ll kill everybody!!”
and threw his arms into the air. I said, “It’s ok, Minku. They just haven’t brought my drink yet. I’m sure they’ll bring it soon.” It was fun there,
but still only a pale comparison to the times we had in Best Beautiful. My situation in Hefei was deteriorating, and I knew it, but I still did
my best to hold on to what I had left. But the time for me was coming soon to face the biggest problem yet that I was still unaware of.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling
Starting over, once more, in Hefei