China Mountain Zhang

young man, this polished tidal wave, to be like me. To like me.

We start at the beginning and he grounds me in engineering. He's a pretty good teacher, he understands my need to know what something means. I arrange to come back on Thursday.

That evening I stop in the arcade and buy a copy of a magazine called Xiansheng, a men's magazine I've picked up once in awhile in New York. It's as expensive here as it is in New York. Beautiful men in shirts that shimmer like lacquer and silk jackets brocaded with cranes and dragons. The sweaters have hoods. Everyone is wearing those calf high boots that Haibao had on.

Thursday I have class from eight to ten (a math class) and then I am free until three. I go shopping.

I head north up Daqing Lu, the street is lined with stores. I stop and look in windows, the prices are ghastly. I have some of my Baffin Island salary on credit plus a stipend from the University. Because I study technology, my only cost was getting here, the rest is scholarship. Getting here was expensive enough. Clothes are five times what they would cost at home. And strange. The refinements of fashion look awkward to my untutored eyes. First I buy a pair of those skintight calf-high boots. I feel confident about those.

Then a pair of rust-colored coveralls. I've seen people in these and I have good shoulders. I think the coveralls will flatter me. I finger a brocade jacket, all yellow with circles of long life worked in it and stylized blue waves across the bottom. So expensive, three weeks of my inflated Baffin Island salary for a jacket. And I don't know what it means. What kind of person would wear this jacket, what does it say about the wearer?

If I don't know then it would undoubtedly call out, 'Huaqiao with more money than sense.'

So I buy conservatively, spending money to blend in, not to impress. How painful. But when I think of my sweaters with the leather ties and the mirrors and look out at Daqing Lu, filled with shoppers and scooters and segmented buses, I can only wince. If Haibao ever saw the way I dressed at home… At least I will not embarrass myself.

That night I study engineering and think of questions to ask Haibao. I want to catch on quickly, be brilliant. After an hour and a half of study I'm drawn back to Xiansheng. I study the clothes, but more closely I study the ads. The regular features show some sort of fashionable ideal, but the ads, they show something that has to pass for everyday life. A different ideal.

I wish I had someone to talk to, someone to compare notes with. Not Xiao Chen, who dresses like a tech; coveralls that he could have worn twenty years ago, and will probably be wearing twenty years from now, all in grays and navy blues. Peter. But Peter is in Brooklyn and I am in China.

I write him a letter that begins, 'I'm in love again.' It's ten here in Nanjing, so it's morning in Brooklyn and he's at work. Well, the letter will be waiting for him when he gets home. 'Love from the Middle Kingdom, Zhang.' And then I hit transmit.

Does he take in my new clothes when his eyes flicker over me? It is hard to tell. Maybe the rust coveralls are wrong? 'Hello,' he says. His room is all the color of a sunset until he rather absently waves his hand and then the only sunset is outside his window. And himself, dressed in a thigh-length tunic that shifts from red at the neck to indigo at the hem. The same brushed gray tights and calf-high boots.

He is distant and pre-occupied this evening. I don't know how to act, so I open my book and feign diligence.

'You teach well,' I say after awhile.

'Thank you,' he says. 'I was a teacher.'

'Of engineering?' I say, surprised. I though he was a student.

'No, I taught physics in middle school.'

I had thought him younger than me. 'What made you quit?' I ask, wondering, are those wrinkles at the corners of his eyes? Is he older than I am? He is an engineering marvel, full of suggested cables and supports, tense under his easiness.

He shrugs. 'No money in teaching. No guanxi, either. Fifteen-year-olds aren't very good people to make connections with.'

'How did you get reassigned?' I ask without thinking.

'A friend,' he says vaguely. 'How did you get to school?'

'I was a construction tech on an island in the Arctic circle for a year. I got special placement.' I shouldn't have asked him how he got to school. Teaching is an assigned job, a work unit job, cradle to grave security but the drawback is that it's hard to change. Like the army. Not like my job, which is a free market job, but has no health care, no security, almost no protection. I get a housing allowance, but except for the Baffin Island job I've never had assigned housing until Nanjing. But I can quit any time I want to, go to employment and get on the job assignment list.

How did he get permission to leave his work unit to come to school? Maybe he has a lover with connections?

I smile to myself, I don't even know if he's gay and already I think he's got a lover in the army or something.

'That's a secret smile,' he remarks.

'Thinking about how different it is here,' I say.

'What's the biggest difference?' he asks.

I think for a moment. Everything is different. In New York I ride a subway system built sometime in the 1900's, here buses segment and flow off in different directions. There's a city above the city, a lace work super-structure that supports thousands of four tower living units and work complexes like the University complex we live in; what they call the xin gongshe, new communes. And there's the constant assault of Chinese, I get hungry for someone to speak English with. The food. I ate Chinese and Thai food at home, but not all the time. And there's food here I've never seen or heard of, from Australia and South America and Africa, at outrageous prices. Everyone here seems rich.

I laugh. 'At home, I knew what was going on, and if I had something to talk about, I called somebody and talked to them. Here,' it is my turn to shrug, 'I am not quite sure what will happen, what things mean, and I don't have anyone to talk to about it.' I glance at him, to see how he takes it.

He looks thoughtful.

It's time to leave, I stand. 'I am sure you are tired,' I say politely.

'Oh, no,' he says, equally as polite.

We go through the ritual of leaving. I realize I am taller than he is, although not by much. This is important to me in some secret way.

'Saturday,' he says, 'perhaps you would like some extra tutoring? Not suggesting that you aren't picking it up fast,' he adds, smiling.

'I'd like that,' I say.

'Of course, the class is most important,' he says, 'but it never hurts to have a little left-handed help.'

Left-handed. My heart starts to hammer. It is all code, he is testing me. Or perhaps it's an accident, he just used the phrase, unaware that it can have any other meaning. Back home, straights are right-handed, we are left. Not really, of course, just slang.

'Thanks,' I say, 'I'm grateful, and I always appreciate a little left-handed help.'

'Oh,' he says, politely delighted, 'I wasn't sure you would.'

'More than you know,' I say. 'It's very lonely here for a huaqiao.'

'I think a huaqiao like yourself should make very many friends quickly. You do not really have to go yet, do you?'

I am filled with terror and joy. 'Well, perhaps if you are not too busy,' I say. I am all desire, and I see he is, as well. My knees are loosened, I feel as if I am seventeen again, waiting in the dark on Coney Island beach for someone to come along, while the smell of ash rolls off the burning harbor.

'Wait,' he says, and does something swiftly with the room. The lights darken towards rose and then the sunset is inside the room, and the world is dark outside. Nanjing is lights that go on up the Yangtze River to the horizon; the river is marked by a curving road of lightlessness.

'I cannot believe this,' I whisper.

'What can't you believe?' he asks, laughing softly.