More on Beijing, more broken hearts...
Beijing. What a city. How things change in only a matter of months.
There is construction everywhere. The city has been working very hard, tearing up streets, relaying them, building new parks, tearing down hutongs, putting up new apartments and office buildings. The streets are clean, with an ever present army of orange clad workers constantly walking up and down sweeping trash up in their little collection containers. Less and less people spit on the sidewalks, you rarely see someone spitting in the restaurants anymore. More and more, you find western dress, and western electronics, and western food and clothing shops. Everyone has a cell phone. Or two. They're nuts about instant messaging each other.
And, English is becoming far more prevalent.
The Beijing airport is an amazing exercise in efficient security. They put our US airports to shame. Hundreds of people are moved through the system every hour, all with amazing efficiency. All luggage is x rayed, by x ray machines right behind each check in person. You put your luggage down to check in, the attendant gives you your ticket, your luggage is scanned, and then sent on its merry way to your plane. Security checks are done in a quick and thorough fashion. And, to make things easier, everything is also in English. English is rapidly becoming a second language in China, in fact, many many students are either taking English language in their college or high school curriculums, or, they're teaching it to themselves. The reason? The impending 2008 Olympics represents to everyone a huge potential to make money with foreigners. It's all about making money, and the Chinese all realize, that to make money, one needs to be able to communicate with foreigners. English is hot now.
Layla speaks English, actually, fairly well. Linda, from my past experiences with her over the year, spoke very little. Needless to say, a relationship had formed with Layla over the year, because of our ability to communicate, and, because, well, she's kind of cute. Big American guys fascinate these girls, and I certainly was no exception. But, all the time, I had wished that Linda spoke better English, as she was the one that I had found to be most attractive. Linda was terribly cute, with a very distinctive look that almost appeared to be non-Chinese. In fact, she and Layla had almost no similarities in appearance at all, which, when you consider the usual look of a young Chinese woman, was pretty striking. They looked so different that at times, I wondered how they became so close. It was as if Linda was from some other country, and not from China. There was just something about her that snagged me. But without being able to communicate, developing a relationhip with Linda was going to be tough. Especially with Layla constantly being around, always taking over the conversation. It was all about to change...
But first, some interesting tidbits about China this time around. The hot topic at this time in the news, is the whole North Korea mess, with NK claiming that they were close to have nuclear weapon capability, and some even claiming that their nuclear weapon program was successful. Needless to say, this has put the rest of the region into quite a tizzy, including the US. I had asked about this before, last March, and the general consensus at that time leaned more towards a Chinese attitude of not really caring, and a general desire for a peaceful end to the problem between the US and NK. At that time, from what I gathered, China wasn't all too concerned with NK having nuclear weapons; hell, they weren't that concerned with the US having nuclear weapons aimed at them during the fifty years of the cold war. China was more concerned with all the damn refugees from NK, streaming over their border, into Dongbei province, which, is problem enough to Beijing right now (about 80% of Beijing's prostitutes and homeless come from northern Dongbei province, supposedly about 10% come from Anhui and other areas, and 10% are local Beijingers). More refugees from NK into the very poor northern provinces would cause nothing but more problems in the rest of the country. In March, it appeared that China was more concerned with this problem than NK having nuclear weapons. But, things seem to have changed.
NK being a nuclear power is a major concern for the Chinese it seems. The issue seems to be less that of NK being a nuclear threat to China, for the Chinese realize that NK probably wouldn't attack them (they appear to be close allies, with NK being the one realizing "where it stands" in the situation), and more one of the local balance of power being terribly disturbed. China at this point, from the people that I've spoken with, just does not want NK to have any nuclear weapons at all. There seems to be two reasons behind this. For one, NK's inclusion into the nuclear weapons club would no doubt increase the chances of South Korea and Japan rapidly entering the same club. The balance of power would alter, and the region would become very unstable and dangerous. Taiwan no doubt would enter the fray, Taiwan being a big issue in this country at this time. China just does not want this situation right next to its door. But the other reason is a little more compelling.
China does not seem to trust North Korea. At all. Despite the relatively close ties with that country, and the consistent advances that NK makes to China to "demonstrate friendship", the Chinese don't trust the North Koreans. They find them to be very unpredictable, and very capable of making decisions that are not based upon any factual data or, for that matter, any sort of reason. No, China does not want NK to be nuclear armed, because, they are just so unpredictable. It's a frightening scenario, maybe more so for China, than it is for us in the US, worrying about NK sales of nuclear weapons to terrorists. The Chinese, because of their modest and humble nature, certainly are not terribly verbal about NK's advances recently, but underneath that quiet uncaring exterior, there is sincere concern. No, the general feeling is that North Korea would never start any sort of confrontation with China. But, then again, who knows...
Sonme other interesting tidbits about Beijing. Did you know that there are thirty million people living in the Beijing area? That there are 100,000 taxi cabs in Beijing? And that every year, there are people that spend their time rating these cabs, for cleanliness, driver's ability, and so on, so that, on a yearly basis, one taxi is chosen as the best? That special taxi gets to paint a red star on its roof.
Someone needs to tell these people that all the taxi's in Beijing are painted red.
Western toilets are becoming more and more common in China. The Chinese actually like them more so than the porcelain holes in the floor, objects of fascination for me, as I could never figure out how to aim that well, to make them work the way they're supposed to work. Now, if they could only make some advances with their toilet paper, doc would be a happy puppy.
Paper is a rare commodity in China. China just does not have enough trees to support a paper making industry. So, China gets its pulp supply from an interesting source: recycled paper from the US. Yes, recycled paper from the US is sold to China, who then reworks the material into new paper. The paper just is not of the same quality as that found back home.
But, enough of this. Back to the love life.
It was a relatively nice time with Linda and Layla. Layla, as usual, made the usual advances upon my first return to Beijing, but, it had become obvious, over the next few days, that Linda was just as interested in me as I was in her. I had told her last year to learn English, so that I could talk to her, and, quite surprisingly, over the past few months, she had worked quite hard, to the point where she and I could start having conversations. It really changed things for both of us. The natural attraction that we both seemed to have had for each other over the past year was starting to flourish. It was good, it really was.
And then again, it was bad. Layla just didn't want to have anything to do with it.
I just wasn't sure what I was thinking. Here I was having a relationship with one girl, who, I constantly reminded myself, had made the effort to make that so, and now, I was drifting to her best friend, who, I might add, was drifting to me. But, it couldn't be stopped. Linda and I got closer and closer, Layla got angrier and angrier. I knew it wasn't the nicest thing in the world, and, I must admit, I've never done this before, as, in the past, I've had what you might call "scruples", but, you reach an age where you start to realize that you've got to find happiness where you can find it, and, people will get hurt. That's life. And, I might add, that's the nice way of saying it. Linda and I started spending more time together, without Layla. And Layla was getting pissed.
It all came to a head one day, actually, the day I was to leave for Shaolin, when Linda came up to my room to visit. Layla was at work. We discussed plans for her to come down to Shaolin to visit for a while, which, Linda readily agreed to. But, it was obvious that Linda was also upset with this whole scenario. "Layla is angry with me", she would say. Well, I explained to her, the best way that I could, that sometimes people sometimes get involved with their best friend's companions, and that it wasn't the best of situations, but, you just have to go where your heart leads you sometimes. Nobody said this was going to be painless. Linda understood this, but stated that she and Layla were close, and that they were from the same town.
Best friends and neighbors too. They've been friends for a long time. I again reiterated what I had said before, that these things can be unfortunate, but that you never know where life is going to lead you. I then made sure, that before I left for the airport, that I had Linda's email address. That's when I noticed something very interesting about Linda. Her last name was Fu.
Layla's last name was Fu.
I thought that kind of humorous, so I mentioned it to Linda. I told her that there must be a lot of "Fu's" in Anhui province. Hell, most of the damn country was named "Chen". In fact, the majority of people's last names in China, are one of five common names. Chen and Lee were two of those five. Fu was not.
She replied that there were a lot of "Fu's" in her smalll village where she grew up. In fact, a good deal of the village was named Fu. It was a close knit community. I had wondered just how "close" that community really was in the past.
I reiterated my desire for her to take the train down to Shaolin to visit me sometime next week, which, she appeared to want to do, but, ever so slowly, she started to get more and more anxious about the whole thing. Eventually, she just broke down. I thought to myself, that this just was bad timing. I was supposed to leave for the airport; any long conversations about relationships with a woman was just not going to happen at this time. I had minutes to spare.
But Linda required more than a few minutes. She was terribly upset. Again, the "taking a best friend's boyfriend" issue.
I wondered how I could pull off the "don't worry, it will work out, she'll get over it" conversation in a few minutes. With someone who spoke little English. I gave her the abridged version. I just couldn't miss my flight. And she listened. And she seemed to have calmed down a bit. I thought to myself, this was going easier than I had expected.
Then she gave me her response. The abridged version. One I hadn't heard before. Layla was her older sister.
Doc does it again. Well, at least I was leaning towards the proper age group.
The saga continues...