We're going to a party. It's a birthday party.

Today I wanted comfort food, and a lot of it. I decided to buy a cake. I don’t feel the need to explain myself about this. Cake in China: They don’t use butter cream or fondant, but straight whipped cream. This isn’t my favorite icing, but it’s edible. A “two-layer” cake is really the size of a one layer cake in America. The cake itself is okay, but I was raised on box cakes, and really nothing beats those for me. They cook chewy dried fruit into the cake. Cakes are for birthdays and for special guests. I was served a special guest cake when I had lunch at Susan’s, but her son served it to me, and I had spent the whole morning walking in the park with him, and watching him pick his nose and put his hands down his pants. And he served it with his hands, no utensils required. So I nibbled at it, and didn’t really get farther than that. I went to a shop across the road and pointed to a small cake with a rose on it. I thought they served the ones off the shelf, but the lady at the cake shop started making it right there. I left and went across the road to my favorite noodle shop. The noodles are good, but I really go there for the roast beef. A word on roast beef: Since I first discovered roast beef two weeks ago, I have eaten it at every possible turn. I know that roast beef is available in America, but not like this.
It’s the garlic (dasuan) sauce that really gets me, and the scallion pancakes you eat it with, like a wonderful roast beef taco. I make my own dasuan sauce, which is really the best part of the whole roast beef entrée. What I like about this noodle shop is that they have a wall of pictures of the different foods they serve, and I can just point to a picture, smile, and nod, and thumb-motion “to go, please”, and that’s that. I’ve started doing this every two days. I would do it every day, but one serving of roast beef lasts me for two days. I make some dasuan in my kitchen, pop around the corner to the outdoor market and buy some scallion pancakes, and stop by the noodle shop for some roast beef. It was a nice system. This is what has changed. There is a boy. Two boys actually. This boy has been in my life since the first month I was in China. I often would take long walks, and when we saw me on the street, he would yell, “Hello!” I don’t know why, but he just was there every single time I walked by, and every time he would say hello to me. So then A Jing took me to the noodle place, and this guy was there (per usual). His Chinese name is something like Han Si Lo, but in my head I call him Han Solo, so as to remember. Every time I go there he’s there, with his younger brother. I mostly didn’t pay them any mind at first, as I was really preoccupied with trying to communicate the phrase “niu ro” (beef) effectively enough to not have to point to the photo like a retard every time I went there. But then something happened, and now everything is ruined. Last weekend I went in and ordered my usual roast beef, and it is my custom to stand next to the door, leaned up against the wall, waiting. That time, however, Han Solo was prepared for me. He had apparently asked someone, or consulted a dictionary, or something, because he had a piece of paper, on which was written, “Please, sit down, what is your name?” He painstakingly read these words to me like they were all one sentence. I just stared at him, so he guided me to a chair and sat me down, and then sat down across from me. I was so confused. The care with which he did this reminded me exactly of a situation in a movie in which one character has some very bad news to break to the other, and so gently sits them down, sits down across from them, and looks at them with tenderness and/or pity. And for some reason, my first thought was, Oh no, he’s going to tell me they’ve stopped selling roast beef. Now, every time I go there, he sits with me, and doesn’t speak, but looks at me tenderly and smiles occasionally, and, this is the strangest part, when I give him the 20 RMB for the roast beef, he holds it in his palm like it’s a gift, or he pats it. He looks at me when I approach with a face reminiscent of a dog’s wagging tail. He meets me at the stairs. I am almost certain this guy has a crush on me. No one has ever had a crush on me in my entire life. When I was in high school, I imagined someone having a crush on me (god, especially a cute Asian boy) would feel really incredibly cool. But all I am concerned about is how this is affecting my roast beef intake. Now I feel shy to go there every day, because who the hell spends 50 RMB a week on roast beef? And I’m already like this stereotypical fat American, the fattest person in Qinzhou. Today was like the grand finale. I went in and ordered my roast beef, and then went back to collect my cake. She had made me a birthday cake. A beautifully decorated birthday cake, covered with colorful flowers and candies like confetti.
It said “Happy Birthday” in English, and even came with candles and tiny Styrofoam plates. Since I was going to eat this cake alone anyway, it reminded me of this thing my friend Kaitlin once told me. She said that Charlie Chaplin’s favorite joke went something like this: This guy walks into a bakery and asks the baker, “Can you make a piece of bread in the shape of a gondola?” And the baker says, “I don’t know, it’ll be hard, but I’ll try.” So the guy comes back, and the baker shows him the bread baked into the shape of a gondola, and the guy is really impressed, etc. The baker says, “Just let me wrap that up for you”, and the guy says, “That’s okay, I’m just going to eat it here”. When I first heard this joke, I was completely not impressed. I think I might have even said, “Why would he do that?”, and Kaitlin said, “That’s the point, why would he have a piece of bread made in the shape of a gondola if he’s just going to eat it alone”. However, the joke has definitely grown on me, and now when I think of it, I almost laugh out loud, even when I’m alone and cold. That’s exactly how I felt about this cake, like if this lady had known that she went through all that trouble just for me to go home and eat a slice of it alone, and cold, she would probably have felt the same way as the baker in the joke. This added to the awkwardness of knowing that you’re just buying an entire cake to eat by yourself in your apartment. Pathetic. So I awkwardly took my cake to the noodle shop to pick up my roast beef, but it wasn’t ready. Han Solo sat down and started gesturing at the cake. I said, “Wo bu dong” (I don’t understand). He went to the back room and brought out his brother, who asked, “Your birthday?” So obviously I have several options.

“No, it’s someone else’s birthday. It’s a gift for them.”
“No, I just bought this cake to take home and eat by myself.”
“No.”
“Yes, it’s my birthday.”
Or I could make some lemonade, baby.
“Yes, it’s for my birthday party. I’m going to need two orders of roast beef to feed everybody.”

Obviously, I chose the latter, got two orders of roast beef and didn’t look like a pig, and in this way, I thought I could avoid going back to the noodle place until at least after the weekend. This was not to be. A Jing came by tonight to have dinner with me, and where should she take me but said noodle joint. This time Han Solo had a translator, so he hovered around our table and watched us eat the entire evening, asking A Jing to ask me all the questions he had obviously so desperately wanted answered. In no particular order they were:

How old is she?
What does she do here?
What’s her job?
What’s her name?
What does she do on the weekends?
Does she like my noodles?
Does she like roast beef a lot?
How much did her coat cost?
How long will she be in China?
Tell her she should stay five years.
Does she like my noodles?

But the last question is the one that brought about the difficulty:
How was her birthday party?

At this point A Jing starts laughing, and tells me, “He thinks you had a birthday party today with a cake and candles, and served everyone roast beef!” My face went completely blank, as my mind tried to quickly figure out a way to deal with this situation.

“Yes, it is my birthday. I had some friends over and we had cake and roast beef.” Fine, except that A Jing knows I don’t have any friends.

“No, it’s not my birthday, but I lied to him and told him it was to avoid looking like an idiot. Obviously that has backfired.” That might work, except I’m pretty sure A Jing wouldn’t understand a single concept expressed there.

“No, it’s not my birthday. He is mistaken. Must have been someone else he was thinking of.” Also fine, if it weren’t for the fact that I am the most easily identifiable person in Qinzhou, in equal parts because of 1. the fatness, 2. the Americanness, 3. the hideous, bright orange coat.

I went with the “change the subject quickly and completely” tactic on this one. I asked A Jing to ask Han Solo if he would teach me to make noodles. This distracted everyone, including myself, because A Jing was surprised and amused (thinking I was flirting with Han), Han Solo was pleased and enchanted, and I was humiliated and curious. Let me explain about Han and his noodles. Apparently, his little shop is famous, and mostly all he does all day is stand and make noodles from dough. It’s very difficult. He takes a piece of dough, and pulls it out long, and then folds it in two and stretches it out long again, and he repeats this until he has a handful of long, thin noodles. His noodles are delicious, and he’s very proud of himself and his technique. So he took me to the kitchen, which is in the front of the shop, and open, which is where he always is when he greets me. His younger brother came up and started talking to us, and Han was so shy. To show off he showed me how he could pull the noodles out really thin, even thinner than angel hair pasta, and I was duly impressed. He didn’t try to speak much, but that was because his younger brother was doing all of the talking. They were like caricatures of a younger and older brother. The older one was handsome, quiet, smart, practical, and talented. The younger one was dorky, loud, outgoing, talentless, and flirty. I hate how people here are too polite to translate literally what people are saying. I read this situation like a book. Little brother (speaking Chinese all the while) points at me, points at Han, makes goofy faces, Han blushes, kneads dough, looks at me, smiles like puppy, A Jing blushes and says something to little brother in playful, scolding voice. A Jing translated, “He says his brother wants to live in America.” Come on. I think it went something like this, “Hey, my brother likes her, he keeps asking me how to say things in English so he can talk to her. She should marry him and take him to America.” They made me practice saying his name over and over, Han Si Lo, Han Si Lo, Han Si Lo, and then the little brother would ask me intermittently, in English, “Do you remember his name?” Han gave me the dough to try and stretch it out, and it just plopped down around my knees, and I couldn’t get it back up. Little brother started laughing, and Han punched him in the back, between the shoulder blades (that had to hurt), then picked the dough back up and smiled at me, stretching it for me and handing it back. So this is the root of my problem. I am too shy to talk to him. I don’t know what he’s saying to me in Chinese, and I feel like a fool. After the birthday cake incident, I really never want to show my face in that noodle shop again.

I also want to mention something about cold weather. I don’t think I knew what cold weather was before I came here. Because you don’t know what cold weather means until you live without heat. When you live in America, you are constantly going from one heated place to the next, your home, your building, school, work, the supermarket, the restaurant. Wherever you are going, it’s probably going to be heated. If you spend time in the cold, it’s for fun. Snowball fight, sledding, build a snowman. I only go to two places, school and my apartment, and neither of them is heated. The students sit in their gloves and coats while I teach (in my hideous coat, which is distracting for all of us). Then I go back to my apartment, which has generally been colder than outside. Today in the middle of my class at the primary school, the freezing rain turned to snow, and came down hard. Everything was covered by the time I got out of class. It was beautiful, but so sad. I knew I would be going home to my unheated apartment, to my three hot water bottles and my 16th rewatching of Ice Age. I knew I would make some hot chocolate, and crawl into bed wearing my coat and gloves. I knew I would think longingly of the warmth of Florida and the comfort of Ashley Jane. I knew my internet would not be working, because it wasn’t working before I left for work either. I suddenly realized that this is what cold weather really means to some people (homeless people, for instance). It means you’re not going to be warm again for a long time. It means that every single thing you do, taking a piss, boiling some water, heating up dinner, washing the dishes, and especially taking a shower, is now a horrendous chore that you have to do to the almost musical accompaniment of your chattering teeth. No more standing in the kitchen watching the sun rise, no more going for leisurely walks, no more comfort, at all, even a little, for four more months. The knobs on every radiator in my apartment are stuck, or perhaps they’re not meant to be turned. The next time I see Flora I’m going to demand heat. The people downstairs turn their heat on, and sometimes that makes my own radiator hot, but not enough to heat the room. Not even enough to take the edge off the biting cold. The strange thing, though, is that these are the silly inconveniences that make me stop, sometimes, in the middle of my day, and burst into a giddy grin. It’s a thing like slipping into my bed with a cup of hot chocolate in my coat and gloves that almost brings tears to my eyes. Sometimes I stop, and I have this feeling of nostalgia, but not for the past. I will pause and realize, “This is going to become one of my fondest memories”, and I feel that happiness that feels like sadness again. Maybe that’s what that feeling is, nostalgia.