BILL MURRAY

I do love what the universe lays out for me. I was just lamenting to my friend about how my writing has slowed not because I find it difficult to keep up the energy required to write but because I’ve been feeling rather nebulous. In my nebulous state, the clarity I need to carve out the gist of what I want to write simply has not been around. The haze has kept me from my normal routine. The haze has come between me and the gratitude I should have at the beauty I can’t see in everyday life. I’m getting old enough to realize that my nebulous writer’s block is nothing if not simply a part of being alive and just like the ephemeral nature of happiness melancholy is ephemeral too. With nothing left to do but ride out the storm of "eh" I’ve been indulging in all the indulgences that come with my position that I have thus far neglected. I’ve been shopping up a storm. I’ve been eating out at lovely, delightful restaurants most nights. I’ve been indulging my girl friends and I’ve been keeping company with the loveliest of French men.

Le Francais (my Brazilian Angel’s husband) needed to call in an engineer to fix one of his machines here in Xi’An. So, his company shipped out an engineer forthwith and my Brazilian Angel, goddess of the rescue that she is, swooped in and shook the culture shock dust of him like only she can. Le Francais and my Brazilian Angel have been showing him the city and they’ve been getting on famously. Then Sunday night of last week, Le Francaise thought it would be a nice idea to get us all together as my French is minimal and the engineer’s English is nonexistent. (The common language amongst the Foreign business community here is English, so if you don’t speak English, you’re relatively out of luck… though there are several French businessmen in the West Egg community.)

In person, socially speaking, I’m a rather quiet and reserved woman at first. I’d rather hang back and figure out how I fit in the picture than bombard the room with my personality. Granted, once you know me, I’m a bit of a ball of fire and I will not be swayed from my often obnoxious personality but at first I just like to observe. I wouldn’t say I’m shy; I’m cautious. I have a tendency to get too attached to people, need them too much, and so I get wrecked easily. The whole "hanging back" thing is about understanding how we’ll fit more than, "Gee, I hope they like me."

As it has been my experience here, Westerners are not to be trusted. They’re always out to pilfer something and then brag about what a superior race they are. So, when my Brazilian Angel suggested I meet with the new French colleague of le Francais, I was a bit cautious. First, I was a more than a bit nervous about my terrible French. My French comprehension is not too shabby (considering it’s been a decade since I’ve lived in France properly) but my conversation is truly horrid. Parisians (as I was living in Paris) tend to be spikey about the abuse their language takes (the rest of France, as has been my experience, tends to embrace foreign attempts to speak French) consequently, the last thing I wanted to have to deal with was condescension at my terrible language capacity while supping with an imperialist.

Frankly, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The French colleague was charming and kind and every bit in love with China and the Chinese as I am. He was very low key and took every opportunity to set me at ease without an ounce of arrogance. In fact, he was the antithesis of arrogance. He was the ultimate breath of fresh air compared with much of the rest of the foreign business community here. When I spoke and my Brazilian Angel attempted to clarify everything I said, he would cut her off with, "No, no, I understand" and then return to me with questions to flesh out the idea. If I seemed lost or confused by anything, he would slow down his speech and simplify his words without the slightest hint of patronage. It was the first time I’ve ever felt really encouraged to speak French without fear of humiliation and it was the first time in Xi’An I felt that a Western male was actually interested in talking to me and not the "single White" chick.

So we hit it off last Sunday and then on Saturday, my Brazilian Angel, Le Francais, the Engineer and I went sight seeing. My Brazilian Angel is nothing if not Brazilian and so, by design, she was the life of the party. She effortlessly managed to organize us all and keep the interesting conversation going. She truly is wonderful, especially when you’re overwhelmed by things to the point of sliding into your shell; all you need do is not say "No" and she will keep you moving until you’re back to your normal self.

I, on the other hand, was the quiet American with minimal other languages. The Engineer and I, it turned out, are quite similar in temperament and so he spent much of the time hanging around with me.

We went to the "Red Pagoda," (I’m not familiar with the official name) and wandered around for several hours. It was wonderful and peaceful and funny. There were several buildings in the pagoda compound devoted to quite Catholic depictions of what awaits you in the afterlife if you don’t behave. Essentially, there were (at least) three buildings, two stories high filled, floor to ceiling, with cartoonish dioramas of a Buddhist hell. In one corner of one building, there were lots of nude women rolling about in boiling water. Flushed and writhing, it was difficult to tell if the women were pre-orgasmic or pre-flesh-being-boiled-from-their-skin. The fact that the women were beautiful with perfect bodies did not help the confusion.

"It may be hell but the artist sure did create this with a lot of joy." I commented.

"It’s inspiration but I’m unsure what it’s inspiration for," the Engineer commented as he gestured to the vat of writhing nudes.

Giggling, I nodded. "It’s very Catholic." I commented.

Putting the emphatic look that only a good, lapsed Catholic can, he nodded as we ducked out of HELL PART ONE. Frankly, I can think of nothing better than a little flirtation and a lot of giggling in the face of such demonstrative threats.

We wandered about the Buddhist grounds a bit more, reveling the calm and serene beauty within the brutally loud and hectic city. We studied massive Buddhist tablets and little chickadees in the trees. When we had our fill of the nude, minimalist calm of winter’s natural exterior, we passed by the monks at the entrance and wandered out into the street.

From the street wandered outside to the small alley of stores just outside the entrance. Inside one of the stores, le Francais tried on a Buddhist monk robe and negotiated a good price for it. I wandered the cd’s and incense, trying to find the floral one I smelled once but have yet to find again. I’m not a patchouli kind of girl but that one floral scent was a smell I could and would like to live with. The Engineer came over to chat with me briefly and I explained what was going on within the flamboyant negotiations between the shopkeepers, my Brazilian Angel and le Francais. As they finished up and I finished translating, the Engineer and I wandered back outside.

It slowly dawned on me that I was able to translate from Mandarin to French without shifting into English first. It’s a bit dizzying to realize that you can have a full, broad relationship within a foreign world complete with branching out into yet another foreign world without visiting home. I haven’t felt like that since the training wheels were taken off my bike.

Once le Francais was properly monk-i-fied, we wandered to a restaurant and my Brazilian Angel started organizing all of us like the lost puppies that we were. She started explaining what there was to eat and she started exploring the restaurant to see the broad spectrum of what was offered. I knew immediately that I would have a sandwich. The Chinese make this fantastic sandwich out of spiced, salted pork in very plain, dense flatbread.

"What are you having?" the Engineer asked me.

"The sandwich and probably some noodles," I answered without hesitation.

The Engineer nodded and my Brazilian Angel returned. She spoke briefly with le Francais and then she turned to the Engineer. "Do you know what you want to have?"

"The sandwich and probably some noodles," the Engineer said.

In that moment I realized I had found my Bill Murray to my Scarlet Johanson from "Lost in Translation." The Engineer liked me, in spite of my "I’m a wallflower" self-dismissal when held against the bright, brilliant beauty of my Brazilian Angel.

We each had a sandwich, which he claimed to like very much and split a bowl of noodles. It was quite lovely and full of quiet physical jokes about wrestling with slippery noodles and chopsticks while my Brazilian Angel filled the quiet with lots of interesting tidbits.

After lunch, we did a brief tour of the South and it was decided that Bill and would meet up on Sunday (1/28) to take a tour of the Tang Paradise park. We dropped Bill off and headed home to drop off my things before I met my Chinese Angel for dinner at La Seine (the fancy French restaurant) for her birthday celebration.

My Chinese Angel and I met up and had a delicious, five-hour dinner. I was beyond thrilled that she enjoyed the exploration of all things "foreign." Granted, that quiche, fruit salad, pumpkin soup, escargot, grilled salmon, Bordeaux and tiramisu is "foreign" is strange to me and I felt a bit silly exposing her to such status quo cuisine in my world but she claimed to be thrilled with it, so I was happy.

The next morning, I put on RFI (Radio France International) internet radio in preparation for spending the day with Bill. I was definitely overwhelmed by the thought of, after the better part of a decade, flying solo in French without a net and I figured that listening to RFI would be akin to warming up before the marathon.

My taxi pulled up to the hotel and he hopped in. I explained where we wanted to go to the cab driver and we were off. Bill and I bisoused and then began talking about the fascinating differences between Chinese and Westerners. It wasn’t a conversation about the absurdity of such a backward culture but a discussion about the humor to be found in cultural divides. Bill, like myself, is a bit of a quiet jokester/prankster and so he has, on more than occasion, exploited the cultural divide to a humorous end. (Case in point: the Chinese, as has been our experience, by and large work with many people in an office or with many people coming in and out of their office. He decided to see how long it might take one of his Chinese colleagues to break through the mask and impose upon him if his door was closed but it simply did not happen. Finally, defeated he gave up on his experiment and returned to the Chinese way with his tail between his legs.)

We then talked about our homes. He told me about the village in the North of Bourgogne that he’s from. He talked about how, when he’s home in Bourgogne, he goes from his village of a couple thousand people to his mother’s tiny village of fifty or sixty people on the weekends. He recounted the beauty of the forest, the sheep, the cows, the nature and all the peace that his home has to offer.

"On Sundays, I have one assignment; to go for a drive, find a road I have never seen before and explore it," he recounted to me. "Sometimes you find abandoned homes and sometimes you find nothing but I like to explore."

"That’s perfect," I sighed. It’s safe to say I long for that.

I told him about my home and how I have the advantages of New York City and the advantages of living in a small town at the foot of the mountains with the nature, the turtles, the deer, the rivers and the comfort. I told him how I go for a hike in the mountains everyday and on the weekends I look for abandoned homes.

As I was recounting pieces of my home, I kept tripping up over my French and, as my frustration mounted, I decided to lance it by apologizing for my horrible French.

"No. It is my fault. I should speak English but I don’t . _I_ am sorry." Bill offered earnestly. In that moment, I felt utterly understood. I have met people who respond to me effortlessly, I have met people who meet me where I’m at, I have met people perfectly complimented to me but in Bill I realized I have found a friend who is just like me. He is calm and steady. He is silly and observant. He is incongruous and creative. He is quiet without being shy. He is a perfectionist at work and a pushover at home. He likes to explore the forest and look for ruins. He’s fascinated by foreign cultures and has a transient profession that takes him all over the world for months at a time. He realizes that normally one must make an attempt to meet the other person half way but that sometimes life gets in the way and it’s just not possible to do so, consequently, gratitude is important to express… even if said expressed gratitude obliterates any notion that fully making up the difference myself is an effort of any sort. He’s just like me.

Granted, I know it’s a bit of an oversimplification of a separate and fully realized individual but I exist in a vacuum here. Most of my fellow Westerners are imperialists I wouldn’t socialize with at home. The closest thing I have to compatriots here are my colleagues who have a healthy respect for my culture and values but have no visceral understanding of it. They have never seen my culture in action and while they love and appreciate me beyond anything I could have ever hoped for they do not understand me; they accept me. They have no great passion for the upper middle class indulgences or romantic, classical education and the great love of the arts it invariably instills in those of us too incongruous to be labeled "winner" during our formative years. They are utterly perplexed by my distaste of New Money vulgarity and my preference for more a subdued appearance. Bill understands because he lives it.

So we arrived and he paid the cab fare, despite my insistence that we split it. He then purchased my entry ticket to the Tang Paradise park and refused my offering to pay for that too. I thanked him and didn’t feel weird about having him take care of me, I felt simple gratitude laced with nothing, not even guilt.

As we made it through the gate, we were handed maps. We opened them up and checked out the sights.

"I can’t really understand this. It’s all in English." He explained.

I looked at the map and then back at the woman who handed us the map.

"Wait a moment." I said.

I went back up to the woman and pointed to the map. "Yo jiege Fa wen ma?" ("Do you have this in French?")

She briefly looked at me, confused and then it clicked in her head that I was speaking Mandarin. "Meiyo." ("No, we don’t have any") She explained.

I returned to Bill. "Sorry, they don’t have these in French."

"I’ll just have to depend on you for an explanation," he smiled at me.

I nodded, checked out the map and translated everything for him, the sum total of which were completely unhelpful names of things. "See, not much in English either."

We both shrugged and head off, up over the massive granite bridge spanning the narrow side of the gigantic lake. At the end of the bridge was a waterfall.

"Oh, humidity." I breathed a sigh of relief. "I have always lived near the ocean or large rivers. This is my first time living near a desert. I’m not used to such dry conditions. I love the humidity in this air."

"After my first week here, my hands started to itch and flake. I thought I was having a reaction to something, so I took some allergy medication but it did nothing." Bill explained as he dramatically scratched at the back of his hand, making me giggle. "Then I went to work and mentioned to my secretary that I was having an allergic reaction I couldn’t fix. She told me it wasn’t allergies but dry skin." Bill makes a comic face indicating his surprise at it own ignorance and the simplicity of the answer turning my giggle into laughter. "She got me some moisturizer and it healed right up." Shrugging, he briefly showed me the back of his hand and then gestured with a dismissive flourish into the wind in that way that is so very French and for the first time in my life I found charming, not irritating. "It’s dry here." He said, mock knowingly making me laugh even more.

From the waterfall, we wandered up the hill to the right, away from the sprawling lake and fortress to the left. As we wandered up the hill, I spied a ravine off even further to the right. Down the ravine was a waterfall and a very well kept promenade. "That promenade begs to have its solitude broken and be walked in," I thought.

"Do you want to go and look?" Bill asked as I silently spied the waterfall. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might want to go check it out. I was just looking.

As it settled into me that perhaps I wanted to go see something off our casually chosen path I turned to look at Bill. I’m so quick to stifle my natural urge to explore in the presence of others in order to stay on track and this was the first time anyone had, one, noticed I was thinking of going elsewhere and, two, verbalized an offer to put our previous plans on hold to indulge my flight of fancy.

"I just saw that you were looking and thought you might want to go see." Bill explained self-consciously.

I smiled, more grateful than he will ever know and nodded.

We descended the ravine, passing beautiful park employees decked out in Tang Dynasty dress, hiding amongst the little blind corners of the path carved in the rock to have a cigarette. As we passed the smoking women dressed not unlike characters out of some Disney attraction, I thought about the explanation I have always heard about why Chinese men who smoke find Chinese women who smoke unattractive; a woman smoking is a sign of misery despite the fact that a man smoking is a sign of masculinity. Somehow it just felt right that the women who have taken a job in a Disney-like park hocking their glossed-over and simplified culture with such drama and fan fare would, secretly, take their breaks to go and smoke in private. It was then that I decided I had no interest in seeing the exorbitantly priced theater spectacles that these women were hired to perform and which Bill had already expressed was my decision to see or not (despite the fact that he was paying). The park alone was beautiful enough. All the park needs are the standard maintenance people; not men and women paid to be falsely cheerful while hocking the plasticized version of their culture.

As we reached the bottom of the ravine and broke the solitude of the promenade, I settled into such comfort that I started making silly jokes that Bill really seemed entertained by. He asked if I had been to other countries and I said none in Asia but plenty in Europe. He told me about Japan and how wonderful the culture is there too. He explained about one of his trips there and how lovely it was to visit such a rich culture.

We made our way around the stream-lined promenade and started back up the hill as Bill expressed his great regret at not having been a better student. From what he described, I suspect he’s dyslexic too. He explained about having a visual memory and how difficult languages are for him, even French. I told him my little brother is the same way, avoiding telling him that I’m the same way too. Most people don’t believe me when I explain how difficult languages are for me and that my "forte" for languages is not, in fact, a forte for languages but an incredibly high threshold for my own humiliation, inability to understand and desire to say, "This sucks. FUCK IT!" English was just as hard for me as every foreign language I’ve ever learned and one of the reasons I started writing regularly was to maintain what everyone else simply had.

Nonetheless, I felt that Bill would think I was mocking or patronizing him and I lack the French fluency for the nuanced explanation to say nothing of the fact that, on the surface, I am simply good at languages. If one does not speak the native language of a country, one must at least speak English to get by. I not only speak minimal Mandarin and slightly more English, I was managing to maintain my half of our conversation in French. The last thing I wanted was to make Bill feel like I was patronizing him especially when he made no overcompensating-because-he-felt-emasculated-by-my-control-of-our-external/Chinese-interactions gestures.
So under the brilliant, clear, beautiful day, we made our way back up to our original path as he explained his difficulties in school and his great desire to have been a better student, allowing him more access to languages. He explained how he finally found an English teacher who understood his difficulties with learning and helped him sort out a way to learn visually. He explained that the teacher had used the movie "Saturday Night Fever" to help him learn and how most of his English comes from that method.

At that, I was positive he was an undiagnosed dyslexic and my heart went out to him, thinking about how untenable it is to be labeled "stupid" despite the fact that you’re not and you know you’re not, to say nothing of the fact that when he was a student, dyslexia was not understood much less tolerated by teachers.

We wound our way around the outer edge of park and then hiked up one of the hills for the lookout. We joked about the steps in China and how they’re just a little too short for our long legs (he’s my height).

"But do be careful on the way down. These granite slabs can come loose from the earth and I don’t want you to fall." Bill explained his lovely gesture in the quietest way.

"Okay." I said, making the mental note to take all the steps carefully on the way down as nothing inspires my obedience like a man concerned for my safety.

At the top of the hill, we took in our first overview of the city for the day. The day was beautiful and clear and you could see for miles; an incredibly rare thing in Xi’An in the past few decades. We turned around, taking in the 360 degree view.

"Ah, the calm, the beauty, the grace, the…death?" I thought as I looked over the view and then found my vision resting on a massive skull and crossbones. Apparently, next to the Tang Paradise is an amusement park and the top of one of the scary rides has a massive metal skull and crossbones.

I explained my train of thought to Bill and he laughed, explaining that he had the same general thought when he saw it.

We then descended the large hill to meander through a garden of the fourteen hand gestures/seals of Buddhism. There were massive, 8-foot-tall hand sculptures in the fourteen different gestures of Buddhism lining the path. I explained what each one meant and he kindly listened with interest as I butchered the French language.

I don’t know when it occurred to me but it slowly seeped into me that I was with a kindred spirit. Language and cultural barriers aside, sometimes people are just meant to understand each other.

We found our way to a long, covered bridge that bordered the massive lake and we entered. Strolling through the covered arches, I looked up and noticed that the keystones of the arches were covered with ornate plates. The plates that were facing us were covered in Chinese characters and pictograms. The plates to our backs were women dressed in Tang Dynasty dresses. I pointed them out and Bill, pulled himself from the view of the lake to photograph the plates.

I then looked out to the lake where Bill had been photographing. The lake was still as death. The sky and city reflected back onto itself infinitely. The lines between heaven and earth vanished, lost within the distant, dark haze of pollution. And I was happy to be able to spend that moment there with my new friend.

Slowly we continued our stroll through the archways and made our way to an open plaza with a four story octagonal building. Just outside the plaza, there was a sign that spoke about how deep (and therefore dangerous) the water in the area was. I hopped out to the sign and showed Bill the character for water. On the first night we met, Bill tried to force himself to remember the word for water after he heard me ask the waitress for some. As the character is quite simple, I thought it would be nice to show him.

"Water" I pointed to shuai.

"’Deep’ what does that mean?" He asked, reading the "The water is deep. Take care." sign.

I completely forgot the word for "deep" in French and so I had to explain it. "It’s the opposite of shallow." I then held my hands together, my lower hand hovering just beneath my upper hand. "Shallow" I said and then I dropped my lower hand, "not shallow. ‘Deep.’"

"Oh, deep!" Bill finally understood. The French word for "deep" is "profound" and it possesses all the connotations both of the physicality of "deep" and the intellectual depth of the English "profound." "Like Johnny Deep [Depp]. Johnny is very profound." I laughed. "Of course, it’s because his woman [the word for "wife" and the word for "woman" in French is the same thing so even though they’re not married, she’s still considered like his wife] is French."

"Obviously, Vanessa Paradis’s man is very profound." I countered and we both laughed as we entered the plaza.

In the plaza there were tall blocks of sea green glass with the life sized silhouettes of Tang Dynasty women etched into them, effectively appearing as though the ladies were on the other side of a translucent, colored door. We walked up the path to the building entrance, passing by the silhouettes and climbed the stairs to the second floor balcony of the building.

On the balcony, we got yet another breathtaking view of the city. However, as we emerged from the stairwell, I got a view what looked like a construction dumpsite. I studied it for a moment and then realized it was not a dump site but and outdoor water slide attraction attached to the nearby aquarium.

"Oh my god that’s ugly." I exclaimed.

"Yes. Most modern buildings are. Architects and contractors are more interested in building quickly and making a statement that creating something with beauty." Bill explained. "That’s why I love cultures with such deep history. There is old architecture with great beauty."

"Very true." I commented, loving every second of our conversation. "I’ve never understood why women fall all over themselves at the thought of French men. I mean, I like French men just fine but I’ve never noticed that the advantages of French men far outweighed the advantages of any other nationality. However, I may have been mistaken." I thought to myself.

We ascended another two flights to the top of the tower to see what we could see and we were greeted with more spectacular views of my beloved and incongruous Xi’An. She’s modern and she’s old. She’s got obscenely wealthy high-rises crowding ghettos of falling down apartments flanked by blossoming apartment complexes and the cranes building them surrounding massive park spaces of ancient artifacts and modern sculpture. Xi’An is a cacophony of life; the old and the new echoing back onto itself into infinity.

It was then that Bill started to proactively reach for and hold open the flaps that cover doorways (in lieu of doors) to allow me to pass before him. It was also then that I realized this is precisely what I needed to find my voice again. The nebulous haze that had descended upon me had started to lift and I was beginning to feel as clear as the still lake.

We wandered around a few more buildings and then Bill asked me about San Francisco.

"Do you know San Francisco?"

"Yes, my grandmother lives there. I know it quite well." I explained.

"Tell me truly what you think of it. It has always been a dream of mine to go."

"It’s a wonderful city. The sights are fantastic. The people are wonderfully kind and progressive. It’s fun to get around." I gushed.

"That’s it. I must go. I must go to San Francisco." He declared definitively.

We stopped in front of a plaque explaining in Chinese English precisely what we were looking at. Bill stopped talking to look at the English and I followed his gaze. It’s safe to say that the translated plaques are always a bit difficult to read, even for me who deals with Chinese English everyday.

Bill shrugged his shoulders, "I can’t read it. It’s too difficult."

I smiled. "I can’t read it either. It is too difficult."

Bill laughed, "I guess Chinese English is hard."

I nodded. "It’s true. And the funniest part is that the Chinese, who are so innocent about their romantic intentions always choose the words that are a bit sexual to explain their great passion for something."

Bill laughed and explained how true it is that the Chinese are incredibly earnest in their personal relationships. He has, on occasion, attempted to lightly tease a fellow colleague (good naturedly) as we do in the West. Instead of countering his teasing, they simply accepted the comments at face value and moved on, leaving Bill feeling like a heel and trying to explain it was just a joke. I ran into the same problem (see any number of my earliest interactions) and we commiserated about how bad we felt overstepping that boundary.

We continued our wandering around the lake and came upon a large playground. I was fascinated with the enormous game of Chinese Chess (or Othello as my beloved math geeks know it) where each black or white piece was large enough for a person to sit on. I was so enraptured by the massive Chess sculpture, I failed to really notice the two waterwheels attached to some monstrous contraption that ended over a small gazebo. Whatever it was, it wasn’t working as there wasn’t any water in the streams surrounding the island the gazebo was on so I really paid it no mind.

Bill got very excited upon seeing the contraption and started wandering about the enormous thing. This got my attention and I turned away from the Chess sculpture. I studied the monstrous contraption, confused but Bill returned to me to explained how it all worked, ending with the water falling over the gazebo. With Bill’s explanation, I understood what happened, I just didn’t understand why. So, I went to the plaque in front of the gazebo and did my best to decipher what it said.

"Air-conditioning." I said.

My engineer friend got even more excited and started taking pictures. "Yes. It must be the first air-conditioning. I must have pictures of this. The Chinese are a truly brilliant culture. So much of what we have, so many of the inventions in the world come from China. They are such and old and rich culture and they have given the world so much."

I couldn’t have agreed more.

As Bill told me about the various engineering contributions China has given the world, we wandered to the granite island carved to look like a dragon boat. Bill, at this point, had grown accustomed to my habit of walking into a room first studying the floor and then studying the ceiling. This time he beat me to the punch and found the most beautiful corner of ceiling while I was still studying the ground. He led me to a corner where the ornate stained glass ceiling was not only beautiful in its arabesque complexity but lined with large, colorful, swirling glass balls the size of pool balls. Perhaps several hundred of these balls lined the outside of the beautiful square of light and his immediate sharing of his discovery was the loveliest gift I’ve received in a long time. It felt like the ceiling was made just for my pleasure.

We wandered throughout the "boat" and at the front of the boat was a ceiling of repeating dragons.

"It’s amazing that the whole world has dragons but where to they come from?" Bill asked himself the same question I have asked myself over and over since the beginning of time. "Perhaps it’s some prehistoric animal that died out just as man was beginning and has somehow managed to stay in our collective unconscious." Bill answered himself with the same answer I’ve stuck with over the years.

We made our way out of the dragon "boat" and around the lake towards the massive fortress stopping along the way to meander on the Chinese bridge promenade. The white granite bridge led to nowhere and circled back onto itself.

"Oh, at last, ducks." Bill sighed with relief as he spied the only two ducks I had seen all day. "I would have thought there would be more ducks and swans in the lakes here. But, no ducks or swans." Bill glanced at me as I was looking out onto the water. "Oh, never mind. You probably don’t know which bird is the swan."

"Yes, I do. Big, white bird that sings one song before it dies. It’s a ‘swan’ and there are lots of swans and ducks in the spring, summer and fall."

Bill smiled happily and seemed relieved though I don’t know why.

"In France, there is a very interesting radio show. It’s about a man who backpacks through different countries with the soul purpose of convincing local people to let him spend the night with in their home. It’s very interesting. He reports on which countries are the easiest and which countries are the hardest to find a place to sleep. He said in China, it was very easy." Bill pauses to watch a Chinese family pass us by. "But I would know how to approach them. I wouldn’t know the first thing to say."

"Me neither. That’s such a great idea for a radio show."

Bill agreed and he continued to tell me about various episodes.

We walked around the base of fortress and Bill worked up the nerve to ask me about my film work.

"You said you worked in film. Do you mind if I ask you why you came to China?"

"I love film. I love making film, I love watching film and I love the process. However, I was working in production. It’s a very difficult job for a woman and I left it before I began to hate it. Someday I want to return to write and direct."

"The one regret of my whole life is that I never worked in film. It is my great passion. I would have loved to be a director."

We talked some more about film and made our way up the grand staircase.

"You know, when I first moved to China, I hated it." Bill confessed.

"Me too. I hated it for a month. I got in the first day and thought, ‘What have I done? I want to go home! This is such a mistake!’. I thought, ‘I can’t breathe. The air is terrible. The people are so different from me. I don’t know what to do.’"

"Me too. But, you know who helped me enormously? [Your Brazilian Angel] She came in, she took me out to dinner, she showed me the city, she showed me how to get around and now I love it."

"Me too. In my head, I call her my Brazilian Angel. She saved me. I would not have lasted in China had I not met her. I would have gone home. I owe her more than I could ever repay her." I concurred.

Bill and I reached the top of the enormous steps and he pulled back the curtain for me. We entered and wandered around the small museum. At the center of the large, square room was a royal court made to look very life-like and I found it incredibly unsettling. I expressed my unsettled sensation to Bill and he teased me by commenting that he thinks he saw one of them move.

"That’s not funny." I turned around, creeped out.

"No, seriously, look. She moved." He said again, trying to stifle his laughter.

And I did what any mature, adult female fully in control would do; I shivered off in a creeped out waddle.

Fully entertained, Bill followed me. I don’t know what it is about boys but when they pull my pigtails and I know it, I just can’t help but be even more indignant, to their great delight.
Still creeped out, I ascended the next set of stairs but not before Bill hurried ahead of me to grab the sound blankets acting as a door and pull them out of my way.

At the next terrace we reached, we looked down at the plaza below to see an acting troupe gallivanting about on stilts and putting on a good show for the plaza. We spent a good half hour watching the stilt-wearing acrobat actors bounce about to well-timed live music and put on a great show.

As I watched the bright colors flap about several stories below, I found myself wondering what Bill was thinking and what it’s like to be inside a brain that functions in French. I wondered if the words of beauty he might be thinking were "belle" or "jolie" or "beau" and which pieces of the performance they applied to. I wondered what he thought of the music as he’s not a fan of the atonal Chinese traditional music but the folk music the Chinese were playing was much more tonal and traditional in the European sense.

The performance ended and we continued our lap around the wrap-around terrace. As we made it back to where we had started, another performance was starting up on the plaza below. This time, instead of allowing a pillar to be between us, I nestled myself into the space just next to him and he immediately turned himself to face me.

As I watched the multi-person dragons dance about on the tall platforms below, Bill watched me. We talked about something, the likes of which I can’t remember, only that it was so comfortable standing there, close to him as he watched me. I was glowing under the thought that the universe had given me this brief moment to restore me. I saw the ephemeral nature of this gift in the warm glow of his gaze and knew that whenever this day ended, I would always think of it fondly.

From there we wandered up another few floors to the top wrap-around terrace and discovered a room with a three-story tall gold pagoda mockup. We studied the pagoda for a bit as the Chinese studied us; a tall European couple and the essence of exotic in this exotic place. A woman and her daughter walked in as I was reading the sign below the pagoda and Bill laughed.
"They are completely shocked."

"Who?" I asked.

"Them. Their mouths are on the floor." Bill pointed to the mother and daughter walking past us, backwards, to gawk at our exotic nature. "Younger women look at me but older women never do."

"It’s because of me." I explained.

"Why?"

"They think I’m your wife which makes you safe to openly observe because I will make sure you behave. But, unfortunately, younger women won’t look at you as openly when I’m around. Sorry." I faux apologized.

Bill shook his head, indicating he had no problem with not being looked at by younger women.

I smiled and took out a yuan coin. The sign explained that if you drop a coin into the jug before the pagoda, the pagoda would light up and play music. I dropped a coin into the jug and immediately the pagoda lit up with different colored twinkle lights that rimmed the roof of each wrap-around terrace. It clicked and whirred under the movment of light.

"Wow," Bill sighed. He walked to the far corner of the room and took a picture of the pagoda and its dancing lights.

When Bill returned, he studied me for a moment and noticed my irritated look. "What’s wrong?"

"There’s no music. The sign says there will be lights and music but there’s no music. Only clicking. Hmph." I pouted.

Bill smiled at my pout and shrugged.

"Well, it wasn’t very expensive." I tried to console myself.

We watched the show until it ended and then Bill took out another coin and dropped it in the jug. "Perhaps there will be music now."

The lights clicked on again and the show that had been several minutes long suddenly was cut short after less than two minutes. Surprised, we looked at each other.

"Well, it wasn’t very expensive." Bill echoed and we found the way out.

As we were easily ten stories up, looking down the shaft of the narrow circular stairs was quite dizzying.

"Oh!" I gasped as I looked over the edge and felt the swirl of vertigo hit me while looking at the Escher-like staircase that seemed to fold back onto itself forever. I rarely get vertigo. In fact, if I was hard-pressed, I couldn’t come up with a single case of it before. Leaning back, a bit swirl-headed, Bill reached out to steady me. Once he was sure I was steady, he looked over the railing.

"It’s like that movie with James Stewart." He paused to find the name of the movie.

"Vertigo" we said at the same time.

"Yes, and with the actress…" He paused to find her name.

"Kim Novak" I finished for him.

"That was a great movie."

"Yes! Really great!" I concurred.

"Are you okay to walk down the stairs? We can take the elevator if you’d like." Bill offered kindly.

"No, I’m okay. I’ll just walk near the wall."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, thank you."

As we descended the staircase, we were passed by a couple with a woman wearing, as always in China, heels.

"Women always wear heels here." Bill commented. "I never understand why they are always wearing heels. Their feet must always hurt."

"I don’t know. Sneakers are hard enough for me to not fall down in. I can’t wear heels. I would never stand up." I concurred with his confusion.

We made our way back towards the entrance and I felt better than if I had just spent the past four hours doing yoga.

"Tomorrow I will go to work and tell [le Francais] that I had a wonderful day." Bill flattered me and I discovered I had to resist the urge to hug him.

"And I will say the same thing tonight to [my Brazilian Angel]. Thank you."

"No, thank you for your company. It was a wonderful, relaxing, refreshing day. One of my best in China."

"Thank you."

"What would you like to do? We can head home or perhaps do something else. Whatever you’d like."

Sleepy from the sunny day and afraid to ruin a really beautiful day, I resisted the urge to suggest we go back to his hotel and instead suggested we head to our respective homes.

"Do you know how to tell the driver to make two stops? We will drop you off and then I will go to my hotel. Of course I will pay for it."

"Oh, thank you and yes. Yes, I can explain how to get from here to my home."

And with that, we piled into a taxi and headed home, the warm glow of the day and the familiar company had lulled me into a state of such relaxation that I knew nothing but the moment. I explained to the cab driver how to get to my home and then how to get to Bill’s hotel.

"East or West" the cab driver asked when I explained that my compound is by the North Corner Round About.

"East" I explained.

"What did he ask?" Bill asked.

"There are two North Corner Round Abouts and so he asked if I was going to the East or West one. ‘Do’ is East. ‘Xi’ is West." I explained.

Bill nodded and smiled as he sat back contentedly into his seat. And as I found myself resisting the urge to snuggle into his shoulder, I realized that I made the right choice to call it a day. I’ll be free to wreck the loveliness next time I see Bill but for one afternoon, I had perfection.