What do foreigners think of us? Why does the government forbid Chinese people from entering your churches?
I did not quite look at their eyes. Perhaps if I had greater proficiency in their language, I would not have sounded so simplistic.
We foreigners look at the Chinese with the awareness that we come from a different world, I said.
How?
We think there are certain problems in the kind of government that cause a great deal of difference.
But certainly other countries, your countries, have your own problems as well!
This was Miao Ban. She knew where this would lead to if we pursued it.
It's different, I said vaguely, my vocabulary failing me. We shouldn't be talking about it here.
Oh, it's fine! Xin Feng. We know about those things that shouldn't be talked about.
I raised my head to see if anyone else was listening. There was a local Chinese boy two chairs down, buried in his book.
How is it different?
I found myself talking about the 'free world' as if months before I would not have laughed at myself for using those two words with such idealism in the Philippines. But when a language fails you, you use wide blanket statements and say to yourself, This conversation isn't so important anyway. Every minute I looked up to see if the middle-aged lady who had come and was standing nearby could hear us.
Xin Feng and Miao Ban brought me out for dinner. Across the restaurant was a frozen lake, fenceless, unwatched. I had never stood on iced water before. It was too dark to see how the ice was, but it seemed thick enough, and I stamped on it, the cold escaping into the soles of my shoes. Figures of twos or threes whispered and laughed softly around me, but the lake was quiet and the world was calm.


*

My friend's story does not have a happy ending. Very few of the international romances begun in Beijing by foreigners extend beyond the airport. This is a fact. There is a clear, identifiable glance that passes between lovers when a friend asks one of them for any plans to stay longer. It is silent, urgent. It is a source of anxiety because it is a perfunctory question frequently asked. BEIJINGERS ARE FRIENDS TO ALL THE WORLD / Beijing shi shijie de peng you says the blue billboard on the way to Sanlitun. The translation into English is slightly inaccurate. Beijing is the world's friend. Good for Beijing. For the last few years, the world had suddenly been just as eager to become Beijing's friend.