Retirement begins

Post-bakery

                The bakery episode is now ended.  What next?  Now I explore retirement.  What does that mean for someone still intellectually active, physically able?

                I made up my mind that if I was going to continue to live, I must have a life partner.  This seemed a bit unrealistic.  I haven’t found one in all these years.  Why now, particularly when the physical limitations of old age have transformed a once desirable body?  If my partner is a woman, that doesn’t matter.  What are my chances of finding a Chinese like-minded woman? 

                If I moved back to Florida I could post ads, like in Craig’s list, for a housemate of a certain age and financial stability.  It feels like trying to find a good employee at the bakery.  Many come and try out, but the good ones never stay.

                Then along comes this bizarre text message from America. Someone is enquiring if I am the Satina as seen on China TV, under ‘Life of Foreigners in China’.  I say yes.  This person explains that they think their father is the man I was looking for, according to the TV show description. 

                That person, as it turns out, was the daughter of a retired man in Chongqing.  She connected us.  We began communicating.  But over the phone, with my limited Chinese, there was little we could say.  He calls every day, to say ‘good morning,’ and ‘have you eaten?’  After a while this gets tedious.  I like the sound of the voice, however.  Once, Jamie helped translate through a conversation.

                I decided it was time to meet.  If he comes to Changzhou, how would I entertain him?  I am a visitor here myself.  Also, being summertime, my friends are all traveling. 

                I booked a flight to Chongqing, for five days.  He planned my introduction to Chongqing, and himself. 

                The flight to CQ was delayed by typhoon-like weather up north, where the flight originated.  We were in phone contact.  I told him, I have heard no news of when the flight would actually depart, so he should go home and wait.  He stubbornly stood at the airport, clutching a bouquet.

                Just before midnight the plane finally arrived in CQ.  As I headed for the baggage carousel I glimpsed a figure beyond the exit doorway.  A serious-faced many clutching a bouquet of roses and lilies stood facing the door.  The luggage took forever to finally arrive. 

                We recognized each other from our pictures.  He greeted me warmly and took my suitcase handle.  We rode the subway to my hotel.  The pavement was wet, it had been raining all day.  He saw me checked in and settled, and then he left. It was well after midnight.

                We spent two days touring the city, and a third day just relaxing at his apartment.  I was glad for the rest, because he had walked my legs off.  We watched a soccer match, and then a ballet of Romeo and Juliet (his choices).  I got on his computer and found translation software, so we could have some deeper conversations.  He cooked lunch for me.  Chicken soup, unadorned with the famous Chongqing spiciness.

                On the final day, he collected me for my morning flight, and saw me off at the airport.

                He is on a fixed income.  He spent a lot of money on me, for food, a romantic evening harbor boat tour, park entrance fees and transportation.  I would have to wait patiently until his coffers filled again for his flight to Changzhou.

                As the weeks went by, our communications became more sophisticated. He learned to use WeChat, with the translation feature.  I no longer had to try to write in Chinese, fraught with selecting the wrong character and sending gibberish.  I wrote in English, he in Chinese.

                By the time he bought his ticket and fixed the date, four weeks later, I was very eager for his arrival.  ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ I kept hearing in my head.

                I did a careful search for a suitable yet affordable guest house for him.  I would provide the housing.  I worked hard on making my spare room suitable as a bedroom, but the sheer quantity of my ‘junk’ was making it nigh impossible. 

                When my well-publicized attempted relationship with LaoZhu failed, a year earlier, Changzhou online gossip withered my reputation with assertions that ‘it was all a publicity stunt.’

                Xiao Wang has always been more a friend than a journalist.  Reading about me in the first serious photo-journal piece in a small Changzhou newspaper, in January of 2013, he tried my baked goods and liked them.  I got to know him first as a customer.  The TV station is in the same block as the bakery.  Then he asked if he could do a short ‘human interest’ story for his station’s evening newscast.  It was cute, showing me interacting with the community buying supplies for the bakery, baking, and greeting customers. 

                Two years later I was thinking about my future.  I decided that my best bet was to find a Chinese boyfriend.  I asked my repeat customers, with whom I felt comfortable enough, to consider introducing me to their elder widowed friends and relatives.

                Xiao Wang thought it would make a good story.  By this time I had rented the next-door larger space, and it made a nice backdrop for the piece, where I asked the viewers to help find me a ‘gentle hearted man’.  Xiao Wang has a lovely sense of humor, and so the piece was light hearted and very well received.  It led to the other Changzhou station wanting to do a piece, plus another newspaper, plus another writer who wanted to do an in-depth piece (I never knew what happened with the latter’s work, if he sold it independently or what).  All this became a hot topic of discussion on the internet.

                Eventually it caught the attention of a reporter in Beijing, working for CCTV4.  That station was doing a sporadic series on lives of foreigners in China.  Though I can’t be sure, I think that is the one that Linda eventually saw, while living in Brooklyn

                I could not resist assuring XiaoWang that my search had not been a publicity stunt.  I sent him a picture of HuiWen.

                A week later he contacted me, and asked how things were going.  I told him HW was due to arrive in days.  He wanted to meet.  We met at Starbucks, and there were two people with him.  The lady was the reporter in training, and the other guy was the cameraman.  Poor anonymous cameramen, I thought maybe I had worked with him before but couldn’t remember, and never got a chance to ask.

                I knew that Xiao Wang was no longer ‘just’ a journalist.  You see, the station entered his video of my romantic search to a Jiangsu Province-wide competition.  He won first prize.  With that award came a promotion.  Now he trains budding journalists.  He says he has 150 trainees!!!  The two he brought along would be doing the piece.  They don’t speak English, so we did the interview in Chinese.  At one point, Xiao Wang must have felt that they weren’t getting the whole story, so he jumped in and led the interview for a short bit.  We talked about the rumor that it had all been a publicity stunt, and how I felt about that.  That part we did in English.

                We agreed that they would film HWs arrival at Changzhou airport.

                Now, how do I include HW in this?  I don’t want him thinking about it ahead of time, with time to be nervous.  Yet it would be unkind to just spring it on him, a camera trained on him while he exited the secure area, and a microphone stuck in his face.

                I wrote Linda.  I asked her to ask him if he wouldln’t mind being interviewed for the TV spot.  He replied that he did not want that, he did not want to ‘be famous’.  I gently reminded Linda that it was too late now, that she only knew me because of my TV appearance, and it was only right that Xiao Wang should be able to produce the last segment, the end of the search and the beginning of true romance.

                And so he was aware that at some point he would be interviewed.  He took with good humor the work of the TV pair at the airport.  He hugged me warmly, as I gave him his symbolic red rose of love’s declaration. 

                I am not above being an opportunist.  The weather is very hot.  I had bought a special dress for the occasion, which was two-layers thick.  If I said no to the journalists, I’d be traveling for almost two hours in crowded hot buses to get to the airport.  They, on the other hand, would provide an air-conditioned trip there and back.

                On the trip back I thought their questioning of him was a bit intrusive.  I sat quietly, hoping Xiao Wang would make sure in the editing that things didn’t get too personal.

                I thought we would have to drop off his luggage at the hotel, and then come to my apartment.  But as it turned out, he brought just one small backpack, so we came directly to the apartment.  Later on I would take him on my ebike to the guest house.

                My bilingual friends were all out of town.  Sonja is probably in Jilin with her family.  Siok-Eong and Mark were visiting family in Malaysia until the end of the month.  Christel and Steffen would arrive a few days after HWs arrival, but they are not bilingual.  Jamie is still in town, and happy to serve as a translator.

                I thought of Lucy and her husband.  I met him only once, and would like to get to know him.  He is a bookworm, a gold mine of Chinese history and culture.  He does not speak English however.

                Meanwhile, HW and I are trying to get to know each other, while enduring temperatures hovering around 100 degrees.  At least the humidity has left the 88% range, standing around 64%.  Even so, this is the kind of weather where you dip in and out of the shower all day, unless you sit in an air conditioned room all day.

                On our first night alone, we walked to the Italian restaurant, Monkey King.  He is staying very near that location, which is also across from Yancheng Park.  We had plain pizza with garlic, and linguini with shrimp and pesto.  I ordered us two glasses of pinot grigio.  The bill was over 200 rmb, but I didn’t care.  My gesture of welcome.

                The next day we just hung around the house.  We watched TV, movies, chatted, played with the dog and cat.  I ate leftover dal, and he bought take-away pulled noodles.  We cooked a simple meal of egg plant, and cucumber

                On Saturday I had an 8 a.m. appointment at the dentist.  The previous night as I walked him halfway home, I told him I’d like him to come with me, and have his teeth looked at.  He said, no, no, his teeth were fine.  I said they needed attention.  His breath stinks.  He protested that it was because of all the garlic we at that day.  I gently disagreed.

                He came of age during the pioneering age of the revolution, where men were tough, life was rough, and it was all for the better good of building a new China.  Dental hygiene was the least of their cares.

                On the third day we went to the dentist.  I had a root canal done.  His cleaning took longer than my root canal.  Afterwards the dental assistant told me he wasn’t finished, and needed to come back for more.  I made an appointment for the following Monday.

                We went back to the hotel.  By then I was already feeling tired.  His room has twin beds.  I thought I’d lay on one, he’d lay on the other, and we’d chat and nap.  I lay down, and he sat on the side of the bed with me.  We talked.  One thing led to another.  We kissed.  Sparks flew.

After that we walked arm and arm around the retro Old China buildings outside the Park gates, looking for a place to eat.  The area has grown up a lot since I first visited it.  They no longer have a family-style small noodle shop.  Everything is expensive there now.  We wound up finding a pulled noodle place down from his guest house.  We came back to the flat and I opened the translation software. 

                I put a light-hearted Chinese movie on the TV, and took a nap on the couch.  He was sitting on my favorite chair (not using the foot rest) and wound up falling asleep too.

                We cooked and ate in.

                We spent the evening playing cards, with much laughter.

                I have paid his room through Sunday night.  We decided that Monday he would move in.  No need to prepare the spare room.