The Museum Staff

May 21, 2021 to May 22, 2021

Lychee Rose flavored near beer. Only thing I was willing to drink.

So, that was weird.

It's part and parcel of "being a foreigner in China" that weird stuff happens to you. It's also part and parcel of "being me".

But this, this was extra levels of weird with weirdness sauce on top.

By the time I get picked up for dinner, it's gone from the multiple county museum workers who were in the middle of a surveying trip to check out parts of the local Great Wall to one guy and not even the guy I particularly remember talking to (though only one of them directly got my WeChat from me so it must be).

I'm thinking the possibility of discussing cool historical things that might never lead to translation work but which would be Cool Things; he's thinking of a date. Later on, I read over the messages from him inviting me out to dinner if I stayed in town and I realize that there never was an explicit "we" inviting me out rather than a "me". I have to admit, he's not unattractive and if he lived in the same province as me, I can imagine not being completely adverse to at least going out on a few dates. (However, he does that northern Chinese disgusting loud throat clearing thing that makes it unlikely he'd last beyond a few dates.)

The traditional styled gibberish on my leg trapped three of the men into trying to puzzle out if the reason they couldn't understand it was or was not alcohol

Living in a part of southern China where it's perfectly normal for an adult woman to weigh 50kg, it's a bit discombobulating (in a positive way) to suddenly find myself the active target of male attention. It's just that I ordinarily would be leaving town tomorrow and have explicitly told both the Public Security Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control that I'm leaving town tomorrow. This means no matter what, I'm leaving town tomorrow.

My unexpected date starts at what I think is the slowest shaokao bbq place I've ever been to. The not very large crowd of customers downstairs whose table we join all seem to know him and they all seem to know the boss which may explain why people put up with such excruciatingly long wait times between dishes or I could just be hungry. As my eating half of the aged parmesan cheese in my recently acquired care package means that my level of peckishness is not quite enough to actually think that everything which was ordered tastes good, I'm inclined to believe it actually is a meh-tacular restaurant.

From there, I am taken to a glammy karaoke place which doesn't think the weather is anything in need of air conditioning and where a half dozen of his friends from their army days (which had to be at least twenty years in the past) are already six sheets to the wind. I try not to laugh when the one guy keeps telling me again that he's known the fellow who has taken me out since they were in the army, complete with pantomiming shooting an imaginary machine gun. Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa.

I can't decide if my being sober makes the spectacle more or less entertaining. In my week back on the road, I've already started dropping body weight so my alcohol tolerance is going to be uncertain and besides which I've added "being an alcohol snob" to my already existing "being a coffee snob" and nothing they are drinking is anything I want to drink.

Certainly the being sober part of things makes me notice that my clean off-bike clothing now smells like cigarette smoke and spilled beer. It also means that I'm less inclined to be forcing myself to Stay Awake and Enjoy Things than I might be if I were also hammered.

Eventually, on the basis of my actually nodding off in the karaoke room despite the ear splitting volume, I get taken back to my hotel around 1:30.

In the morning, the attempts to get my interest and convince me that I want to stay in this town and visit with him for awhile were kind of cute (watchtower photos - he sent me watchtower photos), even if its not at all cute that he persistently refuses to understand that my already telling the Public Security Bureau that I'm leaving means there is no way I am staying.

Watchtower photos that I'm only now realizing might have been an attempt at phallic humor

I'm also not taking a cab back to Dingbian to join him for dinner even if he pays.

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