The Chinese Dream

I was crossing the border from Hong Kong into Shenzhen near the Futian checkpoint when I first saw her. Of course, I didn’t know who she was back then or what kind of psychological torture she’d inadvertently put me through but there she was. Innocent and new. A tall, blonde, Ukrainian firecracker running out of a hotel with no shoes and a dim gold dress that wrapped around her tight, little frantic body. 

She was sprinting forward towards the busy streets at full speed with an erratic pace in her step. Wads of her hair pasted miscellaneously across her cheeks as bleeding mascara weaved through the mess of it all. However, somewhere amongst the disheveled portrait of this distraught train wreck, in a certain kind of way, with the right squint of an eye, she kind of resembled an old Egyptian goddess glowing in that gold dress under the mass city lights of the Chinese city. She was halfway though the street before almost getting plowed down by a blue taxi zipping by. 

As a young American man, teaching English in China wasn’t my dream but it was a way for me to break free. It was the stepping stone to what I secretly desired. An adventure I sought for so long during those dreadfully idle nights in North Carolina. I wanted excitement, chaos, stimulation, regrets, and to experience the raw nature of life in the depths of foreign waters with no sense of direction but only the hope for a god damn good story to remember when the fun all ends. 

It wasn’t long before I had met other foreigners throughout the city and found the hidden gems of the nightlife. I would take the metro all across Shenzhen on my days off from the school and smash beers with the Australians and the Englishmen while they would swap their crazy adventure stories. Beer spilled, stories spilled, and the days couldn’t be long enough in the new Chinese dream.

The teaching job itself was mundane to say the least. I was on the twenty-seventh floor of a new skyscraper in the downtown area that looked out over the sweeping concrete landscape. It was laid out like an office but the cubicles went all the way up to the ceiling with glass walls and were doubled as classrooms for private tutoring lessons, which was essentially the whole business of that particular center. 

I saw the blonde firecracker for the second time at a coffee shop in a little spot called Coastal City. She was sitting alone at a table outside on a balcony near a bridge that overlooked an oncoming highway. Considering the city had over fifteen million people, I knew fate or chance or luck or whatever the hell it is wouldn’t be in my favor many more times so I ordered a caramel late and sat down across from her. 

She had her cat in her backpack and it peeked out from a little round window from the back of the bag. It was a glowing white with two different colored eyes. One yellow and one a tantalizing, sea blue. At one point I remember her telling me that those eyes represented the duality of life for her and the will to surmount when stuck between heart breaking decisions in life. After hearing that I knew she was one of those girls who had a magnetic pull that could suck you in from galaxies away. 

It became almost haunting the more I thought about her absolute power over me. I wondered as I had many times before; was I falling in love with the idea of this girl or did she really just posses an energy that was capable of completely lacerating your inner most fantasies of companionship with a pitiful amount of effort. 

Her Name Was DARIA

She had the perfect story to fall in love with. She had also come to China to teach but her reasons were much more wholesome, or so I believed at the time. Part of me still believes it now. Her father had died the previous year and her mother couldn’t afford to finish the last year of payments on their family home back in Ukraine. She was sending almost everything she made back to her mother but it still wasn’t quite enough, she told me. 

After coffee we walked around a place they called SeaWorld. It was essentially a little promenade that wrapped around a large pond by the bay that had a massive, white cruise ship that rested in the middle. It had bars and restaurants inside and every hour or so a great water show with music and lights would go off pulling in large crowds as the spectacle ensued. 

She grabbed my hand as the first big explosion of water went off near the starboard of the ship. We watched from the middle of an arched bridge that crossed over the further parts of the ponds water. I could feel the pulsating in her hand as I looked over at her. The world beyond her seemed to drift out of focus as I watched the curls of her soft, blonde hair get delicately pulled across the bottom of her chin by the waters breeze. A smile crept from the corner of her mouth and the Chinese dream became more real than it ever had before. 

She gave me her number and we started spending a lot of time together. We’d check out parks, visit the local museums and go down to the area by SeaWorld where we played pool inside the bars and would drink buy one get one free Tiger beers all night as the world spun in chaos around us.

The owner of my school came in the office on a Tuesday afternoon one day and decided he would take his team out for dinner, drinks, and KTV. I hated when they made the staff participate is some off-the-clock, team building bullshit but I had nothing better to do that night and Daria was busy so I said what the hell. I figured if I got too bored I could bail on the KTV and meet up with a few buddies down at the pool bar and smash a few Tiger beers before calling it a night. There was also news about a possible typhoon hitting so I figured it would serve in my best interest to be a little drunk for that because I knew I could sleep in. The city would shut down for a day or two if the typhoon reached the shores at all.  

At the dinner another English couple were there. I had never seen them at our center but I figured they were probably part of the branch somehow. I’m sure its roots extended through the city much further than I cared to learn. 

We all sat at a long table with a red cloth over the top of it and the waitresses were bringing dishes of seafood and bbq meat every couple of minutes. The English couple were sitting near the head of the table close by the owner and were visibly pounding beers quicker than they could order. 

The owner had a great big whopper of a wine bottle sitting in a chilled bucket in front of him and I could see the English woman eyeing it down more and more often the more and more she drank. The owner eventually stood up and started walking around the long table greeting each employee personally and introducing himself. People were joking and giving him cheers with their beer cups and this went on for about twenty five minutes or so.

By the time the owner was back around to the head of the table he stopped pretty suddenly and picked up his wine bottle which was now laid sideways on top of the table empty. 

“Who drank this?” He shouted looking a little confused and halfway in a state of actual disbelief. “This was a special bottle to show my gratitude for my employees.” 

A silence swept through the room.

“It was four thousand yuan!” 

The English woman stood up, gave a big ‘WoooooHoooo,” then puked on the floor in front of him and fell over trying to give him a hug. 

This was just the beginning of the night. My boss, who I came to know as Mr. Li insisted that I go to the KTV after sitting down next to me for the last twenty minutes of the dinner. We hit it off pretty well and I didn’t mind getting on the good side of the top. MiMi, one of my coworkers, latched onto my side as we grabbed a taxi to the KTV.

Mr. Li ordered beers by the tray into our private KTV room and we would pound them in between songs. He paid for loads of entertainment to be brought in and it honestly surprised me with what they managed to dig up for us in there. There was an exotic dancer with a saxophone player and two young ladies offering foot rubs along with a barrage of young girls who paraded through the place like little pompon cheerleaders. The Chinese dream was twisting into a wild nightmare of beer and excitement and was getting ready to explode like a grenade behind my ear. 

“I’ve got the VIP tickets for us after this,” Mr. Li said sitting down next to me. I gave him a bit of a smile not knowing what he meant by that. “Trust me. This one you won’t want to miss. In this city, the world doesn’t sleep when you have money.”

I was in one of the KTV toilet stalls when MiMi jumped in behind me and slammed the door. I scrambled myself back upright trying to get my pants sorted before she leapt onto me wrapping her legs around my body and sending me crashing into the back wall. My foot fell into the floor toilet making me slip sideways and go plummeting down to the sticky floor. MiMi let out a drunken giggle while trying to find her balance on the way back up. 

“I think I have a girlfriend,” I said. I wasn’t sure what Daria was to me but the more time I spent with her, the more I knew I wanted to spend more with her.

I walked out of the stall without saying anything else and I didn’t hear her follow behind me.

Some time later Mr. Li called us a car and from there we went to a club near the area of CoCo park. This was close to the place where I first saw Daria running out in the road in that tight golden dress. This area was loaded with nightlife and loud music blared feverishly in every direction. Neon blue and red lights shined and flickered as you walked through the noisy chaos of it all. 

An old Chinese woman posted up next to me as I sipped a whisky sour near the bar closest to the entrance. Mr. Li had already disappeared but assured me that he would be back in a few minutes with a surprise. The old lady held up a bundle of roses in front of me and stuck out her hand while mumbling something incoherent. I gave her some money and grabbed the biggest one from her bundle. I decided maybe if I was lucky, I could hold onto it all night and give it to Daria the next day. If not, oh well. At least the old lady made a sale. 

Mr. Li came back and grabbed my arm before pulling me behind the first bar into a back room. 

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Just follow me. Just follow me.”

We crossed over a dance floor somewhere before maneuvering our way behind the DJ and opening another door that lead into what Mr. Li referred to as, ‘’Behind the scenes.”

It was a large room with well dressed Chinese men sitting in red velvet chairs just beyond a circular wooden stage. The music was softer in there and it had more of a gentle feel than the outside pandemonium. A server quickly rushed up to us from our right and Mr. Li ordered two glasses of whisky. 

“Sit down. Please, sit down,” he insisted. 

We sat relatively close to the front of the stage and another waiter in a midnight blue three-piece suit was promptly at our side with the two cups of whisky neatly displayed on a glass tray. I grabbed mine and started sucking it down. 

“At any time you can raise your glass and the girl is yours.”

Right as I heard those words pass through his lips, I saw it. Then it all froze. Everything; my heart, time, the world. It was a motionless blur of shock that paralyzed me. When the unnerving hallucination finally came to a halt, I accepted that I was seeing her… Daria. I raised my glass.

I stood up and our eyes locked like two silent snipers across a quiet battle field. The loud shattering of glass broke the silence and every head in the room turned my way. The whisky was splattered across the floor by my feet and the big rose laid sideways absorbing the little brown streams of liquor that moved into it. Her body seemed to be getting further and further before I realized I was being dragged out of the place by two men in black suits. I just kept looking at her frozen on the stage until the door closed and the DJ was pushing me back onto the dance floor in front of him. 

I had dozens of calls from her the following week but I didn’t have the gumption or the desire to answer. It wasn’t until I finally got a message from her that I felt it all again.

“I got deported for working on a tourist visa so maybe I’ll never see you again. Maybe that’s what you want. I’m sorry about everything and I only did this for my mother. The house is all she has left. I never wanted to hurt you but I also didn’t want my mom to hurt anymore. I love you and I’m sorry. Life doesn’t always give us easy decisions or equal opportunities. I’ll always remember you. But I’ll secretly always pray that you’re on the way to me here in Ukraine. I got enough money for the house with that job.”

I wondered if this is what I secretly desired the whole time. Did I just want to feel something even if that something hurt? Was it better than feeling nothing at all? Did I unconsciously desire the chaos?

I wondered if I should continue the Chinese dream or buy a ticket and take a new ride…