Beds, bathhouses and the Gobi Desert
BAOTOU, Inner Mongolia — My former student Diamond is particularly pleasant. She has a round face, a big smile and eyes that twinkle as though she is always thinking of something very amusing. She is one of the sweetest people I know.
When I sent Diamond a text message reminding her that I would not be arriving at her Baotou home alone, she immediately replied with this: “Excuse me Dan could you please tell me the sex of your traveling companion?”
I told her it was Johnson. Diamond, aka Chen Wen Yi, remembered him from my class and said she was excited to see him again. And I thought everything was fine. I didn’t realize this revelation sent Diamond into a tizzy.
You see, Diamond, 20, and her mother share a small two-bedroom flat. In fact, Diamond warned me via text message that her place was a “slum. :)” (she ends all of her messages with a smiley face). But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Johnson was a man.
Diamond could sleep on her bed. Her mom could sleep on the couch in the living room — she often does this anyway. But that only left one double bed. And somewhere in her schooling, Diamond read a report that said a foreign man would never share a bed with another man — and if he did, he was surely a homosexual.
Diamond, evidently, did not want to turn her English teacher into a homosexual.
“So I dare not ask you to do this,” she explained later.
09.07.2004, 3:46 PM · Inner Mongolia, The Trip · Comments (14)
