HELLO BEAUTIFUL GIRL, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Beautiful girl? Was he really talking to me? Nobody ever called me beautiful before.
Even so, I ignored the message. As is my want. Oh, how I ached for him, even in those early stages. But I had to play the game of love. If I had replied to his message right away he would think I was easy, or desperate, and he would lose any respect he had for me. Dating in any culture is a fickle business, but in China it’s often less about what you say, and more about what you don’t say. We like to maintain an air of mystery, plant a seed in someone’s head and let it slowly grow, watering it and caring for it, until it consumes them and all they can think about is you. It takes time. Chi ku. Eat bitter.
Wang Chen probably sensed how much I wanted him. So he played the game, too. He sent me messages every morning and every night for a week, even knowing he would get no response. Eventually, when my instinct told me a sufficient amount of time had passed, and when I could stand it no longer, I replied.
I AM FINE THANKS, AND YOU?
We exchanged messages for two months before we finally saw each other again walking home from school one afternoon. He always maintained the encounter was a happy accident, but I suspect it was more by design. Or am I just deluded? Love does that to you, it makes you irrational. Makes you doubt what is real, and blurs the line between fantasy and reality.
One chance meeting gave breath to an unlikely relationship, crumbs of sustenance to two starving birds whose atrophied wings gained strength and soon gave flight. Afterwards the messages increased in volume, and the boy himself encroached more and more upon my thoughts as our lives became entwined.
Wang Chen, Wang Chen, Wang Chen.
When you first meet somebody and start a relationship with them, the person you are seeing isn’t real. It’s a representation of what that person thinks you want to see. Likewise, you alter your own personality to fit the idea you think they may have, or alternatively fit the image you want to portray. Only later, much later, do the real people come to the surface. I wanted to know everything about him.