A Short History of The Husband - 3

Chapter 3: Nowhere to Go

Early next morning, in my haste to pack up and get to my third accommodation, I scraped my right hand on the uneven surface of a crudely finished wall in my room and got a bad cut. Quite amazingly, I had brought along not just band-aids but also antiseptic alcohol swipes. Those were left over from a school camp god-zillion years back and seeing them lying around, I actually have the foresight to put them in my backpack.

After taking a cab to my new stay for the night and getting lose in the myriad of hutongs for a while, I managed to find the lovely courtyard inn and checked in without much trouble. My room was fabulously beautiful, the courtyard was fabulously beautiful, so I spent the better part of the morning taking numerous shots in varying angles. Finally, I decided it's time to go out there for more exploration.

The thickness of my research notes suggested that I had far too many places to visit, it was mission impossible to complete even a fraction of that list. I was feeling lazy and didn't attempt to do any of them, deciding that leisurely soaking in the Beijing-ness of it all was a more agreeable option.

You guessed it, I went back to the cafe. Since I had decided not to go by the to-do list, I had nowhere to go, really. I wanted to go back to that historical cafe and take more photos. However, I stupidly did not make a mental note of the location of the cafe, which is quite usually the case for a person as bad with directions as I am. Hence I had to take a cab to the Lama Temple and try my very best to find my way there by backtracking.

As luck would have it, I found Nanluoguxiang pretty soon, but I was disoriented and mistook one direction for the other. I couldn't find the cafe where I thought it was, and so I gave up and thought I'd be better off just window shopping and taking more pictures of that pretty alley. Well, I did just that and even stopped for a leisurely lunch at a Korean restaurant before popping into a cute little notebook store.

When I exited the store and looked across the alley, there he was, standing in the doorway of the cafe that was just barely five metres away in that same blue shirt! He was walking out and stretching himself. (He later told me that he was indoors all along but seeing it was such a nice day, he suddenly felt like looking at the sun and so walked out.) In a split second, he saw me and looking a little surprised, waved me over. I was more surprised than he was, for I could hardly believe that I found the cafe by accident again!

Inside the cafe, I sat down in the same spot. This time, I didn't have to ask for the menu, he suggested that I try their latte and proceeded to make me one. As I was sipping at the coffee, he noticed the band-aid on my right forefinger. Then, he lifted his right forefinger up to show me a deep gash on the very same spot! He was watering the flowers in the doorway that morning when a pot tipped over. Instinctively, he tried to catch hold of the pot but cut himself on its chipped rim. It was creepy that we both had cuts on the same section of the same finger at the same time. What's more, I actually had not just band-aid, but alcohol swipes with me too! It was a never-ever-before moment.

While I was cleaning his wound, it occurred to me how unlikely, in normal circumstance, that I would help a grown person with that. I mean, I could have just given him the plaster and alcohol swipe, but there I was, being nice at such close range to this person whom I have no particularly strong affection for. Very strange.

Oh by the way, there was one point when I was slightly attracted to him. I was tearing open the alcohol swipe and before I used it on his finger, I pre-empted him that it could sting. To that, he nonchalantly replied, "I'm not afraid of pain." (Manly, but I later found out that it wasn't always true :P)

A Short History of The Husband - 2

Chapter Two: The Meeting

My vacation finally began. I arrived in Beijing late in the evening and spent the next twenty hours rediscovering the city, especially the hutongs around my first accommodation.

I love to travel solo, and to be honest, it was fun and exciting to wander aimlessly and get lost in those neat old alleys. My immediate surrounding of courtyard houses and shops was enough to interest someone whose last visit was 17 years ago on a school trip - which meant remembering nothing but visiting friends in hotel rooms. Everywhere I walked, there was so much culture and history, I didn't need a map nor recommendations, and the pile of research notes that I had brought along was forgotten in the deep of my backpack.

So far so good, no unsettling indications of being manipulated by said higher being yet (see Chapter One). Or so I thought.

On the third day of my solo trip, also otherwise known as That Fateful Day, I had ventured into a different part of the city as I checked into a different accommodation. That is more hutongs to explore, and so I left the room as soon as I put my suitcase down.

Pleasurably wandering, I chanced on many good photo opportunities in the neighbourhood - colourful cotton blankets hanged out to sun, chessboard and mixed-matched chairs waiting for old masters to finish their breakfasts and come play, chatting grannies minding their toddler grandchildren whose ruddy bottoms peek out of their open crotch pants...

I came upon a sleepy street that looked rather quaint. It was a hutong, only fancier and lined with rows of little shops and cafes. Nothing seemed to be opened at barely 10:30am. I looked longingly into shop windows and wonder what time they will allow me some shopping. I snapped some pictures and began to search intuitively for a place where I could sit around and wait for the action to begin. The cafes, with potted spring flowers and old wooden doors beckoned to me, but some looked like there were still closed. I walked on and finally saw one that seemed to be open and stepped in.

There, I met The Husband, who of course wasn't The Husband at that time yet. He was wearing a bright blue T-shirt, standing behind the bar counter cleaning up and preparing the cafe for a new day. He looked rather startled to see me, clearly wasn't expecting customers at that time of the day. I was also quite startled that he looked so startled to see me, realising immediately that I had barged in before opening hours. Stumbling for speech, I lost my Chinese part of the brain and reacted by asking if I could come in, in stuttering English, uncertain if he could understand me. Stupid tourist, I said to myself.

So my entrance was nothing short of alarming, but I was lucky he was in a good mood and signalled for me to come in with a nod and a grunt after establishing that I was a just another (stupid) tourist.

Now some background before we move on: He was relatively new to Beijing then and barely spoke Chinese, though he could understand most part of it. The cafe, which also was a performing space for minority folk bands, was owned by his cousin who was also a photographer and went on annual photographic pilgrimages to Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. At my point of visit, he was there helping to manage the cafe along with two other establishments while his cousin was at his artistic pursuit.

Back to the cafe, I chose a tiny two-seater table and sat there waiting for some form of service, but I got none. He was intently working on something behind the bar counter that I had to walk over to get the menu and tell him my order. It was as if I were a regular patron made to feel right at home - just not much service to shout about.

After he made me a pretty decent cup of cafe mocha and finished whatever he was doing behind the counter, he came over and chatted with me in his broken Chinese. He wasn't much of a conversationalist but felt obliged to since I was alone. For the record, I was also always an introverted solo traveller, I hardly chat to strangers and could go on for days without talking. (Much later on he told me that if I were to visit a month earlier, he wouldn't be able to converse with me in Chinese at all; one month later and he would not have been helping out in the cafe.)

The first thing he asked was if I were Mongol. Strange question you'd say, but yeah he thought I might be one, maybe because of my round face. It was then that I learned of his ethnicity, and we chatted cordially a bit more about that. The old house in which the cafe was housed had a surreal aura to it; the March weather was a little chilly and melancholic, yet the sun was warm and lazy. It did feel like we were two people in another world, but it wasn't at all seeping with romance or anything you'd imagine.

When my cup was emptied and I sat long enough to seem like a pathetic and lonely traveller, I decided stroll along the hutong a little before heading to the famous Lama Temple for a quick look. I asked him for directions and although he barely knew the way, he gave me a used map and tried to figure it out for me. I saw a strange script written on the border of the map and enquired about it. He told me it's Classical Mongolian script that they use back home, and offered to write my name in it. So for my parting gift that day, I had a small piece of scrap paper with two lines written on it - my name and his name in Mongolian.

Before I left, he asked what I was going to do the next day and I told him frankly - I didn't know. He then casually said, "Come here then, if you have no where to go." (Much later on, he told me that it truly wasn't a pick-up line, he was really just trying to help in case I had no where to go!) I wasn't thinking of taking up that offer, surely there are plenty more places for me to visit, but I asked for a business card anyway. He told he they were out of business cards, but wrote me the cafe name and phone number. (Only days after I came back from Beijing did I realise that I had stumbled upon the chic Nanluoguxiang unwittingly and his cafe was coincidentally the one that I've read great reviews online. Its very name, address and phone number were scribbled eerily in my pile of research material that I never used! How random is that!)

And I recall, that day at the Lama Temple, I thanked the Buddha for the new friend found.

More amazing coincidences in Chapter 3...

A Short History of The Husband - 1

Chapter One: Destined to Meet

It was early March. There was only one thing on my mind - my week-long March school break, which I had failed to plan in advance. Well, it wasn't really a week long, I had a 2-day professional development workshop and so it was effectively just 5 consecutive days of holiday. Five days of idyllic rest at home would be nice, I thought. However, barely a week to the shortened break with no overseas vacation in sight, I was getting depressed and irritable like a coffee addict who was not getting his daily caffeine fix. The traveller in me had to go somewhere!

So there I was, staring at the Zuji website just days before the start of my holiday with no destination in mind. Five days should be nice for someplace near like my usual choice of Thailand, Taiwan or Hong Kong. Even if I were feeling slightly more adventurous, I would have opted for Borneo or Laos. But no, it was as if a higher being had taken over my body, or rather, my mouse clicking right hand. It swiftly got me a ticket to Beijing, the quickest and also most last-minute travel decision in my life.

I swear that it was not my doing. Firstly, having visited China several times in my childhood and early teenage years, I thought I had seen about enough of China to decide that it wasn't my favourite place to spend a hard earned 5 day holiday. Secondly, the ticket I had booked wasn't for a direct flight to the far flung Chinese capital - it stops over in Hong Kong, losing precious hours of my already short vacation. It just did not make sense. Moreover, I had no friends in Beijing and I hate Peking Duck.

Then came the question of what I was going to do in Beijing. If I asked you for a list of recommended things to do in the city, I bet you'd mention the Great Wall, Peking Opera, Peking Duck, Wangfujing... Man, just what else is there in Beijing??? (Now you see why it was not someplace I'd have endeavoured to visit...)

Thankfully, that said higher being (or perhaps it was an alien abduction) gave me an idea - hutongs. I have no recollection of how in the world I learned about the word 'hutong' or what it meant. Miraculously, it had me devoting hours past midnight researching and drawing out maps on hutongs to visit. To complicate my hasty holiday further, I even decided to book myself into, not one, but three different hutong-style accommodations for a true feel of Old Beijing. The madness hadn't end there, being the obsessive travel researcher that I am, I also trawled countless English and Chinese reviews of places to eat, shop and visit, resulting in pages of illegible scribbles of addresses and opening hours which I never got to use, as you shall see in Chapter Two...

The Curious Case of My Marriage

At my wedding dinner in Singapore last summer, I was hard pressed by curious (and drunk) relatives and friends to give an account of how my Mongol husband and I met. Well, I had seen it coming, marrying a Mongol man isn't as commonplace as, say, marrying a Malaysian man. In fact, I don't think it was even heard of.

I tried to enlist the help of several privately expressive and dramatic friends to do a comical impersonation of our first chance encounter, but they weren't comfortable with revealing their inner clowns in a public appearance. Not even when I tempt them with a waiver of angpow or their choice of seating arrangement.

I then attempted to enlist the help of my teenage cousins who, since little, were very good at making cute but useless voice-over home videos with their toy Piglet, Tigger and Chansey (a Pokemon nurse who preferred the company of Pooh's friends). Sadly, they were in the blushing years of adolescence and thought this whole lovey-dovey project rather unsuitable for their cool stuffed friends.

My last resort was to write a short piece on the topic and have it printed on invitation cards so that everyone could read it before they come for the dinner, thus sparing us (mainly me) the agony of retelling our love story each time we stop at a table to toast. I even thought of having a quiz session at some point of the dinner to jack up the entertainment factor. However, the idea didn't materialise all the same due to my procrastinating nature. I was thankful for just getting the invitations out in time.

In the end, I didn't have a plan. So there we were, standing high and dry in front of a bunch of overly intoxicated guests who rowdily demanded their angpow money's worth of romantic storytelling. Being somewhat intoxicated myself and eager to go back to my red velvet wedding cake served with raspberry compote, I just grinned widely, promising to give them the story in detail another time before running off to toast the next group of curious well wishers.

Now six months later, I doubt anyone will remember that I owe them a story. I wouldn't be surprised even if they had forgotten whom I am married to. "Wasn't he from Mauritius? Or was it Manhattan? No wait, I think it was Mountbatten lah..."

Still, I shall give it to them, late but finally delivered. Up next, A Short History of The Husband...