Yesterday I went to eat at a xiabu xiabu restaurant near my home. Xiabu xiabu is a type of hot pot restaurant where there are long counters that wind around the store and each seat has its own hot plate to hold a pot of spicy oil to dip food into. In need of a relaxing study break, I had brought my tablet and was watching Arrested Development when the waiter tapped me on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “The gentleman across the row wants me to give you his card.” He handed me a business card—always use two hands!—and I looked up. A tired looking man and his assistant were seated across from me. He flashed me a smile.
All of a sudden all of my girlhood dreams flashed through my mind. I had always imagined one day I would be at a fancy European restaurant, and the waiter would saunter over to my table with a bottle of red wine wrapped in a handkerchief. As the band played softly in the background, he would tell me the handsome gentleman at a table across the room sends me his regards. The future would seem a bright and endless field of flowers.
But then I returned to reality. The fancy Continental restaurant was actually a loud hot pot place in Beijing, and instead of a string quartet Chinese pop music whined through tinny speakers.
The man spoke. “I am looking for English teachers,” he said in English, very slowly, as if I might not understand my mother tongue if he went too fast. I glanced at the card. Apparently he owned an English tutoring company nearby. “You should come visit us sometime,” he said. “You can teach English.”
Part of me wanted to believe him. But the other part of me knew how this would end. Things would be magnificent at first, but soon we would start to argue, myself saying I had given him everything, all my time and my energy, and he would say I was not good enough for him, and why should be give me my money? I would leave, embittered and heartbroken, knowing that all along it had only been my pale skin that had allured him, and nothing else.
So instead I nodded, thanked him, said I would think about it, and went back to eating my food. I will not be easily seduced my men who act fancy by passing business cards along through waiters at xiabu xiabu restaurants.