Never in Yanji

I arrive in Yanji at 6:52 am, just as my train ticket says I will. My friend Cui is waiting to pick me up. We drive to her house where homemade kimchi and a soup of homegrown pumpkins waits for breakfast. Right away, Cui and I begin a string of conversation that won't really end until I leave. We regail each other with happenings from the last few months, letting our hands do the necessary morning routine activities automatically. By nine, Cui, her dad, her brother, and I reach the office. Although it's Sunday, Cui has two meetings. I tag along because I'm tired of eating and sleeping, which I've been doing all week in Changchun during China's "Golden Week." 

Our conversation continues well into the time when my stomach starts to rumble. Cui's biggest question for me: What can we do so you won't get bored? I answer with another question. What haven't I done in Yanji?

Since I lived in this small town for a year in 2010-2011, and have visited many times since, there's not a lot I haven't done. Cui suddenly gets the idea to see a movie. When I lived here there was only one theater that I never patroned for reasons beyond me. Now there are two or three cinemas and I'm finally going to go see a movie! We decide to see Out of the Inferno, a Park Brothers film starring Gu Tianle and Liu Qingyun. The movie is about a skyscraper in Guangzhou that catches fire and the brother firefighters (Gu and Liu) who rescue a lot of people. I'll save my review for another post, but sufficient to say, I quite enjoyed its 3D, action-packed, heart-wrenching story.

I decide to use the restroom before leaving the theater. All six stalls are occupied so I wait. The first stall that opens a young woman comes out and I pass her to go in. "Whaaaaaaat!" We both say as we pass. As we each get a good look we realize that we know each other! It's my former student Tian Hwa! We had a one-on-one class when I lived in Yanji, at which time she was preparing to go to New York to study. Up until now, all my Facebook statuses told me she was still there. She thought I was in Changchun, so the bathroom stall of the movie theater where we had just watched the same movie was the last place we expected to see each other.

Cui and I went back to her house where Cui's mom was already busy preparing a Korean BBQ dinner. Everything is so fresh and perfectly spiced. The pictures may not do it justice but they will just have to do.

 

 

 

 

 

Cui the cook

 

The next morning, Tian Hwa and I meet up for brunch at a newer bakery-slash-coffee shop. We end up chatting for over four hours. She has a lot of interesting insights into life as a foreigner in the U.S., especially as a Chinese citizen. Unfortunately, we got so caught up in our conversation we forget to take a picture together. Hopefully we'll get to meet up in the U.S. sometime, though!

In the afternoon I do some shopping. This is NOT something new for me in Yanji, but I happen upon some good deals. Later, another friend and I have decided to get a group together to go bowling. I've never done that in Yanji either! Cui, who has never bowled before, luckily gets off work just in time to meet us for a few games. It takes me ten sets just to get warmed up (putting me in last place for the first round), but I step up my game and end up winning the next round by one point. In the end, however, my fingers gave out on me before my spirit does, and I finish the last round at third place. It's pretty good considering that by this time none of the other girls are playing. After bowling we go out for more Korean food. Most of those students are medical majors, so conversations with them can take a gory turn, but mostly we all just goof-off and get to know each other. The next morning Cui and I are up early to get me on a bus to Changchun.

 

 

 

Winner with a score of 124!

 

 

Cui and I after her first bowling adventure

 

 

An hour outside of Yanji the land bursts into a yellows canvas ranging from dandelion white to mustard. Every now and then it bursts into hot pink and crimson. Any leftover green is all the more stringent for not having succumbed to autumn's inevitable demise. A thought crosses my mind for the first time ever. What if we looked at old people the same way we looked at trees in the fall? With every new wrinkle we would "ooh" and "aah." When black or blonde hair silvered with age we'd all rush to take pictures and gather it in our hands. If only we looked at our own selves growing old with the same awe with which we view the change from summer to autumn. Soon my thoughts become memories, the landscape drifts past in rolling gold, lulling me into a pleasant, deep sleep.