The Cold

I looked outside and saw a blue sky, the sun shining brightly, leafless trees with no wind bullying them around. I walked out and it felt like I’d been punched by the air. I wouldn’t call it brisk, I’d call it a dry cold, one that burns the inside of your nose the longer you stay in it. I quickly fumbled for my headband and wished I’d brought my ski mask. I started the walk to school, my bones creaking like the sound of water on ice. My breath hung lifelessly, like a ghost, in the air next to countless other ghosts left by other people. By the time I walked into the school building, my fingers felt like they were blistering from the cold, but the warmth of the building permeated my skin and they started tingling without fully regaining the ability to feel. The cold has arrived and it doesn’t even look like it. It feels like summer if you don’t see the trees.
***
School ended and Gavin and I were off to work on the English scavenger hunt to find the dying parts of Beijing, such as the hutongs, trees, parks and all the wonderful places that represent the disappearing past of China. The ultimate goal was to meet up with the people who are fighting against the construction, showing a public voice emerging from the depths of a socialist country. An opinion. That’s what I was searching for. Ok, that is a bold faced lie. I was searching for a warm coat. I couldn’t take the cold anymore. We were really off to Xidan to buy a coat, the one with the furry hood that makes you look like an Eskimo. It’s all the rage in Beijing. We strolled down to the Jishuitan subway station with the wind. I was still wearing my six layers of clothes so I was warm, but it was too troublesome, tai mafan le, to actually wear that much. And to actually do the scavenger hunt, we needed to move quickly and comfortably. We arrived in Xidan and wandered through the underground mall, searching for bargains, but to no avail. Everything was quickly out of our price range, so we wandered to the streets and found a stand and bargained two jackets for the price of 2/3 the price of one. Oh how I love the power of bargaining. I put it on and I felt odd. Maybe it was the feeling of numbness and cold leaving my body, or maybe I felt even more like a part of the city. Gavin and I both felt it, we both felt we had undergone some ridiculous quest that made us part of a larger group. It felt good. Now we had our coats so it was time for the scavenger hunt… or yet another distraction. The cold only bit at my fingers now. My headband was no longer necessary; the fur just hugged my head and was so comfortable and warm. Gavin got a call back for that internship he applied for at a company to help teach Chinese to people. We got in a cab and went to the 15th floor of the building, and they invited us both into the meeting, even though I wasn’t there for the job. They talked in Chinese and I understood but couldn’t respond. Not that I would anyway, it was Gavin’s job. It felt like a big company thing, sitting around an oval table, the business people were all dressed in their work clothes and we were dressed in jeans and our newly purchased coats. It was a funny sight, but we composed ourselves with dignity. I walked out for the personal interview and soon enough Gavin was out with an internship. We went back out to the cold and wandered back to the underground mall. It was time for the arcade to celebrate. We found a Dance Dance Revolution machine and Gavin went to town on it. He’s as good on that as I am on Pump it Up. We danced with some Chinese kid and drew quite the crowd. Not just teenagers, but adults and kids too. People dragged their dates away from what they were doing to watch us dance. Why don’t people in America do such romantic things with their dates? The building was hot, and I decided to finally take off my coat and stop looking like a moron dancing in the Eskimo coat. By the time we finished there was a semi circle of people around the machine, all staring blankly, until one of us would say to a person, “Bu hao yi se,” or how embarrassing and then they’d smile. We left and headed back to the subway station, fighting the cold with our coats that blended into the crowds and went our separate ways in the subway. The walk home was into the wind, and it ripped and tore at my fingers. The cold gets fierce at night. Wait… there was a scavenger hunt. Whoops.