Onslaught!

Wei has worked as a very successful graphic design animator for building design proposals… he is also completely obsessed with work resulting in him putting in anywhere from 3 to 10 hours of work a day the entire time I was visiting, even on Saturday and Sunday. This was not a bad thing. I really enjoyed having the late afternoon to myself, drinking milk tea, trying all the random fried vegetarian snacks on the streets, walking in and out of shops, taking a little bit of Mandarin away with me from each place. I would meet him for lunch at 1pm at a traditional Korean restaurant, and then be off again into the afternoon, taking yoga classes and renting bicycles to trek around Sunlitan, the shopping district. The freedom was wonderful and the city was inviting. Buildings were significantly smaller than the structures in HK, which is neither good or bad in perception. Both cities harnessed this wonderful excitement that reverberated through the streets, pumping prana into the veins of the street lights, illuminating the store front windows. Hong Kong's overdone 64 story building spectacles well exceeds Beijing's humble attempts, but the coziness and warmth of the city is much appreciated on this very very cold day. I parked my bike and wandered slowly through the main corridors, long streets lined with red paper lanterns and side car street vendors, appreciating the life that hums so closely to the sidewalks, and down under the streets.

The times I had alone were my favorite. I wonder why I felt this way. How selfish of me to look forward to the next moments Wei wasn’t around, when he was the one that brought me here. But, the truth was, it’s been two days and I’m already feeling suffocated. I wasn’t even sure how much I liked Wei at this point. Either the Chinese are super indulgent and affectionate to any woman, or he was totally smitten by me, which I couldn’t understand since we’ve only known each other for about 12 hours up until this point, including the hours spent sleeping. I often felt myself rolling my eyes at him when he wasn’t looking and looking at the clock, asking him when he needed to go back to the office again, hoping I would have a couple more hours of sunlight to bike around and be on my own.