Chinese: Part 2

‘And so’ pursued Neil, as Andrew and I tucked into a second bowl of fruit salad and the amazing frozen yoghurt, ‘and so I returned two weeks later refreshed after my vacation and looking forward to the new term and keen to meet my new flatmates. But boy was I in for a big surprise.

‘Even as I walked up the road to our halls there was a bad omen: a sports car racing at top speed, lurched around the corner, terrifying me and driving away into town. I wondered who in halls drove a sports car?

‘When I entered reception I found it swarming with Chinese. Some fancy looking girls, dressed up for a night out appeared to be waiting to go off to town. Others gobbled away to the receptionist, enquiring about something. Others spilled out of the bar, loitered in reception, went in and out of the lifts. Everywhere there were Chinese, everywhere there were yellow faces, everywhere was the noise of their ching-chang-chong vernacular. As I waited at reception to sign in, I saw another sports car pull up, driven by some cool Chinese dude. The Chinese women, in high heels and stockings, and with much hauteur and self-importance, went out and got in. This was something new altogether.

‘As I went up in the lift, I was already feeling like an outsider. I was overcome with such a feeling of petulance and pathetic hatred of Chinese people, as if I couldn’t stand to be around them. As I reached my floor and headed to my room, two people walked down the corridor: two Chinese people.

‘I decided to go and check out the kitchen. Hearing the noise of people there, I slowly and with caution entered. The first thing I noticed was that it was an utter tip, as though a bomb had hit it. Dirty dishes lay heaped everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and five or six rice cookers occupied the benches. A tall, muscular Chinese guy in a white vest pulled out a glass from the cupboard, filled it with milk, drank it back, burped, left the dirty glass on the bench top, and made to leave. As he did so he met my person barring the doorway and looking at him. He gazed at me with vacant, contemptuous eyes. I moved aside. He left.

‘Before me at the kitchen table I saw four young men, deep in conversation and eating their dinner. Three were Chinese, one, so I learnt later, a Frenchman. They spoke in English. They were clearly cool young people and considered themselves so, and paid no attention at all to me, the bespectacled philosophy student. I walked around the kitchen a bit and they continued to talk, heedless. It was as if I was an alien, an outsider, in what just two weeks earlier had been my home. And an undeniable, but persistent annoyance bit at me; an annoyance at having to be surrounded on all quarters by yellow faces. I went and spoke to my friend Wan.

‘‘You have returned home and seen the changes’ he said to me in a low, depressive voice, as if he was glad to have my company, to commiserate on the situation. ‘There are no girls, no girls at all. The demographic has changed. We are all men. Not even men really. Mostly they are aged twenty to twenty-three. We are now the oldest. Last year you and I were the youngest. They are so immature these new lot. I have kept my distance. Ten of them are Chinese! The Chinese are everywhere! We have been invaded! They are dirty rats! The curse of my people!’

‘Wan began to tell me of the new wave of Chinese students; and later on I was introduced to some of them. Although none were quite as original as Blake, there were, to be sure, some interesting characters. The first of these was Mathew.

‘Hello’ he said, shaking my hand in the kitchen one day. ‘I am Mathew, but everyone calls me Matt.’ He spoke with a slow, aristocratic English twang. He was a cool cat, always strolling around in his vest and flip-flops, showing of his biceps. He was also on the business management course.

‘Welcome’ he said ‘your name is Neil I understand. Welcome.’ I didn’t know how to react to this. Did he not know that I’d already been here a year? I put on an act of being inferior, self-deprecating. Yet cooler than me though he evidently was, it was strange having to demure to a Chinaman.

‘‘Pierre is my best friend. He lives next door to me. Have you met him? He is French. I used to live in France with him. He will come to China one day. We both love basketball and break dancing. Anyway nice to have met you Neil. I will see you later.’

‘And with that he shook my hand once more and left. It was a confusing position for me to find myself in. This Pierre I had already seen: a more arrogant, contemptuous, hip-hop young French man I had never met. He was blond, toned and sexy and he mooched around the halls in basketball tops, disdaining people. He had already ‘dissed’ lowly old me on several prior occasions. I had no love of him. But I noted that his partner in crime, the equally cool Matt, had at least offered me the hand of friendship. That much seemed his due as a Chinaman. Whereas the smug Pierre, as a westerner, need not condescend to me.

‘So was Matt. I couldn’t really fault his good manners or good intentions, but as a non-academic, as a hip-hopping, beat-boxing break dancer and chump did we really have anything in common? I felt stressed by the thought of keeping up appearances with him.

‘Another was Nathanial. More shy and respectable than Matt, he was equally as handsome in a clean cut, teenage heart throb kind of way. He dressed himself well in designer clothes and always seemed in the process of grooming himself. He would get up early in the morning and stand before the bathroom mirror, ceaselessly styling his hair. And as he did so he would sing, singing in the soft strains of the Chinese male. His tune was like a mating call, he was like a shy, soft little bird calling musically to attract mates. He was so nice as well, always smiling and grinning. But he was intellectually light weight, a dandy, a pretty boy, a feather head, and I foresaw it would be a struggle to get along with him for a whole year.

‘And there were others as well. Harrison the vest-wearing martial arts practitioner, who liked to work out; Steish, the beret wearing Bohemian who wanted to be a film star. As well as these guys there were some more traditional Chinese. Men who were here to study, to study food science, computing, or urban planning, for example. At least with these Chinamen I felt much more at home. We could discuss life or politics, we could discuss anything we liked really without being shackled by what was cool and hip. They were true intellectuals, we held common ground. But make no mistake. They were no losers: Lee, the food scientist owned a fancy car; Luke, a PhD student, was tall, athletic, handsome. Even the bespectacled computer wizards seemed different now. As if they were here on an equal footing. The days of inferiority were gone.

‘And so that was the hall I returned to, a one dominated by yellow Chinese faces, a one where the young, rich, offspring of the Chinese elite, with their designer clothes and sports cars, and with their limited intellectual faculties, were ubiquitous. Besides now feeling alone and isolated in what had once been my home, I also perceived that I was now considered by all and sundry as no more than a geek, a swot and a bore. A nobody. Gone were the days of the liberal intellectual atmosphere of last year, when I was Neil the philosopher, Neil the man people liked to chat to, Neil the interesting. No, those days were gone. To the cool young men in our corridor I was now Neil the nobody. Neil who? Some strange, boring creature that did strange things like studying. Strange.

‘So that was that then. I was surrounded on all sides by Chinamen, most of whom I had nothing in common with, and I soon became sick of the farce of smiling with Blake, Matt and Nathanial, of having to face on a daily basis, crammed in as were like commuters in a tube train, people who I didn’t really want to be around. They would have endless parties in the kitchen, and now it was I, with humble, self-deprecating face, who would have to sneak in and use the freezer, glimpsing the splendid party, the fancy women and food. Blake by the way, despite the introduction of the cooler Matt, the more handsome specimens of Nathanial and Steish, and the more muscular Harrison, Blake was still, in his sluggish, contented way, the king, the chief male. One day I happened to see him.’

‘I was dressed up in some new clothes and a new haircut, that well, frankly weren’t me. Walking along the corridor I passed Blake. I smiled at him. Yet he, seeing my new clothes and makeover, could not help a smirk of derision come over his face. It was there just an instant and quickly realising he should behave with more decorum, he removed it. But it was all that I needed. I felt humiliated, ashamed. I felt angry. I needed an excuse for war and Blake had just given it me.

‘After passing Blake, I entered the kitchen. As I opened up, not only was I greeted by an utter mess, but loud hip-hop music blared out. On the centre of the kitchen floor was Matt, in his vest, break dancing with amazing speed and suppleness, dazzling the spectators, amongst whom I saw the arrogant Pierre, an earring in one ear, a cap back to front on his head. There were some Chinese-dolls watching, and some Chinese dudes in vests drinking beer. Feeling insignificant and annoyed, I went to see my friend Wan.

‘‘Right’ I said, showing my annoyance ‘it’s time my friend that we went to war with the Chinese. I’m sick of every single one of them. Especially Blake, he’s an arrogant son of a whore.’

‘Wan seemed pleased by my anger, as if he had been waiting for me to come and see him like this, to scheme and plot revenge for the chaos that we had both slowly watched unfold on our floor.

‘‘I tell you’ said Wan, angrily, ‘that guy Blake, he must have one big penis. I don’t know what his problem is, but it must be that.’

‘In that one phrase of my Korean friends, I felt he had pin-pointed exactly what Blake’s problem was, as Wan so ironically put it. In the way in which we’d both come together to bitch like this; in the way in which Wan so plaintively bemoaned the fact, emphasising the word big as he spoke; in the way in which the two of us were so at a loss to explain our inferiority to Blake, even though physically he was not so much superior, especially to Wan who was outwardly his match; in all of this, in our peeved, undignified confusion, it seemed the only possible conclusion.

‘‘He must have a big penis’ hummed Wan in his unearthly Korean accent. ‘He must.’

‘And so we sat together and had a good whinge about all the Chinese and what we would do to them. But I tell you, we soon adopted some strange ways of talking. For one thing we now referred to the Chinese as chinks; and in deliberately and cynically employing this sort of racist language, completely unbecoming for two research students, we were utterly pathetic and foolish. We would sit for hours and decry the ‘bloody chinks’ in our impotent way. And just as impotently we would draw up ridiculous revenge schemes – we talked of killing Blake or poisoning the chinks, we talked about taking down the yellow men and re-taking the floor. It was all so ludicrous, this gangster talk, this racist slang, for we only did it out of earshot of everyone.

‘But we weren’t alone in our hatred of the Chinese. There were seven or eight other nationalities on our floor, and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt gentlemen, it’s that all the different races, when brought together here as also-rans, to the United Confederation of British Islands, my God, they loathe and despise each other, they’re like bitches at each other’s throats. I canvassed the opinions of our foreign visitors.

‘‘Vikram my Indian friend’ I said one day in the kitchen. ‘What do you think of the Chinese?’

‘‘The Chinese? They are dirty peoples. You see this kitchen, you see this mess? That is Chinese peoples for you. I am living here since maybe one year, okay. Everywhere, everywhere man, I see Chinese peoples. When I am arriving here I am saying to the taxi man as I looking out the window, is this China or England man, and we are making some joke like this. But seriously man, the Chinese are the new power. They are trying to steal Tibet from India. That is why every morning I am praying God, thanking him that America pushes China back.

‘‘Your thanking him for America?’ I asked puzzled.

‘‘Yes! They are pressurising the Chinese man.’

‘And the Pakistanis? ‘Vishnu my friend, what do you think?’

‘‘The Chinese? I hate the Chinese. They are dirty peoples. The Chinese and the Nigerians they are making this kitchen so dirty. The Chinese have no souls. I have seen one movie about the Chinese. A businessman is going to a brothel to have sex with many women. They have no God. They are robots. In Pakistan we are having lots of religion. It is all bullshit! I am not believing in any of it. There is no science for it; they have no proof. I am hating Pakistan, it is one big chaos. The government is using religion to control the peoples. But when I came here and saw the Chinese I am disgusted’ he said, shaking his head, resigned. ‘They are soulless. There were three Chinese peoples making sex in a car!’

At this point, his Pakistani friend, who stood with his back to us, doing the dishes, turned around to look at me.

‘‘There were three of them’ he said emphatically and with shock, delighted to have the chance to tell me, ‘making sex in a car.’

‘‘And Nigeria, how about you.’

‘‘The Chinese? They are dirty man. They are everywhere and so bloody rich.’ He chuckled to himself and shook his head. ‘Look at the kitchen, look at the toilets. There’s shit all over the place. It’s the Chinese man. And the Pakistanis.’

‘‘Mitsu, you’re Japanese, surely you like the Chinese?’

‘‘During the war the Chinese did experiments on my people. They tried chopping off their arms and legs without medicine, without how you say it, being asleep. For that reason I hate the Chinese. They are the curse of my people. Just like the Koreans.

‘‘And Thailand, what do you think?’

‘‘Oh I hate the Chinese. Look how dirty the kitchen is. The Chinese try to control us, to destroy us. They tried to kill my people. That is why I am loving America, for fighting the Chinese.’

‘‘Scott you’re Australian, you’re a white man, surely you’re above all this petit racism?’

‘‘The Chinese? The motherfuckers are everywhere. It’s the curse of the bloody yellow man, man.’

‘‘Okay Erik, you’re from Taiwan, so you are Chinese right?’

‘‘No I am Taiwanese. The China is trying to say that the Taiwan belong to them. But it belong to the Taiwan peoples. They are trying to steal it for themselves. The Americans will help us.’

‘‘Wei, my Chinese friend. You’re an intelligent person, a research student. Why does everyone hate the Chinese?’

‘‘Oh come on Neil, they don’t hate us. Take the Taiwanese guy Erik. Taiwan belong to China. He is telling lies. Taiwan just want independence.’

‘‘Okay Lee, my Korean friend, you hate the Chinese right.’

‘‘Of course. They are the curse of my people. Them and the Japanese. Why, why are you asking?’

‘‘Well’ I said ‘Wan and I are preparing a little war against the Chinese. We’re going to take back the floor. Do you want to be one of our soldiers?’

‘If you want in’ said Wan in his theatrical Korean twang ‘you must prove your loyalty. We want you to urinate in Blake’s milk!’

‘So we laughed and schemed.

‘And so it went. But I tell you, being at war with the Chinese was just as hard as being at peace. Every time I saw Blake in the kitchen or corridor now, I ignored him or gave him a hacky look. He knew I was not happy with him. I couldn’t help but like the guy for it. He was emotionally sensitive like that, he knew why I hated him. So it was easy to play games with Blake, he indulged me as it were. And I began to see that he was sick to death of having to share the flat like this, tired of all the tension. For example one day, meeting him in the kitchen, I found him on his mobile phone, listening to a girl telling him some story. ‘Get to the point or just shut up!’ he barked out in his dominant way, at the end of his tether. In his terse, moody manner, I recognised that he too was sick of the war.

‘As for the lightweight, airhead, bimbo and singer Nathanial, I treated him like dirt whenever I saw his groomed personage or heard his melodic strains. I gave him acrid looks, slammed doors in his face and yet for all this he always tried to smile at me, to be friendly, to be my friend.

‘But though I could control Nathanial in this way, and though Blake indulged me and allowed me to emotionally target him, the break dancing Matt was a harder person to be nasty to. I could never find it in my heart to ‘go to war’ with him, since he always addressed me ‘Neil’ and talked to me directly. Whenever he spoke to me, I responded submissively and with kindness. With him, I limited myself to the occasional disapproving look, the occasional tut of disgust as I saw him partying with his friends. And backed up by the arrogant Pierre, who as a white man could laugh in my face, out and out war with Matt might have been foolish.

‘So I scowled, huffed and gave dirty looks whenever I could and there were many chances to do so, Chinese people being here, there and everywhere. I would also gossip with the cleaner or the secretary, and full of bigotry, racism and bare faced lies, swap tales and complain about the ‘fucking’ Chinese. And whenever I had the opportunity, I would slam a door in the face of a passing oriental. So it went.

‘But like I say, acting like this was just as tense and unnerving and at heart I really loathed myself for it. What I really needed was to be somewhere else. The most difficult thing about the war though, was my relationship with Cynthia.’

‘Cynthia’ I asked ‘who is she? Your girlfriend?’

‘No, no, no’ responded Neil ‘Cynthia was the name of the prostitute, remember, who I first saw with Blake.

‘After a few weeks here she changed. I think it must have been under the advice of Blake. She seemed suddenly more respectful, more pleasant. In addition she seemed to always go out of her way to be nice to me, to smile at me personally, as if Blake had informed her that I didn’t approve of her.

‘So I began to perceive that she was really a likeable girl, and it was now that I figured out just why she had been dressed that day like a prostitute. You see’ said Neil, looking at us with a glint in his eye as if he’d solved the mystery ‘it’s all to do with the Chinese perception of the west. They take us for a Godless, soulless nation where women go around virtually naked, and where everyone is constantly having sex, bed-hopping without thought or consequence, a cool, liberated, modern place where nobody cares what you get up to. Instead of seeing us for what we are, a sexually repressed, prim and proper nation of prudes and scoutmasters, who scowl, frown and are not amused by the sexual shenanigans of any he, she or it, let alone of Phil and Francesca foreigner. So you see that outfit, that gaudy, overtly sexual way of dressing, that had simply been a reaction on the part of a sensitive, young girl, intimidated by her preconceptions of our liberal culture, trying to impress people and show herself of worth. With all her insecurities, and pressurised by false impressions, she had been trying to ‘adapt’ to our society.

‘But I guess I was not the only one to show her my moral outrage. In any event she had cottoned on and not only did she now dress down and more sensibly, she seemed at pains to placate everyone. Take for example the English security guard. Not comfortable amongst students in any event, that middle-aged, uneducated, unmarried man would often come across the Chinese hosting a party. One day I recall overhearing him, telling the Chinese off for being too noisy. And the response? The kind and soft spoken Cynthia apologised profusely, speaking directly to him, possessing like Blake, that emotionally sensitive faculty that made her aware of the feelings of others. She offered him some food. He refused, but was incredibly taken aback. He wished them a happy Chinese new year. They thanked him graciously. Cynthia especially so, as if it was a big deal, as if his patronisation was important.

‘So did I come to see what Cynthia was like. And every time, every time I promise you, that I saw her, I could count on her to pay me attention, smile at me, look demure. However I responded by looking even more grouchy and irritated. I even recall one day travelling alone in the lift with her. I scowled the entire time, showing her my displeasure. And when she got off the lift, when it stopped at her floor, she simply said ‘sorry’, as if to say there was nothing she could do; she was sorry, sorry that I was a nobody and a bore, a bespectacled philosophy student and couldn’t ever mix in her fashionable world, her sexy world, the world of fun and excitement; ‘sorry’, a sad little sorry, as if she’d done all she could for me, commiserated with me, would change the world if she could, but was sorry she couldn’t, sorry that she was cooler than me, sorry that she was way out of my league, sorry that life was so. Sorry.’

‘I felt bad about my response to her, especially so, as when other Chinese girls happened to come onto our floor, and I showed my displeasure and hatred of them, huffed, scowled and tutted, they simply responded by ignoring me, scoffing at me or treating me as if I was a nobody. At such times I felt impudent and enraged, angered. And when I saw how Cynthia ceaselessly made the effort to play my game, just as Blake did, I felt like such a fool and a child and a loser.

‘So I was sorry for Cynthia, and thought about being pleasant with her. But then I recalled exactly why I had gone to war. I could make nice-nice with Cynthia, be kind to her, show her I forgave her. But the next day, when I saw her having a party with her fashionable friends, or when I saw her entering the odious Pierre’s room to get up to I don’t know what, or again, when I saw her getting into the sportscar of her greasy Greek boyfriend who I so despised, when I saw any of this, I would feel again that resentful, prudish annoyance, that feeling of jealousy and insignificance, that feeling that she belonged to a superior world, a world in which plain old me could never be accepted.

‘And so that gentlemen’ said Neil, seeming to bring things to a conclusion ‘is my tale, a tale of how overnight I became a petit, raging, bitter racist, how I employed racist language, went around talking of killing and wars, how I came to detest the Chinese. A tale of how I wouldn’t live and let live, but how I systematically went about, in my priggish, pathetic way of trying to stamp the joy out of other people’s lives. Forever jealous and feeling left out of the fashionable, hip-hop world of those about me. Playing childish, emotional, psychological games with Blake and Cynthia, being the archetypical English racist, feeling sorry for myself, being in a word a complete pain in the ass.’

‘And that’s your confession’ said Andrew immediately ‘that’s what you wanted to tell us?’

‘Actually’ said Neil ‘it’s not what I had to tell you and it’s not in fact my confession. It would’ve been my confession, it might have been, in another life time, all that I would have done. But things turned out differently. You know, for all the talk of war and revenge, I genuinely never thought anything would come to pass. But in the end there was an incident.

‘Wan and I were often on the lookout to make some mischief, to throw a spanner in the works. One night we stood in my room looking out the window, down to the reception area below. At one point a Chinese girl arrived. She’d obviously been to a nightclub, and had with her an Englishman at her heels. Standing outside, she went about snogging him, like an animal she was all over him.

‘‘Slut!’ I said angrily to Wan. ‘What a fucking slut she is.’ I was so peeved and jealous, so consumed by envy at this sight.

‘‘Has Blake ever had an English woman?’ I inquired nervously of Wan.

‘‘No. I don’t think so. Only the Italian and Finnish.’

‘I felt slightly relieved. ‘Well’ I said in my impotent way ‘if I ever catch him with an English girl, I’ll chop his penis off and stuff it in his mouth.’

‘We stood there awhile brooding and angry. Then a sportscar pulled up.

‘A Chinese guy got out and slowly, with unsteady footing, wandered to some bushes were he was agonizingly sick. Evidently he was drunk. When he was finished he got back into his car. The security guard came out.

‘‘Are you sure you’re in a fit state to drive?’ he asked.

‘The Chinese guy humbly assured him he was. The security guard asked again ‘are you sure?’ He assured him once more, and the security guard, though not truly convinced, went back inside. The Chinaman, ever so cautiously, started to drive off.

‘‘Quick’ I shouted to Wan ‘let’s go!’ and we sprinted off downstairs and outside. When we got there I took out my mobile phone. Wan and I raced around the corner and saw the car slowly driving off. We got the first four letters of the registration. Our plan was to call the police and hopefully have the Chinese guy arrested for drink driving.

‘Yet the moment slipped away. The car drove off into the distance; the police would no doubt take a while to respond; plus we didn’t have the full number plate. I desisted from dialling 999; and ultimately, I think it was because I didn’t really have the heart to go through with it, to shop this guy to the cops.

‘On another occasion, word came back to the hall one night that a Chinese guy, on his way to the supermarket, had been beaten up by local youths. This was a common problem where we lived, the teenage residents roundabout resentful of and simply despising us students, and they would stand and intimidate and insult you as you passed through their lair. Last year a German exchange student had been beaten badly, an event that all of us had taken to heart, and I especially had been vehement in my outrage at the incident. However that had been last year. Things were different now, and I had not failed to notice that the disenchanted youths of these parts had on several occasions cast angered, jealous looks upon the Chinese sports cars, the fashionable women, their wealth, riches, and apparent arrogance. I had not failed to notice this, and in the shifting power circles, I wondered now where my sympathies lay.

‘Anyway one dark night we received this news, and Wan and I stood at our window, looking out over the vacinity of the hall waiting for people to return. The incident had occurred one hundred or so metres away, but shrouded in the darkness of night, we could not see anything. An ambulance had been called by a returning Chinese shopper. We awaited the return of the others with interest, not least because, included in the wave of Chinese students that had gone off to the shops that night, were Blake and Cynthia.

‘‘Oh please God! Let it be Blake!’ preyed Wan cynically as we stood at the window, laughing maliciously.

‘Eventually however, Blake returned, along with Cynthia and the others. We felt annoyed to see his arrogant, supreme person, sauntering back into camp, as if he were an indestructible force, not to be messed with; and when the next day, I discovered which Chinese student had been beaten, I was really angered.

‘Of all the Chinese students they had chosen to target, the youths had not gone for a Blake or a Cynthia, but instead for a small, round, bespectacled, computer wizz, who I might as well call Chen, the most inoffensive man in the world, who had taken his sorry, lonely little person off to the shops alone. This Chen had caused us all in halls to smile with joy, when one day, we happened to see him play table tennis, a game gentlemen, which the majority of us played with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Not so this Chen, who with consummate professionalism, played in shorts, t shirt and sweat bands. Ah yes Chen, he-he, it had been a wonderful sight. And it was him of all people who had been targeted.

‘A few days later I saw him and his subdued, sad little face, scarred and beaten. I also saw how Cynthia, in her gentle, soft, Chinese voice, asked of him, a man she’d never before met, how he was. I saw how he responded, how he plaintively spoke to her, subdued, on the verge of tears, saw how Cynthia spoke even more softly, in that calming, soft, soft tone of the Chinese, that birdsong of theirs; saw the genuine feeling of support between the two, a camaraderie under this foreign moon, on this foreign soil; saw how gentle Cynthia was, as with womanly affection, she examined the marks, and lovingly, tenderly rubbed them, and touched Chen’s sorry, boyish little person.

‘I felt regretful and sad for all my bad thoughts. This, this should’ve been a warning to me, to end the war and give up all that nonsense. Yet just three weeks later, I was back to my old-self and this time the fire crackers were lit.

‘The Chinese were having a party, a big one. Blake, Cynthia, Nathanial, Matt and Harrison were all going. I saw them as they went about preparing the food and dining room, dressed splendidly in their designer clothes. Other Chinese were coming from other floors. It was a big event. Pierre was there too, as well as a cohort of Grecians, slick, handsome, swarthy men, bronzed and greasy, one of whom was Cynthia’s boyfriend. Some Americans came as well. Yet what most surprised and upset me was to see just who in our hall had been invited.

‘The Australian guy was there, so too the Nigerian, so too the Taiwanese guy, the Japanese, the Thai, and even the Indian. When I happened to pass into the dining room, to get something from the freezer, and saw them there, I felt really annoyed with them, betrayed. To see them currying favour with the Chinese like this, flattered to be invited to their grand party, enjoying themselves eating their cuisine, apparently bought off – well you can imagine how I felt.

‘When I returned next door to the kitchen and found myself alone, I started to see that just about everyone on the floor had been invited to the party, and that I perhaps was the only one who had not been. I felt sorry for myself. Then another thought crossed my mind: I wondered if I would be invited? If not Blake or Cynthia might ask me to come? But then, even they over the last few weeks had at last gotten sick and tired of me and my games. They’d finally had enough.

‘So I went about my cooking, preparing my tasteless pasta and tuna, and popping into the dining room once more, I caught a glimpse of the party, of the fashionable Chinese, the swanky Greeks and Americans, the bought off Taiwanese, Australian, Nigerian and Indians, who, oblivious of my person, ate and chatted happily, pleased that they’d been invited to the party. Then when I returned to the kitchen, hoping to find myself alone so that I might brood and feel sorry for myself and escape everybody, I looked over to my pasta and saw the Italian doctor kissing his Italian girlfriend.

‘They looked irritated by my interruption, and broke off their kissing, as if I’d invaded their privacy. The Italian doctor sighed and turned to stirring his saucepan, whilst the Italian girl smiled at me and with well meant but tired, patronising intonation said ‘hello’.

‘The Italian doctor had moved in recently, and as well as being intelligent, was also tall and handsome. There was a combination of cool and intelligence in his bespectacled, superior face, and he was not unlike Blake. He was so superior, often seemed irritated and tetchy, and was loved by women. I didn’t know how to react to him. Unlike Blake, he was undoubtedly more intelligent than I. He always seemed irritated, busy, important, though occasionally he would condescend to me and say hello.

‘So the three of us stood there at the cooker making our dinner, I feeling like an unwelcome guest, the Italian doctor sighing, irritated, and complaining to his girlfriend in that Italian dialect, that Latin way of whinging that’s such anathema to us Brits. Anyway shortly a Chinese girl entered the kitchen. I recognised her as a PhD student in biochemistry from another floor, who I just couldn’t stand because she was always pretending to be above people like me, to be fashionable, cool and superior, instead of admitting that, as a fellow research student, we probably shared some common ground. She had been invited to the party and to all pretence and purposes was at home with the lightweight, petit-bourgeoisie Chinese. Ignoring me as if I didn’t exist, she excitedly asked the good, comme il faut Doctor and his girlfriend if they wouldn’t like to come to the party. That they’d only met briefly before, and barely even knew each other, didn’t seem to matter. The facts were that they looked cool and so they were invited.

‘And flattered, the good doctor and his girlfriend said they would be delighted to join them, and that they would bring along some of their spaghetti Bolognese.

‘Meanwhile my sorry person stood at the hob, feeling mortified, foolish and ashamed. My body language must have been awful as I tightened up, my face becoming sensitive and expressing my thoughts. I really didn’t know where to look. There was almost a tear in my eye as I avoided looking at those people, tried to bury my head, my person, to pretend I wasn’t listening. But my face gave the game away.

‘I was beset with agony and shame at that moment, full of hatred of these people. I simply wanted the scene to end. Yet I have to confess, I was also terrified of being invited to the party. The thought had crossed my mind: I wondered whether the Chinese girl would turn to me and say kindly ‘and you, do you want to come?’ I imagined sweetly acquiescing, saying okay, and, like the lowest of dogs, tagging along with them. I imagined it, but in truth I didn’t want it, I didn’t want any invitation from these alien people who I hated. I wanted no mitigating circumstances. I wanted all out war.

‘In the end I wasn’t asked. I don’t know whether the Chinese girl tactlessly ignored me. I don’t know whether, as I half suspected, after speaking to the Italians, she turned to look at me, in thought of offering me a respectful – though not cordial – invitation; a consolation, as though she didn’t really want me there, but I could come if I wanted to. I don’t know whether she thought about doing this, but that, in seeing my sensitive face and my hurt-ridden eyes, telling her not to dare humiliate me any further by inviting me – my body language saying ‘don’t you dare!’ – she decided it was best to just leave me alone, this, as I say, I don’t know. In any event I wasn’t invited.

‘Eventually the Italians cleared off to the party and I sat in the kitchen alone eating my miserable food. Wan entered.

‘‘Wan, were you invited to the party.’

‘‘No’

‘‘Good’ I said relieved. ‘I’ve had enough of these Chinese’ I said. ‘Look at this’ I said standing up and showing him a pan of Chinese food. ‘How the fuck can these animals eat chicken’s feet!’

‘‘It’s a delicacy’ explained Wan. ‘Blake I know loves them.’

‘‘Ugh! That is the sickest thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘It really was. A pan of pink, defrosting chicken’s feet, their claws prominent, like nails, had been left on the bench before us. It could not have been more disgusting had it have been a pot of pink, human fingers.’

‘‘The time has come’ I said growing nervous but excited. Wan watched on as I went to one of the Indian’s cupboards and pulled out a tub of salts or additives, I didn’t exactly know which. There were several Chinese dishes on the hob, simmering away, ready to be eaten, the Chinese occasionally popping in to take the food next door.

‘‘Right watch this!’ I said to Wan, and opening up the tub, I poured huge amounts of these additives into the simmering pots, cauldrons and woks that were bubbling and boiling on the hob. I stirred it in and it seemed to dissolve. ‘Let’s see what they think of that!’

‘We sat at the table eating our meals. Fifteen, twenty minutes elapsed, during which time the Chinese took away the various dishes they’d been cooking on the hob. To be honest though, I don’t think either myself or Wan expected anything to happen: we’d grown so accustomed to our impotence. We waited, we waited still. Then a cry went up next door.

‘It was a sort of cry of horror, a Chinese scream, and as soon as I heard it, I was overcome with remorse and angst. I was terrified, my face burned red, and I was suddenly horrified at what I might have done. Within seconds we saw, through the kitchen door, the figures of Blake and Harrison running into the toilets.

‘I looked at Wan, gulped, and said ‘Oh God’ trying to laugh off my guilt. I was full of regret, fear and hatred of myself, as if I’d spoiled all chance of happiness in my life. We got up and went into the bathroom.

‘By this time two more Chinese had entered. However, unable to enter the toilets occupied by Blake and Nathanial, they stood over the basins instead. They were desperately trying to vomit, and contorted and in agony, brought up piles of spew all over the basins. Other Chinese, unaffected, were close at hand trying to help them. Wan approached one of these carer Chinese and asked gently what the matter was, expressing in his voice a sympathy, an Oriental sympathy, that really touched me, and made me feel more guilty, more inhuman. I stood back, full of regret, pretending to be shocked and sympathetic and saying ‘oh dear, oh dear.’

‘Then the bathroom door burst open and Cynthia ran in. Her face was contorted with pain, she was clearly desperate to reach the toilets. They were of course all occupied. Realising this she turned, presumably with the intention of going downstairs to the toilets on her own floor. However it was simply too late. As she headed back out, just as she passed by me, so that the two of us were almost alone together – I with a shocked, alarmed face, totally engrossed in watching her in her agonised fate – just as she passed me, she broke wind loudly and disastrously, and a spattering of diarrhoea charged uncontrollably out of her, spraying through her knickers and miniskirt, falling on her naked legs and on the floor. I watched all this in coldness. The poor girl, ashamed and embarrassed, desperately ran out, where, escorted by her Greek boyfriend, who hadn’t known where she had gone off to, she was taken downstairs to her own toilet.

‘That night I sat alone in my room, cornered by an empty, hollow feeling, a deadness, a coldness, as if I were no longer alive. Eight members of the party had been affected, I later learnt, and had spent the next day in agony, vomiting and having diarrhoea.

‘Later that evening, I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk. The kitchen, as well as the dining room and corridor was dead and deserted. It was like a ghost town. Matt entered the kitchen.

‘‘Did you hear of the troubles Neil’ he said, speaking in his slow, measured, aristocratic voice. ‘It is a very bad day for us. Seven Chinese students and one Nigerian are lying in bed, vomiting and constantly needing the toilet. It is very bad.

‘‘The Chinese’ he continued in his slow, pregnant, unearthly voice ‘are not just dogs to be treated like this. Someone has done this to us, we are sure. Someone who dislikes Chinese people, dislikes us for what we are, and cannot stand to see us happy. Someone who cannot take us for what we are. We are not just dogs to be treated like this. I feel such anger. This is not the way things should be. It is not reasonable now is it? You know in China we have a saying: the rat who gnaws at the cat’s tail invites its own destruction. Do you understand Neil?’

‘I could hear my heart thudding and I blushed in a mixture of shame, fear and self-loathing, unable to decide whether this was a generic speech Matt was giving, or whether he knew I was to blame, and was artfully playing with me. Nervous, guilty, shyly, I pronounced

‘‘Yes’ I do.

‘‘I knew you would Neil, I knew you would. We are not dogs. I like you Neil, you are a good man. Goodnight my friend.’

‘And with that he left the kitchen, and ashamed, I stood there alone.

‘Well aren’t you surprised’ said Neil addressing me after a pause in which he waited for comment.

‘I’m never surprised by anything’ I responded. ‘In any case there were mitigating circumstances. I understand your predicament. You had good reason to feel upset.’

‘But did I?’ persisted Neil, questioningly. ‘I don’t think so. I think I acted like the typical childish, self-pitying Englishman, deliberately huffy and resentful, whatever the Chinese did.

‘Anyway, the next day I sped off to my parents house in London for an emergency holiday. I needed to get away from the halls. When I got to London, I went out to walk the streets, giving myself up to philosophising. And the first thing I remembered happening was that I went and took my downbeat, miserable soul to a coffee house. At the counter, a Chinese girl served me, and smiled kindly into my face. In my dejected, mirthless state I couldn’t find it in my self to smile back at her. Instead, I just observed her acme covered face, her goofy teeth and felt annoyed by her, as if she was a nuisance. And there, you see gentlemen, I saw the error of my ways, what a charlatan I was, that I should be so disgusted by her. I recalled Cynthia. How she was beautiful, elegant, fashionable. How she had tried to be kind to me. How I had hunted her remorselessly like a dog. How her face had been contorted, how she’d been in agony, how she had so unceremoniously discharged her diarrhoea in my presence.

‘What would I have done had I been invited to the party? I would’ve said no. I’d said no twice before, several months earlier. On each occasion I’d simply felt, when a Chinese guy had put his arm around me, and said do you want to join us my friend, that he was just being well-mannered, courteous. It would’ve been awkward to intrude my non-Chinese speaking presence into their happy little party; it would have spoilt it for them, and having nothing in common with them, I would have been ill at ease. But, the facts remain, they had twice already invited me.

‘If a fashionable, wealthy, beautiful Chinese girl happened to be in our halls and ignore me, I hated her and was enraged by her; but if such a woman made, like Cynthia, an effort to be nice to me, I ignored it and was not worthy; there again, if an ordinary Chinese girl, plain, humble and modest happed to step onto our floor, I huffed, puffed and showed her my disdain, equally as if she was a bitch. In all cases they were doomed.

‘I can’t remember why, but for some reason, the case of the Chinese cockle pickers, was at that time, back in the news. Twenty or so Chinese, here illegally and working for gangsters, had been forced into slave labour, and, going out everyday into the treacherous sands of Morecombe bay, had been trapped out at sea, and there drowned. They had died a horrific death, an awful, tortuous, horrible death, compounded, of course, by the knowledge that they were dying a million miles from China, in an unforgiving, foreign sea. One man had telephoned his mother in China, as he found himself drowning. The whole story was tragic.

‘With this in my thoughts, I sauntered along Oxford street, on that icy, dark, December evening. Up ahead there was some commotion.

‘I don’t know why, but some brain-dead, common Londoner had gotten out of his four-wheel drive and aggressively, in cockney, stood swearing at a diminutive looking Chinaman shouting ‘don’t you dare do that again, you hear me’. The Chinaman, a weak, small, frail looking man was dressed badly, and held in his hand a collection of gaudy lights, some yellow, some green, some pink, you know the tacky tourist sort, and was obviously a street peddler of these goods. He was so inoffensive, pathetic and pitiable and I wondered what on earth had caused the ever so angry, common cockney man to be so aggressive toward him. I don’t know what was more demoralising to the Chinaman: the fact that the wife of the cockney, a common and verbose woman, straight from a scene out of Dickens, got out the car, and exactly like her husband, like a pigeon copying her mate, berated the poor Chinaman in an aggressive, cockney harangue. Really it was a scene, the poor Chinaman, like a lesser bird, set upon by those two bigger pigeons, male and female both, and pecked at, head butted, and chased away remorselessly by those two common, despicable, bossy birds; I don’t know whether that was more demoralising or the fact that no passer by bothered to intercede or help out. Everyone simply passed a casual glance at the scene, and presumably unwilling to intervene, and not knowing the full details of what had happened, and assuming the Chinaman must have done something to provoke his aggressors, walked on.

‘So I walked along and saw all this. And as the shabby, wrinkly, worn-down old Chinaman backed away terrified, I could see the indignation in his face, how humiliated and incensed he was. I won’t ever forget his words as he backed off, trying to stand his ground, but inevitably having to concede it.

‘‘Fu o!’ he shouted with such a sense of grievance in his voice. ‘Fu o!’

‘He couldn’t pronounce the words properly you see. Such a sad figure, impoverished, old, what a sorrowful sight he was, here on foreign turf, a million miles away from his home, at the mercy of those cockney pigeons, selling cheap, tacky lights that no one in their right mind could possibly want. Selling them for what must be peanuts, uneducated, dirt-poor, despised and alien in this world, a shabbily dressed peasant with no hopes here, a slave in England, presumably also a slave or a dead man in China, I really don’t know. An alien and a nobody in a dark, ruthless world, at the mercy of those two cockney pigeons who treated him like filth.

‘I saw that scene and nobody stopped to help the poor guy, nobody except two people, who after the guy had backed off, and the pigeons had flown, stepped in to inquire if he was alright.

‘They were two rich, fashionable young Chinese passers by, a Blake and Cynthia. I saw them ask if he was alright, I saw the Blake put his arm around the man, I saw the Cynthia ask what had happened, I saw the old man tell his sorry tale.

‘Deeply affected by the scene, I followed the dejected figure of the man as he now, after separating from his Chinese countrymen, walked off alone. Shortly he met up with a young Chinese girl standing on a street corner, also selling these worthless, kitschy, luminous things. I watched as they had a conversation, saw the sympathy writ expressively along the Chinese girl’s face, as she listened to the older man, saw how in this alien, bleak, lonely world she at least could offer him some comfort. Then spurred on by guilt and determined not to let the moment slip and have the Chinaman believe nobody cared, I stepped up.

‘‘I’m really, really sorry for all that’ I said putting my arm around his shabby, smelly, diminutive figure. Resentful, scared and angered, he removed himself from my grasp. ‘Please’ I said ‘I am really sorry. That man had no right to treat you like that. Please accept our apologies’ And realising that perhaps he couldn’t understand, and that in any case he was full of hate toward the English at that point, I made to go, pulling out a tener from my wallet, putting it into his hand, and with sympathy patting him on the back and saying ‘I’m sorry my friend, take this.’ He looked at me confused. He didn’t understand it was guilt money.’

A Chinese waitress brought us the bill. With it there were some fortune cookies.

The restaurant had by now emptied. A few diners remained; staff went about clearing things up. Neil was silent, waiting. So too I. Andrew though, seemingly as if he hadn’t been listening to Neil, occupied himself in opening up a fortune cookie.

‘Reshape ones foot to try to fit into a new shoe’ he pronounced.

I opened up a cookie, and Neil, seeing that apparently we weren’t listening to him, hid his embarrassment in also opening one up.

‘Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness’ I read.

‘Flowing water never goes bad’ read Neil ‘our door hubs never gather termites.’

There was a silence. ‘So what was your announcement then Neil’ I said after a while.

‘Well I have a new job you see. My miserable two year stint on the dole is soon to be over thank God. And it’s a good job too. A cushy job. A one where I will broaden my horizons. I’m going to teach English in China. They’re crying out for people. I get a good salary, accommodation is provided, I’ll be well taken care of.

‘And in my spare time, which is much thank God, I intend to learn Chinese, and to engross myself in Chinese history, philosophy, Chinese literature, art and culture. Think of it. What a gigantic nation. Yet can you name me one Chinese artist or writer? Hmm? No you can’t. What complete ignorance we’re all steeped in here in England. I intend to immerse myself in Chinese culture and I intend to live and let live. There’s no point staying here, going bad in stagnation, cursing the darkness, I need to open my horizons. I want to go to China, and stop being the smug, conceited, little Englishman I’ve become. I want to be an outsider, to feel the lonely but salutary feeling of being a foreigner, having to scrape and bow to my hosts, I want to be humbled like that. Travel will broaden my outlook. I will only stagnate here. In China I will have to adapt to their culture, to change my preconceptions, to reshape my foot. I intend to aspire to the principle, behave with virtue, abide by benevolence, and immerse myself in the arts. Yes I do.

‘The Chinese are the future, they are coming. In thirty years time, I predict they will dominate politics, business, every major sport. Believe me they are coming. And look what wisdom is contained in these cookies. Look.’

And with this, he intimated to Andrew to open up another cookie, and with the reading of the proverb so prove his point about the Chinese. Two cookies remained. Andrew took up one.

‘Do not employ handsome servants’ he said, in a deliberately confused intonation, as if Neil’s magic trick had gone awry.

Andrew laughed. Neil looked disappointed, despondent. I opened up the last cookie.

‘Well, how about this’ I said encouragingly to Neil. ‘Do not waste your time worrying over past transgressions; concentrate on living well in the present.’