While I am cooking the lamb in the pot, you and your friend just look at it, and put the uncooked carrots straight into the mouth. In Chinese, we say the way you cut the meat reflects the way you live. They must be timid people.

Here is the birthday gift from you. Two book. The first is The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde. You say is good book for me to start with, to understand English writing easily. The second one is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. You say it can be read later on, when my English becomes very good.

Then Japanese girl Yoko gives me small little box. It is delicate, like perfume box. On the cover it says:

Waterproof Personal Massager

MADE IN CHINA

What’s this waterproof? Battery? Watch? There is picture on the cover: it is something looks like small cucumber but slightly bended.

Curiously, I open the box. It comes out a smooth plastic thing look exactly like small cucumber. On the bottom there are some buttons: on/off/fast/slow. Is it toothbrush machine? I put into my mouth, but it not fit easily. A massage machine for facial beauty? Or for back and neck aching? Maybe the instruction will tell me.

I unfold the little piece of instruction.

Natural Contours-it’s great to be a woman

Then there is a printed letter:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for purchasing your new Natural Contours massager. Natural Contours is a revolutionary approach to personal relaxation: a massager that’s ergonomically designed to fit the contours of a woman’s body. It is our goal to offer you personal products that encompass quality, taste, and style to please today’s woman.

With the move toward greater self-awareness and exploration for women, we hope this product meets with your expectations and opens up a whole new world of personal relaxation for you.

Then there are some sincere advertise on the verse of the page:

Answering the call for quality personal products, Natural Contours delivers unbeatable performance: a stylish massager with a low noise motor that provides stimulating vibration. The elegant, impact-resistant casing is ergonomically designed to complement a woman’s natural shape.

TO OPERATE: SWITCH TO “ON” POSITION

So follow this instruction I switch on the machine. It is beeping. Everybody who eats the hotpot now stops eating and look at me.

You lean to me and whisper in my ear, “It’s a vibrator. You put it in your vagina.”

Holding the vibrate, my hand is shaking badly. I switch it off. It makes me feel horrified.

Everybody in the party laughs.

“I think Asian people have a great sense of humour,” you say.

“No, we don’t,” I clarify.

“Why not? You and Yoko make everybody laugh all the time.”

“No. We Chinese don’t understand humour. We look funny just because the culture difference, and we just being too honest,” I say.

“Yes, when you say things very honest, people think you are funny. But we stupid,” Yoko adds.

“Yes, I agree.” Here comes Korea girl Kim Yan Zhen eventually. She barely speaks, but whenever she speaks she impress everybody. She seriously makes a comment:

“Humour is a Western concept.”

Is super English. I didn’t know Kim’s English improve so much recently.

Your friends look at us three Orientals, like look at three panda escape from bamboo forest.

I watch the vibrate. I want to make a comment as well: “Enjoy sex is a Western concept too.”

“That’s rubbish. Men enjoy the sex everywhere,” says Korea girl Kim Yan Zhen.

Mans look at each other.

“But, I mean, Yoko, did you give her the vibrator as a joke or as a serious gift?” you ask.

“Of course serious,” answer by Yoko. I know Yoko is serious. Oriental people are serious, even young punks.

“Have you never seen a vibrator before?” one of your friends ask me.

“No. How would I?”

“But it’s made in China,” the friend says.

“Doesn’t mean I see it,” I say. “Actually those big international co-op factories run by foreigners. And the managers employ lots cheap labours like peasants, peasants’ wives. And those womans they don’t really know what is this machine for, but they just make it, by putting every piece of spare parts together. It is like they make computers by putting pieces together, but they never ever use computer.”

Why it doesn’t say “Dildo” or “automatic sex for woman” on the box? Maybe because it made in China, not allow to say things so clearly. It might become a big scandal if somebody from his village know his neighbour making plastic cocks everyday in a factory. Or maybe these factories are secretly protected by the government. Because Chinese government say there is no sex industry in China.

Putting more white cabbages into the hotpot, I can’t help thinking about those womans waking up early every morning to make vibrators. I am seeing them leaving behind their unemployed bad-temper husbands and poor children to sit on production lines and make vibrators. And those peasant womans will never use the vibrator in this life. All they want to know is how much they will earn today and how much money they can save for the family.

I put back this plastic cucumber into the box. When I leave it on the oily table, I see the warning from the side of the box: Clean with washcloth and mild soap.

migraine

migraine n. a severe headache, often with nausea and visual disturbances.

Another hot day. You left home in the morning with your old white van. I went to school and I had an exam on vocabulary. The exam went OK. I think I gain more English words since I have been lived with you. Mrs. Margaret praises me. She said I a fast learner. She doesn’t know I have been living with an English man every day and night. Soon school will end for summer holidays. My parents not expect there be so many holidays when they paid this school.

I come back home in the evening and switch on BBC Radio 4. I know my listening comprehension still bad. I hear Six O’clock News, then The Party Line: comedy about a frustrated MP. I don’t understand English comedy.

I am waiting for you to be back.

You come back home almost ten. You hug me with a cold wind. You look so frail. You look painful. You say you got two parking tickets today, one is forty pounds, another one is sixty pounds. You say you were fighting with the traffic policeman who is a black. You say why black people they are so kind and friendly in Africa, but are so rude as long as they live in London. You say London is a place sucks. You say London is the place making everybody aggressive.

You say you got strong headache again, and your whole body aches as well.

I make you some tea. Your favourite peppermint tea. (On the tea bag it says: produce of Egypt. I thought English people they produce their own tea.) I poured the boiled water into the pot. It is an old teapot in brown colour. It is ugly. You say you used this teapot for almost ten years. Ten years, you never break it. Is unbelievabal.

You drink the tea and you stare at the steam from cup.

I give you a painkiller pill. You take it. But you look worse. You move your body to the bathroom. You throw yourself up.

It is unbearable. I hear your pains, through the closed bathroom. It feels like you are throwing up all the dirts from your body, all the dirts from the sick world.

The running tap is being switched off. You come out from the bathroom, with a pale face.

“I never had headaches before I came to London. My body was so healthy when I lived in the country with my goats, and I was just planting potatoes. Since I moved here I’m struggling all the time. My body is in misery. That’s why I hate London. Not only London, all big cities. Big cities are like huge international airports. You can’t have one moment of peace here, and you can’t find love and keep it.”