bittersweet

I've barely got my chops around the chopsticks before she asks again. "How is it?"

Three pairs of eyes eagerly watching, waiting, over steaming bowls of soup, fried egg, shredded potato and tofu.

Delicious, I say. So good. Amazing. Zhenda hao chi.

It's not enough. Grandma keeps telling Vivian to make me eat more; Grandpa keeps gesturing towards the egg and chilli. Vivian keeps ladling rice into my bowl. Grandma wants to cook me some eggs to eat on the train tomorrow. Grandpa gives me a package of 'special Chengdu food'. All three implore that I am very brave [crazy] for travelling on my own and that if I come back to Chengdu, I must eat with them again.

I've known Vivian for all of twenty-four hours. She and I were obliged to meet purely because I know David. She knows David. I was going to Chengdu. She lives in Chengdu. I am foreign. She is Chinese.

We meet at my hostel, she having bullied her non-English-speaking workmate into playing chauffeur for the evening. She takes me to dinner. To lunch. To the zoo. To a temple. To Chengdu's most-touted tourist attractions. To another temple. And, finally, to her grandparents' home for a real, hone-cooked Chinese meal.

And I can't pay a cent.

I am Chinese, she tells me. It is the Chinese way.

I have to physically restrain her when I slip away to pay for our smoothies at the cafe. The only chance I got to pay for anything.

Boy, did it piss her off.

It is our way! she protests.

Later, softened by half a Beer Lao, Vivian tells me she hates China.

She hates the people. She hates the government. She hates Mao. She hates that, at 26 [a week younger than me] she is 'too old' to be single and her family are constantly urging her to get a husband/house/baby.

I want to travelling, she sighs. I admire you. In China, no people can do this.

You are lucky, she says again and again.

I run out of excuses. Vivian - intelligent, sweet, educated - is probably right. She, like her friends and workmates and nearly every other woman in China, will live with her parents until she is bundled off to a suitable gentleman and a life of domesticity. A house to clean, a child to raise and elderly parents to care for.

I - educated, aimless - am free to do whatever the f*** I choose.

And I will.

Last night, Vivian and I parted with the usual promises to keep in touch. That, if she ever visits New Zealand, I will return her hospitality.

I'll probably never see her again.

Oh sure, I felt a bit crap. A bit guilty. A bit ashamed of the fact I'm so damn lucky and she isn't.

For, maybe, ten minutes.

ce la vie. My only luck is not being Chinese.

As far as I'm concerned, I've worked my arse off to do what I'm doing. I'm damn well gonna reap the rewards.

And I'll have a beer for Vivian.