I think I've fallen in love with noodle girl #0110. It's not her palindromic ID number that's so attractive, nor is it the teal apron she wears over her starched-white uniform. No, what turns me on is the way she doles out justice with every ladleful of Shanxi-style cut noodles.
The time is lunchtime, the place is the noodle place and what seems to be the entire Beijing University student body of 30,000 is attempting to demonstrate the power of mob action. Everyone has the same objective: a bowl of noodles, and my would-be lover is the gatekeeper.
The throng has somehow chosen me as the focal point towards which everyone will push as hard as they can. Somebody's thumb is in my ear; I can look down and see half a dozen carefully synchronized elbows working like pistons on my midsection and I think the entire archeology department has congregated between my legs and under my feet.
Every few seconds, another successful party will grab his bowl of noodles and dash out of the mob, jumping from head to head as though crossing a stream by hopping between stones. I, along with the fellow whose thumb is stuck in my ear, am gradually carried by the crowd toward the front. When I finally make it, I can feel my liver crushed between my spine and the counter in front of me, but that is no matter, because I am bathing in a glow of righteousness.
Noodle girl #0110 goes about her business with a stoic look of seriousness, fully understanding the urgent plight of those before her. She punishes those who have come out of turn, those who have perpetrated the most violent shoving and those with a particular look of malice about them. With the impartiality of Lady Justice herself, the noodle girl sends them to the back of the line and serves each customer in the order they arrived; she makes no exceptions.
And with an otherworldly sixth sense, she seems always to innately know what I want, even better than I know myself. Whether I order the big bowl or the small bowl, she always - always - serves me the opposite, and I am always satisfied.
I was going to ask her out to dinner, but she very politely declined before I even asked.
That's who I love.
Here's who I don't love.
My professor in "Speaking Mandarin "is an old Chinese man. He is short, round and he smells like pickled vegetables. He wears his pants somewhere north of his navel and sometimes for a week consecutively. He sports an unconvincing dye-job: The patches of white hair attract more attention than the black, and the effect is that he ends up looking like he has a skunk on his head. He is blunt and straightforward to the point of being offensive; he is crabby, crotchety, cantankerous and he will laugh at you if you ask a dumb question.
His classes frequently devolve into extemporaneous lectures on subjects of interest to the foreign student in China. During one recent class, we learned words like "tonsils" and "microbe" as he described for us a litany of deadly, crippling and otherwise unpleasant diseases we were liable to contract while in China. By his account, drinking the water in China is likely to get us sick, and eating food is equally dangerous, if not more so. And for a cure? He hoisted a green Nalgene knock-off and extolled for us the virtues and benefits of drinking hot water.
Anyone who has had the misfortune to fall ill while in China and has described his or her malady to a Chinese friend or medical professional has undoubtedly faced the following scene: The friends or medical professionals will listen carefully, nodding thoughtfully at each gruesome symptom, and will ponder the inventory of possible ailments, ticking off each one on their mental chart. "Perhaps," they will suggest, "you have been drinking too many cold beverages. You should drink hot water; then you will feel better."
My professor proscribed precisely this treatment to a classmate who had staggered to class for the first time in a week after wearing a track between his bed and his bathroom. It has become a maxim in China that serious illness should be treated with modern medicine, and mild illness should be treated in the traditional style: drowning the patient in boiling water.
There may be a grain or two of wise, ancient truth in all this, but try telling that to the guy who has 50 billion microbes throwing a micro-keg party in his intestinal tract. To be sure, the definition of "serious illness" might seem a bit too conservative. Hot water? No, thanks.
For me, I'll take just a bowl of noodles.
Sam duPont is a Junior, studying Chinese in Beijing. To read more about his adventures, visit his blog: redskyatnight.blogspot.com.
Correction: When this article appeared in print on November 20, the first paragraph was erroneously omitted. Full text appears here.
