I’m pretty sure I built this part of Hong Kong in Sim City 2000 when I was 14. And then I saved it and caused disasters to happen until the whole city was either blown up or underwater. I wonder if Isabella is actually a Sim? What if I am too? And we’re just waiting in Tin Shui Wai for some 14 year old to come and set our building on fire…

The morning following the air conditioner nightmare, I went to the dorm manager’s office and tried to communicate that my air conditioner was broken. I carefully enacted out the events of the former evening – point to the wall, make a hissing sound like air, say “no” and shake your head, then squeal like a pig to demonstrate that the air conditioner broke after make a loud sound. She sat at her desk, staring into my eyes from behind her glasses with confused fear, masked by a composed calmness – the kind of superficially calm but terrified look a cop gives a man who is on PCP and wandering the streets with a baby in one hand and a crowbar in the other.

After performing the skit several times, progressively increasing the amount of terror in her eyes, I realized I was not breaking the language barrier. Without the ability to speak Chinese I was destined to sweaty nights after field work for the rest of the summer. I turned to leave her office, and as I stepped to the door she said in English “Please, write. I will understand.” I wrote on a piece of a paper that my air conditioner broke in the night. The frightened look on her face subsided and she nodded her head calmly. “Wait tree day, I call technician”

Several days passed. The weekend came and went. I hovered naked in front of my fan to cool down, taking showers and then letting the water fade off my body to enjoy a brief moment of evaporative cooling. Every few days I’d go to the dorm manager’s office, and without having to say a word or act out another skit she would see me coming and tell me “tomorrow.”

It’s sad to think I’ve become dependent on air conditioning. In Wisconsin, I only use it on hot days to keep my frogs cool. I take pride in the extreme temperatures I allow my body to survive in. But it’s different here. It’s not so much that the air conditioner cools the room, but that it dries it out. After spending a morning wading through muggy garden pools and an afternoon in the heat washing buckets on a roof, coming home to a room with an ambient humidity level that’s less than 70% makes the day.

Fast forward to yesterday. Dripping with sweat, my arm is sticking to my desk as I type an email. I look at the floor for a moment to think and sweat drips off my forehead. When you sweat only because you are typing, it’s fucking hot. I get up and turn the air conditioner on. Another hopeless test, one of dozens I have performed on the air conditioner over the course of the last 20 days. This time it’s different though. I hear crackling, air is coming out, and it feels….cool. That night, I wake up to the sound of someone throwing pebbles at my window and realize my air conditioner is spewing pieces of ice all over my room, perhaps coughing up whatever was wrong with it in the first place. Maybe it’s not working correctly.

Today, I returned home from work, sat down in my cool bedroom, and started playing Final Fantasy IV on the DS. Life is good. My tadpoles have been weighed, I have a beer in hand, and my room is a comfortable temperature. Just as I’m starting to battle an Antlion, without even a knock a party of Chinese men comes storming into the room. Three of the men are filthy, these guys do real work, you can tell. One has a tool box, the other two are holding some sort of hose and a gas tank. The last guy is holding the dorm manager’s copy of the keys to our dorm room. They rush through to examine the air conditioner. As quickly as they burst into my bedroom they leave upon determining my room is cool. I follow them out and they enter Brenna’s room. Brenna does not have the air conditioner on, it’s hot in there, and so they climb up and start working on her AC unit. She gives me this panicked, helpless look, a look you would give someone if four Chinese men with unusual tools burst into your house unexpectedly. I run in to save her with my Chinese/English dictionary.

I lead them back to my room with broken Chinese as one stays behind to reattach hoses and tubes and cables back onto Brenna’s air conditioner. A hand is placed in front of the output of my unit. He says things to me in Chinese. I nod. I look up the word for ice in the dictionary and show it to him. He nods. He then turns to his associates and they talk quickly for about a minute, then he brings the remote control for the air conditioner over and shows me how to change the thermostat on the unit. He gives it to me and insists I try. I nod and smile and show him that I know how to push buttons. Then all three men start laughing, pack up, and leave, concluding that the American just didn’t know how to use a remote control. I’m guessing I’m now known in town as the dumbest of the foreigners here, the one who left his stuff by a window and got robbed, doesn’t know how to push buttons, has hair on his face, and is always covered in mud when he goes to lunch. But at least my room is cool.

From left to right – Bill, Gwen, Jocelyn, Brenna, me

I think this is a photo of breakfast, where you dress up your noodle soup with that stuff in those bowls.

These are apartments down a side street in town, sort of like the one I had for the first few days I was here.

There are a lot of dogs walking around the streets

This is where you buy dresses

This is where fishermen buy gillnets and other fishing supplies

These things are like trucks with tractor engines. I don’t know what they really are, they use them a lot in Madagascar too.

A very typical street scene. People like to hang out around stores and play cards, smoke, chat.

Street

At this fried rice place near the entrance to the gardens you can get all sorts of good food and fresh juices!

You can also order these “potato cakes”, basically slices of potatoes, fried, and then covered in condensed milk. Sort of like pancakes in a way.

Sunday night: I’m walking the streets alone. Kids scream as they run through garbage piles, past slot machine casinos packed full of men and brothels with exhausted women glowing red in the light. I hear yelling approaching from behind, but I don’t turn around. Drunken teenagers on red motorbikes often hoot at one another at this hour. Then they pull up next to me.

I glare through the dark. Who could this be? Familiar faces smile back. “heeellloow” they say. It’s my former landlords. The ones who installed worthless window locks on a brand new apartment complex, who thought it was a good idea to house americans (the only ones living in Menglun) on the first floor, the ones who could barely look at me or say “duibuqi” to me when the police showed up after the break in. It’s those guys.

“Ni hao” I say. I don’t know what is going on. Blurred colors float over their heads as stores advertise goods with fluorescent lights. At night, this town comes alive in ways you would never expect, and I’m part of it.

The wife hops off the motorbike and carriers her 2-year old daughter with her. “Go! Let’s go!” the husband yells at me as he pats the back of the seat, signalling me to get on and ride into the night.

I tried to decline. But what the fuck. Who cares at this hour. So I straddle the red motorbike and we speed off, leaving his wife and child in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

Moments later we pull into the parking lot of my old apartment. It’s too famliar. I told myself this was home for every second of every day until the break-in. He leads me to my old room and points proudly at the new security measures – chicken wire over the window bars – so that if someone wants to steal your stuff they better bring wire cutters! Great. I nod, smile, and try not to trip on things as I follow him around.

I have a seat in the living room and look at him. I mean I look at him. Dead in the face. I give him a look that transcends all language barriers. And I see how sorry he is, and how bad he feels, and how bad he has felt. I see this, and it all melts away. My anger towards this man is washed into the Mekong. Down through thick mud and sediment-filled shoreline. Flowing past gillnets and finally into green waters that lead to sea. All of it. Finally.

We sit and drink and chain smoke until our heads pulsate with nicotine. He teaches me the word for beer, for lighter, for telephone (not that I remember them this morning) and he tells me how Americans are different from Chinese people because we are big and like to shoot guns. He saw this on television. Well, I guess he is right, I am bigger than he is and I do like guns. He gives me his phone number and I give him mine, and we agree to meet again for another Chinese lesson. But next time, I must bring “my book” (Chinese/English dictionary)

Looking into his face again, I can tell what he really wants is for me to move back in. He wants rent, he wants his wife not to be angry with him. He wants this American to have not left his stuff on a table at night, and for his wife not to have placed a table near the window. Well, me too. And I give him a look that says so. Then we sit back in our chairs, finish the last of our drinks, and fade into the night.