China and Japan

A day or two later she had this to say:

My dear bastard,

I’ve just tuned off my computer, but then I switched it back on to get your email.

I keep on thinking of you, your smile, your action, what you have said, what you have done. It is so easy to shift my attention from what I am doing to you. My bastard, you have disturbed my life! But still I am so glad to have met you, know you, and be with you.

goodnight

Tingting

A few days after that first glorious fuck we met again, for lunch and a film – some generic junk – and it was ok, the whiz-bang of the film, its stylized choreographed violence, bad guys raiding the lair of good guys, ballet with bullets. Easy stuff to lap up, for it was typical, mundane, generic – yet how horrific it would seem to one not used to it.

In any case we only paid half attention, cuddling and kissing, passion growing until she went as far massaging my cock through my trousers towards the end of the film. And then we came back here to fuck. Just like the first time, she was bashful at first, bashful out of a sense that she ought be. I do not mean that it was an act – not at all; her modest feelings were genuine, but grew out of her cultural conditioning even so. And so soon she forgot them.

And she really was a remarkable lover, and when she came on top she so got into it, doing this thing with pelvic squeezes which just blasted me. It was a little difficult to get into her at first, causing her pain, but once she’d relaxed, once she had eased herself round my size, she let her feelings go. This night was not quite as fine as before, since her period was due, and this made her tender. But also (she whispered to me) ‘I’m safe’, so that there was no need to hold back when I came. And that was fun. So we fucked, rested, fucked again; and then dinner. I took her to such and such a place, near her home, since she had said she wanted to sleep there that night. I was standing-water as to whether to cajole her harder to stay here, so I let it unfold as it would. In any case, I was broadly sure she would stay if I pressed her to it, and that was enough. Whether she actually did stay or not became less important since I knew the decision rested with me, not her. I had the power, the control; whether I used it was immaterial.

There was one sour note at the restaurant– the jug of beer I ordered arrived warm. I got pretty pissy at this, as the restaurant passes itself as upscale and charges accordingly. Thus I didn’t expect the hick-town warm beer treatment that’s de rigueur for much of the city. It’s about the only thing that riles me; British as I am I have a horror of making a fuss in public, but cold beer is just a red rag. Tingting teased me about my irritation, which was indeed excessive.

Several properly cold beers later, I was, of course, keen to have her in my arms, in my bed, and she agreed to come home as long as I swore not to make love again. Which promise I made easily enough since coming a third time would have taken some effort; and the frenzied thrusting to achieve it would have even more exacerbated the pre-menstrual discomfort she wished to avoid by making me promise not to fuck.

But even so, her smooth lithe body was a delight to undress and made me hard again. Of course I still did not really have another shot in me, but she did not know that. And so this was really the prefect situation, making me look virile (which, male vanity, I enjoy in competition against her husband) and making her feel wanted (which she is; and which, I hope, gives her the self-belief I know her wet fish hubby don’t, for she has no idea of how fine she is).

We did, however, kiss and explore before we slept, and amid this she irritated me a little by biting me. Now I resented this half out of the mere pain of it. But the other, more important half was for the marks it might leave. I only told her the second reason, of course, explaining that bite marks would look unprofessional for my work.

This was not true. The real reason, of course, was that bite marks are the sign of a lover; and thus I would not be able to chase new women or bed any of my current lovers. And so we slept; and it was good to hold her in my arms, her trim, supple body.

There was one other awkward note to that evening. After the cinema, on the tube home, she had noticed me using my phone (sending a message to Tulip; I will introduce her later), a Panasonic, and said ‘We must resist Japanese brands, fight against them!’ striking that aggressive, slightly rabid pose so common here. When I tried to suggest there were more ways of seeing the world than one, tried to suggest that she, as a doctor, ought perhaps have a wider, mature view, she became sulky. Not because I had suggested she was immature but because I suggested the Japanese were not, in fact, all devils. Her attitude saddened me, but I did not pick a fight, letting it go instead. It is not really possible to expunge the years of indoctrination and bigotry Beijing has fed the people since 1989. It just never stops: today's paper reporting that China has impounded a set of Japanese textbooks being sent to a Japanese school here because they show China and Taiwan in different colors.

But given that 99% of everyone I know here would agree with this stand, would puff and fuss and strut at the idea Taiwan was a separate country, in spite of the clear and obvious truth that it is, in every meaningful way, separate, what can one do? I can explain it step by step, that it has its own laws, its own government, that Beijing has no political or legal or monetary control over it, and they will follow me, will agree. I can say that it has its own history and native language and, less readily, they will agree; yet with all this they will still not accept it is a separate country. And, faced with that level of obtuse ignorance, that stubbornness, what can one do? It is as futile as arguing with creationists.

So few people here are truly able to think, able to see beyond the pabulum whipped up by the government. It’s easier to keep it simple, China good, Japan bad; China right, rest of the world wrong. For example, I tried to pin down Tingting over Beijing’s appalling cover-up of the initial SARS outbreak, to see if she would accept that China owed the world an apology since, as a doctor, she must accept that it was the initial cover up that stymied efforts to stop the spread of the disease, letting it leap to Hong Kong and then the world. Doctors in the region wanted to announce the disease so that people could take safety measures; but they were shut down by the government since this happened at the time of a big Communist Party meeting.

These wretched events are wholly choreographed, and no bad news must be allowed to get in the way of the outrageous parade of filth and lies they generate – days of rubbish about how good the Party has been for China, when in truth it has created vast misery, suffering, pain and the deaths of millions upon millions.

But while Tingting accepted Beijing was at fault, she would not accept it owed anyone an apology – while being quite sure Japan, which (unlike China) has attacked no-one in the last 50 years, did.

This rising tide of Nationalism is dangerous. When people as educated as Tingting buy into the lies, anger and hate, then the future is worrying indeed.

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