Liu Yang

April 2002

I met her in the Banana Bar club in Nan Gang the Saturday before my birthday, and we had a brief, bright, but quickly extinguished…what? Affair? No, no sex. Relationship? No, no commitment was made. I don't know what to call it, but from being the perfect thirtieth birthday present, a promise of fireworks, we became a damp squib, and I don't know why.

It's gone two and I'm dancing with Tam, Clive and Ken on the sprung, bouncy, neon-lit dance floor amidst thick dry ice. Clive is doing the bump-and-grind with a tall, big-boned girl who's all elbows, Tam is gesticulating in that middle-weight boxer style, while Ken is wrapping himself lizard-like around the pole on the stage, forcing his body into all sorts of painful contortions as a group of hormonally-charged teenage girls make eyes at him and scream. Liu Yang starts dancing beside me, then with me, then against me, in tight black jeans, black v-neck top, long hair up in a pony-tail, and these funky black glasses that make her look like a cross between a downhill skier and a pop star.

The music stops and the lights come on. It's time for the exotic dancers or, to call a spade a spade, the strippers. The floor's cleared and, as the men start whooping, and the women start cursing their whooping men, Liu Yang and I escape to the bar for a drink. Under the brighter lights of the bar I realise she's not just cute, but actually quite beautiful: clear pale skin, sparkling eyes, lovely smile, and with kind, tactile mannerisms. We make the usual small talk. She's from Da Qing, studies English at Harbin Normal University, has one year of her studies left. She's still not sure what she wants to do after she graduates. The music starts up again, and we spend the rest of the night dancing together. When it's time for her to go, she takes me by the hand and leads me to the cloakroom, where she finds a pen in her bag and we exchange numbers. We arrange to go shopping during the week, and I invite her to my birthday celebrations the next weekend, she leaves with her friends, and I spend the rest of the night on a cloud floating somewhere above the dry ice.