Wuchang again, and again

Clive and I have been back to Wuchang to earn our extra pocket money two or three times now; but it, too, has changed, and is losing its previous allure. A lot of this has to do with the lack of social time with Rina, and the disappearance of Cindy.

Rina is now studying English full time at the HIT University in Harbin, then coming back home to Wuchang to teach two full weekend days at her little school. It must be exhausting. She lacks confidence in her English, although I think her speaking, especially, is quite good. Tiredness and this only half-hidden insecurity have turned her into a zombie-like apparition, who stumbles and mumbles about, muttering to herself and complaining. Poor Rina, formerly the queen of gregariousness, a bolt of lightning, a shot of adrenalin, has aged before my eyes. You just want to give her a hug, tell her everything will be all right, then give her a kick up the arse and tell her to snap out of it.

Even more sadly, at least for Clive, who is broken-hearted, is Cindy’s elopement. It turns out that not only did Cindy have Clive, plus his Chinese rival in Harbin (a businessman her family wanted her to marry but whom she refused), but she also had a third man, her first love who lives in Beijing, and it was to him she ran when things got too much for her. She moved in with her old flame, found a job in sales, hated it, quit, and is now, according to Rina, as unhappy as ever, as she's feeling guilty and missing her family, but is too proud to come home.

My nemesis Danny is now our main minder. He acts the part of welcoming host, but seems anxious to get rid of us as quickly as possible when the work is done. Long gone are the nights out and the dancing at Happy Sundays, a distant memory the staggering back at five in the morning to awaken the sleepy night porter at the Overlook Hotel. And yet, after class, Danny still says, 'See you in two weeks,' and we find ourselves pressured into agreeing to just one more weekend. We have to sign our names on pay slips now, which Danny keeps in a locked drawer, and we wonder if, in the future, we ever say 'no' to working in Wuchang, will he use this evidence, and his contacts at the college, to make our lives difficult there? A dangerous game, but one we went into quite willingly, so can't really complain about.

That Sunday morning Clive opened the curtains and we looked out onto the low-rise mess of the little town to find it covered in three inches of red sand, a storm the night before having come in from the Gobi desert and enveloped the place. Cars, bikes, rooftops, pavements, balconies, streets and walls, all covered in red sand and enveloped and strange and alien, like a scene from Mars.